What are we writers to do in a nation where so many young and old seem to have gone mad, publically shouting and bullying, using crude names for those of the female sex and for people of non-Christian religions and for people of color — here in a country where over decades we?ve:

• Passed legislation that elevates women and their rights to be on par with those of men (even if we haven?t fully brought that elevation to light in every corner of the country, at least there?s the legislation to work to enforce?or was, if some of the newly about-to-be appointed have their way.)
• Passed antidiscrimination legislation (which helps us enormously in addressing the discrimination that sadly still exists),
• And established separation of Church and State from the very beginning of our existence!

This was on the minds of writers I interviewed last Sunday for my program ?In Conversation, Discussions on Writing and the Writing Life? for KPTZ FM that will be aired over the months between December and April. I spoke with former Washington State Poet Laureate Kathleen Flenniken; I spoke with poet and columnist for The Nation magazine, Katha Pollitt; I spoke with counselor and researcher Harriet Cannon, who writes on helping people deal with issues in multiethnic relationships; and I spoke with poet and retired professor Alice Derry. During the recordings, the poets read from their work and each of the readings held the sadness felt about the trouble our country is in right now when so many, whether from fear or indoctrination, do not recognize that all of us are humans and deserve dignity, respect and caring.

What is this talk of registering Muslims, promising a wall between our country and our ally to the south, dismantling equal opportunity and women?s rights legislation and threatening to make public protest a felony? How fragile are our institutions and how easily they can be torn apart under authoritarian leaders. Some who may soon be in leadership positions are already on record as saying they want to ?tear it all down.?

I knew as I listened to Katha Pollitt that this week?s double issue for Writing It Real needed to be about what writers must do in these troubling times. I knew as I listened to Harriet mention that in her granddaughter?s town, children were bullying other children in the school bathrooms with racial slurs, that it had to be about how writers can help people see what bullying language covers up. I knew when I listened to Kathleen?s poem that it had to be about remembering that the adult world carries with it fears that the innocence of childhood can, given a chance, overcome. And I knew listening to Alice that it would be about our common, very human, bonds with people we have never met.

I wanted to address the idea that what people thought they were voting for may not be what they are getting. I wanted to address the idea that even if they got what they thought they were voting for, they are in danger: when we oppress others, we ourselves are oppressed. We don?t all agree and we never will, but as Harriet said in our interview, we can talk to one another about what we fear and we can refrain from bullying those of different opinions. Our democracy, with its Constitution and amendments, created a country that made this kind of discourse possible. My article would have to be about how this remains possible, even when those we love and who we want to hear us may not be listening and when those we don?t know but want to have listen to us may not because they are busy protecting themselves behind epithets.

Katha describes those epithets in a recent article column in The Nation:

The Trump phenomenon was like an Internet comment thread come to life: aggressive, bullying, ignorant, and contemptuous of women. Consider the T-shirts: ?Trump That Bitch.? ?Proud to Be a Hillary Hater.? ?I Wish Hillary Had Married OJ.? ?She?s a Cunt/Vote for Trump.? ?KFC Hillary Special: 2 Fat Thighs, 2 Small Breasts? Left Wing.? (KFC objected to that one.)

And so I am reminding you as writers how important it is to write from your vulnerability, from your humility and best-though-imperfect selves to help those who read your work rise above any fear and nastiness stirred up by crowds who are manipulated into revealing their most undignified, uncompassionate, and mobbiest of mentalities. It is more than important that you lend your voice wherever you can find a place to speak: in opinion columns, in letters to the editor, in classrooms where you share poetry and personal essays and short stories, where you can talk about the bittersweet experience of being human. Lend your writing voice to those you love?read your work to your children, your relatives?they will listen to your heart even when they do not listen to your opinions. Be the change you want to see, as the advice goes. Your writing is the change you want to see?it reflects what you are working toward ? a higher self that sees more in reflection when you have finished a piece of writing than was possible in the moment it was lived, a higher self that shares the shape of a moment with others and connects because of that. Lend your support to the organizations that are protecting our rights to free speech (you can find them here in a list inside Katha?s recent article).

A few night’s ago, the cast of the hit Broadway play Hamilton read a request that the vice president-elect, there to see the play, help protect the rights of a diverse population. Though he stirred many to violence during his campaign, the vice president-to-be?s presumptive boss quickly tweeted that theater must always be a safe place. It is a safe place for people to experience other people?s experiences. Literature and art, however, are always at risk in authoritarian cultures because they ask us to move beyond our comfort zones, to get to know the actual state of our human hearts, our human minds, our human relationships and our relationship to this planet that supports us. Literature and art ask us to move forward into humility with love. Literature and poetry, no matter the sadness of the truths they evoke, the anger they reveal, always say ?yes,? yes to the yearning we have for fairness and dignity, for love, and for understanding.

As writers we must ?rise to the opportunity,? as Katha Pollitt said in our conversation, to share our wisdom by finding it in our writing and getting it out there?to adults as well as children, in newspapers and magazines, online and in libraries and schools.

No matter how depressed and angry we may feel, we must make opportunities and we must take them to get our writing written and to share it widely because we can eventually humanize the country we are living in. We have made progress before. Our eloquent president and writer, Barack Obama, has very high popularity in this country, higher than when Reagan, also a popular president, ended his term. That tells us something. As do the words of Martin Luther King, which have been well quoted over the last weeks, ?The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.? Justice, and may I add dignity, and freedom for all, not the hate we are seeing lashing out, which always imprisons the haters as well as the hated.

My mantra: when we oppress others, we too are oppressed.

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Be kind to our language. Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. ? — Yale historian Timothy Snyder

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My four interviewees have given me permission to post work they read on Sunday. Each has an individual voice that addresses the need to say what is felt and observed.

From Kathleen Flenniken?s poetry:

Coconut?

In those days we liked our ranks,
our neat columns and rows of desks,
or we didn?t know not to, we little girls
in plaid and sashes, we little boys
with pocket slingshots.

turning to our reading in a classroom
circumscribed by shoebox dioramas
and the number line, we little boys
running in recess packs, we little girls
collecting hop-scotch chains,

who fogged the small-paned windows
on orange afternoons
to write our names, then
a birthday party after school, a pinwheel
thumb-tacked on a pencil to take home,

and rarely, maybe once a year,
boys and girls, someone brought
a coconut to share, say s souvenir
of David G.?s uncle?s trip
across an ocean —

hairy husk hammered open,
woody crescents divvied up,
oily milk from a tiny Dixie-cup?

though we didn?t like the taste
and we complained
as the world began impinging
on our world with its satellites
its news reports, and something in us knew

it shouldn?t be, yet. Because it was enough
to lie in the dark and wait for sleep,

we little girls decoding voices
from another room, we little boys
alert for squealing tires and police.

— Originally published in Word Riot

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Katha Pollitt read a poem from her poetry collection?The Mind-Body Problem:

Trying to Write a Poem Against the War

My daughter, who?s as beautiful as the day,
hates politics: Face it, Ma,
they don?t care what you think! All
passion, like Achilles,
she stalks off to her room,
to confide in her purple guitar and await
life?s embassies. She?s right,
of course: bombs will be hurled
at ordinary streets
and leaders look grave for the cameras,
and wht good are more poems against war
the real subject of which
so often seems to be the poet?s superior
moral sensitivities? I could
be mailing myself to the moon
or marrying a pine tree,
and yet what can we do
but offer what we have?
and so I spend
this cold gray milky morning
trying to write a poem against war
that perhaps may please my daughter
who hates politics
and does not care much for poetry, either.

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Harriet Cannon read from Mixed Blessings: A Guide to Multicultural and Multiethnic Relationships, a book she co-authored with Rhoda Berlin about the work we must do in accepting one another across ethnic lines:

Ethnocentrism

?We make a rational assumption about someone?s behavior based on what we would, or would not, do in the same circumstances, ignoring the otherness of the other. ?

Valerie and Tim?s first Christmas together as a married couple was approaching. Their previous Christmases had been spent apart because as college students each had returned to their parents? home for winter break. Valerie, the 2^nd generation Korean-American expected Tim to be excited about the prospect of being in sunny California over the winter holiday. Tim, Pennsylvania Dutch, expected Valerie to be excited about experiencing her first ?white Christmas?. When they finally got around to talking about it, each was perplexed and more than a little resentful that their partner wasn?t willing to spend the holiday with the in-laws. Each had assumed the other would want to share and adopt a treasured holiday experience, a piece of their partner?s heritage, tradition, and cultural identity. Each was surprised and hurt by the other?s reluctance to give up their family?s practice. It was their first big fight and it stung. The holidays were supposed to bring them closer together, not highlight their differences.

This is ethnocentrism at work. Ethnocentrism is not racism. An ethnocentric perspective means we consider what we know to be best. It?s rooting for the New York Yankees instead of the Texas Rangers.

Ethnocentrism is a natural human phenomenon with key evolutionary purposes. It is an integral part of the development of our cultural identities. When the human species was young, survival depended on knowing where and with whom we belonged. It was vital to be able to quickly gauge the level of risk posed by strangers.

We still identify and categorize other people. It helps us identify our ?in-group? or ?tribe? and create our safety zone. Think of sayings we have along these lines:

Birds of a feather stick together.
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it?s a duck.

Think about the last time you asked a stranger for the time. How did you choose someone to approach? You probably looked for someone wearing a watch or carrying a cell phone. Did you also consider their dress, demeanor, gender, age and/or ethnicity? This is natural, automatic, and usually unconscious. We judge appearances to minimize our risk of harm and maximize our chance of success.

Today?s political landscape attempts to be bias-free. We like to think that physical appearance has little to do with how we relate to people. Recent brain research shows this isn?t true. Human beings have an evolutionary need to identify with groups. Part of the process of recognizing our in-group is governed by an older part of our brains, the amygdala.

Anyone who survived the teen years knows exactly what in-groups and out-groups are. We all want to belong, and we each have to develop our own definition of what that means and how it translates into action and relationship. Luckily, we are not solely dependent on the more primitive parts of our brains. Our frontal cortex enables critical thinking. If we react negatively to a stranger based on appearances, it?s up to us to remind ourselves to override our fight or flight instincts.

Tim and Valerie were not the only ones in their families who had to redefine belonging. In addition to the differences between their East and West Coast cultures, they were the first multiethnic couple in either family. This forced their family members to redefine their tribes, since there was now a member who didn?t look like he or she belonged.

Alice Derry read this poem:

Although I Laid Carnations

1

I wasn?t there
to wash my mother?s body.

The day before,
yes.

When the home nurse came,
we cleaned her together, rolling her gently
on her side so we could wipe away the feces,
rolling her back to lift the too-heavy breasts,
dry the gathered sweat.

And each time we touched, each time
we moved her, she cried,
No. No. No. Although she could hardly speak.
had said her goodbyes two days before,
making me listen.

After his call, by the time I could get to her
?three hours away?my brother had already
washed her and dressed her again
in the flimsy hospital gown.

But nothing in it of ceremony,
although I laid carnations
to frame her face and cover her crossed hands,

thinking of Hamlet?s mother and Ophelia,
sweets to the sweet, thinking not even
of the real but of some other sore heart?s imaginings
to help me.

2.

Walking into work
in the early quiet
where a few minutes alone
is all I?ll get today,
I can try to imagine
the Iraqi Shiite woman
the radio has brought me.
She is the one who keeps the dark stone house
for the ceremonial washing
of the Shiite dead.
She didn?t elect this work.

Twenty-two when I saw the first body.
I said to myself, your four children
will starve if you don?t do this.

The reporter describes how she
begins by covering the genitals
with a small square of white cloth.
Onto the scalp, she touches a circle of soap,
which widens to foam. The rinsed hair
returns to ringlets. With the loofah sponge,
she scrubs the body until it emerges, burnished,
ready to be wrapped in white linen for burial.

If pressed, she will tell you
she has never gotten used to it:
what was hardest, the woman they brought
to her, burned all over?
clutching her baby so tightly,
they had to be washed together.

3.

When friends ask, this first year
my daughter?s gone from home?
Don?t you wish she was always
a child, holding to you?

No, I say. No.
No. I want us
to be able to let go,

one body, then two.

Then from the tight embrace of the first years,
a child gathers herself
to walk away.

The air remains.

This Shiite woman has given me
a part of herself, her gift,
as I stumble out of my car
in the half light of first spring,
all the birds back
to help us hear air.

Transubstantiation.
One thing becomes another.
Mere thought leads to the touchable child.

As she feeds her children the evening meal,
the woman who washes bodies knows well
what flesh is made of
how necessary the solid body is,
which becomes earth, its sure path.

When her children crawl into her lap at bedtime,
that?s a different matter.

— From Tremolo, Red Hen Press, Pasadena, CA 2012.

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I cherish the words of these writers. I cherish the way they reach directly into my heart, allow me to know what is right and good. I believe that their words are what make this article the one I wanted to write.