Forwarded topic of writing used as therapy

In an interview that Gloria Anzaldua did in JAC, she was asked about how writing and activism is related to her. She says, “I think that a lot of the activism for writers and artists stems from trying to heal the wounds. You’ve been oppressed as a woman, or oppressed as a queer, or oppressed racially as a colonized person, and you want to deal with that oppression, with those wounds.” Whether it be any type of struggle that a writer goes through, to be able to write about it serves as a type of therapy and release. Even if the writing content has nothing to do with activism or oppression, I believe that writing about something that happened in the writer’s past can help them develop concrete feelings on the situation and let them grow as a writer. As writers we automatically go to the things that make up comfortable and is easy to speak about, but sometimes stepping out of that boundary helps develop our voice. Even if something is difficult to write about, that caused trauma in the writer’s life it is still easily reachable because it it is relatable to the writer. bell hooks in “Memories of my Girlhood” speaks about how she favored a black baby-doll as a child over any other doll not just because it reminded her of herself but she felt that those dolls were neglected and the white babies were the only ones that kids desired. In a way I feel that this type of writing was a therapy for hooks and helped her expand on how she felt during her childhood and what she thinks that it means now in her adulthood. I find that writing about something I do not necessarily want to write about is the best thing for me, after finishing what I have to say I’d never say, “Wow I wish I didn’t write that.”