Invisible Writers

“Over the years I’ve met a diverse collection of writers who have never been published or earned any academic credentials, yet whose claim to the title of artist is genuine. These invisible writers are soldiers and bakers, convicts and salesmen, winos, hairdressers, firefighters, farmers and waitresses. Their only qualifications to literary authenticity are their writings and their desire to write. Often the only time they have is stolen time, and their private scrawls end up on cocktail napkins, penciled in the margins of receipts, on any piece of paper handy.” Tai Moses —Invisible Writers (Alternet)

The writing is a bit melodramatic (“…the forbidden words found expression anyway, for even the U.S. Army cannot discipline the imagination”), but the insights are provocative. I can’t help but think of Tom Wingfield, the narrator-protagonist of The Glass Menagerie, who works in a shoe warehouse and writes poems on box lids. The modernist poets, novelists and playwrights frequently came from immigrant or lower-class backgrounds.

Suggested by Charlie on KairosNews.