Hi, it’s been a long time! I’ll start with a brief intro in case you forgot you subscribed to this newsletter: my name is Jessica Goudeau and I’m a journalist and creative writing professor. I wrote a book that came out in 2020 about two former refugee women called After the Last Border: Two Families and the Story of Refuge in America.
For the last three years, I’ve been hard at work on my second nonfiction book, We Were Illegal: Uncovering A Texas Family’s Mythmaking and Migration. I’ll talk more about it soon, but here’s the gorgeous cover:
A few months into writing We Were Illegal, I realized that, in order to write the kind of book I wanted to, it would be all consuming. And it has been. I researched four hundred years of national history and did deep archival dives to uncover my own family’s past. I journeyed to Virginia for a weeklong research trip, spent days in Texas libraries, interviewed family members and people whose lives were changed because of my family’s actions. And I wrote and wrote and wrote; at one point, the manuscript was up to 167,000 words. Don’t worry, I also revised and revised: now it’s down to less than 110,000. Friends and family read it; my extraordinary agent read it; my brilliant editor tore it apart multiple times. I agonized over every sentence and gave myself permission to obsess over the commas and adjectives and verbs. The result is a book I’m deeply proud of and can’t wait to release into the world on June 18, 2024.
But it also meant that the words dried up inside of me. For months, I ended the writing day with shaking hands, an aching back, and nothing else to say. This newsletter and my social media presence went by the wayside—a break I think is good and necessary for all of us at times. When I sent the final manuscript to my editor late last September, I thought I would be ready to jump back in.
I was not. I absolutely underestimated how much time the field of my mind needed to lie fallow. I was depleted.
And then words got even harder.
The war in Palestine started just a few days later. After years of writing about the civil war in Syria, with strong ties to the region that I have developed through dozens of friendships and journalistic contacts, I found myself unable to say much beyond the occasional social media repost. I may write more about it at some point, but I do want to say: this conflict is complicated, and also, all wars are complicated. And the baseline belief I will speak out about for the rest of my life is that innocent civilians—especially children—should never, ever, ever be victims in war.
I couldn’t write about it not because I don’t care, but because I care so profoundly. For years, I have walked alongside victims of war and persecution. I have witnessed the losses piling up like rubble and I have chronicled the wild, desperate grief of people who are made to be refugees. It is a grief that cracks the world.
I found myself unable to put into words my despair at the false promises by world leaders and the global rise of hatred against people because of their ethnicity or background. Add to that a rise in national and international political rhetoric that seems identical to where we just were in 2016—it all felt like too much.
So. That’s why I have not been able to write. That’s why this newsletter has been so quiet. But lately, I have found myself with something unexpected to say.
It is this: in late January, in an election year in which I am angrier than I think I have ever been at all of our leaders on every side, when the days feel dark and filled with desolation, inexplicably—I feel hope.
Something has happened to me in the years of researching and writing about war and injustice and largescale narratives in history and in my family. I feel like I’ve gotten down to the bottom of things. Like I understand our country and my state and myself—and honestly, human existence—in a new way. Like I now understand the machinations and the scheming with which we hide our fears and our greed, the ways in which we work so hard to cover up our past so we didn’t have to face the hardest parts of our histories.
In my research and interviews, I have uncovered an important truth: so, so many of us still believe in each other and care for each other. We are connected to one another. And there are good people in the world, millions of us, who truly do not want to give up on one another, who everyday find the courage to do what they know is right.
I don’t care if this sounds false or silly or overly earnest. We need a little more earnestness and sincerity in the world right now. I have hope that is hard earned and I’m ready to write about it.
My kids’ friends call me the ‘everything’s going to be OK’ mom, and I kind of love it. If you want to hear some theories and reasons and stories why I think everything’s going to be ok, even in hard times, then this is the place for you. I’m going to be writing regularly for the next several months, and it will mostly be about that.
If this newsletter isn’t your thing, I won’t be offended if you unsubscribe. But at a time when it feels like every other news story is designed to bring us to our knees with fear and grief, I think we could use as many well-reasoned, clear-eyed, hopeful voices as we can get.
And I finally have some things to say. Thanks for subscribing. I hope you’ll stick around.
Jessica, I can't wait to read more. Our world needs hope!
I'm so glad you're back! Your words are truly the encouragement I needed today and I can't wait to read your next book!