I am mired in research for my thesis and nagging at the back of my mind is still the notion of the missing stories. Throughout my journey as an "academic" I have been as struck by the stories that aren't told as those that are...I celebrate in the stories that do get told and find myself then imagining those that aren't.
I remember in AK we read a "journal" by a Spanish nun in the 17th century who only joined the sisterhood because she wanted access to books and knowledge. She bodly states that it wasn't an overwhelming belief in God that brought her to the nunnery; it was instead the idea that she could have access to the same knowledge that the men of her time might have. I remember this distinctly because it came as such an "a-ha" moment for me. I realized then that I was a legacy of this woman. I am the woman she wanted to become and if not for women like her that found ways around repressive systems, I too might be faced with such a choice as hers. I felt connected to her. And then I found myself exploring the stories that weren't told. I mean, there were so many people then without the time/money/privilege to read, who toiled away their lives to put bread on a table rejoicing in death so that they might finally have some peace...there are so many stories left untold. Those are the stories I want to hear.
So this is a long way for me to say that in my research I am finding that I am hearing the voices of stories left untold. I find myself looking for the stories of the black women working for the white women of this South that I read about. I find myself wanting the stories of "Mammy" told from her voice. What must it have been like to "raise" white children knowing that they would one day be the ones who might take a whip to you, sell your children, or, if you were lucky, be the ones who might set you "free." I want to hear their voices. I cannot imagine how these women navigated that world in which you hope that you can teach them better and then probably knowing that you can't and if you don't it would have immediate consequences for those that you love. I cannot imagine that space between caretaker and slave...cannot imagine how you suckle one who might someday be the one who kills you. I just cannot imagine it...and yet I want to. I want to hear more clearly those voices in the past. Not some voyearistic pathology but want to understand how their history has helped to shape my history.
I see these ghosts in the distance and know that they are important and want to hear them call, want to tell that story, want to understand...
I know that this is morose and not our usual "banter." I know I've gone off on a tangent again and I'm not making any sense. I'm mired in the South right now and I'm trying to claw my way out:)
4 comments:
Lisa, there are many stories that are never told--even today--and I get so frustrated by the frequently-held belief that everyone in today's society has a "choice," that we all have equal access to education, health care, and economic stability. That it was somehow enough to be given the concept of "freedom"--after all, we all have it now, don't we?
And I'm not talking about the traditionally excluded groups, either; those of us who are even moderately aware recognize that we still do not have equality and justice in America today.
You're right--the black women in the South--and Native Americans, Asians, and blacks and immigrants in the North, East, and West, for that matter--were silenced, are STILL silenced, and yes, their voices are screaming to be heard. And I'm thankful for voices like Toni Morrison's and Oprah's and YOURS, who keep insisting that yes, they will be heard. Even if it's a century and a half later.
Right now, though, it's more personal for me.
There is a large group of Americans (more than 40 million at last count)--made up of every color imaginable--who are silenced right now, trapped in a cycle of poverty that makes a joke of the conceptual "freedom" that they supposedly possess. They lack the most essential needs: food, shelter, transportation, and health care--and yet, all we can focus on as a country is Brittany's debut on television, who got voted off of American Idol, or which politician said what and whether that was a "good move" in the game of politics. All we can focus on is the dichotomy of liberal and conservative, and what those narrow, loaded labels supposedly mean.
Distance allows us to look back on the time of slavery and say, "How could we think that way? How could our ancestors have done this terrible thing?" And yet, as Michel Foucault so eloquently points out, that "sight" is dystopic, limited to distant hindsight--to our analysis and criticism of another culture in another time. We find it much more difficult, as a culture, to analyze and criticize ourselves right now, to pause and listen to the voices that have no voice now, lost as we are in our contemporary focus on material things and popular culture.
It has taken my mother four years to finally approach the end of her battle with cancer, which makes it patently obvious that, had she had the most basic access to health care, she probably would have beaten it. She probably would have had the opportunity to meet her great-granddaughter, to see Alaska, to write, to love, and to be heard.
It's so disturbing to be in a position where you hope, for her sake, that the rest of her time goes swiftly, that her suffering doesn't drag out any longer than it already has. She's fighting so hard to hang on to just one more day, one more week, one more month. And like you have trouble imagining the horror of the slavewoman, of knowing that the child suckling at your breast might someday beat or kill you, I can't imagine how it must feel to know that death is just around the corner, to know that they could have stopped it, and to be so frightened and yet so utterly powerless.
Because that's what all of this boils down to, isn't it? Powerlessness. The inability to even have an impact (much less control over) on one's own destiny. To be at the mercy of a merciless system, a culture caught up in the bottom line over humanity, in consumerism and self-gratification, where self-indulgence and apathy reign unchecked.
We DO have ghosts wandering among us--from the past and the present. They slip by us in our everday lives, stand behind us in the line at Walmart, say "Hi," in the line at the Post Office. But we don't see them. We don't hear them. They're ghosts...and we all know that ghosts don't really exist.
You are right. (I probably say that too often.) I know that in my study right now it seems as if I'm not concerned with the ghosts today, but I am...you know I am.
I have known for the longest time that all of the other obstacles we talk about mean nothing if a person has money. Class has a way of transcending any other obstacle and making them obselete. The poor and the working poor in the world today are essentially what slaves were 200 years ago. They are a way for us to prop ourselves up and say "I would never be that way. Isn't it a shame?" The poor today (globally and nationally) allow our country to feel guilty, overwhelmed, and completely stagnant.
When considering the poverty issue facing Americans too many times people play the blame game. "It's sad that those people are like that BUT if they hadn't done x, y, and z they wouldn't have to deal with it now would they?" Most people don't realize they are only two paychecks away from being one of THOSE people. Let's face it, money makes the world go 'round and those that have sure ain't gonna fess up any of it, especially if they think that THOSE people don't deserve it...they wouldn't spend it the right way. The poor today have a way of making people feel better about themselves. We can hold them up as cautionary tales. We can put their stories on the news to show a story but not give them a job. We can use them as the "boogey man." It is essentially no different than any of the other -isms that our culture today pretends to have moved beyond. Class-ism is still alive and well globally.
And in a lot of ways it is more pervasive and insidious. Because if we look at poverty we can see globally that classism is the one constant that unifies cultures. Other cultures are better at embracing peoples of different races. Other cultures embrace religious freedom. But I cannot point to one culture in which there isn't a pervading sense of the haves and the have-nots. Poverty is the one constant that reaches beyond cultures...and honestly it is the one factor, that if changed, would probably turn the whole world around.
If your mother could have had health care because she was a person with cancer, without regard to cost...then she would have hope. You would have hope. The people that love her would have hope. If the parents in Afghanistan had not had to choose between begging for moldy bread or working for the Taliban, they may have had hope. If the kids of the working poor didn't see that their moms and dads were working to only stay one paycheck beyond drowning they may have hope and a reason to do better.
The problem with poverty is that it is the antithesis of hope. And when you have no hope you cannot imagine a way out of present circumstances. You feel helpless. You are more willing to give up or grasp at straws that were you able to be more rational, you would recognize are not real choices.
I suppose that's my soapbox, my agenda, is those stories without hope. I feel for your mom, maybe even more so than my ghosts because we pretend now to be a society that has learned and that is above such things. But I don't think that your mom feels any more free than my ghosts must have felt. Her shackles may be invisible but they are binding just the same. And the outcome is the same. Another life is lost that shouldn't be because of power structures that pretend to know better than...to be better than...
That's brilliant: "poverty is the antithesis of hope." It's true. And I think that the frustration that many people feel towards the programs that currently exist is that they are so mired down in bureaucracy that they waste more money on admin than they spend on the poor. And unscrupulous people take advantage of the system until there's nothing left for those who really need help. It's hard to feel positive about paying 28% of your income in taxes to give money to people who don't really need it, and then watch the people who do need it suffer in silence--which is why so many middle-class Americans are wary--and weary--of "social programs."
I'm proud of the work you're doing right now--it matters. I guess in about 100 years or so, some grad student somewhere will be looking back at our own culture and saying, "Can you believe they didn't have national health care? That they just let people die because they were poor?" :)
Let's hope so. Because I can't believe it now. But my railing against the system doesn't seem to help people like your mom who are the products of THE system...too young, too old, too much money, not enough money. People talk about the cracks in the system as if they didn't have real consequences. The problem is that people are broken by those cracks and even one person is too many. It sucks:(
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