Observations on Queer Writing Style
I’ve found it’s similar to the way that we speak to each other.
“you who asked a lot will not always have the right answer./we’ve always come on boats. we’re going to keep coming. we/know the waves and rough water./bless the rough water and the small boats./bless the worst thing.”
-Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Bodymap (p. 97)
Due to certain constraints in my life, queer literature has only fairly recently become available to me.
That said, it was a revelation to begin to read some of the work of James Baldwin, Ocean Vuong, and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. I found that I loved them not only because they were fantastic writers, but also because there was something in their style that felt like home.
I know that this detail of queerness is something that uniquely belongs to our people because whenever I use this one stylistic way of speaking around people outside of my community, the response is one of clear discomfort.
When I speak in this way around my queer friends, they lapse into this form of storytelling with me without missing a beat.
Moving between queer and non-queer circles, I’ve learned to code-switch between these two styles and ways of thinking. The benefit of this is that I can see my own language a little more clearly to even notice this subtle difference in the way we tell stories.
It’s a style built on trauma layered with joy and life. We seamlessly move between hilarious and ridiculous anecdotes into some very heavy themes and back again to beauty without allowing time for breath or pity. Pain is part of life and we don’t have time to dwell on it permanently. We know it will just keep coming and we need to find the good in the in-between. We aren’t afraid to talk about all of it though.
When I entered the room where Ocean Vuong was speaking, I was still numb from what was happening in my life. I wasn’t sure if I would ever be able to feel again. His words, shared in this style, melted the numbness I was feeling, allowing me to let the pain in, giving me permission to feel it without making sense of it. He touched the pain in this perfect way that allowed feeling without ever fully succumbing, because there was always something beautiful in the next sentence to soak up the blood from the last one.
We perform our own emotional titration therapy through the stories we tell each other.
I find that I must share very slowly around people who are outside of my community. The communication is much less efficient. I must choose between comedy and tragedy and never let the two mix in ways that might be seen as disturbing. I must allow adequate time for acknowledgment of pain, to allow it to sink in, or I must avoid all discussion of it. I must select only digestible pain for this outside crowd, or they will get overwhelmed and shut down before hearing my story. Worse, they may see the pain as inappropriate or false, when it becomes too much for them.
I prefer this more queer way of sharing. It is a medley of layered stories piled together in a stream of powerful thoughts that will make you laugh and cry at the same time, leaving you uncertain how to feel, uncertain as to who is the hero or the villain, leaving you certain that you could love both because you have to, even when you shouldn’t. It is us living more in a short time than many could live in several lifetimes.
It is my people treating all of this as normal and beautiful because for us, it is both.
This is the queer voice. To see it in writing, to see our lives honored and immortalized in their words, means everything.
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