More on writing
Yesterday, while our power was out, E, Darcy and I snuggled under the down comforter and read. I actually enjoyed the lack of technology distractions. I read about half of a book on black sororities. I experienced a bizarre combination of boredom and fascination–sort of like family stories that are interesting to you because you know the people and have a staked interest, rather than the fact that the stories are interesting in their form and content. I was very interested in the book because I learned more things about “my” people, but bored by the form of the book (which seemed to be mostly a narrative of primary sources–conference reports). I didn’t learn very much about the interior lives of the black women in the sorority, but a few things about who held what position and what programs they started.
My boredom was revealing for me, because I start my writing by basically turning the primary sources I am most interested in into a narrative. The article I am writing currently has parts still stuck at that stage. They have been bothering me, but I haven’t been sure how to change them. Now I know I absolutely must find a different way to tell the story, unless I want my readers falling asleep. I do wish I had more information about this woman (the worst parts of the article are those based on scant newspaper sources that mostly just state where she was and who she was with).
Now I’m in the Special Collections at MSU reading/taking pictures of a YWCA journal that is pretty fascinating–maybe it will give me a bit more about the internal lives, thoughts, ideas, religion of “my” people.
balance
Why I always get annoyed by the answer “balance” to moral questions but secretly suspect it is often true: “But E. M. Forster understood this: when someone suggested that truth is halfway between extremes, his answer (in Howards End) was, ‘No; truth, being alive, was not halfway between anything. I twas only to be found by continuous excursions into either realm, and though proportion is the final secret, to espouse it at the outset is to ensure sterility.’”
Writing a Black woman’s Life
I’m reading Carolyn G. Heilbrun’s Writing a Woman’s Life right now–it was written in 1988 when white women feminists were aware of black women, but unsure how to write about them. Heilbrun solves this rather awkwardly in one chapter, by quoting Toni Morrison, then saying I’m not going to talk about black women because I’m talking about women poets of this particular generation (then admits at the end of the chapter that if she had opened her dates a little earlier or a little later, she would have had black women poets to include). That said, it is an interesting look at the narratives that encompass women’s lives. I’m trying to write a biography right now of a black woman…and finding it very difficult to move from the easy step of primary source recounting to the hard step of analysis and synthesis. I think the thesis has something to do with the way this woman changes usual recounting of black internationalism (that focuses mostly on black soldiers and jazz artists)…but it also has something to do with the strong community of black women that she entered into Harlem, before leaving it for Geneva and the League of Nations. All I really have right now about that community is newspaper clippings–short articles that mostly recount names of people at a certain event. Hmmmm, have to just make the decision soon and stick to it.
Anywho, I enjoyed the quote Heilbrun found (not sure how it relates to the woman I’m studying–for the period I look at in her life, she seemed to have ignored family for the sake of career and adventure):
Toni Morrison: “It seems to me there’s an enormous difference in the writing of black and white women. Black women seem able to combine the nest and the adventure. They don’t see conflicts in certain areas as do white women. They are both safe harbor and ship; they are both inn and trail. We, black women, do both. We don’t find these places, these roles, mutually exclusive. That’s one of the differences. White women often find if they leave their husbands and go out into the world, it’s an extraordinary event. If they’ve settled for the benefits of housewifery that preclude a career, then it’s marriage or a career for them, not both, not and.”
James Weldon Johnson was a prophet
1940:
“And it may be that there will rise up out of that element of the colored clergy which realizes the potentialities of a modern Negro Church a man with sufficient wisdom and power to bring about a new Reformation.”
Complications of race in America
From a YWCA pamphlet about promoting better race relations in the wake of multiple race riots (where whites attacked blacks and blacks defended themselves) the summer of 1919:
- “We recognize that in far too many communities and neighborhoods the living conditions of the negro race, housing and sanitary provisions, are far below the standard necessary for a wholesome life. And we here declare that it is an obligation upon the conscience of the churches not to wait for the political or social movements to right this wrong, but that the Christian organizations must lead the way for an immediate radical change for the better.”
- “We would also call for the definite and sympathetic attention of our people to the unfair treatment which the negroes receive in the provisions made for public travel. Since the white race, as the stronger, years ago determined that it was best to segregate the races in public travel, then by every law of fairness and every impulse of Christian chivalry, we are in duty bound to see that they receive as courteous treatment and as safe and comfortable provision as that accorded the whites.”
What is this? It is an example of the problems of labels and dichotomies. That last sentence, emphasizing that the white race is the stronger one, might lead one to say this is a racist document. And yet the author (the Interchurch Movement of North America) actually wants to help improve black peoples’ lives. Which is why I’m coming to believe more and more that we have to meet people where they are, rather than cleansing their language first of all “racism.” This is especially important in the classroom–otherwise I end up teaching a class on racial etiquette instead of a class on history.
But in my writing it is so easy to fall into labels and dichotomies….especially when stretching for a thesis and needing to summarize so as not to write a forever long book. I’m thinking a lot about how to do this, since my early years have been wanting to get away from dichotomies, but instead depending upon them.
Dissilusionment can sometimes be a good thing
so, white liberals in California are shocked to wake up and realize that African Americans are not uni-dimensional paragons of virtue–as if seeing only the good side makes up for so many centuries of oppression. Oh my gosh–they have opinions about things like homosexuality we might disagree with! This desire to find restitution for one’s societal evils by making black people good or even god is rather a common trope in today’s society–see Bruce Almighty, Cornel West in the Matrix, Cornel West in person, the new evangelical blockbuster The Shack, among others.
But it is not a new trope.
About the white writers of the 1920s:
From older writers…to young ones…there existed a common conviction that Western civilization had been badly maimed by an omnivorous industrialism.” “if the factory was dehumanizing, the campus and the office stultifying, and the great corporations predaceous, the Afro-American—excluded from factory, campus, office, and corporation—was the perfect symbol of cultural innocence and regeneration. ‘One heard it said,’ Malcolm Cowley remembered, ‘that the Negroes had retained a direct virility that the whites had lost through being overeducated.’
(David Lewis again)
Ok, ok, so the comparison is not perfect (in the Prop 8 case, white liberals are mad at blacks precisely because they are not “educated” enough to see the “rationality” of being pro-gay …they are surprised to find that being a Democrat does not make one automatically pro-gay marriage, or even that comparisons of bans on gay marriage to American racism do not speak to most African Americans. The Lost Generation writers were excited to find a kind of “pure” morality precisely in the anti-modernity of rural blacks. But both of these examples fail to engage African Americans as whole and complete beings, faults and all.)
(Also to note, I am anti-prop 8, but I refuse to let that opinion cut off my fascination in the discussions/flame throwing between white gays and black church goers.)
takes my breath away
David Levering Lewis sometimes takes my breath away with his confidence. Will I ever be sure enough of my own interpretations and research to make such a statement?
About Charles Johnson (one of the luminaries of Harlem during the New Negro Renaissance, who has few records of his life left):
It seems to have been his nature to work behind the scenes, recruiting and guiding others into the spotlight. his style was, nevertheless, more the pose of modesty than modesty itself, for Johnson had a considerable ego reflected in the British elegance of his suits and the businessman’s gait. He was, moreover, a man whose passion for dominion expressed itself through secrecy and patient manipulation. Yet I was manipulation for a purpose: to redeem, through art, the standing of his people.
Convoluted teasing
I have a very convoluted relationship to teasing. As the youngest and a humorless child, I got teased a lot and did not appreciate it. In truth, I hated it. My scary mien did not win me many friends…I was not often teased at school because people were afraid of me. I think it was in part a smothering I placed over me for fear of teasing (a bespectacled, overweight, awkward, smart kid being well, rather a good target).*
After I got over myself and started actually making friends, growing into myself as an adult, I find I often tease. My favorite romantic couple in literature is Beatrice and Benedict from Much Ado About Nothing (quoted here, in a recent NY Times article about the benefits of teasing that made me think about this post), who flirt entirely through intensely witty, biting remarks. I aspire to be a wit.
And yet, my sensitive side still finds teasing problematic. And, I’m still not very good at taking it… And I tend to reduce the effectiveness of the tease with quick apologies. So–do I continue to hate teasing, learn to laugh at myself better, and/or learn to distinguish more effectively between different types of teasing?
I don’t think the dichotomy the author makes between teasing and bullying is so clear cut as he advocates. This is precisely the trouble with a lot of race based humor, isn’t it? What might be racial slurs and bullying from one person is effective sarcasm and social irony from another. I also highly doubt that all playground teasing is done in a good spirit of fun…like he suggests the frat boys do. I certainly know that teasing can mask all sorts of meanness. It’s an interesting realm to explore.
Any thoughts?
* The article in the NY Times I’m reacting to mentions the social effectiveness of nicknames. I have had none since my mother’s sweet one and my brother’s barbed ones…I’ve always discouraged them and appreciated that my name is not easily made into a nickname. I’m not so sure anymore–somehow names like Phatty connote so much peer acceptance.
