Grief Among Students

I've been working on an anthology of student writing - and emerged from the obsession of page formatting yesterday to recognize a strata of grief in their voices.

These are mostly young (20s) writers, burgeoning learners of the English language, refugees and asylees from Latin America, South America, the Near and Far and Mid East.

Their trials of English parallel the trials of their past, and their present. Death and memory are strong currents. Then, juxtaposed with the prevailing sadness, one or two voices that recall joy and rely on hope.

I'm pulled by two inclinations when I wonder about their writing. The total environment that attaches itself to the immigrant is my first thought. Is this an expression of an innate sadness, a longing and rue that accompanies people who leave their country, home, family, culture for the U.S.? Then I look at them as beginning writers, as neophytes who tap into those powerful emotions that surface so quickly and which seem so easily expressed. By why sorrow? Why not passion or its kindred, love?

Their writing has a restrained tone to it, unlike the usual messy purple quality of beginning writers. I burrow just a little deeper, and thoughts of content and tone are replaced by the practical realization that English is alien. Were I to compose a poem in Farsi or Haitian French Creole, would I plunge heart first or head first?

I'd tred slowly - aware of imminent mistakes in construction, fearful of the faux pas, wary of connotation and inexactitude. Finding metaphor would be a leap in cognition. Careful restraint might appear as disciplined emotion when in fact, it's just careful restraint.

But apart from construction, I keep returning to that sadness. Longing and loneliness.