Things I Should Have Told My Daughter by Pearl Cleage

Author:Pearl Cleage
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books

JULY 24, 1979

“I am getting ready to go to the West Coast to make a movie,” I say to my mother. “I don’t want to fly, but I can handle it. If I don’t fly, I will get a bus or rent a car or something! Richard Pryor is in it.” I know she likes Richard Pryor; feels protective of him because she thinks he sees the truth so clearly it will surely kill him. “Be sure you get enough rest,” my mother says. “And don’t forget to eat your vegetables.”

I feel like everything I am writing is shit. I feel like pretending to be a writer is a good way to get to do what I want, which is not to work too hard and make a lot of money. I don’t wanna write novels. Too hard. I can’t think of why anybody should read the drivel I’m writing. I can’t think of why or who or how. I can’t string it all together. I might just do little sections and then let them get together the best way they can. Can’t I do the connecting tissue later?

Then I read Gayl Jones’s Corregidora, and I say, “Damn, Pearl, that is her first novel.” It is real. It is black. It is so good. And I think my writing is so glib; so slick. I am depressed. How can I get to Detroit to see my mother? I don’t wanna go. I don’t wanna drive. I don’t wanna do any of it, but I will. I have to.

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