I believe that the act of witnessing is integral to the role of art, especially in this particular moment in our nation. Eddie Glaude, the author of Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, said in a recent workshop that the poet's work is to give voice to the suffering, to make it real. As he so eloquently put it, "some of us have to become poets, but all of us have to bear witness." I want us to hear writers' voices — or the voices of their characters — and to be moved to take some kind of action.
I founded Story Remedy as an intentional space to share stories — our own and others' — and to profoundly engage with the world as both an artist and an activist. I am most moved by writing that bears witness to the world around us; that makes reading an act of resistance; that recognizes language as rebellion; and that teaches us, as Richard Wright so beautifully put it, the power of using "words as a weapon."