community | BREATHE: Michelle Garren-Flye

I’m back from my hurrication (evacuation due to Hurricane Florence for those who don’t know) and I’m thinking. A lot.

We left town as the clouds of Florence began to blanket Eastern North Carolina.

First, leaving was tough. I’ve written about being away and not knowing what was happening, and then hearing my hometown’s name on the lips of every journalist on the television for forty-eight hours. I heard from friends whose homes were flooded, some with them still inside. This was while the storm was still ongoing. Later, I heard of homes and belongings washed away, dreams broken, families uprooted… Then came the stories of the heroes. Those who went out in boats to help, those who worked tireless hours to help the ones who lost so much, those with power who took others in, meals made and delivered, pets rescued, the long, hard job of drying off and recovering finally beginning.

Traveling with the animals was a new experience for us. Two cats, two dogs and a bearded dragon had to be evacuated too!

Wow. What an amazing community I live in! I am so proud of these people. I want to be a part of it, to help those in need, too.

But.

Not one of the cats we evacuated with, and he didn’t really appreciate seeing our cats inside…

Now that I am home I can see the truckloads of supplies being brought in, the homeless sheltered, the hungry fed. As I throw out the spoiled food from my own refrigerator, I think about how so many of those homeless and hungry have probably been homeless and hungry for a long, long time before Florence paid us a visit. They’ve been invisible in my community until the winds of Florence blew them out into the open.

This is obviously a country of plenty. A land of too much if you judge by the amount of food that was thrown out from the powerless houses. Why is it that the plenty is only shared at times of crisis?

Traffic returning to New Bern meant being stuck behind this pumpkin truck for an hour in Raleigh.

Yes, my neighbors are amazing. Yes, the federal government was generous in its response. FEMA is here, taking care of those who lost homes and belongings. POTUS even visited and passed out hot dogs and thanked volunteers. Bottled water and food, batteries and an army of power trucks to restore the lost power have alleviated much suffering during this time. I’m sure those who needed it are grateful. I am grateful.

The worst of our damage was downed trees. This one, now that my husband has cleared the drive underneath, forms a kind of natural arch for us to drive under.

But. But what happens when the trucks are gone, when we all go back to our daily activities and forget about volunteering? What happens to those who have needed help all along and always will? Can we stay #NewBernStrong for our community?

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Pexels.com

If you have read my blog recently, you probably saw my firm opinion about The Nation editors apologizing for publishing a poem written by a white guy in Black vernacular (AAV, AAVE, whatever). I believe—still—that the poet has the right to write (and publish that writing) for other races, so long as he does it well. I haven’t actually seen anyone critiquing the poem saying the vernacular was used incorrectly. Mostly it’s been woke white people saying a white person shouldn’t use it at all.

Moving on from that, however, I was thrilled to read an article in The New York Times entitled “Go Ahead, Speak for Yourselves” written by Kwame Anthony Appiah. I have no idea if Mr. Appiah supports the right of Mr. Carlson-Wee to write in Black vernacular or not. However, I liked his take on representing for different cultures. It seems these days that we’ve simplified things a little too much. We’re “woke”, so Black people speak for Black people, gay people for the gay community, and white women for white women.

But what do I—a middle class suburbanite raised in a lower income household—know about a white woman raised on a farm? If I express an opinion “as a white woman”, does it represent everyone from my retired next-door neighbor to my daughter (who is very different from me and will, by the time she is my age, have had very different experiences throughout her life than even some of her peers)?

As a writer, I feel the limitations of this. I strain at the bonds of being a Southern white woman forbidden to write or empathize with other cultures, even when I do my best to learn about and experience those cultures. It’s a multicolored world and we all have a portion of that rainbow in us, whether we’re Black transsexuals or white Southern GRITS or straight Mexican men. I believe if we all learn to embrace that rainbow and take more of it into ourselves, we will grow not only as individuals but as a united human race.

That’s why I stand up for Mr. Carlson-Wee’s right to write and empathize with a race he did not grow up in, even when he and his editors did not. That’s why I will continue to write from the perspective I am drawn to, regardless of what color that person’s skin is. I hope someday I will have the skill to write from the perspective of someone who is truly different from me. I will keep working toward that goal, improving and expanding the boundaries of my empathy.

Because that’s what writers do.