Why Write?

“Last week, I was in a classroom in Austin, Texas, where a girl who was apparently going through a really rough spell at home wrote a poem that was definitely tragic and comic, both, about — everybody was yelling at her in the poem, from all directions. She was just kind of suffering in her home place and trying to find peace, trying to find a place to do her homework. But she wrote this in such a compelling way that when she read it — and read it with gusto and joy; there was such joyousness in her voice, even though she was describing something that sounded awful — when she finished, the girls in her classroom just broke into wild applause. And I saw her face. She lit up. And she said, ‘Man, I feel better.’ And I thought, yeah, that’s — this is such a graphic example of putting words on the page. That feeling of being connected to someone else, when you allow yourself to be very particular, is another mystery of writing.”

– Naomi Shihab Nye, in an interview with Krista Tippett, On Being, March 15, 2018