The following essay was originally presented at Wadham College’s symposium on “Margins” on February 8, 2025. It was originally titled, “Margins as Framed by an English Student: Resistance through Discourse.”

Hi, I’m Christyn. I’m a visiting student, part of the Sarah Lawrence Programme. I’m in my third year at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, where I typically study literature, writing, and a social science (social psychology or sociology). At Wadham, I’ve been studying English, specifically literature (last term was Jane Austen, this term is 20th c. literature!) and creative writing.

I’m going to be honest, I wrote out maybe three or four different presentations, just because I saw so many different paths that I could take in front of me. I’ve already mentioned this, but in addition to studying literature, I’m a fiction writer, and I’ve been working on a novella that centers the deeply complicated, intergeneration, family relationship dynamics from my experiences as a Filipino-American woman and the granddaughter of immigrants.

But one day I had a conversation with a fellow Wadhamite in the Headley tearoom at the Weston, where she told me that defining things literally (“materially” is how she put it) is not stupid or even simple; sometimes, it is the best place to start.

So let’s start where I started. Margins: what is it? How can we define it?

The first thing that came to mind was marginalization—groups of people being treated as “on the fringes of society,” whether it be because of race, gender, intellect, economic status, or physical differences and abilities. If I could explain this to someone visually, I think of concentric circles, with the marginalized groups on the larger, outer circles or not even within these circles at all—completely on the outside. This is a common visual depiction of marginalization, because of these circles’ inability to allow anything that might take up space in the other circles into their own. The diagram—and marginalization itself—works because it relies on something conventional being centric and everything that doesn’t fit that convention to orbit around that, always watching but never actually part of it.

But the theme of the symposium is not “marginalization,” it’s margins, and “margins” is not limited to just this definition, or visual. It can also refer to its singular (“margin”), a financial and business term (and a world I know very little about).

I am slightly more familiar with the term used within an English course, as someone who has studied specifically creative writing and literature since my first year of university, which means I spend a lot of time writing papers, whether it be 2,000 words on Zelda Fitzgerald and the body in Save Me the Waltz or on a particular immigrant woman’s repulsion of her husband for my novella.

And every time I open a new Word/Google document, flip to a fresh sheet of paper in my notebook, or turn the page in a book, I see it—the margins. The barely visible (if my document is online, sometimes invisible) lines that mark where the text on a page begins and ends.

(Demonstrate this by showing some examples of margins—a novel and my marked-up writing from my professor.) As you can see, the blank white stuff is what many writers (academic or non) are familiar with. And these margins differ—while the citation styles dictate those “1-inch margins,” no more, no less, books and other collections of texts have different traditions.

But what exists here? What’s the purpose of these margins? Pretty borders, like a gilded picture frame instead of a plainer wood? (Though my art historian and museum curator friends will tell you that there’s intention behind this too, of course.)

The purpose of these margins are different for everyone, but for me (and my professor!), I like to make notes here, hence the term “marginalia.” Sometimes, I’ll draw a star next to already-underlined passages that strike me. Express frustration or joy for something a character has said or done. And occasionally, I’ll make a note that is slightly more “academic” such as “Who’s the narrator?”

For me, the purpose of these margins is to work with the text. Engage with it. Actively apply it to my life, or at least a setting that is more familiar to me. In this way, texts from 19th-century England (such as Jane Austen’s corpus) and before and beyond are still alive. I can read the words, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife,” and recall other truths universally acknowledged to the community—Wadham is the best college, there’s none other quite like it, etc. etc.

So I wondered (imagine with me for a while) what if instead of thinking of marginalization as these concentric circles, different and unique planets that orbit around a conventional, single-colored sun, we thought of margins like an English student? With its different traditions, everchanging structure, and most importantly, space for discourse, marginalization can be viewed in a way that allows for positive social change.

Within our current social systems, we can’t exist without marginalization. Every part of our history (British and American) was built on the backs of marginalized people. But we, marginalized people and non marginalized people alike, can—and should—view marginalization as strength. Because do you know what those “English-student” margins I described to you do too? They take up space. Necessary and valid space.

In my personal life, most of my marginalizations announce themselves to a room before I can even speak, so I learned early and quickly that I could either:

Fade into the background—go unseen and let my marginalizations speak for me. OR
I think of my marginalizations as strengths. Not things that make me stronger, but strengths. I let them help me gain more empathy for others, put my pen to paper as encouragement for others like me and not like me to think of themselves this way, too. I could take up space.

American poet Amanda Gorman says it better than I do: Poetry for her is about “asking these right questions about what it means to be a writer doing right by your words and your actions and my reaction is to pay honor to those shoulders of people who use those pens to roll over boulders so I might have a mountain of hope on which to stand, so that I might understand the power of telling stories that matter no matter what. So that I might realize that if I choose, not out of fear, but out of courage to speak, then there’s something unique that my words can become.” (Find Gorman’s TED talk here. Find her quote from 00:05:42-00:06:14.)

And if you don’t believe it, or if you can’t imagine this reframing, I’m right here. Some proof of someone who has lived by this way of life for a while. And though that choice took a lot of strength and a lot of courage, if I didn’t, I’m not sure if I’d be speaking to you today at all.

But how do I choose to take up space?

I do it through my writing. I like to take the hurt toward me that inevitably comes as a result of my marginalizations (such as a family member asking me to wear a wig to a family event out of their own pride and shame, despite me choosing not to wear one for the past four years) and channel it into something productive. I do what I know best: I write.

This has been the choice I’ve made since my first year of university—writing stories about family, taking shards of truth and running with them: a cheating dad, a grandmother making miki noodles in her tiny apartment, a drunkard grandfather, and now, a grandparent ashamed of their granddaughter. I found that I can be productive with the bitterness and resentment that inevitably echo as a result of my marginalization and create something.

From this, my novella, titled GRANDMOTHERS, was born. And it’s difficult for me to say this now, to you, out loud.

I was—and still am—hungry for answers, an explanation for that hurt, but it is writing that satiates my hunger and gives a voice to the things I could never stomach saying out loud. I articulate things that often get caught in my throat through my characters, who are braver than I ever could be. Stronger. More emboldened.

When I write, I become someone who can be honest with herself. In writing, I carve out my heart, place it on a table and examine it for everything it is.

Nothing else affords me that truth. Nothing else can make me so unflinchingly honest.

This is how writing is my form of liberation, my form of resistance.

So, the eternal question persists: why do I write? I write so I can feel the words on my tongue and let them go. Let them be free in a way that sometimes, I don’t believe I can be in this world. That is how I make the choice, each and every day, to take up space.

So, how will you make yours? How will you choose to take up space?

Thank you.

Christyn Refuerzo (she/her) is a visiting student at Wadham College. Learn more about her here.

Margins, Space, and Creative Writing: How My Marginalization Became a Way to Speak My Truth