Bring Being into Being

I want to know what the world would be like with out negativity. What would happen if we all stopped saying hurtful things about others? (Directly, indirectly, whatever.) What if we just deal with our own suffering, instead of inflicting it onto others. What if we never said (and eventually thought) bad things or had negative feelings? How would this alter the way we treat ourselves; how would this change our essence of being, and ultimately the world around us?

I was struck by something someone said to me last week to this effect. It was one tiny comment mentioned in passing, intended to be a throw-away thought, but I held onto it. Realizing that this is not possible, I still want to find out. I want to find out what the world would be like if people stopped sending their negative energy and notions of themselves out. I’m not talking about repression or giving up on criticism. I’m talking about completely revamping our conceptualization of critical modes and the habits of judgement and self-loathing that it has caused us to develop.

Try it. No negative statements or thoughts about anyone, including yourself, today. Starting now.

Writing Taboos and the Zero Sum Game, Do or Die

I can’t even express how badly I need to write today. When it gets this bad, when I’m this pregnant with thoughts and ideas, it makes the writing harder. I have too much to say, more than I can possibly get out in the short space and time provided. Surprisingly, Bemsha Swing has had some interesting things to say about the writing process. For some reason, I can’t attach a link to the particular posts that I’d like to refer to. You’ll just have to scroll down and peruse. Writing blocks are not something we’re supposed to talk about. It’s the big taboo elephant in academia. And, there are plenty of people who are willing and ready to cast judgement on those who legitimately are trying to get to a better place by talking about it. I love writing; I love researching; I love my work! But, I want to learn how to write without a gun to my head (I also think it’s important to teach students this too). Being on the brink of career suicide (the equivalent of missing deadlines) all the time doesn’t seem like a productive way to live out my life and my vocation. Since deadlines won’t ever go away, I can at least change my feelings about them.

I can feel this wall beginning to crumble. It feels good, but I have to keep punching at the keys.

Press Pause.

During finals week I paused my productivity to attend a reading by Zakes Mda (an event I advertised previously on this blog), And, I have to say — Zakes was amazing! I call him Zakes because he is a prof my former institution (where I got my MA); everyone there calls him by his first name. I didn’t know him that well when I was at Former University, not much at all really, and I certainly didn’t know when I was there how awesome his fiction is. My prof of South African Lit (Prof Enthusiastic) says that Zakes is THE GREATEST writer of post-apartheid SA. I agree.

The event was interesting to me for several different reasons: First, Zakes is a really dynamic speaker and reader. Secondly, his new novel CION sounds fascinating. All of his novels take place in SA, but this one, CION, is set in Southeastern Ohio, close by Former University. Most of what I know of the novel is what I learned from Zakes’ description of it; he explained it’s set in a small Ohio town where an isolated community of racially mixed African-Americans, Native Americans, and Irish-American former slaves live. (I believe the name outsiders use for this community is “WIN;” they’re called the WIN people, though I can’t remember exactly what that acronym stands for. Forgive my bad memory.) The author of blog entitled “Black Threads,” which is devoted to quilting history in African-American communities, wrote to Mda asking him about the genesis of this racially mixed community. He responded:

My discovery of a wonderful community in the village of Kilvert in southeast Ohio [inspired me to write CION]. The community was founded in the 1830s with the intermarriages of Caucasians (mostly Irish), African slaves who had escaped from the slave-holding states through the Underground Railroad, and the original Native Americans of the area. The community has a strong quilting tradition, and some of its members still keep quilts that were made and owned by their great-great-grandmothers.

The novel focuses on this isolated community when a visitor from South African comes to live there. The history of these people are found not in written documents, but in quilts that contain both codes from their ancestors as well as their ancestors spirits themselves. I’m really interested in what Zakes does with the quilts. He didn’t say that his work focuses on gender at all, but quilt-making plays such a dominant role in the history of women’s cultural production in 19th and 20th century America that I can’t imagine that he was able to avoid the issue of quilt making and women’s authorship/cultural productivity. One of the excerpts that he read described the enslavement of these people (African-Americans, Native Americans, White Irish slaves) and the practice of breeding and selling humans instead of crops or livestock, which suggests to me that, once again, Zakes must focus on the significance and commodification of women’s creativity. The passages about breeding human slaves comes from the past; other parts of the novel focus on the present day in the area surrounding this community. It’s significant to point out that the “present day” in CION takes place during the last Presidential election year, 2004, which I can attest was a very contentious time to be living in Athens, Ohio. Athens County is very much a BLUE county, very liberal, but like most Midwestern college towns it’s an island in an ocean of Republicans bleeding fundamentalist right-wing values. There was a lot of pressure on Ohio before the last presidential election; we were all very nervous about it and many of the grad students and profs in the English Dept. went around canvassing for Democratic candidates. After the election was stolen from John Kerry the night of the election, we (meaning myself and all my friends and colleagues in the English Dept) were very depressed. A lot of of drinking occurred that week. Lots of people were really upset by the outcome of the election — so much so that a few fights broke out on the streets and in the bars.

Again, this all makes the setting of Zakes novel all the more interesting to me. But there’s one more thing — he also sets part of it on Halloween. I’m not proud of this, nor did I enjoy it while I was there, but my Former University has been ranked the 2nd largest party school in the nation. I large part, I must believe, because of the Halloween festivities. They call it the Mardi Gras of the Midwest. And, so it is. I was just reminiscing with a friend last week about Halloween in Athens. We both probably have very different perspectives on this cultural event than most of the undergrads and other folks who haven’t actually been out in the Halloween mobs between 10pm and 3am. It’s very dangerous. The town and university spend inordinate amounts of money on security and extra police forces during Halloween, but I think in the end there’s very little they can, or do, do.

One bit of evidence for this that springs to mind can be found in a film of Halloween in Athens that my Former University funded and that two profs shot. I heard lots about the film, but didn’t actually see it until just before I was to move to Kansas. It’s not very long, about 10-15 minutes. The subject of the film is unclear until it becomes obvious that the filmmakers are in the middle of the Halloween mob at the height of the evening/morning. I only saw the film once and my memory’s a bit fuzzy, but at one point several men show up in front of the camera carrying a woman who appears to be very drunk (or perhaps drugged; I don’t know). What they’re doing with her is unclear at first, but later after a man holding one of the woman’s high heeled shoes waves the camera away and mouths something like “you can’t watch this” it becomes explicitly clear that this group of men are or have been raping a woman in the middle of the street in the middle of a mob of drunken fools in downtown Athens, Ohio. The remainder of the film consists of interviews concerning the woman’s rape; most of those interviewed, as I recall, were completely unaware that this had occurred inside the Halloween mob and not in some dark secluded place.

Many, many, women are raped during the Halloween festivities. I don’t know what the current statistics are on Halloween night rapes, but I know they’re very high. The fact that a rape occurred wasn’t surprising, although this doesn’t detract from how disturbed I was when I saw the film (witnessing a gang rape and not having the ability to do anything about it) nor how upset and ultimately disgusted I become, even now, as I remember my screening of the film. What was and still is surprising is the listless apathy with which this was handled. The filmmakers, one man and one woman, both of whom are university profs who I think should know better, did not turn this film into the police. They claim that they didn’t know what was happening as they were shooting it (which I suppose I can understand; there’s a lot happening, lots of pushing, shoving, and shouting going on in the mob). They became aware of the rape during the editing process, but still did not turn the film into the police. Instead, they just blurred the woman’s face and those involved in violating her. As I mentioned beforehand, I saw the film long after Halloween was past. Still, after viewing it I asked one filmmaker — why didn’t you take this to the police??? He, I should add, was also disturbed by the rape, as was his co-filmmaker. Nevertheless, when asked this question he just shrugged and said something to the effect of — “what can they do? They’d most likely never find those people who did this.” His cool and nonchalant attitude made me want to shout out in outrage that they should haul his ass into the cops for his apathy and listless behavior. We, however, had had many arguments on topics much less important than this one; regardless of how right I was I knew I would never win with him. To this day, though, my friends and colleagues that saw or heard about this film remain disgusted at the indifference with which this situation has been handled.

The filmmakers aren’t entirely to blame; I don’t want to suggest that they are. The university funded their project so they had to present it to the academic community, all of whom (to my knowledge) remained silent and unresponsive to the ethical and moral responsibilities of the filmmakers or to those surrounding persons in the Halloween mob. This to me (and also again to my friends and colleagues — though I don’t want to pretend to speak for them; I can only represent my ideas here and no one else’s) seems indicative of the ways that my Former University and Former Department approach issues of gender, sexual harassment, and equality. I don’t like to speak poorly about any of my alma maters, because I fear that it lessens my degree and, on some level, the value of my education and time there. Nevertheless, some things need to be said. The apathy shown toward the documented victimization of the woman in the film also seems indicative, to me, of the fact that the university and department at my Former Institution sustain an environment where sexism in some of its most ugly forms is made tolerable, perhaps even accepted since it flourishes to such a degree there. I won’t go into the many many details of how this is true. I have no desire to protect anyone, but I also do not wish to trash, entirely, the place and department I once called home and that of many good friends and people whom I respect who still live and work there.

The reason I bring this up in reference to Zakes’ novel CION is because he writes about what he calls the “Halloween Parade.” As he described this “parade” at the reading I knew there was something terribly wrong. His writing of it suggests that it is a beautiful exotic sort of carnivale where spirits rise up and dance in pagan costumes down the central street in Athens, Court St. I’ll provide a few passages, just to show the beauty and vividness of Zakes’ work:

October 31. The seasons have come full cycle and the creatures have returned to Court Street. The madness is mild for the night is still young. As it ages the pagans will rage on the paved street. Many of them are still in the process of transforming themselves, stealing identities from American cultural and fictional icons. Fueling their bodies with the spirits that will give them pluck to be as free-spirited as the occasion warrants.

Quite a few of the pagans are here already. Grown men in diapers are strutting about. They mingle with cowgirls and pirate wenches in miniskirts. Giant spoons dance with giant forks. the uninspired superheroes are obviously the staple of the parade. They were here in great numbers last year — Superman, Spiderman, the Incredible Hulk, Batman and the rest. They are here again this year — the last resort for a lazy pagan who can’t think of original ideas for the night.

This is a day of saints, although the pagans don’t recognize the fact. None of the saints with whom I aspired to socialize at the Durham Cathedral will be seen here tonight. No Venerable Bede. No St. Cuthbert. This is also the day of the disembodied spirits of those who died last year. They come back in search of living bodies to possess for the next year. That is their only chance of an afterlife. The Court Street creatures, of course, do not have in their minds the Celtic roots of the feast as they prance around, even though their ghoulishness is reminiscent of the original Celts. It was a look that was meant to frighten the disembodied spirits away so that they fail to take possession of any living man, woman or child. (289)

I apologize for providing such a long quote and not analyzing any of it. I love Zakes’ prose and think it might be valuable to share some of it with those who have never encountered his work. I don’t really have much of a point here, other than to suggest how interesting the setting, both the time period and the location, for this book is. And, even though my interpretation of Halloween in Athens is quite different than Zakes’ representation of it in Cion, as a novelist he’s perfectly free to do whatever he wants with it to benefit his goals in the novel. I’m not suggesting that there’s a need for historical or cultural accuracy in his novel. Just that there are other perspectives on the events which he writes about. I haven’t read the novel yet, so I think it would be premature for me to disagree with his representation of Halloween in Athens. I just wish that he was more cognizant of how dangerous this event can be, for women in particular. While he was signing my book, I politely asked Zakes if he’d seen the short film that I’ve been referring to. He hadn’t and was surprised to hear about both its content and its uselessness in helping capture the criminals whose actions were documented there. The film surely does bring some awareness of what goes on in the midsts of the Halloween mob, but it has no direct effect on either the woman being violated or her violators. This is disappointing to me because it seems like it so easily could have been used for some greater, more immediate, good. Again, this isn’t all that relevant to Zakes’ rendition of Halloween. I’m not yet offering a critique of CION; I’m just providing some context for its setting.

I gave this book as a Christmas present to a few friends. Upon opening the present, I inflicted a 15-20 minute speech on why the novel should be interesting. I hope they enjoy CION as much as I have anticipating the time to read it. I began writing this post right after attending the reading and have only just now been able to return to it. I feel slightly odd about publishing it now, since I’m about to travel to Athens in a few days. Regardless of the inauspicious timing, perhaps it is a good time to begin to read Mda’s novel and to revisit my thoughts and feelings about Athens and my time there.

p.s. There’s an article in the Nation that discusses Mda’s CION. Follow the link if you’re interested in further reading on this topic.

GRE: Valued Sign with No Referent to the Subject

Here’s my soapbox.

I have a number of friends that are currently, indeed as I write this now, working on their applications for PhD programs. Partially because of my friends and partially because of my own experiences applying to graduate schools, I have HUGE issues with many universities, their respective departments (particularly English), and their current admissions procedures.

A little background, if you will.

I hate the GRE. Hate it. I mean, I really hate it. I, myself, have never been able to score highly on that test, neither the general exam nor the subject one. My scores on those exams are abysmal. To say the least. Despite my GRE scores, though, I think that my application last year showed that I would be a good doctoral student and subsequent candidate. The problem is that most graduate English programs receive many many more applicants than they could ever hope to admit. So the rejection rate is exceedingly high. The market’s tight.

Ok. Fine. I knew that long ago when I got into this business.

The dilemma that this causes for graduate programs is — how to evaluate hundreds (literally hundreds) of sometimes exceptional applications. How to find the applicants whose needs they can meet and who can also meet their needs/demands/expectations as a department. Because of all of this many English departments have sunk to relying upon the GRE scores as a way of weeding out applicants. The GRE is supposed to be indicative of one’s intellect, or something that the statement of purpose or the writing sample or one’s grades can not show. A GRE score is considered a sign that requires no, utterly no, interpretation. When I was applying to schools several people told me, namely my advisor, that if my scores are all that bad (and they were) that it would indicate that something was wrong, that the rest of my application seemed vastly different that what my scores reflected, and that this would cause admissions committee members to look at my application more closely, to discover the discrepancy and to “interpret” what kind of student/scholar I really am. I spoke with a friend on the phone a few days ago — she’s in a similar situation as I was in. Her scores are higher than mine but not stellar; I told her I thought she’d be fine. She noted that after taking the test three times, with little improvement reflected in her scores, that surely schools would realize that she’s not a good test taker and that perhaps, just perhaps, this exam isn’t all that indicative of her abilities. I agreed. Upon later contemplation though I realized that what my friend, my advisor, myself, and others have been assuming is that committee members are willing to interpret GRE scores. This notion, however, goes against what the GRE exam sets out to do, which is create a number, a sign, that demonstrates one’s aptitude for success on the graduate level. And this is why schools rely upon scores so heavily. They receive too many applications — so many in fact that they don’t read them all. They simply look at the scores and throw them into piles: trash (which is where mine went in several cases), folks they really want (goldenchildren of standardized tests), folks that are “good enough,” and the really mediocre but maybe we’ll think about them pile. I just made up names for these piles. Perhaps there are only two: the trash and those we’ll read. I don’t really know, but it seems like a ranking process that’s very similar to grading — which is fine, but I at least READ EVERY PAPER THAT I GRADE.

What I’ve discovered and am upset about is that not all graduate programs (again in English) read all the applications they receive. I really should write to the Chronicle of Higher Education or Inside Higher Education about this, but right now I don’t have the time to pursue this issue in a larger venue. Plus, I’m not proud of the fact that I can’t score well on the GRE. It’s embarrassing. Even more so that some schools thought that my scores were so bad that they didn’t even want to bother opening my file, or in some cases sending it to the respective department for consideration. At some universities, the graduate school just threw it in the trash for the English department. Again, embarrassing. But more than embarrassing I find this shockingly unethical. Since we live in a capitalist society, and put our values where our money is, I’d just like to point out that I paid an application fee specifically so that my application would be read. And I ain’t no rich girl neither. Not only did they not read my application, but they took my money under false pretenses. I paid for my app to be read and it never was. They stole from a poor grad student! How unethical is that???

Let me step back for a moment and explain one incident in which I discovered that my application had not been read.

In Octoberish, I went to the MSA conference in Tulsa, OK. I won’t delve into specifics about the conference proceedings, but I will say that it was a rather awkward one for me. (Though thankfully I had some good friends there. Lifesavers they were.) Since I applied to so many schools (14) and had done my homework on them all (reading essays by folks I thought I might want to work with, doing school visits, emailing profs, the works) I ran into a few people that I knew from the admission process (grad directors, folks I wanted to work with and met, folk who were on admissions committee etc.). It was a little awkward. After saying hello one woman said — “didn’t you apply to xyz school?” (this school was my *top* choice by the way; at the time I’d have given my left leg to do my doctorate there). “Yes” I replied. “And you didn’t accept?!” she said. I, then, of course, had to tactfully explain that I hadn’t been accepted. This kind of scenario was repeated about 4 or 5 times. It was awkward and having to explain why I chose to come to Kansas didn’t help. Get the picture? So — at dinner one night with the poetics crowd a woman who I wanted to work with at U of Cool School (before we’d even ordered the food mind you) leaned over and said, “Why don’t you leave Kansas and come finish your PhD at Cool School?” Her voice seemed kind and I was touched by the idea that she’d only just met me and seemed to find me valuable enough to say such a thing, even though this was kind of a ridiculous proposal. Again, tactfully, I had to say that I had applied to Cool School the previous year. She and a colleague of hers exclaimed “And you didn’t get in?!?” I calmly and quietly explained that my GRE scores had made the admissions process unusually difficult for me. I soon learned that the “colleague” of this woman was the chair of the dept at Cool School, and also a long standing member on the admissions committee. (I think I may have listed her as on of the folks I potentially wanted to work with too, since she does a lot of feminist scholarship.) Immediately she got defensive and claimed that the grad school probably didn’t even send my application to the dept for consideration. She later stated that she’d never read my application, which was kind of odd since I’m not even sure if she would have remembered my name, much less what kind of work I do, but nonetheless I believed her. It seems highly plausible to me that they didn’t read my application because of my GRE scores. I discovered, by accident in every situation, that a number of other schools did this as well; they didn’t read my work, not my statement of purpose even.

Going back to where I was before — this seems HIGHLY unethical to me. It’s utterly shocking. Later during dinner the woman who had been on the admission committee suggested that I take the GREs again and reapply. I didn’t tell her, because I wanted to be polite, that I would never consider re-applying to a school that didn’t even bother to read my materials the first time around. Plus, I have no desire to 1. leave Kansas or 2. be a part of a department or university that acts so unethically and that makes such shallow decisions about the graduate students they accept. The world is shallow enough; I don’t want to participate in it.

My main point here is this: GRE scores are treated as signs or symbols that are allegedly indicative of a given applicant’s abilities. They are not interpreted, nor meant to be. Those of us that believe or hope that committee members do interpret these scores are entirely too optimistic about what I have found to be a rather shallow process of evaluation and inclusion. If you’re on an admission committee this year or know someone who is — please ask them to take their job seriously, to be ethical, and to read every single last application. Throwing away applications simply because of a sign that has no reference to the subject’s capabilities is unethical, supportive of a patriarchal system of signs, and most importantly, I think, it keeps good people (though thankfully not me) out of academia; and we need all the good people we can get. The least one can do is READ the applications. If English departments today have become so utterly lazy that they can’t even read the materials that are submitted to them, then perhaps they should shut their doors. Perhaps they’re too lazy to do the good work that English departments should do.

That’s why I’m in Kansas. People here read. Sometimes poetry even. And for that, I am very grateful.