Writing to Change the World

Mary Pipher writes:

I am from Avis and Frank, Agnes and Fred, Glessie May and Mark.
From the Ozark Mountains and the high plains of eastern Colorado
from mountain snowmelt and southern creeks with water moccasins.
I am from oatmeal eaters, gizzard eaters, haggis and raccoon eaters.
I am from craziness, darkness, sensuality, and humor.
From intense do-gooders struggling through ranch winters in the 1920s.
I am from “If you can’t say anything nice about someone, don’t say anything,” and “Pretty is as pretty does” and “Shit-muckelty brown” and “Damn it all to hell."
I am from no-dancing-or-drinking Methodists, but cards were okay except on Sunday, and from tent-meeting Holy Rollers,
from farmers, soldiers, bootleggers, and teachers.
I am from Schwinn girl’s bike, 1950 two-door and West Side Story.
From coyotes, baby field mice, chlorinous swimming pools,
Milky Way and harvest moon over Nebraska cornfields.
I am from muddy Platte and Republican
from cottonwood and mulberry, tumbleweed and switchgrass,
from Willa Cather, Walt Whitman, and Janis Joplin.
My own sweet dance unfolding against a cast of women in aprons and barefoot men in overalls.

Before expounding on these themes in a personal-history essay, the author explains:

When I researched The Middle of Everywhere I asked refugees to write “I Am From”-type poems as they struggled to find themselves in a new country and language. They followed a formula with each line beginning with “I am from.” Writing this kind of poem is way to experiment with identity issues. The poem must include references to food, places, and religion. You might give it a try.

If you look back on your life, most likely you will be able to trace a trail from the present to deep into your past. Pivotal events shaped your core values. Certain people and experiences interested you. You had talents, and ways you spent your time. Most likely you cared about certain things – school, sports, animals, politics, religion. The trail into your past may be linear or meandering, or, at some point, it may have taken a sharp right turn.

You possess an innate temperament, a belief system, and a work ethic. By now, most likely, you have a sense of your weaknesses as well as your strengths, your blind spots as well as your unique gifts. You know what people like and dislike about you. All this self-knowledge allows you to write with your own grand themes, your own passions, even your own flaws, at your service.

...Our sensibilities, our moral outlook and our point of view are what we writers have to offer the reader. Only when we know who we are can we fully offer this gift. Keep in mind that fuzzy thinking leads to fuzzy writing. With inner clarity, we present readers with reflective, honest work.

I did "give it a try." See I Am From.