Editor’s Note: In March 2010, we began posting the work of Enceno Macy, an inmate in a US prison. Enceno’s articles are sent handwritten, then typed and edited by a trusted editor. Comments typed into the response area will be sent directly to Enceno. Thanks for reading and for the warm response he’s received each time. –efc & ajp
by Enceno Macy
Beware of allowing a tactless word, a rebuttal, a rejection to obliterate the whole sky.
— Diary of Anaïs Nin, January 1944
The prison library for some reason does not have any books by Mary Higgins Clark, so I haven’t read any, but as an author she is impressive as hell. She is 83 years old and has written 42 books, every one of them a best-seller. She still writes one or two books a year and gets $4 to $5 million in advance for each one — pretty good for a former airline stewardess and single mom who got 40 rejection notices for her first story before finding a publisher.
Forty rejection notices! How does a person persevere against such repeated rejection? How does she maintain enough confidence to keep trying when one rejection after another comes along? And what an incredible rush when finally, against such odds, she was accepted!
Prison is of course the ultimate rejection by society: not only total physical rejection but also spiritual and mental abandonment, because the first and most terrible thing a prisoner is aware of from the day the doors clang shut is that to the world outside he no longer exists and is not worth remembering. From that moment on, prison by its nature is an exercise in repeated rejection. For most if not all prisoners, the pattern goes back to their earliest memories. How is it that some of us give in to the most common — even trivial — rejections, while others persevere and overcome them? I don’t have an answer to that.
Looking back, my own first rejections now seem innocent and inconsequential. I was black in a white, redneck school, I was big for my age, and slow and clumsy. Also, I was probably more immature than a lot of kids my age. Often I was the last chosen for teams and school projects, and being aware and hurt made me uncomfortable to be around. This limited my number of friends drastically. I didn’t understand that I was different and that people — especially kids — don’t always take well to the unordinary. Trying to make friends was difficult, and the rejections — frequently being excluded or made fun of — made me cry as a child. When I grew older and was courted by the football coach, it didn’t help that I refused because football was too violent.