“Writing Life”– In Conversation With Rebecca Walker

Photo by India De Rocha Humberstone

Writer, activist, and the inaugural voice of Third Wave Feminism, Rebecca Walker, visited Bush House earlier this month to discuss memoir-writing and expressions of identity and belonging with King’s College London students. 

I attended the session as a graduating English Literature student, about to continue into my Contemporary Literature Masters. Feeling, at first, a level of imposter syndrome as I was surrounded by PhD Creative Writing students, I left the room imbued with a renewed sense of inspiration for my writing endeavours, whether that be for my academic pursuits or a desire to step beyond my self-perceived limits and attempt writing a memoir of my own. Led by Rebecca Walker, writer of Black, White and Jewish – a memoir which she began writing in her final year of University – a room full of aspiring writers of all ages, similarly embarking on their own journeys of self-discovery and coming of age, were immersed in thought-provoking and expanding discussion surrounding the writing process as it can serve as one of self-discovery, empowerment, and healing.

After a round of introductions, Walker read a passage from her memoir, Black, White and Jewish, titled “This is How Memory Works”. It was during this reading that I began to understand how the written word can be used to intimately express and, in a way, “store” the self. As Walker returned over the memoir her younger self had written, emotion rose into her voice as she read out loud. After a beat, held in collective understanding by everyone sitting in the room, Walker returned to her reading. While other guests may have chosen to brush over this moment, Walker chose to be refreshingly vulnerable with her room of students. She explained that returning to this writing was like returning to a version of herself, to a younger Rebecca who struggled profoundly with her sense of identity and belonging in the world and who wrote this memoir precisely to write that self (or rather, selves) into understanding: “I needed to be at the centre of my own story, rather than at the periphery of someone else’s”.

While Walker’s reading visibly stirred a moment of profound emotion, she explained that she felt it more like a ‘breeze’, a ‘visitation’ back to the self that she had written into these pages - “I don’t live there anymore”. She was no longer that confused, self-conscious young woman, she had written that story onto the page in her final year of university, and that is where it settled.

 Experiencing this moment with Rebecca was an incredible teaching in how the process of writing can be used to not only figure out yourself – your “true” self, the one at the centre of the multiple performances you might deliver to the world around you, but also how this process can act as a cleansing. You can purge a story out of your body – one that may be causing you pain or confusion – onto the page, and leave it there. And it can be returned to years later when, or if, you desire. 

The conversation urged me to rethink writing not only as a crucial process of expression but also one of exoneration, where you can absolve yourself of a story that has been occupying any space of pain, guilt or shame. You can, through the process of writing, absolve yourself of a self – a story – that no longer serves you.  

A PhD writer in the room empathised with this notion, asking Rebecca if she ever felt a “void” after writing one of those stories – the ones that process a self, from the body onto the page. In response, Rebecca agreed that once these stories that we prioritise as needing to be told are told, it can feel like a transition into a more vulnerable and liminal space. If that self we desired to be expressed is expressed to satisfaction, then what are we left with? What story do we use to define ourselves from that point onwards? 

After a moment of contemplation, Rebecca opened up about her faith, drawing on the Buddhist practice of awareness beyond the individual self to think through this potential writer’s dilemma of “the void”. Rather than fearing this space that the writer might find themselves in after they have written a story to completion, they could instead realise that they are released from the hold that story had on them. Beyond the multiple selves a person might  perform for other people, the stories we assume to define us, the process of writing can achieve liberation from limiting societal and self-definition. Whether you wish to call that awareness, God, the divine, Source, or simply a blank slate, it can be leaned into not feared – the writer is now free to write and tell a new story for themselves. 

While we of course discussed the more technical aspects of writing – form and voice, plot and genre, and so forth – I found the most inspiring insights from Rebecca came in these moments of deep and personal discussion, where any elitist or limiting myths I had constructed of what a writer ought to be, were toppled. As a phenomenally achieving author herself, Rebecca primarily reminded us that to write a story worth reading is to write one that feels important to you. Being a good writer, a good storyteller, can simply coincide with a mundane vulnerability and passion to relate your human experience as you wish to tell it. 

As Rebecca urged us to remember, “your most important reader is yourself”. And if you have a story that you believe is worth telling, you are likely to find that someone else might connect with it, feel inspired, and be grateful that you told it too.