Whew. Wow. Man. The honesty in this is breathtaking. I love how you ended up here: "There’s nothing in our past that is as good as the future we need to build."
Garrett, this piece resonated with me so much. Thanks for writing this! I think I've mentioned that I've finished a draft of essays on nostalgia, and I also use Chabon's excellent essay in it, and the parts you quoted were also the parts that stood out to me as well. I loved this sentence: "What is meaningful is that I’m longing to be part of something better than what I inherited." That articulated something I've been trying to, so thank you for this.
> What is meaningful is that I’m longing to be part of something better than what I inherited. What matters is that I’m not the only one doing so.
I love hearing your stories of love & struggle, Garrett, because so often they lay bare something I've felt or experienced or struggled with and felt shame over because of course I thought it was just me. No pressure(!), but I also can't wait for the book. <3
This means a ton to me, Anna, especially since the subtext of all my writing is basically "um... is this just me or do other people feel this way too?" lol.
I find nostalgia in all its forms as enticing as the next guy, and in a way I feel grateful that as someone who's White, but also gay and trans, that I so quickly hit the roadblock of "yeah, there's nothing for me there", that nothing resembling that which makes my life happy and fulfilling in the present is available to me in the recentish past.
I've been coming across more and more recently the idea that White people can only form a better relationship to our whiteness, and stop strip-mining other traditions for meaning, when we develop a a relationship with our own ancestry, and connect with the fact that there was something there before colonialism and capitalism and disconnection from ourselves and each other and our environments, and I think that the piece that you often write about, of connecting with more recent White radical struggles and solidarity movements, is connected to that in a really interesting way that I'll be thinking through for a while. Grateful for your writing, as ever!
This is all so well put, Lee. "There was something there before...." is a refrain I keep rattling around in my head, but what's really helpful about the connection you made here is reminding me that I likely won't be able to find that history by going all the way back, even if I trust it's there, but that I can see glimpses of it in the stories of the White people in the recent past who discovered glimpses of it in solidarity and struggle.
Whew. Wow. Man. The honesty in this is breathtaking. I love how you ended up here: "There’s nothing in our past that is as good as the future we need to build."
❤️❤️
Garrett, this piece resonated with me so much. Thanks for writing this! I think I've mentioned that I've finished a draft of essays on nostalgia, and I also use Chabon's excellent essay in it, and the parts you quoted were also the parts that stood out to me as well. I loved this sentence: "What is meaningful is that I’m longing to be part of something better than what I inherited." That articulated something I've been trying to, so thank you for this.
I would love to read what you've written about nostalgia sometime!
> What is meaningful is that I’m longing to be part of something better than what I inherited. What matters is that I’m not the only one doing so.
I love hearing your stories of love & struggle, Garrett, because so often they lay bare something I've felt or experienced or struggled with and felt shame over because of course I thought it was just me. No pressure(!), but I also can't wait for the book. <3
This means a ton to me, Anna, especially since the subtext of all my writing is basically "um... is this just me or do other people feel this way too?" lol.
Ha!
I think the longing this writing describes, for me, is something like hiraeth
https://sites.psu.edu/kielarpassionblog2/2016/04/02/hiraeth/
I find nostalgia in all its forms as enticing as the next guy, and in a way I feel grateful that as someone who's White, but also gay and trans, that I so quickly hit the roadblock of "yeah, there's nothing for me there", that nothing resembling that which makes my life happy and fulfilling in the present is available to me in the recentish past.
I've been coming across more and more recently the idea that White people can only form a better relationship to our whiteness, and stop strip-mining other traditions for meaning, when we develop a a relationship with our own ancestry, and connect with the fact that there was something there before colonialism and capitalism and disconnection from ourselves and each other and our environments, and I think that the piece that you often write about, of connecting with more recent White radical struggles and solidarity movements, is connected to that in a really interesting way that I'll be thinking through for a while. Grateful for your writing, as ever!
This is all so well put, Lee. "There was something there before...." is a refrain I keep rattling around in my head, but what's really helpful about the connection you made here is reminding me that I likely won't be able to find that history by going all the way back, even if I trust it's there, but that I can see glimpses of it in the stories of the White people in the recent past who discovered glimpses of it in solidarity and struggle.
Terrific piece! Thanks for putting into words the feelings that I couldn't quite name. Can't wait for the book.
Hey, thanks a ton!