Writing Within & Without a Community
Writing Within &
Without a Community
Shonette Reed
My greatest wins and moments of success have come when I am grounded in community. From the nudge to enter an art or writing contest, to celebrating a placement, or even making it to the final round, it is a profound experience to be encouraged to move forward with a goal that visibly lights my entire face up. Community, in essence, is where I have thrived and grown into the person and creative I desire to be. It is an innate desire that God has placed in each of us, all the way from the beginning of creation.
When I started college in 2010, I had no intention of pursuing a journalism degree. Though I had started writing at the age of 9 in an after-school program, I kept most of it private—only sharing bits and pieces with those closest to me. But God, who made a point to speak to me through the voice of others, had a different plan. Whether it was an elementary school teacher who saw something in my poetry, a high school teacher who said I had a “strong voice” before I ever knew what voice was, or my freshmen seminar college professor who pointed out the skill in an assignment. This is where my safety began. But in college, I encountered a world where my safety began to shatter.
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I did not have a writing community in college. Whether it was school, an internship, or the journalism study-abroad program, finding community in other writers was far more difficult than it should have been. In time, I found it even more difficult to navigate school in the midst of other writers—whether it was in the criticism of the stories I wanted to tell, the lack of willingness to listen to students of color on campus who were not seen as valid, or the unreciprocated effort I found when I offered to lend an extra eye to someone else’s work. Whenever I made the attempt, there was always something that made writing—an activity I enjoyed and considered to be a communal effort—isolating. It felt like every corner I turned, there was another competition to gear up for. The lack of camaraderie nearly made me leave the world of media and publishing before I crossed the stage and received my degree. Having jobs at well-known publications was often held in high regard—yet, most of the time, as a Black woman, the faces that represented those well-known publications that my Christian college brought in to speak, weren’t Black. It’s not as though publications that catered to me did not exist, so why were they seemingly viewed as less than?
And while I don’t think people meant harm, at times, I do know that there are systems in place to put writers in a position of running a rat race and seeing one another as competition over supporters and allies. I know that systems are in place to view one publication as higher than the other. And while, yes, there are spaces that are more credible than others, students came willing and ready to learn. Not to be overlooked and treated poorly if their work did not reflect what often catered to whiteness or a white standard. Not to be viewed as less than if their dream publication wasn’t one that the masses clapped for.
These experiences hurt my view of the writing community. Competition took the place of community. If you were a journalism major with an emphasis in writing and publishing like I was, it was often looked down on because “print is dead.” And, yet, little glimmers of hope made their way in. Ever so often, someone from a different section of the journalism department would care to lend a hand—but these moments were few and far between. That should have never been.
As the luminous writer bell hooks revealed, “The intellectual tradition of the West is very individualistic. It’s not community-based. The intellectual is often thought of as a person who is alone and cut off from the world. So I have had to practice being willing to leave the space of my study to be in community, to work in community, and to be changed by community.” Writing was a solitary act. And while I do need quiet to tap into what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling, it’s important for me to be able to break out and converse with other writers when I am too close to the work.
After graduation, I was able to do freelance work as I also worked a full-time, overnight job. It was in these spaces, holding different freelance positions, that I finally found a thriving writing community. Where writers championed one another and congratulated each other on accomplishments, even while small. And through that, I began to care about writing again.
I noticed this trend as I carried on in smaller communities doing good work after college. I learned that there are people who want to help. There are people who want to see other writers win, even if it’s before them. Or as Kendrick Lamar says, “I wanna see all my dogs make it. Even if it’s before me.” And through this, I’ve moved from labeling myself as simply a journalist or writer—though both are important and dear to me.
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It’s amazing the ways you begin to view yourself and your work when you can exist in safe spaces. Creating spaces that we have not seen before is difficult, but it is not impossible. We see time and time again throughout scripture when God calls someone to a mission and equips them in a way to move forward. Whether these biblical individuals find excuses to hesitate based on their fear, anger, or doubt, they eventually gain the courage and ability as the call of God and the desires of their heart align with Christ as the ultimate importance.
To state the obvious, community starts with creation in Genesis 1. Yet, the creation of spaces where people are free to exist, discover and flourish together is not an easy feat. America has a system in place that has been entrenched over 400 years that has thrived off pushing down one group while uplifting another. Yet, as we question why we hold to certain things, and as we fight for equity–having people at tables who are able to speak and shed light at these tables–I believe we will prevail.
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Through my time in post-grad life, I have found myself constantly challenged by what I read and who I engage with to create the world I want to see. It is easy to become weighed down by what is that we forget what can be. Throughout this journey, the work of bell hooks reminds me once again, “To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we just continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads to behave in ways that perpetuate domination.”
I don’t expect every space to be a mixture of all people. There are times where spaces both need and deserve to be more exclusive, especially as we live in a world that shows just how deeply white supremacy is rooted in our society—sometimes, one simply needs the space to breathe.
My journey to writing, to building my own community of creatives, has been a constant state of trial and error. No one gets it right the first time, but we must fight toward a world that honors people over productivity and praises the people themselves, over the work we deem to be worthy of a hand-clap.
I do, for some reason, have hope that this will come. I have lived it. And while I may not see it perfected in my lifetime, both myself, and those I’ve chosen to surround myself with, can honor the future by doing the work now.