Thread by @VilkViktorya

As we @PENamerica reel from the horrific news of the attack against Salman Rushdie—brilliant writer, free expression defender, & past PEN President—I can think of no better way to honor him than with his own incisive & urgent & words from our 2022 Emergency Writers Congress:

"We are engaged in a war of narratives, incompatible versions of reality, & need to learn how to fight it. A tyrant has arisen in Russia & brutality engulfs Ukraine, whose people, led by a satirist turned hero, offer heroic resistance & are already creating a legend of freedom...

Meanwhile America is sliding back toward the Middle Ages, as white supremacy exerts itself not only over black bodies, but women’s bodies too. False narratives rooted in antiquated religiosity & bigoted ideas from centuries ago are used to justify this, & find willing audiences.

In India, religious sectarianism & political authoritarianism go hand in hand. Violence grows as democracy dies... False narratives of Indian history are at play... that privilege the majority & oppress minorities, &... are popular, just as the Russian tyrant’s lies are believed.

This is the ugly dailiness of the world. How should we respond? It has been said... that the powerful may own the present but writers own the future, for it is through our work—or the best of it... the work that endures—that the present misdeeds of the powerful will be judged.

How can we think of the future when the present screams for our attention, & if we turn away from posterity & pay attention to this dreadful moment, what can we usefully or effectively do? A poem will not stop a bullet. A novel cannot defuse a bomb. Not all satirists are heroes.

But we are not helpless. Even after Orpheus was torn to pieces, his severed head, floating down the river Hebrus, went on singing, reminding us that song is stronger than death. We can sing the truth & name the liars.

We can stand in solidarity with our fellows on the front lines and magnify their voices by adding our own. Above all we must understand that stories are at the heart of what’s happening, and the dishonest narratives of oppressors have attracted many.

So we must work to overturn the false narratives of tyrants, populists, and fools by telling better stories than they do, stories in which people want to live. The battle is not only on the battlefield. The stories we live in are also contested territories.

Perhaps we can seek to emulate Joyce’s Dedalus, who sought to forge in the smithy of his soul the uncreated conscience of his race. We can emulate Orpheus and sing on in the face of horror, and not stop singing until the tide turns, and a better day begins."