I’m sitting here in this apartment we rented, but the front room which was supposed to be built is in construction and the dust is everywhere and there are more problems than I can easily recall and basically I just sorta not really wish that I was back home, you know, with mom and dad taking care of me like I was king or a prince or something, so, you know, the writing space special issue on family is resonating with me, maybe not so much because of the writing, some of which is poignant, some of which is dull, but more so because I am only now really realizing what family is all about, the way they are a crutch and wheel-chair and a cripple all at once. Maria Gould’s opening essay puts it in terms of narrative–in that every member of a family carries a narrative in his or her head, and that narrative is always coming into conflict with the other family members’ narratives. This is interesting, but I think she could have done more with it. After all, can’t the same thing be said for every single person in the world? If so, doesn’t that mean that all that seperates families from groups of strangers is that narratives touch each other more often? (So close friends call each other brothers etc.) There are more elements to the family than that as Kate Rogers demonstrates in her poem Eulogy for the Bird Man. Here we begin to explore the nostalgia that sticks to our understanding of family like a stain we don’t even bother trying to wash off. Rogers is harsh but true, and in her truth, perhaps even accepting. Still, the family remains a pragmatic unit. Diana Kiesners writes in Are we there yet? that “in an immigrant family it is a sad thing to lose a child to the arts, like losing her to drink or some dread childhood illness he might contract no matter how careful you are about germs.” In the end, the family remains shrouded behind the veils of narrative, of conciet, of nostalgia — When see the family in this issue of the Writing Space it’s like recognizing a lost relative, strange, unfamiliar, beautiful, distant.
journal / #1, vol 3, 12 pages / publisher: The Writing Space Press / main creators: Maria Gould and Diana Kiesners (editors) / $3, $8 for 2 / 121 Parkmount Road, Toronto, ON, M4J 4V3