Writing from the Nadir, but Reaching for the Zenith.
When I was at university in the heady old days of the early '90s, I read a book as part of my research for my dissertation on African-American literature called "Writing from the Nadir". I can't remember now who wrote the book, but the title has stuck in my mind, being, to me at least, somewhat poetic. The idea of writing as a means of improving one's lot appealed to me greatly. and it was as if the title of this book was suggesting that even if one was stuck at the bottom of the social, political and economic heap, one could at least write to explain one's position and attempt to educate wider society, and by doing so even effect change. Indeed, I found out that the first so-called "slave narratives" were such instructive texts, written largely in the hope of expressing the plight of the enslaved African-American community to a wider, white readership, in the process aiding the abolitionist cause. Perhaps one could go even further and suggest that s...