“What kind of stuff do you write?” one student asked on my first day at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. After a decade away from the classroom, I was back to ____1____.
“Creative non-fiction,” I said.
It was a ____2____. I couldn’t remember when I’d last written a creative essay. It must have been before my volatile(喜怒无常的) mother fell ill, leaving me resigned to the idea that our story of family dysfunction would not end ____3____. It seemed that nothing I wrote could ____4____ that.
With too much time and lack of ____5____, I accepted a position to teach creative non-fiction. Although I couldn’t get myself to tell my own ____6____, I could require that my students tell theirs.
“You’re going to be keeping a ____7____ in this class,” I said. “And I want you to tell your stories like they ____8____.”
“Why?” a boy named Michael asked. “I mean, who ____9____ about our stories?”
Looking out at the roomful of students, I realized I didn’t have an ____10____.
No one said a word. I ____11____ that most didn’t know their stories were stories-as beautiful and hard-as their own lives.
Finally, I said, “Because it’s what you have. Stories allow us to make meaning of what we’ve been through. When you shape your ____12____ into a story, it becomes yours and not just something that ____13____ to you.”
Michael didn’t look ____14____, but he didn’t challenge me either.
In his first essay, Michael wrote about how he grew up in one of the ____15____ neighborhoods in Boston. He wrote about the night he was out with two friends:
The feeling of numbness(麻木) shot through my body as a car came zooming towards us. At that moment everything went blank. Both of my two mates were hit down, drenched in blood. Minutes after I witnessed that, I decided I was leaving the dangerous neighborhood and going to college.
He went on to write about how his high school teachers, who saw his ____16____, helped him get into this school.
I had Michael ____17____ his essay out. After he finished, the class went so ____18____ that we could hear the sound of each other’s breath. After a moment, I said, “That’s why you tell your stories.”
I went home that night and picked up my journal, ____19____ and untouched. I found a pen and for the first time in months, I had to ____20____.