“Write the tale that scares you, that makes you feel uncertain, that isn't comfortable. I dare you … see what comes to you in the silence.”
- Michaela Coel
Sketch by @tin_beat
That story? Yes, that story. We all tell ourselves tales, often conflicting and distorted. But I’m terrified to tell you this one. During my time abroad, I want to reach the tail end of a writing project that has never entirely left me. A feature script that I’ve only seen through to the first draft. It’s a story that I consider to be loosely autobiographical. Very loose. Friends and family have either read excerpts or listened to me talk about it for years. Finally, I’ve decided it’s time to finish it. The goal is to rewrite the script by the end of September, at the latest.
Announcing that deadline feels like an exercise in masochism. The generation of words has always come easier to me than editing and revision. I have a hard time digging into the messes I’ve made. There’s a frightful tedium to that task. I think of all my scattered notes and files, my pages of journal entries, and I quickly get overwhelmed. But the threat of humiliation is meant to ward off procrastination. By telling you what I mean to do, I’m forced to be accountable.
The other day, I overheard something a relative said, which left a strong impression. The direct translation: I have to reconnect myself with myself. (Believe me, it sounds better in Amaringya). That’s exactly what it feels like I’m doing by returning to my long-avoided script.
So, what exactly is this narrative? We’ll call it, Script X. (Subscribers, find out the title below and get an exclusive peek at the look book, featuring an early script excerpt.) Here are three six-word summaries: Sisters estranged by culture and circumstance. Family secrets exposed by tragedy. Young woman’s return to home unknown. Script X is an exorcism of my experiences as a first-generation Ethiopian-American. It pulls at the common threads that run through a lot of my projects—identity, cultural inheritance, language, migration and familial distance. I’m trying to explore how the past informs the present, not only how trauma is shared, but also why we so often carry our burdens alone—Depression. Regret. Guilt and the rest.
I first conceived of the project as a poem.
The sisters Sun & Moon / distinct as Night & Day / divided by the hands of time / and living worlds away
The words emerged lyrically and were later adapted for other formats—animation, feature, episodic, short, back to feature.
Sunny is the story’s protagonist. A young Ethiopian-American woman, living in Washington, DC, who loses her father suddenly. (My own father passed away in 2017.) In the wake of this tragedy, Sunny learns that she has a sister, one she doesn’t know and barely remembers. Add to that, the woman Sunny knew as her mother is actually her stepmother. Both her father’s death and the knowledge of this mysterious sister, Koki, prompt Sunny to journey back to her birthplace, Ethiopia, where she must confront the past, in order to discover who she is.
To complete the script, I have to achieve metamorphosis. For my characters, for myself, change must occur in both interior and exterior worlds. I have to find out what each of them—especially, Sunny—wants and needs, before I can satisfactorily write an ending. Does she merely want to bury her departed father? To reunite with her sister Koki? To find out about her biological mother? I have to help her transform through actions and interactions; through decisions and destruction, as well as reconstruction, reunion, and, ultimately, (ideally,) unity.
Scott Meyers, who writes the scriptwriting blog “Into the Story,” discusses the concept of “emotional truth.” That’s the essence of what I mean to uncover here. Though I consider the narrative to be a work of autofiction rather than biography, I imagine Sunny as I am, on a rooftop somewhere in Addis Ababa. The sun is down, only gray clouds and dusty pink in the background. I watch a plane rise high above me, its lights flickering and disappearing, and I picture Sunny catching sight of the same spectacle. Or, maybe, she’s looking down at me through the porthole of the plane window, observing the sprawling puzzle pieces of dark brown and lush green that I remember seeing my first time coming here, at the age of ten.
There’s another story, Red at the Bone, by Jacqueline Woodson, that speaks to me; a novel that reads like poetry. Woodson traces “the influence of history on a contemporary family,” each chapter “moving forward and backward in time.” Choosing this book for this trip, at this particular moment, feels both timely and necessary, as I try to fictionalize my own history. One of Woodson’s characters paints my effort precisely, describing “memory like lightning. Flash. Darkness.” I try to connect my own sparks of light like a constellation, stitching together fragments of memory, whether from my own recollections or things relatives have told me. All of these deeply personal events, some real, some historical fiction, are meant to convey a visceral emotional truth, as-yet uncertain.
What will it take to complete this heroine’s journey? That’s a question for Sunny as much as me.
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