sug·ar

 

¹sug·ar     noun     \ˈSHo͝ogər\

1: a : a sweet crystallizable material that consists wholly or essentially of sucrose, is colorless or white when pure tending to brown when less refined, is obtained commercially from sugarcane or sugar beet and less extensively from sorghum, maples, and palms, and is important as a source of dietary carbohydrate and as a sweetener and preservative of other foods b : any of various water-soluble compounds that vary widely in sweetness, include the monosaccharides and oligosaccharides, and typically are optically active

2 : a unit (as a spoonful, cube, or lump) of sugar

3: a sugar bowl

 

²sugar     verb     sug·ared     sug·ar·ing

transitive verb

1: to make palatable or attractive : sweeten <a story sugared with romance>

2: to sprinkle or mix with sugar

intransitive verb

1: to form or be converted into sugar

2: to become granular

3: to make maple syrup or maple sugar

 

 

I found Sugar at a time in my life when I was mourning severed connections, reflecting deeply on myself and my life and my choices and experiencing raw loneliness. My life was by no means in shambles, but I still was struggling with boundless uncertainties and deep self-doubt.

An advice columnist for The Rumpus, Sugar’s columns are exactly the opposite of what repels me from other columns. They are not didactic. They do not pretend to solve someone’s complicated problem or deep question in one neatly wrapped up answer. They are not formal or impersonal. They do not have an imbalanced or hierarchical relationship between advice seeker and advice giver. There is no air of superiority.

Instead, Sugar is a cartographer of the heart; she reaches into the map of her personal history, pulling out threads of her journeys and struggles and celebrations and weaving them through readers’ questions. Here, she says, look at this. And this. And this. In authentically crafting stories that navigate their way to an answer of sorts, she offers words that resonate with all readers, no matter whether they have been in the same situation as the advice seeker or not.

It isn’t that Sugar is telling us things that we don’t already know. Sugar taps into the deep register, the inaudible murmur resting below the words being said and she echoes back this thrumming in the truths she tells and the way she tells them: with honesty, with compassion, with love. Often those writing in don’t only need to address the current situation in need of attention and healing but the deep wounds that lie beneath it. And these wounds—of not feeling worthy or of being ashamed or of being scared to love or to be vulnerable or take risks because of our past hurts—these are ones we can all relate to.

Tonight, Sugar is having a coming out party in San Francisco, to tell the world who she really is. But as she said in one of her columns, we already know who she is: “…I quickly realized that telling stories about my life was often the only way I knew how to communicate the complexity of my advice. Your story spilled into mine and then I spilled it back into you, with hopes that we’d all find ourselves somewhere in the big story that belongs to all of us in a place we made up called Sugarland, where you know me already, even though you don’t know me at all.”

 

 

Researcher and storyteller Brene Brown has a brilliant TED talk about vulnerability. One of the things she discusses is that there is only one major difference between whole-hearted people, those who live with their whole heart, and those who don’t, and that is that whole-hearted people view vulnerability as a necessary part of life. And they see that vulnerability involves risk (to say “I love you” first, to do something they’ve never done before, to ask for help) and they choose to be vulnerable anyway. Sugar’s columns are built with vulnerability and they encourage this sort of way of being and living in her readers.

I brought Sugar’s columns into my freshman composition classroom this past fall to show them examples of how to use personal narrative to make a strong and clear point. We read one of her columns aloud and discussed how she went about telling her story and for what effect. Then, students had to answer one of her letter writers using their own personal experience. They talked about loss and grief and insecurities. Their words spilled over with hope and fear and love and disappointment. And when they were finished writing, one of my students asked: Can we see her answer? What did Sugar say?

I never know how students will respond to lesson plans and had hopes for this one. But it was about something more than craft or pedagogical goals: I wanted to expose them to the rhetoric of love. One of the things I love most about Sugar is that she writes her column because the letters she receives need to be read and these stories need to be told. We all need tending to. And in reading and in responding, she has created and held a space for us, where we all can feel less alone, where we all belong, where we have the opportunity to be whole-hearted people, together.