A mouth at the door - an invitation

When writing fiction, I ask students to begin with a question – what does your main character want?  And what is in the way of them getting what they want (or getting rid of what they don’t want)?  In essays, the motivational energy goes towards figuring out a large, seemingly unanswerable question.  The two main questions that govern my new book of essays are: How does one return home?  And, what are the things we inherit? When designing teaching units, we begin with “essential questions” – foundational, thought-provoking questions that are not focused on content or outcomes, but rather, inspire inquiry into the deeper meanings that can be transferred to life outside the classroom.  For example, a unit I taught on short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri, a writer who uses subtext and what is left unsaid to dramatize tension, my essential questions were – is silence its own language?  And if it is, what is its lexicon?  Science experiments and math problems all begin with well-crafted questions.  Even AI is only as good as the prompt, or question, that is offered to it. 

In Chinese, to inquire is 問 – the character for door 門 with the character for mouth 口 nestled in the doorframe.  This feels like the perfect pictogram because asking questions opens doors.  I imagine that what lies on the other side of the portal changes – energetically, maybe even cosmically – according to the quality of the question one poses, on this side.   

The poet Bhanu Kapil spent several years asking Indian women in India, the US, and the UK a list of twelve questions she composed, which, on their own, read like a poem:

1.    Who are you and whom do you love?

2.  Where did you come from / how did you arrive?

3.  How will you begin?

4.  How will you live now?

5.   What is the shape of your body?

6.  Who was responsible for the suffering of your mother?

7.   What do you remember about the earth?

8.  What are the consequences of silence?

9.  Tell me what you know about dismemberment.

10.  Describe a morning when you woke without fear.

11.  How will you / have you prepare(d) for your death?

12.  And what would you say if you could?

I’m only familiar with her list poem of questions, but I understand Bhanu Kapil collected answers from hundreds of women to her probing questions and harmonized the answers into a collective voice that tells a story about womanhood, identity, and impermanence.  The book is called The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers. Writers often use Kapil’s list as a prompt to write poetry, which is unsurprising, because her questions are so alluring – they invite and encourage deep contemplation – even if you just focus on one or two questions.  My favorite one is – and this could be a third essential question for my unit on Jhumpa Lahiri’s fiction – “What are the consequences of silence?”

Here’s my invitation to you.  Answer Kapil’s questions however you like – straight on, in vignettes and memories, or as philosophical meanderings. 

Or, write your own version of Kapil’s 12 questions.  Here are my

12 Questions

After Bhanu Kapil

1.  Who are you and who do you wish would write you a letter?

2.  Where did you get lost/how did you find your way out?

3.  How will you begin this story if you know it doesn’t begin at the start?

4.  How will you live without your mother’s judgment and guidance?

5.  What will be the shape of her absence and what will its texture be?

6. Who will be responsible for your mother’s things?

7.  What do you remember about the time before language and do you think it will be the same as the time after language?

8. What are the consequences of not being able to write?

9.  Tell me what you know about fear.

10. Describe a morning when you woke without urgency.

11.  How will you prepare for your return?

12.  What will you say to your reflection?