How I Get Inspired to Write About Social Issues
Sometimes the best way to tackle the present is by looking to the past.
Next week, Kavita Das is teaching How to Write About Social Issues in Unprecedented Times, a 3-hour Narratively Academy seminar designed to help you craft persuasive and impactful articles, essays and op-eds that move readers. Today, we asked Kavita to share how she gets inspired to write about the world’s most pressing issues.
While the times we’re living in today are certainly unprecedented, sometimes I find the best way to write about current social issues is by taking a look at the past.
When Independence Day came around earlier this summer, given the rising authoritarianism of this presidential administration, I had been pondering what exactly there was to celebrate this July 4th. And it so happened that in that moment, my publisher invited me to write something reflecting on the 4th.
For the last several years, I've had a tradition of rereading Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," so, I decided I would add a new tradition of rereading Frederick Douglass's iconic "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro," in which he asks the powerful, rhetorical question, "What, to the Slave, is Your Fourth of July?" In rereading it, I found so much that was so relevant to the horrors this administration is unleashing on vulnerable populations, especially immigrants.
So, I wrote this piece, "What, to the American Immigrant, is Your Fourth of July?" an homage to Douglass's speech that examines this present moment through the lens of his indictment of America's persistent stain of white supremacy. It is an example of how sometimes when we are wrestling with what to say about present day struggles, we can find inspiration in the words of leaders of past struggles.
Want more insight into how to write about social issues? Join Kavita Das, the author of this piece, for Narratively Academy’s seminar, How to Write About Social Issues in Unprecedented Times on Thursday, August 14.
