The hard part is often a hidden narrative, a shadow story, a recognition that is difficult to discover. Writers explore the hard part in many ways – through flashbacks, braided narratives, deflection and revelation, and the slow accretion of narrative moments. James Baldwin told “the hard part” in “Notes of a Native Son” with a flashback to the story of his coming to awareness of racism and his near collision with disaster. He lets you see how the fury of that awareness clouded his judgment and resulted in impulsive, violent actions. Nicole Walker in How to Plant a Billion Trees tells the hard part of being seduced/raped at age 11 by a babysitter through a braided narrative, revealing her innocence interwoven with her culpability, her female humiliation contrasted to an emerging love of nature. The hard part involves both a triggering subject — an emblematic moment, a charged memory — as well as a deeper, more complicated perception about that subject.

In this workshop, we will discuss one or two essays, then follow prompts for a triggering subject (a charged memory) as well as prompts to discover the more complicated emotional narrative that often shadows the triggering subject. The focus of the workshop will be to open ourselves (in our freewriting) to how writers use personal narratives to unravel and clarify mixed emotions.

In collaboration with the UAB Institute for Human Rights and the English/Creative Writing Department

Patricia Foster has been awarded a PEN Award, a Pushcart Prize, a Clarence Cason Award, a Dean’s Scholar Award, a Yaddo Fellowship, a Carl Klaus Teaching Award, a 2024 Hall-Waters Prize for Distinguished Southern Writing, and the 2026 Alabama Truman Capote Award for fiction and nonfiction.

Activities Statement: The purpose of all UAB Institute for Human Rights (IHR) programs, activities, and endeavors is to foster collaboration, scholarly exchange, and academic learning related to human rights. Everyone is welcome to attend!