It's almost midterm and there's so much to be done - I'm working with Pat and Noah (two other adolescent ed. majors) to prepare a thematic unit on the American Dream. It's my job to research literature that deals with social class, so right now I'm reading "A Question of Class" by Dorothy Allison (from: Skin: Talking About Sex, Class & Literature) and am feeling awed and inspired by her language and writing, but saddened by the fact that this piece probably wouldn't fly in a high school curriculum largely because of Allison's frank discussion of lesbian sexuality. But gosh, she can really write:
My people were not remarkable. We were ordinary, but even so we were mythical. We were the they everyone talks about - the ungrateful poor. I grew up trying to run away from the fate that destroyed so many of the people I loved, and having learned the habit of hiding, I found I had also learned to hide from myself. I did not know who I was, only that I did not want to be they, the ones who are destroyed or dismissed to make the "real" people, the important people, feel safer. By the time I understood that I was queer, that habit of hiding was deeply set in me, so deeply that it was not a choice but an instinct. Hide, hide to survive, I thought, knowing that if I told the truth about my life, my family, my sexual desire, my history, I would move over into that unknown territory, the land of they, would never have the chance to name my own life, to understand it or claim it.
That's on pages 13-14 of my edition. Isn't is great? I'm probably going to end up reading this whole book as soon as I'm done with the Knapp memoir that I'm reading (Drinking: A Love Story). I read another memoir/non-fiction book by Knapp, Appetites: Why Women Want, my senior year of high school and it helped me through some really dark times. Drinking is beautifully written and, even though I don't drink, there's so much that I connect to in her writing and link to what I drew from Appetites.
[...] we hide from others (and often from ourselves) the truth about our real selves and who we really are when we sit in our offices dashing off memos and producing papers and preparing presentations, about what is really churning beneath the surface.
Beneath my own witty, professional facade were oceans of fear, whole rivers of self-doubt. [...] Inside, I harbored a long list of qualities that made my own skin crawl: a basic fragility; a feeling of hypersensitivity to other peoples' reactions, as though some piece of my soul might crumble if you looked at me the wrong way; a sense of being essentially inferior and unprotected and scared.
Lately I've been going back and forth between feeling academically inspired and immobilized by fear and indecision. I've been obsessively researching graduate programs in my spare time, feeling torn apart by my dreams of relocating to the Pacific Northwest or New England and my roots in Northeastern Ohio and the Midwest. I daydream about the Evergreen State College and Smith College, but am careful not to rule out John Carroll and Oberlin as likely possibilities.
I have tiny cuts all over my hands and I don't know where they came from.I am feeling swept away by Yeasayer's "Red Cave" and my lips are bright red from the cherry pomegranate juice that I'm drinking. I'm hopeful and excited for the future - even if the future doesn't really begin until May 2009.
I'm ready for spring/summer - I can't wait for warm weather, bike rides, circle skirts, panini and cherry-strawberry soda at Kofenya, late night ice cream from UDF, parties on the roof. I'm excited for home and the possibilities it presents (including a car! Though, I'm going to do my absolute best to remain committed to my bike as my main form of transportation.)
Also, and I'm trying to figure out a way to talk about this without feeling conceited, I'm excited about my own writing. I feel like I'm getting better all the time and I'm starting to write about difficult things. My ENG 304 class (Advanced Theories of Composition) is really pushing me forward as a writer and my instructor's feedback has been really encouraging. We have midterm portfolios due in a little less than two weeks and though I haven't done much work on mine, I'm planning on setting some time aside tonight to edit some things and think about what pieces I want to include. I've also been doing a lot of work on a new issue of my zine - it's been a work in progress since the late summer/early fall of 2006, so it's been a long time coming. I'm probably going to print out the rough draft at the writing center tonight and read through it for typos, etc. I'm hoping to buy a gluestick tomorrow and start putting it together this week! My fingers are crossed for having it finished by spring break.
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