In a New Century: Essays on Queer History, Politics, and Community Life

5. Why I Write

83 k 5 Why I Write In 2003 grad­ u­ ate stu­ dents in the his­ tory de­ part­ ment at Co­ lum­ bia Uni­ ver­ sity or­ ga­ nized a con­ fer­ ence, “Why We Write: The Pol­ i­ tics and Prac­ tice of Writ­ ing for So­ cial ­ Change.” Their in­ vi­ ta­ tion to me to speak at the con­ fer­ ence was an op­ por­ tu­ nity to re­ turn to the cam­ pus where I had been both an under­ grad­ u­ ate and a grad­ u­ ate stu­ dent. It was also an op­ por­ tu­ nity to re­ flect upon the un­ ex­ pected circum­ stances of my life—that, ­ against the odds and much to my sur­ prise, writ­ ing be­ came a major part of what I do in the world. k One can never pre­ dict what a sim­ ple in­ vi­ ta­ tion to give a talk can pro­ voke. Think­ ing about this panel and the theme of the con­ fer­ ence has made me re­ al­ ize how lucky I am and how ­ blessed I have been. I have had a solid quar­ ter cen­ tury of writ­ ing of ­ things that I care about pas­ sion­ ately and that at least a few other folks care about, too. Every day I carry with me the cer­ tainty that the heart of my work, my writ­ ing, has made a dif­ fer­ ence in the world. This essay first ap­ peared in Jim Downs, ed., Why We Write: The Pol­ i­ tics and Prac­ tice of Writ­ ing for So­ cial ­ Change (New York: Rout­ ledge, 2005), 11–16. Part II: Doing History 84 But why do I write? I write be­ cause some­ one—a fel­ low grad­ u­ ate stu­ dent—told me one day that I was good at it. More than three ­ decades later, I re­ mem­ ber the mo­ ment as if it had hap­ pened yes­ ter­ day. A small group of Co­ lum­ bia his­ tory stu­ dents was meet­ ing at my River­ side Drive rail­ road flat to put to­ gether the next issue of Com­ mon Sense, our ­ rabblerousing news­ let­ ter. Ex­ cept for my desk, which was a ­ six-foot-long plank­ stretched ­ across a pair of ­ two-drawer file cab­ i­ nets, every­ thing else was close to the ­ ground. My bed was on the floor. My din­ ing table was a ­ painted wood board rest­ ing on milk ­ crates. My sofa was the mat­ tress of a twin bed­ pressed ­ against a wall with some pil­ lows as back­ ing and a ­ paisley-patterned sheet as cov­ er­ ing. Sev­ eral of us were squat­ ting on the floor and ­ hunched over the table, rul­ ers in hand, pains­ tak­ ingly creat­ ing head­ lines by press­ ing let­ ters, one at a time, onto the ­ mock-up of our news­ let­ ter. Rich­ ard, mean­ while, had wan­ dered over to my desk, where he stood read­ ing pages of my­ not-yet-proofed ­ master’s essay. He ­ looked down in my di­ rec­ tion and, with a mix­ ture of sur­ prise and ad­ mi­ ra­ tion, said, “You write so well!” Rich­ ard and I had only a pass­ ing ac­ quain­ tance. He was a year ahead of me in the pro­ gram. He had no rea­ son at all to flat­ ter me. No one had ever said such a thing to me be­ fore. It was shock­ ing and rev­ el­ a­ tory. It ­ opened up for me the pos­ sibil­ ity that writ­ ing—not sim­ ply re­ search, or study, or teach­ ing—was some­ thing I might do. Why else do I write? I write be­ cause read­ ing his­ tory books saved my life, and I have been bold—or fool­ ish—­ enough to think that maybe my writ­ ing could do the same for some­ one else. The north­ east Bronx, where I grew up, was more than a world away from the Mor­ ning­ side ­ Heights cam­ pus of Co­ lum­ bia Uni­ ver­ sity. The com­ bi­ na­ tion of fer­ vid anti­ com­ mu­ nism and Roman Cath­ o­ lic moral ab­ so­ lut­ ism made for an en­ vi­ ron­ ment in which cer­ ti­ tude was a fun­ da­ men­ tal prin­ ci­ ple. The de­ scrip...