If You Haven't Read Belonging by Toko-pa Turner You Are So Lucky Because Now You Get to Read It For the First Time

I tried reading a section of Belonging, Remembering Ourselves Home without a pen in hand. I lasted one sentence. What if I forget what Toko-pa had said?! What if this sentence—the sentence that follows it, and the sentence that follows that one—disappears into the well of my memory instead of acting as starlight for the rest of my life?

Here. I’ll give you a taste. Toko-pa wrote: I meet so many women in my work who have gorgeous ideas but are terrified to release them into the world. This terror is a combination of things, but at the fundamental level it is the fear of criticism. The inner critic, a spokesperson for all the diminishing voices in our past and in our culture, is the first gatekeeper of true belonging. It barrages us with ‘buts.’ ‘But you don’t have anything original to say.’ ‘But you can’t prove that.’ ‘But you will look or sound ridiculous.’ ‘But you aren’t as talented as X.’ and so on. When we look at these outer criticisms more rigorously, we begin to see that they are all based on the outer-measurement we’ve come to associate with patriarchal thinking. The challenge of this gate is not to measure up, but to use a different barometer altogether.

Now you understand the pen!! Again and again as I read this book, I turn to the back cover to look at Toko-pa’s face. She looks youthful. Joyful. And yet she writes like some kind of Yoda. Why she isn’t she a thousand years old? How is she so wise?

It wasn’t until I realized I had been taught to write in a world that honored the male voice most of all, that my culture honored the voice which believes in the importance of A leading to B to C to, eventually Z. The voice that values organization and structure, while other kinds of truth were seen as not it, not worth documenting: the more quilted life of the feminine, the fractured life of the traumatized, the stitched together stories of those who are not currently leading our country, the leap of creativity that connects seemingly oppositional objects in surprising and illuminating ways.

What?! My conclusion does not have to be a restatement of my introduction? What?! The space between words, between paragraphs are just as powerful if not more than the words or paragraphs themselves?

What?! My stories matter? I matter? My voice matters?

How can this be? I am not like you. Not like him. Not like her.

That, sweet reader, is so often the story, The not part. The very part you hate. The very part you want to numb, to hide, to deny, is your way in.

Remember when you were a little kid and you went outside and you found something that seemed like a treasure to you, and so you picked it up, and then you held on, tight, so tight, your sweaty little fingers holding, holding, holding the treasure close in the dark in the hidden home of your palm?

Treasures are meant to be seen. Shared. The world is full of treasures. You can find and give, find and give, and there will always be more.

Open your hand. Let us see.