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I’m Learning
I’m No Longer Editing Myself
I spent my journalism career trying to be perfect. Now I’m just trying to be myself.
Even at the risk of burning, the mouth always seeks the light. —Elizabeth Acevedo, The Poet X
I just finished Elizabeth Acevedo’s YA novel The Poet X, and that line really stood out to me. The main character, a burgeoning slam poet named Xiomara, writes a poem for her class about her struggle to communicate with her strict, religious mother and how she finds herself unable to truly express herself. But Xiomara concludes in her writing that being herself is more important than the fear of falling short of her mother’s expectations.
This is what she writes, but it’s not what she eventually turns in to her teacher.
Something I loved about this novel is how we see the main character writing multiple drafts of her poems and school assignments. Xiomara first expresses how she truly feels—unfiltered, unapologetic, unedited—but the final draft she turns in is usually something entirely different: pared down, safer, more of what others expect of her, less like who she truly is.
Reading Xiomara’s drafts reminded me of all the times I’ve rewritten myself in…
