How to Write a Suicide Note E-Book

Sherry Quan Lee

• Herausgeber: Modern History Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Serie: Reflections of America
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2008

Seitenzahl: 73

Beschreibung

How to Write a Suicide Note examines the life of a Chinese/Black woman who grew up passing for white, who grew up poor, who loves women but has always married white men. Writing has saved her life. It has allowed her to name the historical trauma--the racist, sexist, classist experiences that have kept her from being fully alive, that have screamed at her loudly and consistently that she was no good, and would never be any good-and that no one could love her. Writing has given her the creative power to name the experiences that dictated who she was, even before she was born, and write notes to them, suicide notes.
Sherry Quan Lee believes writing saves lives; writing has saved her life.
Acclaim for How to Write a Suicide Note
"How to Write a Suicide Note is a haunting portrait of the daughter of an African mother and a Chinese father. Sherry dares to be who she isn't supposed to be, feel what she isn't supposed to feel, and destroys racial and gender myths as she integrates her bi-racial identity into all that she is. Through her raw honesty and vulnerability, Sherry captures a range of emotions most people are afraid to confront, or even share. Her work is a gift to the mental health community."
--Beth Kyong Lo, M.A., Clinical Psychologist
"Sherry Quan Lee offers us, in How to Write a Suicide Note, a deep breathing meditation on how love is under continuous revision. And like all the best Blues singers, Quan Lee voices the lowdown, dirty paces that living puts us through, but without regret or surrender."
Wesley Brown, author of Darktown Strutters and Tragic Magic
"I love the female aspects, the sex, and the strong voice Sherry Quan Lee uses to share her private life in How To Write A Suicide Note. I love the wit, the tongue-in-cheek, the trippiness of it all. I love the metaphors, especially the lover and suicide ones. I love the free-associations, the 'raving, ravenous, relentless' back and forth. Quan Lee breaks the rules and finds her genius. How to Write a Suicide Note is a passionate, risk-taking, outrageous, life-affirming book and love letter."
Sharon Doubiago, author of Body and Soul, Hard Country; and other works
Modern History Press is an imprint of Loving Healing Press

Leseprobe

HOW TO WRITEA SUICIDE NOTE

serial essaysthat saved awoman's life

Sherry Quan Lee

Book #2 in the Reflections of America Series

How to Write a Suicide Note: serial essays that saved a woman's life

Book #2 in the Reflections of America Series

Copyright © 2008 Sherry Quan Lee. All Rights Reserved.

Cover art copyright © 1992, 2008 Kurt Seaberg.

Author information at www.SherryQuanLee.com

No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lee, Sherry, 1948-

How to Write a Suicide Note : serial essays that saved a woman's life / Sherry Quan Lee.

     p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-1-932690-63-7 (trade paper : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 1-932690-63-8 (trade paper : alk. paper)

1. Racially mixed women—Poetry. 2. Identity (Psychology)—Poetry. 3. Racially mixed people—Poetry. I. Title.

PS3562.E3644H68 2008

811'.54—dc22

                  2008014038

Published by: Modern History Press, an imprint of

Loving Healing Press

5145 Pontiac Trail

Ann Arbor, MI 48105

USA

http://www.LovingHealing.com or

[email protected]

Fax [phone]

Modern History Press

Acclaim for How to Write a Suicide Note

“In her raw, passionate and unflinching How to Write a Suicide Note, Sherry Quan Lee has committed a bold act of courage, naming ghosts and fears that can paralyze us, reminding us that sometimes we must die in order to really live, encouraging women and people of color to revision our lives as artists, in order to begin anew.”

—Shay Youngblood,author of Soul Kiss and Black Girl in Paris

“Sherry Quan Lee negotiates the difficult path of language between raw and educated, bare and poetic, to bring forth searing writing that is its own truth. Even if we don't intentionally lie in our own work, How to Write a Suicide Note pushes us to reconsider a more honest way of speaking. It reminds us that writing is no less than an act of truth, although it holds our shame, our desire to cover, and that at every moment, with every word, we make a choice to go to truth if we are invested in our own lives.”

—Anya Achtenberg,author of The Stone of Language, The Stories of Devil-Girl, and creator of the Writing for Social Change: Re-Dream a Just World Workshops

“I love the female aspects, the sex, and the strong voice Sherry Quan Lee uses to share her private life in How to Write a Suicide Note. I love the wit, the tongue-in-cheek, the trippiness of it all. I love the metaphors, especially the lover and suicide ones. I love the free-associations, the ‘raving, ravenous, relentless’ back and forth. Quan Lee breaks the rules and finds her genius. This is a passionate, risk-taking, outrageous, life-affirming book and love letter.”

—Sharon Doubiago,author of Body and Soul, Hard Country; and other works

“How to Write a Suicide Note is a haunting portrait of the daughter of a Black mother and a Chinese father. It vividly captures, with powerful emotion and detail, the trials of one colorful woman's life. This book is a gem.

As a clinical psychologist, I work mostly with Native Americans, African Americans, and Latino populations, where the impact of historical trauma is apparent in their day-to-day lives. But psychoanalysis, or any directive therapy couched in white privilege, is not what is needed. Sherry's work is a perfect example of how women of color find healing: salvation is within.

Sherry dares to be who she isn't supposed to be, feel what she isn't supposed to feel, and destroys racial and gender myths as she integrates her biracial identity into all that she is. Her story relies on a contextual view that feminist women of color insist on—the intersectionality of race, class, age, gender, and sexuality.

Through her raw honesty and vulnerability, Sherry captures a range of emotions most people are afraid to confront, or even share. It is my pleasure to read her intimate and heartening story, but more importantly her work is a gift to the mental health community.”

—Beth Kyong Lo, M.A., Psychotherapist

“Sherry Quan Lee offers us, in How to Write a Suicide Note, a deep breathing meditation on how love is under continuous revision. And like all the best Blues singers, Quan Lee voices the lowdown, dirty paces that living puts us through, but without regret or surrender.”

—Wesley Brown,author of Darktown Strutters, Tragic Magic, and other works

Reflections of America Series

The Stories of Devil-Girl by Anya Achtenberg

How to Write a Suicide Note: serial essays that saved a woman's life by Sherry Quan Lee

Chinese Blackbird by Sherry Quan Lee

“The Reflections of America Series highlights autobiography, fiction, and poetry which express the quest to discover one's context within modern society.”

From Modern History Press

To Stacy Lee Quan because she knows and understands.

To loved ones, mine and yours, whose heartache was too much for this life.

To us who find ways to live with heartache.

To writers that break open hearts and fill them with life-saving stories.

Suicide hotlines:

1-800-SUICIDE / 1-800-784-2433

1-800-273-TALK / 1-800-273-8255

1-800-799-4TTY (4889) Deaf Hotline

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

The Dying is Almost Over

Suicide Note Number One

Next to the last note

Last Note

Death Wears Black

Because Writing Saves Lives

How to Revise a Rough Draft

Scatter the Trash

Suicide Note Number Two

It's about money

So You Want Me to Write About

Scatter the Trash

He's Just My First Husband

Exorcism

Mad at Love

Suicide Note Number Three

Love Letter: you should have been there

When Do You Leave the Flawed Lover—Or Hold On?

It's about love

Here you are again, caught

Run Baby Run

Avoidance, About Writing

A Strong Embrace

Suicide Note Number Four

Fire in the Bad Girl's Belly

Bold in Her Beauty

She Has Never Been Afraid

Mother's arms kept me safe

Sane Asylum Café in the Woods

Writing on a Good Day

I Want to Live

Suicide Note Number Five

I Didn't Know I Wasn't Breathing

Poem After Poem After Poem: I write a book

At Some Point Your Notes Begin to Make Sense

It's True What They Say, I Am a Writer

That's Where She is Now

And, Finally, There is Quiet

Notes

About the Author

About the Artist

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Sharon Doubiago, my Split Rock Arts Program Online Mentoring for Writers mentor, for her generosity of time and expertise. Thanks to Shay Youngblood for reading How to Write a Suicide Note and insisting that I find a publisher. Thanks to Wesley Brown for asking why I didn't ask. Thanks to Eden Torres for giving me permission to be angry and to love. Thanks to Linda Hogan for teaching at the University of Minnesota in 1985. Thanks to my writing group, Girls Night Out, for listening to and commenting on much of this work (and my love life, or lack of) over the past six years; especially to Sandee Newbauer who suggested How to Write a Suicide Note as a title. Thanks to Lori Young-Williams who collaborated with me to write and present Chinese Black White Women Got the Beat—where excerpts from How to Write a Suicide Note first got their debut. Thanks to my neighbor, friend, and sister writer, Anya Achtenberg, for her love, her encouragement—and always having chocolate. Thanks to Kurt Seaberg whose lithograph, Temple Guardians, embraces both the light and the dark of my story. Thanks to Beth Kyong Lo for her clinical understanding of how poetry can save lives. Thanks to Charissa Uemura for her ability to photograph me beautiful. Thanks to the man and his dog for, more often than not, welcoming me to the Café and Laundry in the Woods, a quiet and lovely twelve acres of pine and spruce trees, deer, rabbits, great horned owls, cardinals, crows, and occasionally a garter snake, where I had no responsibility except to write this memoir. And, much thanks and appreciation to Victor Volkman, publisher, who responded to my query letter within an hour saying, “I believe you have an important message and one that deserves to be heard so I will do whatever it takes to see it in print”—this, even though he has never published poetry.

Introduction

It has taken me six years to complete How to Write a Suicide Note: serial essays that saved a woman's life. It is memoir, a writer's guide, and a guide to living.