In a recent piece for The Guardian that is not part of her new collection, Rebecca Solnit describes a moment from the Democratic candidate forum on LGBTQ rights when Elizabeth Warren gave a funny, cutting reply to a dopey question. Warren’s reply went viral, and the conservative response was extremely telling; virtually everyone who pretended offense claimed she was disrespecting white men and Christianity by supporting same sex marriage, which is legal in all 50 states. They called her an elitist, and generally threw a giant pity party for themselves. Solnit rightly calls them out for this: “...(P)eople transformed a question about the rights of gay and lesbian people into a focus on the needs of straight men, or even conservative straight white men. Whose story was it?”
Reading this was an “aha” moment for me. After finishing Solnit’s collection of essays, “Whose Story Is This? Old Conflicts, New Chapters” (Haymarket Press), I felt less settled in mind than usual when engaging with her work. It may have been because unsettling news was breaking at a frenetic pace, or perhaps the endless shriek of sirens outside had fried my nerves. But this gathering of essays, while terrifically well-crafted, fierce, and often funny, didn’t click into something cohesive until that Guardian essay turned the lights on.
These are largely Guardian or LitHub pieces, and they range from a letter praising Christine Blasey Ford for her courageous testimony to observations on unconscious bias in politics and the misplaced fear that men have been effectively “cancelled” due to their own misdeeds. All connect to the question posed by the title: Ford’s bravery on the stand was catalyzing to women, but the media seemed to lose sight of what she maintains Brett Kavanaugh did to her and became far more concerned about his fragility on the stand. How did it all end up being about him?
It may be the overall theme, that question of stories being hijacked and misappropriated to silence the speaker, that made this book feel more jittery and less unified. It’s also true that many of the stories are harrowing. Solnit relates the story of a job she had long ago bussing tables in a diner where the cook would routinely grab her from behind; too afraid to call him out directly, she carried a tray of glasses one day and dropped them with a shriek when he made his move. The spectacle got the owner’s attention and the man was reprimanded … for causing inventory damage. A footnote in the same piece describes the closed circuit video of a man who did the same thing to a waitress recently, only to have her turn and drop him on his ass; she was supported by her manager as well as law enforcement, and the man was arrested. The more things stay the same, the more interesting the changes that can occur in response.
An essay titled “City of Women” is based on a map of New York City Solnit co-created with artist Joshua Jelly-Schapiro for the book “Nonstop Metropolis,” itself an atlas of needed revisions to history across multiple themes. The map is what it sounds like, New York City but with its landmarks, streets, and neighborhoods rededicated to women who created its history alongside the men for whom virtually everything is named. (The map has been updated this year, so now Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cardi B., and — to my great personal delight — Salt-N-Pepa are included.) One way to answer whose story is being told is to keep retelling it with more precision and accuracy; this map is a creative addition that coexists alongside the gradual removal of memorials to Confederate soldiers, a shifting of who and what we remember.
There are tropes common to Solnit’s work here, including a persistent call for hope in dark times that’s beautifully made manifest in a description of climate activist Greta Thunberg’s claim that her own activism was inspired by that of Rosa Parks. It’s a point she makes and remakes, but one we continually need reminding about: The effort itself creates ripples that can cross space and time in ways that can’t be imagined from that point of origin. “Whose Story Is This?” reminds us to listen for the ways power is hijacked and talked over, and to find and amplify those voices where we can.
Heather Seggel is a writer living in Northern California. Email heatherlseggel@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, February 1, 2020
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