BreakBread Spotlight with Zainab Raza
The Volume 1, Issue 2 Summer 2021 edition of BreakBread Magazine features the work of many young writers, poets, and artists like 14-year-old Zainab Raza. “Despondency” is a short and impactful story exploring the connection between place, memory, ambition, and how they coalesce to shape a person’s life. Raza discussed her work and creative pursuits with BreakBread.
For many, one's teenage years are an alembic through which we emerge not fully formed but at least with some idea of who we are and where we want to go in life. Raza, like any writer, combines this developmental aspect of youth with a perceptive authorial view of the world which makes her writing impactful and concise. Raza said that her creative impulses can range from “my own sheer frustrations at the moment” to “other writers that I love.”
In “Despondency,” protagonist Florence sees the world around her change from the environment to her relationship with her father. Discussing the events of her story, Raza said that we “like to think we control our lives and make our own decisions based on what we would like, but that’s simply not true.” It’s not that we are powerless, and Raza’s story certainly is not that fatalistic, but there are certainly limits to our efforts.
“Despondency” begins with seven-year-old Florence’s realization that the trees and their animal inhabitants that have long surrounded her home are to be torn down for a nearby housing development. This development is framed by Raza as an inevitability because her father is the only holdout among the locals, and this only because his widow Corrine, Florence’s mother, loved the woods so much.
Raza uses the story to comment on the connection between memory and place. She said that in “destroying a place, you are destroying a thousand memories.” For Raza, this “emphasized how the actual destruction went beyond just trees. They destroyed a person too, all that remained of one.”
Interestingly, the money that will come in from this transaction is going to be used to put Florence through school. This idea is brought up throughout as another inevitability, in essence the money has come in so now the family can fulfill its dreams. Nestled in this drama is the coming-of-age for Florence who did not realize, in the beginning of the story, that land could even be sold. And adults, for her, merely “stride in and out of your view, stopping for a brief moment before going off to buy a car or pay a tax.” But this naivete, or shroud of innocence, is swiftly shattered.
Raza said “the destruction of the forest correlates to the ruination of Florence’s blissful innocence and the destruction of her childhood. She must conform to what she does not want to adapt to, the way I think everyone must as they grow older.” Beyond this, it seems that part of growing up is realizing that the sacred ties that bound you and your loved ones to a place do not exist in the way you once imagined.
Thankfully, there are those like Raza who have the foresight to use writing as “a preservative act, [because] it is a way to preserve these memories and keep them alive.”
Written by Clayton Tomlinson