In this 17 minute interview for the Louisiana Channel conducted in 2018, Zadie shares some thoughts on the topic of shame, rage, and writing. Shame to Zadie is a very useful emotion, particularly with writing as she believes “writing is all shame.” Shame comes in a variety of forms at all levels of societies and can help humble people as well as help them seek understanding and insight. Zadie points out that writing is very intimate and exposed. Paradoxically, many writers happen to be shy and introverted. Zadie believed that shame then serves as a motivator to endure the uncomfortable exposure that many introverted people do not like. Shamelessness, on the contrary is extremely dangerous remarked Zadie and points to the current president of the time as an example of how destructive a shameless person can be. This transitions Zadie in to talking about rage that is apparent in extreme right wing politics. It is rather fascinating to her that simple linguistic strategies like BLM can often quickly enrage right wing ideologues. It seems rather absurd for people to endure hundreds of years of slavery and oppression and then receive so much rage for simply saying the three words of “Black Lives Matter.” Zadie also elaborates on her observation that white people seem to be so angry at their exclusion into social worlds. It almost seems unacceptable to certain white people to be left out and Zadie believes it to come from a place of insecurity, jealousy, and vanity. She questions as to why can’t a person feel curious or accepting of experiences of exclusion? Why jump straight to rage?
I was not expecting to relate to something so deeply when watching the video. I myself am a very introverted person and have slowly been gravitating towards writing for years. I never thought to consider that shame was a source of writing fuel for me. There was a section of the video that really hit home and it was a quote by Foster Wallace that she mentioned. Writers essentially are people who are talented in many domains but not talented enough to make something of it. Performing can often lead people to crumble under the pressure and lead to subpar work. Writing, on the contrary, requires no performance in front of others; it for the most part is intimate and alone. I completely agree with Zadie. I always felt like I was good at many different things, but if it required me to perform in front of large amounts of people, I would certainly mess it up or perform below what I know I am capable of. Baseball was especially one of those things for me. I would often do well in practice but I always stank it up during games. Perhaps I was always meant to be a writer…
Cosmic Latte 