Abstract:
This memoir comments, in verse, on its author’s experiences of
teaching creative writing at an Anglophone university in Beirut,
Lebanon. The poem develops the premise that the creative writing
classroom, especially in conflicted, perpetually unstable settings,
functions as a third space or safe zone for personal growth through
self-expression. I therefore examine the role of undergraduate life
writing workshops, in particular, in providing a leeway for narrating,
discussing, and reimagining painful experiences related to coming
of age and/or coming out – in an otherwise conservative context
where coloring outside the box is often actively discouraged. The
memoir outlines a process of reclamation, whereby the act of owning up to one’s lived narratives, articulating and sharing them
publicly, is the brave, first step in a process of healing, however
partial it may be.
Citation:
El Hajj, S. (2022). Queer bodies converse: teaching creative writing in Lebanon. English in Education, 1-2.