Today is my last day of class. I have officially survived my first semester of my MFA program in one piece. We’ll determine how well I survived after grades come in, but I appear to be in one piece and of sound mind, so I’ll call it at least a moral victory.
Last Wednesday, my workshop discussed the revisions I made to the Grammar Lesson story that I submitted earlier in the semester. I sat down and fleshed out the story and it went from a four page piece of flash fiction to the ten page beginning of a short story. Not only did the class enjoy the revisions, but a visiting professor who was observing our class for evaluation interrupted the workshop and said “First of all, I’m trying to figure out how you’ve managed to write my life.” Turns out, she’s a black woman (I was fooled by her nearly lily-white skin) whose own high school experience closely mirrored my character’s. She then delved into the themes of race, class, and generational expectations in the story. And she said something that stuck with me: “When you’re an intelligent African-American woman, your life is not your own. You’re always representing the race.” (That comment helped inspire my Ratchet Revolutionary post.) Anyway, at the end of class, she passed me her email address and thanked me for my story. Apparently, she’d been having a bit of writer’s block and she found Grammar Lesson inspiring.
