Exhibit A (knickers twisted)
April Fools in the Neighborhood
Archive | City Matters
The Fire Still Burns
Today is the 108th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. The worst industrial disaster in NYC history, 146 garment workers—123 of them women—died in a Washington Square factory fire because doors and windows were locked to ensure workers didn’t take breaks or steal. The events of that day helped launch the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, now known as UNITE, which protects the rights and safety of textile workers and where I worked as an organizer. This picture was taken 25 years ago at the site of that disaster. I am the dark-haired butch in the left-hand corner, talking to NYC tweens who’d been inspired to support their mothers being mistreated in sweatshops. Oh, how I wish things were more improved today.
Diving Into the Wreck
16 at 48.
My eldest goddaughter calls me a “method writer.” By this she means that I experience everything as I write about it and materialize in real-life whatever I author on page. As is often the case, she is absolutely right.
I’ve been thinking about this because I spent the first half of this day writing a scene I’ve desperately avoided writing for two years. It’s about all the stuff I don’t like to think about, let alone read about. And yet the scene demanded to be written.
At heart my book is about post-traumatic growth–the magic that’s conferred when we rise from our own ashes– and you can’t write about such an ascent without first describing the fire.
After I sent in the day’s work I spent an hour curled up in a ball. I was worrying about the impact of these pages on my reader and overwhelmed by the sadness and rage and fear I’d had to unleash. I do not know how to write about pain without experiencing it anew.
For me the the worst thing about writing isn’t the writer’s block (I rarely have it) nor the poverty (though it’s becoming devastating) but that crazy, out-of-control feeling of diving into the biggest and hardest places without someone or something to pull me back out. There I sat in the late afternoon sunlight crying like a Child who had never been rescued. Continue Reading →