I’m a writer. There.  I said it.

The truth is I’ve been in denial of that for a very long time. It hadn’t even occurred to me to call myself a writer.

Looking back, however, it seems so obvious. How can I not consider myself a writer? I spend the majority of my time writing (or trying to write). And yet, as an academic, “writer” is not a readily accessible identity marker despite all evidence to the contrary: The constant stream of fellowship applications, project proposals, conference presentations, articles, thesis chapters, course proposals and syllabi. All demanding to be written. The life of an academic is primarily one of writing. And yet, the “writer” part of an academic identity is so often downplayed in favor of the “intellectual” or “critical thinker” components. Writing is, rather, a necessary evil in pursuit of intellectual engagement.

So, why start a blog if my life as a graduate student is already so consumed by writing?

Academic writing is exhausting. It’s not my voice. It’s the voice I’ve been trained to use, with fancy vocabulary, theoretical references (because why actually explain what you mean when you can just cite someone else?), and uses of “problematic”. To write properly in academia requires the use of a legitimate, subtly socialized, voice. Of course, there are multiple voices available to the student of anthropology (it is, after all, both a social science discipline as well as a humanities discipline). And there are always people who deviate from the norm. But as students, deviation could mean ending a career before it starts. And likewise as students, we are more dictated by institutionalized norms within a given departmental culture than we like to admit. Within this context, the options open to us can be limited.

I am not an academic. Although I do pretend to be one at times.

I don’t come from a family with PhDs. I didn’t take any AP classes in high school and I didn’t get my undergraduate degree at a prestigious university. All this makes me a little out of place in a highly ranked anthropology PhD program. And, it all makes my replication of an “academic voice” that much more difficult, false, and performed.

So here I am… in search of MY voice. The voice that is not stifled by the endless need to “advance theory” by ripping apart those who have come before in an effort to build ourselves up as legitimate intellectuals.

Someone once said that anthropologists get to have the most interesting adventures and experiences. But then they come back from those adventures only to write the most boring stories. I agree. I bore myself sometimes.

Recently I’ve been reading for fun again (god forbid!) and I’ve found myself mesmerized by memoirs. My enjoyment is not just about deriving pleasure from other people’s pain or problems. Instead, it’s about learning something about the human experience – the lives and experiences of others and how they choose to tell those stories. I like to think it helps to cultivate greater empathy.

Isn’t this also what anthropology does? Many anthropologists seek to understand the diversity of human experience by listening and talking to people, interacting with them on a personal level. The promotion of tolerance and empathy, I believe, are anthropology’s greatest strengths. And yet, we largely fail on account of our technical vocabularies, disconnected theories, and hyper-criticism that all easily turn off the uninitiated reader. Why can’t we tell stories in a way that’s interesting, accessible and free of the requirement to “advance theory”?

My goal for this blog is to have it log stories. Stories that hint at the diversity of human experience and hopefully inspire empathy.

As a model, I draw on Cheryl Strayed. Not only has she led a fascinating life, but she talks and writes about it in a beautifully honest manner. Most people know her for the recent film staring Reese Silverspoon, “Wild” (adapted from her book by the same title). While her first book, “Torch” was also beautiful and captivating, it’s her early work as an advice columnist that is most inspiring to me. The advice she gave through her “Dear Sugar” internet column (published collectively as “Tiny Beautiful Things“) and continues to give through the Dear Sugar podcast (see links below) is, as the description accurately summarizes, “radically empathic.” Her skill is in the way her empathy permeates her responses. She connects on a personal level to her letter writers both in her careful and sympathetic desire to understand and the way in which she draws on her personal experience to illustrate her point. In this way, she openly demonstrates the subjective nature of her advice (her advice as specific to her set of experiences) and fully opens herself to a vulnerability many people wish to avoid (especially in public settings). In doing so, she connects on a personal and emotional level with both her letter writers and her readers/listeners. I admire her courage and the skill with which she is able to saturate her responses with empathy while also giving honest (and sometimes hard) advice.

Does that mean I want to become an advice columnist? No. Certainly not. My point in bringing her up was to point out an important take away lesson many writers have heard before: Show don’t tell. While I could just tell you what I learned from doing dissertation research in Haiti, it’s much more effective if I show you through stories. Perhaps you’ll learn what I learned (and intended to communicate) or maybe you’ll take away sometime completely different. Either is fine. That’s the beauty of human experience: We don’t all experience things the same and we don’t all interpret things the same.

Ideally, I’d love for this to evolve into a collaborative blog since I make no claims to my experiences being in any way representative. Nor are anyone else’s for that matter (academic or not). I’m open to anyone wishing to post a story or two of their own. Raw or polished. Don’t hesitate to contact me. There’s no requirement that postings be by anthropologists or even academics. The only requirement is that you have stories to tell and you want to find or use your own voice in telling them.

In the meantime, I’ll tell my own stories.