Read my latest flash, Venison, at 52|250.

As a writer, I look at this article on the suicide of Iris Chang as a sort challenge– or a reminder of the constant challenge to face as much of the world as possible, as much of the brutality and cruelty as possible.  This is not to say that an artist must always confront it on a literal level but simply that everything one creates must be suffused with an awareness of it.  If I write about the ginkgo leaves by the library turning yellow, I must also remember the ginkgo trees that survived the bombing of Hiroshima.  When I write about people, I need to be aware of the entirety of their potential as humans– especially those aspects that I might prefer to ignore.

It is not that brutality and cruelty should be privileged in the artist’s mind or that an artist has a particular duty to portray them.  It is simply that it takes more work in order to account for them– or against them– in drawing a world a slice thereof or a path through it.

In practice, I know I hold onto cruelties enacted on me and that these serve as ways to reach those practiced on others, though I cannot say for certain that there is a causal effect.  Indeed, I fear to say it, for sometimes I also suspect that some aspect of my psychology has sought out some of these worst experiences to enable my writing in the way some more noble than I have sought to stand as more direct witnesses.

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