So, I just rewatched The Grapes of Wrath this evening, and golly by golly, it has to be one of the saddest stories ever told. We had to stop it twenty minutes short because class was over, and seeing how last twenty minutes are the most tragic part, we didn't even watch the worst of it. But you could feel the spirit of the class puddling around our shoes when the lights came on...a very real way to start "Class, Poverty, and Politics" this semester.
It is always a unique experience re-encountering things you have encountered before - it becomes so much more clear to you what effect time and growth has had on you in the space between. The book made a great impression on me as a teenager, partly because of the horrible fate of the Joads, and partly because of the language. Steinbeck's use of Midwestern dialect was credited as making the book accessible, but I found it be full of words that couldn't be looked up in the dictionary. For example, I have a strong memory of the whole chapter about jalopies, which I thought were some kind of strange fruit until my teacher explained they were lemon cars. I also remember how "Rose of Sharon" was written "Rosasharn" to emulate the dialect, but I really thought the character's name was "Rosasharn," not "Rose of Sharon," largely because I didn't know that rose of sharon is a plant (which my mother told me) and from the bible (which evangelical classmates informed me).
Watching the film again, which I haven't seen in four or five years, brought some of these memories back. It also struck me how superficially I understood the film the first and second, and probably third, time I watched it. As a teenager, I thought it was just a sad story about the Great Depression. Sort of like movies about the Holocaust - you watch them and feel a wrenching sensation in your gut because it's not pleasant to reflect on the horrible things we have done to each other, especially when we are in need. But then you go home and watch Boy Meets World and do your calculus homework, and that's that. To feel badly about or for someone is not the same as being reflexive.
Before we started the film this evening, our professor asked us to think about the relevance of The Grapes of Wrath to today. What if this film just came out? Where do we see the themes of this film played out today? What similarities exist between the Great Depression and our great recession? And so now being reflexive was built into the viewing. It was no longer an old black and white movie with some sad-looking poor people in it. They were more human to me now, more real. And the utter tragedy of their situation was not one that was bandaged by Roosevelt and some rain, but timeless. It persists. It rages on.
At the end of class, the professor pointed out a line where the Joads are refused admittance to a town by a group of torch-bearing men. "We ain't gonna have no goddamn Okies in this town," one says, "You turn right around, and don't come back until the cotton's ready." Versions of this have played out over and over again...although The Grapes of Wrath is about white people, this is said to low-income Central American immigrants today. The professor gestured to the way in which mid-westerners could once be considered migrants in California, and now we think of migrant workers as being from out of the country, especially Mexico. The boundaries of statehood have expanded to nationalism, but the message remains the same: we don't want you, except to do the lowest work for the lowest pay, and you better not plan on doing it where we can see you.
Such forced invisibility and dehumanization of the poor was a prominent theme in the film (and book), and it is not limited to migrant or undocumented laborers in our contemporary society. Two other themes - although I am sure there are others - from The Grapes of Wrath are widely experienced by the poor. The first is the policing of the poor, as the Joads are monitored, refused admittance, inspected, scrutinized, surveyed, and always doubted by authority figures. This remains true, as law enforcement is set up to protect those in power from those without. (I grew up believing the police would protect me...but not all my classmates saw the police that way.) Patrolled borders, limited mobility, containment...all serve to prevent the poor from class-based organizing.
Tied to this is the second theme, that of disunity. The logic of classist structures seeks to disunify the poor. They are pitted against each other to compete for starvation wages, used as strikebreakers, separated to prevent the spread of information, and all "agitators" are removed to ensure groups remain malleable and controllable. Families, as Ma Joad laments, are torn apart as a result of such hardship and depravity. Poverty - structurally-enforced poverty - breaks the spirit of a family. People die. People go mad. People lose children. People do terrible things to each other out of hunger and emptiness. Those who are not shown love are equally denied the ability to love one another. Poverty ensures there can be no "whole" to a family, only fissures and cracks and shards.
On another note, there is an interesting strain running through the film about how Ma Joad is the central figure of the family. She does an awful lot of emotion work, and it seems like a large conclusion of the film is that, despite all the misery and tragedy and all-around crappiness of poverty, women will stick around to heal those fissures and cracks, to pick up those shards. Men might lose their dignity in not being able to secure a job to fulfill the gendered provider role, but, by golly, their women remain steadfast. And in many ways this is true, as a gendered expectation of women is to fulfill family duties. They do not get to go crazy, or beat up the cop, or die...they have to take care of everyone who does.
Also, I wondered what happened to black people during the Great Depression, because there were only white faces in the film - this is something that never occurred to me the first few times I watched it. Surely there were black people in Kansas and Arkansas and Oklahoma who migrated when the dust storms came and richer white people came to swallow up the land...but their story is likely even more tragic. It is also not the film that was made. It may also have to do with why we'd like to think of the Dust Bowl Migration, with Henry Fonda's salt-of-the-earth white tough guy who got a raw deal, as entirely different than our current dependence on invisible and dehumanized undocumented labor force. Or the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which displaced over one million people, most of them poor and black. It's always much easier to think of ourselves as roses, and as not having any thorns.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Just as we suspected
You may have heard of a recent Wall Street Journal article by Amy Chua that is garnering considerable attention. It's called "Why Chinese Mothers are Superior" and is an excerpt from Chua's just-released book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. The article explains why the "Chinese" parenting style produces more successful children than the "Western" parenting style, it reads as much like an Onion article as the idea of an Obama Chia pet. But no, dear readers. Once again the people who come up with this stuff are totally, absolutely, sincerely serious.
Chua, a Yale Law School professor, uses her own experiences as a case study to make sweeping generalizations about a groups she terms "Chinese" parents, which can include immigrants of many races and ethnic backgrounds, but is predicated on strict, shame-heavy, warden-style child-rearing tactics. She begins with a list of things "Chinese" parents never permit their children, including "attending a sleepover," "watch TV or play computer games," "choose their own extracurricular activities," and "get any grade less than an A." Based on her eyewitness accounts, she determines that there are three main differences between the parenting styles - 1) Western parents care too much about their children's psyches, while "Chinese parents assume strength, not fragility," and can therefore shame their children because they know them to be strong enough to take it; 2) Western parents see themselves as indebted to their children, while Chinese parents see their children as indebted to them; 3) Western parents believe their children can determine what is best for themselves, while "Chinese parents believe they know what is best for their children and can therefore override all of their children's own desires and preferences."
And then she tells a story about how she bullied (not "insulted," she says, but "motivated") her seven year old to master a very difficult piano song overnight, not even letting her get up to pee. (But it's okay because they had a nice cuddlefest afterwards, plus the kid totally rocked out at the recital!)
Let me begin by saying that I think there are a few other details left out of the article that would have likely made better sense of the success of the "Chinese" mothering model. For one, Chinese immigrants in the mid to late 20th century (Chua's parents are of Filipino descent, but migrated from China the year before Chua's birth), are one of the highest socio-economic status immigrant groups; not surprisingly, one of the highest correlations with academic success is the class status of one's parents. And, while we're at it, let's just make this clear - the only kinds of parents Chau is talking about, "Chinese" or "Western," are middle and upper-class. (I doubt low-income mothering rests within the purvue of any news source whose name begins with the words "Wall Street.") And where the heck are fathers in this article? Although Chua's Jewish husband, Jed, makes some "Western" parenting appearances, it seems that "parenting" really means "mothering," as child-rearing is, as we all know, a mother's responsibility. Women, who are often treated as if their primary purpose is to make and rear children, are judged severely for the outcomes of their children - it seems that this burden rests just as heavily on Chua's shoulders.
Chua's critique of Western parenting does highlight some harmful flaws. In a side-ways manner, she gestures to the way passive aggressive parenting tactics coupled with an overindulgence of children's desires breeds entitlement and laziness. And while the focus of the controversy has been on the stuff she put her kids through - is it even legal? - I want to address something equally as complex: the racialization of mothering. Because although Chua nods her head to "squeamishness about cultural stereotypes," it doesn't seem to stop her from painting herself as one. She terms herself a "Tiger mother," for Pete's sake! The line between a celebration of cultural identity and capitalizing on orientalism to sell books is especially blurred as Chua sets herself up to be called the "tiger mom" by the press.
In the Wall Street Journal excerpt from her book, Chua's initial assurance that she is using "Chinese" and "Western" to represent broad categories quickly erodes as "Chinese" becomes Chua herself (and all other Chinese and Chinese-American mothers, or, for most Americans, any middle-aged woman who looks Asian) and "Western" becomes all the other white moms on the block. This polarizing dichotomy only furthers the 'us versus them' divide, as if there is no grey area. And there IS no grey area for Chua, as all Chinese-ethnic moms who employ Western parenting methods are deemed not 'really' Chinese mothers. (Check out an awesome post on Slate.com where Nina Shen Rastogi makes this critique, and also notes the complexity of identifying with Chua's writing.) Regardless of Chua's intentions, for Western readers, Chua is ultimately always reduceable to her ethnicity.
Interestingly, Chua has responded to the controversy over her Wall Street Journal article, as it seems she wasn't the one to title it, or approve of the final editing. She emphasized in a CNN interview (as well as elsewhere) that her book is not meant to be a parenting guide, and in fact it is a memoir about how she changed her ways over the course of her daughters' upbringing when her youngest daughter fiercely rebelled against her tactics. So it turns out most of the article is meant to be self-deprecating, a joke on herself for going to such extreme measures. It is an Onion article after all.
But that's not how the Wall Street Journal article sounds, or how its readers are taking it. And there is the rub, dear readers! A public who already believes that "Chinese" mothers are everything Chua paints herself out to be are not able to pick up on sardonic nuance. We don't just think that Chua fits a stereotype, we think that the stereotype is truth, and Chua is merely presenting additional evidence of what we've already condemned her to.
This article reads more to me like a tragedy of intersectional proportions, where race and gender stereotypes feed the preconceived notions of Wall Street Journal readers. It flames the 'yellow peril' of China's imminent dethroning of our red, white, and blue awesomeness, when they will presumably spend their time laughing in our faces and relishing their children's comparatively higher SAT scores. It reinforces the xenophobia that lead us to see Chinese as representative of all Asians, and all Asians as not-Americans, and to treat "tiger mom" as a euphemism for "dragon lady." Chua is not seen as a conflicted mother striving to raise her children in a nativist nation that will never fully claim them as its own. She is not seen as attempting to bridge a multiplicity of cultures amid a prevailing culture that demands she walk that bridge. She is not seen, like all of us, as learning and growing and changing and making mistakes. She is just that mean Chinese lady who terrorized her Carnegie Hall-performing children. And she's selling a lot of books off of it, too.
Chua's role is dubious one, as Chua apparently had no say in what was eventually published in the article. But as Angry Asian Man eloquently notes, "the Wall Street Journal excerpt is still a piece of shit, and the damage has been done."
And in the end, we are the tiger that cannot change its stripes.
Chua, a Yale Law School professor, uses her own experiences as a case study to make sweeping generalizations about a groups she terms "Chinese" parents, which can include immigrants of many races and ethnic backgrounds, but is predicated on strict, shame-heavy, warden-style child-rearing tactics. She begins with a list of things "Chinese" parents never permit their children, including "attending a sleepover," "watch TV or play computer games," "choose their own extracurricular activities," and "get any grade less than an A." Based on her eyewitness accounts, she determines that there are three main differences between the parenting styles - 1) Western parents care too much about their children's psyches, while "Chinese parents assume strength, not fragility," and can therefore shame their children because they know them to be strong enough to take it; 2) Western parents see themselves as indebted to their children, while Chinese parents see their children as indebted to them; 3) Western parents believe their children can determine what is best for themselves, while "Chinese parents believe they know what is best for their children and can therefore override all of their children's own desires and preferences."
And then she tells a story about how she bullied (not "insulted," she says, but "motivated") her seven year old to master a very difficult piano song overnight, not even letting her get up to pee. (But it's okay because they had a nice cuddlefest afterwards, plus the kid totally rocked out at the recital!)
Let me begin by saying that I think there are a few other details left out of the article that would have likely made better sense of the success of the "Chinese" mothering model. For one, Chinese immigrants in the mid to late 20th century (Chua's parents are of Filipino descent, but migrated from China the year before Chua's birth), are one of the highest socio-economic status immigrant groups; not surprisingly, one of the highest correlations with academic success is the class status of one's parents. And, while we're at it, let's just make this clear - the only kinds of parents Chau is talking about, "Chinese" or "Western," are middle and upper-class. (I doubt low-income mothering rests within the purvue of any news source whose name begins with the words "Wall Street.") And where the heck are fathers in this article? Although Chua's Jewish husband, Jed, makes some "Western" parenting appearances, it seems that "parenting" really means "mothering," as child-rearing is, as we all know, a mother's responsibility. Women, who are often treated as if their primary purpose is to make and rear children, are judged severely for the outcomes of their children - it seems that this burden rests just as heavily on Chua's shoulders.
Chua's critique of Western parenting does highlight some harmful flaws. In a side-ways manner, she gestures to the way passive aggressive parenting tactics coupled with an overindulgence of children's desires breeds entitlement and laziness. And while the focus of the controversy has been on the stuff she put her kids through - is it even legal? - I want to address something equally as complex: the racialization of mothering. Because although Chua nods her head to "squeamishness about cultural stereotypes," it doesn't seem to stop her from painting herself as one. She terms herself a "Tiger mother," for Pete's sake! The line between a celebration of cultural identity and capitalizing on orientalism to sell books is especially blurred as Chua sets herself up to be called the "tiger mom" by the press.
In the Wall Street Journal excerpt from her book, Chua's initial assurance that she is using "Chinese" and "Western" to represent broad categories quickly erodes as "Chinese" becomes Chua herself (and all other Chinese and Chinese-American mothers, or, for most Americans, any middle-aged woman who looks Asian) and "Western" becomes all the other white moms on the block. This polarizing dichotomy only furthers the 'us versus them' divide, as if there is no grey area. And there IS no grey area for Chua, as all Chinese-ethnic moms who employ Western parenting methods are deemed not 'really' Chinese mothers. (Check out an awesome post on Slate.com where Nina Shen Rastogi makes this critique, and also notes the complexity of identifying with Chua's writing.) Regardless of Chua's intentions, for Western readers, Chua is ultimately always reduceable to her ethnicity.
Interestingly, Chua has responded to the controversy over her Wall Street Journal article, as it seems she wasn't the one to title it, or approve of the final editing. She emphasized in a CNN interview (as well as elsewhere) that her book is not meant to be a parenting guide, and in fact it is a memoir about how she changed her ways over the course of her daughters' upbringing when her youngest daughter fiercely rebelled against her tactics. So it turns out most of the article is meant to be self-deprecating, a joke on herself for going to such extreme measures. It is an Onion article after all.
But that's not how the Wall Street Journal article sounds, or how its readers are taking it. And there is the rub, dear readers! A public who already believes that "Chinese" mothers are everything Chua paints herself out to be are not able to pick up on sardonic nuance. We don't just think that Chua fits a stereotype, we think that the stereotype is truth, and Chua is merely presenting additional evidence of what we've already condemned her to.
This article reads more to me like a tragedy of intersectional proportions, where race and gender stereotypes feed the preconceived notions of Wall Street Journal readers. It flames the 'yellow peril' of China's imminent dethroning of our red, white, and blue awesomeness, when they will presumably spend their time laughing in our faces and relishing their children's comparatively higher SAT scores. It reinforces the xenophobia that lead us to see Chinese as representative of all Asians, and all Asians as not-Americans, and to treat "tiger mom" as a euphemism for "dragon lady." Chua is not seen as a conflicted mother striving to raise her children in a nativist nation that will never fully claim them as its own. She is not seen as attempting to bridge a multiplicity of cultures amid a prevailing culture that demands she walk that bridge. She is not seen, like all of us, as learning and growing and changing and making mistakes. She is just that mean Chinese lady who terrorized her Carnegie Hall-performing children. And she's selling a lot of books off of it, too.
Chua's role is dubious one, as Chua apparently had no say in what was eventually published in the article. But as Angry Asian Man eloquently notes, "the Wall Street Journal excerpt is still a piece of shit, and the damage has been done."
And in the end, we are the tiger that cannot change its stripes.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Only the 'good' stuff
With the recent snowfall in eastern North Carolina, the local American Red Cross blood bank is running on a shortage. (The Red Cross is really always running on a shortage,* so 'a greater shortage than usual' is more apt.) My mother is a regular donor, and she brought me - a first time donor - with her when she went in last week.
Alas, I failed the eligibility requirements, even though I had great vitals and a high iron level. Turns out New York doesn't have state health regulations for their tattoo studios - they have local regulations and have to meet health codes, but no state official goes around and accredits them, which is the criteria for Red Cross donations. So I can't give blood until August.
But the point is not that I may have under-researched state regulations before I got inked again (learn from me, all you kids out there!), but that I had my first personal encounter with the eligibility requirements. And I could not help but set my analysis upon them, as I am inclined to do. Here is how it goes. Before giving, they prick your finger to test your iron, take your blood pressure, your pulse, and temperature. They ask you some general health questions to assure themselves that you are generally healthy. Then they leave you alone with a computer to answer about a dozen questions in private. The presumption is that way you'll be honest and be more likely to admit to any embarrassing likelihood of having 'bad' blood. And what do I mean by 'bad' blood?
These questions can roughly be summarized as the following five themes:
1) "Is your blood messed up because you have some kind of illness or disease?"
This is hepatitis, mostly, or HIV/AIDs, although it also includes things like blood-related cancers and tuberculosis. There is also a year long waiting period after you've completed treatment for certain STDs, like syphilis or gonorrhea.
2) "Might your blood be messed up because you sleep with someone who has some kind of illness, or take money for sleeping with anyone who has God knows what, or because you've been to jail?"
Basically, if you've slept with someone who has hepatitis or has tested positive for HIV/AIDs. You are also considered at risk for HIV/AIDs risk if you've ever taken any form of payment for sex since 1977. If you've been jailed for more than three days, you are ineligible for a year because of the risk of hepatitis exposure.
3) "Might your blood be messed up because you are taking legal or illegal drugs?"
In terms of legal drugs, this could be anything from a recent aspirin or immunization to antibiotics or bovine insulin. As for illegal drugs, if you've ever shot up (heroin, steroids, etc.), you are ineligible to donate, ever. This is because of the risk of hepatitis and HIV transmission through shared needles or anything not doctor-proscribed.
4) "Might your blood be messed up because you are a gay man who practices gayness?"
The ARC considers all those who are deemed at risk for HIV/AIDs ineligible for blood donation. If you are "a male who has had sexual contact with another male, even once, since 1977," you are considered as "having done something that puts you at risk" for HIV/AIDs. The same is true if you are a woman who has had sexual contact with another man who had sexual contact with another man. (Did you follow that? If you're a woman who has had a sexual relationship with a man who sleeps with men, then you are considered to have put yourself at risk for HIV/AIDs, too.)
5) "Might your blood be messed up because you are African, have ever been to Africa, or have ever slept with someone who is in any way connected to Africa?"
I'm being harsh. It's not all of Africa, just 8 western African countries where there is a rare strain of HIV that is not easily detected. In the case of malaria, however, it's pretty much all of Africa. Actually, there is a nice yellow and red band that sweeps across the entire Global South, marking highly infected regions, and if you've lived in any of them, you have to wait three years before being eligible to donate. Now, the United Kingdom isn't completely spared, as the risk of mad cow disease makes anyone who has spent more than three months in any UK nation since 1980 ineligible to donate as well. Iraq also requires a year long waiting period.
I don't want to make light of the importance of regulating blood donations. Believe me when I say I understand why many of these regulations are in place, and I want those who need blood to receive the purest, healthiest blood we can offer. I cannot overemphasize that truth.
It does strike me, however, that donating blood is a reminder of our place on various hierarchies. It reinforces what is 'good' blood and what is 'bad' or 'tainted' blood, where is the right place to be from and where is the wrong place, what is the appropriate sex to have and what is the dangerous, what are the correct ways to live and what are the perverse. If you've done it all correctly, then your blood is welcomed. If you've made some mistakes - or worse, if you are a mistake, or if a legacy of imperial depravity has made it so that you will be forever marked as a mistake - then your blood is not.
More than that, though, is that to be able to give blood suggests something about your structural position and probability of avoiding mistakes (making them, being them, or being in any way connected to people who make mistakes or are deemed mistakes) entirely. As I looked around the room of sweet locals sitting patiently as their packs filled with blood, I thought about how donating blood could be considered a public way of saying "Yep, I'm privileged!" I am heterosexual and I only sleep with heterosexuals. I have never had to prostitute myself to survive. I have great health insurance, so all my drugs are legal. I have easy and affordable access to condoms. I've never spent any considerable duration of time seeing any part of the Global South. I've only ever been to the UK for six weeks one summer to study Shakespeare (come on, I know I'm not the only one!). I've never experienced any life-long, blood-related illness, probably because I am of a class position in which I can avoid the structural circumstances that track me into unprotected sex, intravenous drug use, incarceration, and a higher risk of certain diseases.
I know it's not as simple as that. Nothing is ever as simple as that. But given these questions that deem you "in" or "out," it does say something about us having the ability to give blood. It says we have privilege. We might not be privileged through and through, but we do have some privilege; that much is clear.
And do you know what else it says? It says we are using that privilege for good. Even if we have not made mistakes or are not considered mistakes, we will give our blood to those who have (although I have to add that our blood will probably be differentially distributed to others like us who have the resources for it and access to it). After the standards we've set, it's the least we can do.
*For information about how you can give blood, see the American Red Cross website.
Alas, I failed the eligibility requirements, even though I had great vitals and a high iron level. Turns out New York doesn't have state health regulations for their tattoo studios - they have local regulations and have to meet health codes, but no state official goes around and accredits them, which is the criteria for Red Cross donations. So I can't give blood until August.
But the point is not that I may have under-researched state regulations before I got inked again (learn from me, all you kids out there!), but that I had my first personal encounter with the eligibility requirements. And I could not help but set my analysis upon them, as I am inclined to do. Here is how it goes. Before giving, they prick your finger to test your iron, take your blood pressure, your pulse, and temperature. They ask you some general health questions to assure themselves that you are generally healthy. Then they leave you alone with a computer to answer about a dozen questions in private. The presumption is that way you'll be honest and be more likely to admit to any embarrassing likelihood of having 'bad' blood. And what do I mean by 'bad' blood?
These questions can roughly be summarized as the following five themes:
1) "Is your blood messed up because you have some kind of illness or disease?"
This is hepatitis, mostly, or HIV/AIDs, although it also includes things like blood-related cancers and tuberculosis. There is also a year long waiting period after you've completed treatment for certain STDs, like syphilis or gonorrhea.
2) "Might your blood be messed up because you sleep with someone who has some kind of illness, or take money for sleeping with anyone who has God knows what, or because you've been to jail?"
Basically, if you've slept with someone who has hepatitis or has tested positive for HIV/AIDs. You are also considered at risk for HIV/AIDs risk if you've ever taken any form of payment for sex since 1977. If you've been jailed for more than three days, you are ineligible for a year because of the risk of hepatitis exposure.
3) "Might your blood be messed up because you are taking legal or illegal drugs?"
In terms of legal drugs, this could be anything from a recent aspirin or immunization to antibiotics or bovine insulin. As for illegal drugs, if you've ever shot up (heroin, steroids, etc.), you are ineligible to donate, ever. This is because of the risk of hepatitis and HIV transmission through shared needles or anything not doctor-proscribed.
4) "Might your blood be messed up because you are a gay man who practices gayness?"
The ARC considers all those who are deemed at risk for HIV/AIDs ineligible for blood donation. If you are "a male who has had sexual contact with another male, even once, since 1977," you are considered as "having done something that puts you at risk" for HIV/AIDs. The same is true if you are a woman who has had sexual contact with another man who had sexual contact with another man. (Did you follow that? If you're a woman who has had a sexual relationship with a man who sleeps with men, then you are considered to have put yourself at risk for HIV/AIDs, too.)
5) "Might your blood be messed up because you are African, have ever been to Africa, or have ever slept with someone who is in any way connected to Africa?"
I'm being harsh. It's not all of Africa, just 8 western African countries where there is a rare strain of HIV that is not easily detected. In the case of malaria, however, it's pretty much all of Africa. Actually, there is a nice yellow and red band that sweeps across the entire Global South, marking highly infected regions, and if you've lived in any of them, you have to wait three years before being eligible to donate. Now, the United Kingdom isn't completely spared, as the risk of mad cow disease makes anyone who has spent more than three months in any UK nation since 1980 ineligible to donate as well. Iraq also requires a year long waiting period.
I don't want to make light of the importance of regulating blood donations. Believe me when I say I understand why many of these regulations are in place, and I want those who need blood to receive the purest, healthiest blood we can offer. I cannot overemphasize that truth.
It does strike me, however, that donating blood is a reminder of our place on various hierarchies. It reinforces what is 'good' blood and what is 'bad' or 'tainted' blood, where is the right place to be from and where is the wrong place, what is the appropriate sex to have and what is the dangerous, what are the correct ways to live and what are the perverse. If you've done it all correctly, then your blood is welcomed. If you've made some mistakes - or worse, if you are a mistake, or if a legacy of imperial depravity has made it so that you will be forever marked as a mistake - then your blood is not.
More than that, though, is that to be able to give blood suggests something about your structural position and probability of avoiding mistakes (making them, being them, or being in any way connected to people who make mistakes or are deemed mistakes) entirely. As I looked around the room of sweet locals sitting patiently as their packs filled with blood, I thought about how donating blood could be considered a public way of saying "Yep, I'm privileged!" I am heterosexual and I only sleep with heterosexuals. I have never had to prostitute myself to survive. I have great health insurance, so all my drugs are legal. I have easy and affordable access to condoms. I've never spent any considerable duration of time seeing any part of the Global South. I've only ever been to the UK for six weeks one summer to study Shakespeare (come on, I know I'm not the only one!). I've never experienced any life-long, blood-related illness, probably because I am of a class position in which I can avoid the structural circumstances that track me into unprotected sex, intravenous drug use, incarceration, and a higher risk of certain diseases.
I know it's not as simple as that. Nothing is ever as simple as that. But given these questions that deem you "in" or "out," it does say something about us having the ability to give blood. It says we have privilege. We might not be privileged through and through, but we do have some privilege; that much is clear.
And do you know what else it says? It says we are using that privilege for good. Even if we have not made mistakes or are not considered mistakes, we will give our blood to those who have (although I have to add that our blood will probably be differentially distributed to others like us who have the resources for it and access to it). After the standards we've set, it's the least we can do.
*For information about how you can give blood, see the American Red Cross website.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Year end review
I came across this website of year-end reflection prompts by way of a recent post from a lovely friend. While I am not so sold on the idea that we can "manifest what's next" (it's a little too a-la-The-Secret bunk for my taste), I do believe that reflective practice is often what makes our next steps most clear, and helps us appreciate the depths of our past experiences. Forgive the self-indulgence of my posting my answers (even if somewhat edited for cyber privacy) here. I invite you to do the same, if you are the same sort of person.
1) Encapsulate 2010 in one word. What one word would you like to encapsulate 2011?
As a former English major, I have a hard time with the one word questions, so perhaps I should stick with potent imagery. I pulled a 10 of Swords as my overall year card in the reading I did for 2010, and I feel it has encapsulated my year in many ways. As for the new year, I pulled the Ace of Cups. And I do hope the meaning of the Ace of Cups (love, mostly) will encapsulate 2011.
2) What do you do each day that doesn't contribute to your writing, and how can you eliminate it?
I do not have cable at my apartment, but I watch television shows on my computer...I'd like to watch less. Television is horrible for both inspiration and productivity in writing (although it is fantastic for hedonism!).
3) What one moment did you feel most alive this year?
I remember the first night I was in Lewes, Delaware, and there was two feet of frozen snow on the ground, and the main street was practically empty on a February weekend evening. It was cold, and you had to toddle everywhere over the ice and snow, and I had on my boots and hat and heavy down coat. But my partner was with me, and the sun was setting, and I was free, and fully myself, and joyful.
4) How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year?
Does being super invested in Harry Potter 7 count?
5) What (or whom) did you let go of this year?
I let go of dissertation topics and advisors, of mentors and friends who never were, and of attachments and obligations and responsibilities that were my own creations.
6) What was the last thing you made? What materials did you use? Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it?
The last thing I made was a chocolate raspberry torte, which was made of all of the things we don't like to know we are eating, plus it was the first time I used my largest tart pan. I want to bake many more desserts this year, as baking is something I don't realize I'm missing until I pull out the mixing bowls again. There is nothing so grounding as cracking an egg over a bowl of sugar, or running a spatula around the edges to mix in all the dry ingredients, nor does any other practice have such a rewarding end result.
7) Where have you discovered community in 2010? What community would you like to join, create, or more deeply connect with in 2011?
Rather than discovering community itself, I have discovered the precious, precariousness of community. I have re-remembered where community is not, and where my community continues to be. I would like to continue to nurture the community I have, and build on it where I go next.
8) What makes you beautifully different? What do you do that lights people up?
Baking is not all that unique or different, but people are always happy to eat it.
9) What social gathering rocked your socks off in 2010?
A July wedding of friends in Greensboro, North Carolina. I was grateful for the chance to see many friends again, all together in one place for a brief few hours. Also, to eat cake! And to dance!
10) What was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out?
It's been an all-around wise-up year, if I do say so myself. But the wisest was perhaps to cut to the chase already and get on with it. When I know how it plays out, I'll tell you.
11) What are 11 things you life doesn't need in 2011? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of them change your life?
Here are four: over-planning, excessive doubt, war movies, and skipping dessert. I propose to get eliminate them by doing my best never to skip dessert.
12) When did you feel most integrated with your body this past year? Did you have a moment when there wasn't mind and body, but simply a cohesive YOU?
After four extremely painful hours, there was a permanent picture on my back. I didn't feel that integrated afterward (in fact, I felt pretty terrible), and for a time I panicked and fretted about whether I had made the right choice. But the healing process takes over two weeks, and caring for such a large wound requires meticulous care and attention. The tenderness faded as I tended my back, and as it healed, so did I. So the cohesive me was a process, not a moment.
13) When it comes to aspirations, it's about action, not ideas. What is your next step?
To actually do what it is I have been promising myself and my partner for two and a half years.
14) What's one thing you have come to appreciate most in the past year? How do you express gratitude for it?
Fancy bourgeois food! I am on a limited budget, but a similarly-economical friend and I have started up monthly fancy restaurant visits, and my partner shares a penchant for fancy food that is probably not the wisest expenditure (but it's so awesome!! Why do bourgeois things have to be so awesome?!) I think gratitude comes in some degree of scarcity, and knowing that it is a gift to oneself to go out in a place too pretty for you once in a while.
15) Imagine you will completely lose your memory of 2010 in five minutes. What do you most want to remember?
Don't retake your comprehensive exams - you finished those, okay?
16) How has a friend changed you or your perspective on the world this year? Was it a gradual change, or a sudden burst?
In one hour, an acquaintance showed me that there wasn't any reason to keep myself from my greatest desires. Soul-starving need not be self-imposed. Sometimes the best way we can love ourselves is to know we are already worth what we most want.
17) What's the best thing you learned about yourself this year? And how will you apply that lesson going forward?
That I make for a decent instructor! I really do know what I'm doing after all...and I should not be so afraid of it. But I also learned that it's alright to not to commit myself to it...we can be good at many things, but we'll never know what we'll miss unless we try something else for a while.
18) What do you want to try in 2011? Is there something you wanted to try in 2010? What happened when you did or didn't go for it?
I want to try to recultivate the spirit...to burn more candles, have more quiet moments, to maybe visit the local meetinghouse for Sunday service.
19) What healed you this year? Was it sudden or gradual? How would you like to be healed in 2011?
See #16. That is healing enough.
20) What should you have done this year but didn't because you were too worried, unsure, busy, or otherwise deterred from doing it? (Will you do it?)
I am a woman who acts, so I don't think there is anything I didn't do that I should have done. (There were, however, things I probably shouldn't have done that I did!)
21) Imagine yourself five years from now. What advice would you give your current self for the year ahead?
Let go. Don't try to harness your fate. Let your life happen with you. And yes, this is the best thing...there will always be regrets, but no one ever regrets not regretting enough. You already have all the tools you need.
22) Where did you travel this year? How or where would you like to travel next year?
Lewes and Rehoboth, Boston and Cambridge, Ontario, Niagara Falls, Atlanta, Northampton, Greensboro, Asheville, Cary, Chapel Hill, Greenville, and many precious trips to D.C. Next year I will go to San Francisco! And Philadelphia! And hopefully a much, much longer stay in D.C.
23) If you could introduce yourself to strangers with a new name for a day, what would it be and why?
Just my own name is fine...I've come round to it.
24) What's the best moment that could serve as proof that everything is going to be alright? How will you incorporate that discovery in the year ahead?
My grandfather's funeral was sort of comedic, what with the pastor starting the prayers while my father was in the middle of a loud conversation about the weather with the undertaker as he carried the urn, then my sister forgetting she was the youngest grandchild, the sudden a capella burst into "Wind Beneath My Wings," and my father driving back to the cemetery later and taking a picture of the wrong plot. We are only human, and there is comfort in that. We will always have reasons to laugh at each other and at ourselves.
25) What one photo from the past year best captures you, either who you are or who you strive to be?
The best photo, I think, was the first photo of the year of me. It was taken at a barbecue place in northern Virginia. I was digging into pork and beans and macaroni and cheese - it's not that I want to be seen as uber-carnivorous, but I was eating on a wooden table in the sunlight of the window, and I like how content I look (although it could be that I was about to tear into a pulled pork sandwich). I look like someone who knows herself, or at least is at home in a barbecue restaurant.
26) What did you eat this year that you will never forget? What went in your mouth and touched your soul?
Dates stuffed with chorizo and goat cheese. From a tiny, empty wine bar in my eastern North Carolina hometown. OMG like candy. Also, burnt brown sugar ice cream from a local shop in Northampton, Massachusetts. And a fried chicken sandwich in Asheville.
27) What was one of your most joyful ordinary moments this past year?
It was in a coffee shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where my lovely friend had an unfortunate encounter with a plastic coffee cup lid because of my insistence that she "push harder" on the top to open it. Such a silly moment is the kind of moment our friendship is full of.
28) What's one thing you most want to achieve next year? How do you imagine you will feel when you get to it?
Transitioning from a long-distance relationship to living under the same roof. I think it will feel wonderful, although we might wish the other person would go away once in a while. That is the beauty of it - we will have the privilege of taking each other for granted.
29) Describe a defining moment (or series of moments) that has affected your life this year.
For some reason I can only thing of poignant, sad moments in response to this question, although there are funny realizations that come of them. There was one time when I was so overwhelmed by what I saw as my tragic, dour situation that I burst into tears in my shower and proceeded to have a very good, long cry in the bathroom. Not long afterwards, new neighbors moved in below me, and they were much noisier than the previous tenants. They were so noisy, in fact, that I realized the walls are thinnest between the bathrooms! So now I don't cry in the bathroom.
30) What's the most memorable gift, tangible or intangible, that you received this year?
I received a gift of loss. Many losses, I think. My grandfather's death seemed to set my father freer, even amid the tragedy. I lost (or reoriented...'lost' might be too extreme) many friendships over this year, and a mentor I never really had to begin with. These are gifts, though, because losing them allowed me to see where my strongest relationships still lay, and to prioritize what I wanted (because how could doing what I wanted to do hurt anyone else when not doing what I wanted to do was hurting myself?)
31) What central story is at the core of you, and how do you share it with the world?
The central story is something like integrity and living rightly, and homecoming. I don't know how I share it with the world, yet...I don't know if I want to share it with the whole wide world, just the people who are the world to me. We will keep believing a better world is possible, and building it as we go.
1) Encapsulate 2010 in one word. What one word would you like to encapsulate 2011?
As a former English major, I have a hard time with the one word questions, so perhaps I should stick with potent imagery. I pulled a 10 of Swords as my overall year card in the reading I did for 2010, and I feel it has encapsulated my year in many ways. As for the new year, I pulled the Ace of Cups. And I do hope the meaning of the Ace of Cups (love, mostly) will encapsulate 2011.
2) What do you do each day that doesn't contribute to your writing, and how can you eliminate it?
I do not have cable at my apartment, but I watch television shows on my computer...I'd like to watch less. Television is horrible for both inspiration and productivity in writing (although it is fantastic for hedonism!).
3) What one moment did you feel most alive this year?
I remember the first night I was in Lewes, Delaware, and there was two feet of frozen snow on the ground, and the main street was practically empty on a February weekend evening. It was cold, and you had to toddle everywhere over the ice and snow, and I had on my boots and hat and heavy down coat. But my partner was with me, and the sun was setting, and I was free, and fully myself, and joyful.
4) How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year?
Does being super invested in Harry Potter 7 count?
5) What (or whom) did you let go of this year?
I let go of dissertation topics and advisors, of mentors and friends who never were, and of attachments and obligations and responsibilities that were my own creations.
6) What was the last thing you made? What materials did you use? Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it?
The last thing I made was a chocolate raspberry torte, which was made of all of the things we don't like to know we are eating, plus it was the first time I used my largest tart pan. I want to bake many more desserts this year, as baking is something I don't realize I'm missing until I pull out the mixing bowls again. There is nothing so grounding as cracking an egg over a bowl of sugar, or running a spatula around the edges to mix in all the dry ingredients, nor does any other practice have such a rewarding end result.
7) Where have you discovered community in 2010? What community would you like to join, create, or more deeply connect with in 2011?
Rather than discovering community itself, I have discovered the precious, precariousness of community. I have re-remembered where community is not, and where my community continues to be. I would like to continue to nurture the community I have, and build on it where I go next.
8) What makes you beautifully different? What do you do that lights people up?
Baking is not all that unique or different, but people are always happy to eat it.
9) What social gathering rocked your socks off in 2010?
A July wedding of friends in Greensboro, North Carolina. I was grateful for the chance to see many friends again, all together in one place for a brief few hours. Also, to eat cake! And to dance!
10) What was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out?
It's been an all-around wise-up year, if I do say so myself. But the wisest was perhaps to cut to the chase already and get on with it. When I know how it plays out, I'll tell you.
11) What are 11 things you life doesn't need in 2011? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of them change your life?
Here are four: over-planning, excessive doubt, war movies, and skipping dessert. I propose to get eliminate them by doing my best never to skip dessert.
12) When did you feel most integrated with your body this past year? Did you have a moment when there wasn't mind and body, but simply a cohesive YOU?
After four extremely painful hours, there was a permanent picture on my back. I didn't feel that integrated afterward (in fact, I felt pretty terrible), and for a time I panicked and fretted about whether I had made the right choice. But the healing process takes over two weeks, and caring for such a large wound requires meticulous care and attention. The tenderness faded as I tended my back, and as it healed, so did I. So the cohesive me was a process, not a moment.
13) When it comes to aspirations, it's about action, not ideas. What is your next step?
To actually do what it is I have been promising myself and my partner for two and a half years.
14) What's one thing you have come to appreciate most in the past year? How do you express gratitude for it?
Fancy bourgeois food! I am on a limited budget, but a similarly-economical friend and I have started up monthly fancy restaurant visits, and my partner shares a penchant for fancy food that is probably not the wisest expenditure (but it's so awesome!! Why do bourgeois things have to be so awesome?!) I think gratitude comes in some degree of scarcity, and knowing that it is a gift to oneself to go out in a place too pretty for you once in a while.
15) Imagine you will completely lose your memory of 2010 in five minutes. What do you most want to remember?
Don't retake your comprehensive exams - you finished those, okay?
16) How has a friend changed you or your perspective on the world this year? Was it a gradual change, or a sudden burst?
In one hour, an acquaintance showed me that there wasn't any reason to keep myself from my greatest desires. Soul-starving need not be self-imposed. Sometimes the best way we can love ourselves is to know we are already worth what we most want.
17) What's the best thing you learned about yourself this year? And how will you apply that lesson going forward?
That I make for a decent instructor! I really do know what I'm doing after all...and I should not be so afraid of it. But I also learned that it's alright to not to commit myself to it...we can be good at many things, but we'll never know what we'll miss unless we try something else for a while.
18) What do you want to try in 2011? Is there something you wanted to try in 2010? What happened when you did or didn't go for it?
I want to try to recultivate the spirit...to burn more candles, have more quiet moments, to maybe visit the local meetinghouse for Sunday service.
19) What healed you this year? Was it sudden or gradual? How would you like to be healed in 2011?
See #16. That is healing enough.
20) What should you have done this year but didn't because you were too worried, unsure, busy, or otherwise deterred from doing it? (Will you do it?)
I am a woman who acts, so I don't think there is anything I didn't do that I should have done. (There were, however, things I probably shouldn't have done that I did!)
21) Imagine yourself five years from now. What advice would you give your current self for the year ahead?
Let go. Don't try to harness your fate. Let your life happen with you. And yes, this is the best thing...there will always be regrets, but no one ever regrets not regretting enough. You already have all the tools you need.
22) Where did you travel this year? How or where would you like to travel next year?
Lewes and Rehoboth, Boston and Cambridge, Ontario, Niagara Falls, Atlanta, Northampton, Greensboro, Asheville, Cary, Chapel Hill, Greenville, and many precious trips to D.C. Next year I will go to San Francisco! And Philadelphia! And hopefully a much, much longer stay in D.C.
23) If you could introduce yourself to strangers with a new name for a day, what would it be and why?
Just my own name is fine...I've come round to it.
24) What's the best moment that could serve as proof that everything is going to be alright? How will you incorporate that discovery in the year ahead?
My grandfather's funeral was sort of comedic, what with the pastor starting the prayers while my father was in the middle of a loud conversation about the weather with the undertaker as he carried the urn, then my sister forgetting she was the youngest grandchild, the sudden a capella burst into "Wind Beneath My Wings," and my father driving back to the cemetery later and taking a picture of the wrong plot. We are only human, and there is comfort in that. We will always have reasons to laugh at each other and at ourselves.
25) What one photo from the past year best captures you, either who you are or who you strive to be?
The best photo, I think, was the first photo of the year of me. It was taken at a barbecue place in northern Virginia. I was digging into pork and beans and macaroni and cheese - it's not that I want to be seen as uber-carnivorous, but I was eating on a wooden table in the sunlight of the window, and I like how content I look (although it could be that I was about to tear into a pulled pork sandwich). I look like someone who knows herself, or at least is at home in a barbecue restaurant.
26) What did you eat this year that you will never forget? What went in your mouth and touched your soul?
Dates stuffed with chorizo and goat cheese. From a tiny, empty wine bar in my eastern North Carolina hometown. OMG like candy. Also, burnt brown sugar ice cream from a local shop in Northampton, Massachusetts. And a fried chicken sandwich in Asheville.
27) What was one of your most joyful ordinary moments this past year?
It was in a coffee shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where my lovely friend had an unfortunate encounter with a plastic coffee cup lid because of my insistence that she "push harder" on the top to open it. Such a silly moment is the kind of moment our friendship is full of.
28) What's one thing you most want to achieve next year? How do you imagine you will feel when you get to it?
Transitioning from a long-distance relationship to living under the same roof. I think it will feel wonderful, although we might wish the other person would go away once in a while. That is the beauty of it - we will have the privilege of taking each other for granted.
29) Describe a defining moment (or series of moments) that has affected your life this year.
For some reason I can only thing of poignant, sad moments in response to this question, although there are funny realizations that come of them. There was one time when I was so overwhelmed by what I saw as my tragic, dour situation that I burst into tears in my shower and proceeded to have a very good, long cry in the bathroom. Not long afterwards, new neighbors moved in below me, and they were much noisier than the previous tenants. They were so noisy, in fact, that I realized the walls are thinnest between the bathrooms! So now I don't cry in the bathroom.
30) What's the most memorable gift, tangible or intangible, that you received this year?
I received a gift of loss. Many losses, I think. My grandfather's death seemed to set my father freer, even amid the tragedy. I lost (or reoriented...'lost' might be too extreme) many friendships over this year, and a mentor I never really had to begin with. These are gifts, though, because losing them allowed me to see where my strongest relationships still lay, and to prioritize what I wanted (because how could doing what I wanted to do hurt anyone else when not doing what I wanted to do was hurting myself?)
31) What central story is at the core of you, and how do you share it with the world?
The central story is something like integrity and living rightly, and homecoming. I don't know how I share it with the world, yet...I don't know if I want to share it with the whole wide world, just the people who are the world to me. We will keep believing a better world is possible, and building it as we go.
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