January 23, 2022
Your piece uses a unique form to explore an intersection between identity, discovery, and history. What inspired you to tell this story in this form?
My family, like many white Southern families, is proud of its heritage. Proud of the thin, obedient women who married well, proud of the “brave” confederate soldiers. Genealogical research often involves finding famous people or “distinguished ancestors.” My research has turned up records of enslavers. I didn’t want to hide the dirty laundry. I took the mess and I sewed it into the most honest quilt I could make.
“Use This Image” draws on historical photos, documents, and art to create its narrative. How do these texts inform your story? Did the story necessitate the images, or did you start with the images and create meaning from there?
My mother has dementia, and I’ve been scanning family photos that she collected. The man with a beard, who was an enslaver, is my namesake. I also did research on Ancestry.com. I collected the various images in a folder on my computer. I started writing words only. I noticed the phrase “use this image” on the top of a file, and then I decided to take that command as personal directions. I didn’t want to use the images the way my family would have traditionally used them, as a point of pride. I wanted to use these images as a bridge to a better understanding of my familial past. This is the first work I’ve made that is a hybrid of images and words (but not the last).
The piece’s voice gains its strength in part from so many directives: “observe,” “use this image,” “always say thank you,” “never eat bread,” “leave.” What kind of direction are you offering your readers? What, if anything, do you hope they take away from “Use This Image”?
I’m a teacher, so giving simple commands is a part of the fiber of my being! In seriousness, I want people to question things they automatically obey. A lot of my writing asks readers to be brave, face uncomfortable truths. We gain nothing through blindness and obedience, nor through immersing ourselves in guilt. We grow from the horrors of the past by writing about them with honesty and vulnerability. We learn about ourselves by facing all of our facets.
Read “Use This Image” HERE.
Maggie Rosen lives in Silver Spring, Maryland. Her poems have been published in Little Patuxent Review, Waccamaw, Cider Press Review, RiverLit, Blood Lotus, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Barely South, and Conclave, among other publications. Her chapbook, The Deliberate Speed of Ghosts, was published in 2016 by Red Bird Chapbooks. She works as a teacher of English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL).
