As I floundered in the throes of uncertainty spurred by the coronavirus pandemic, I found myself returning to a question I have often grappled with as a marginalized person: how does one feel empowered in a world that insists on our powerlessness? It would be redundant to list the myriad methods that structures and institutions—whether social, economic, governmental, etc.—deploy to maintain the powerlessness of marginalized people. To be marginalized is to know intimately the pattern of power struggle; to know that generally we are offered only a modicum of power if we are willing to suppress what makes us “other”; to know that generally we are rewarded (with a fraction of dignified life) only if we work tirelessly to dehumanize ourselves and uphold the white supremacist, heternormative foundations from which our current world stems.
Writing and publishing, like all industries, are no exception to this framework. I have had the great misfortune of “a seat at the table” inside many white- and cismale-dominated rooms in the literary community, where my progression as an artist was conditional on my capacity to cede my “otherness” and power. I have also borne witness to marginalized writers across all walks of life actively ceding theirs in order to succeed. So regularly did I encounter obstacles to my and others’ empowerment as a young writer that I became proficient in these settings with resistance rather than dialogue. Because there is no room for dialogue when, as a person, almost every forum in which you are begrudgingly allowed to participate is one that vows to ensure your voicelessness.
Something I have realized over the course of my life is also something I’m stealing from the abolitionist activist and organizer Mariame Kaba: hope is a discipline. It is understandable to be overwhelmed by a seemingly hopeless world. But it is only when we collectively act in defiance of the status quo, organize, and focus our energy where it is capable of the greatest impact that we inspire others to do the same. So, I have learned that the best way to feel empowered in a world that insists on our powerlessness is not to wait for power, but to brandish it, by living and creating fearlessly. And equally important, to quote the great Toni Morrison: “If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.”
And so, everything about this wonderful Editorial Fellowship with Shenandoah has been about that: empowerment. From the beginning, Shenandoah has emboldened Fellows to create fearlessly in their curation of an issue. To me, this meant translating all the liberation that the marginalized artist finds on the page into the dynamics of editing. Put another way: the marginalized writer is freest on the page, and our experiment at Shenandoah would be to manifest that freedom from submission to publication—because repeatedly, the spaces to which marginalized writers offer their fearless imaginations are ones that echo the disappointing constraints of our reality, the very sense of powerlessness that these writers experience while moving through our world.
Thus, we gave writers the option to advocate for their craft by doing away with the traditional cover letter and requesting instead that they tell us about the goals, traditions, and insights informing their submissions. These craft notes immediately allowed for marginalized writers to initiate a conversation on their terms and for us to bear that dialogue in mind while reviewing their pieces. Similarly, we gave our contributors the option to provide an author’s note where they would have the opportunity to address an audience of readers. (Spoiler: they all did, and each note is a rallying manifesto.) From acceptance to publication, we have aspired to empower these writers as much as possible, encouraging them to retain agency and authority over their visions. To that end, we worked collectively toward inspiring ourselves and others to create fearlessly too, to get all of us closer to the real world we at Shenandoah believe is possible, if we are so defiant as to imagine it. If we are so defiant as to toil for it.
It takes bravery to live and create fearlessly. These pieces of fiction are tethered not by theme, genre, or subject matter, but rather by the mettle it takes to live in our world as a marginalized writer and still be so bold as to imagine different ones. My wish for you, then, dear reader, is that they inspire you as they have me, to exercise the inventiveness and resilience necessary to not only hope for a better world, but also to believe in the power to fight for one.