Walled Women

Hi- I had trouble uploading my avatar but here is the photo I would eventually like to use:

This is an eye that I drew this past summer, which I'd like to use both because I think eyes can be symbols of observation and envisionment. I also decided to use it because it was personal to me, as something that I had drawn myself. I also could not figure out how to get the picture to be right side up.....

It seems sadly appropriate (or maybe ironic?) that the class called "silence" is the one I have most trouble speaking up in. This problem isn't new for me -- I struggled in ESem and it looks like I'll be struggling for a while again. I know I'll hit my stride eventually. What helped me last time, though, was using Serendip as a form to (unselfishly!) share unspoken thoughts with the class. 

Today, during our discussion of poetry and whether or not a person's interpretation can be "wrong" or "right", I was reminded of my high school's entrance exam. There was a small section of analogy work (triangle is to shape as purple is to _____) and some mathematical ratio problems. But the bulk of the test was poetry analysis. We were given one poem and 50 minutes to annotate and write and analytical essay. As someone who is ambivalent towards poetry on the best days, needless to say I was worried. But I did my best, writing so quickly that most of my thoughts were illegible. I never thought much of that poem after taking the test. Until this class, that is. I wonder, now, what it was they saw in my analysis. Were they looking for something specific? Did they just like my style? Maybe all they wanted was a well-organized essay with all the parts in the same place. I'll never know of course. I have no real conclusions about my experience here, but would welcome yours.

And off to a completely separate thought! 

I really wanted to use a picture of myself for this but didn't necessarily want it to show my face very clearly. I chose this for that reason and also because of what it shows about my voice/silence in a protest setting, something that is very important to me and has been an instrumental part in me finding my voice (as I wrote about in my last silence post). I also like that it is in black and white, especially after someone described silence as colorful in class and after reading the Little Book where Zehr recommends black and white fotography as a way to observe light. Also I just really like this picture :)

This summer I read a novel by Margaret Atwood called Alias Grace. It is based on the “celebrated murderess” Grace Marks a maid in Canada who was arrested for aiding and abetting the murder of her employer and the housekeeper in 1843. The novel is largely told from the point of view of both Grace and a doctor who listens to her in his study of criminal behavior, and in this way we hear her version of the story. The way Atwood retells it, Grace Marks is portrayed as someone who, not only suffered from poverty, a physically and emotionally absent mother, and an alcoholic and abusive father; she also was a victim of circumstances and was used by the farm hand who was hanged for the murd

As I read Colored Amazons, I could not get over Alice Clifton’s story who was a slave seeking freedom by supposedly killing her newborn baby. Whether she killed her baby or not, I could not believe that the court had the audacity to try Alice as a human even though her status as a slave was more objectifying than human. So I began to wonder about why she was in court since her appearance would mean that she was worthy of human services—a reality that was not the case beyond court doors. What was truly her crime, killing her dead daughter? Using her daughter’s unfortunate death as a ticket to freedom? Or for, which seems more likely, depriving her white masters of a profitable object, both for sex and labor, in the future? Although Gross, shatters the pretense that Clifton’s trial was on the basis of sympathy, morality and humanity, Clifton’s story is a disturbing reminder of how our justice system works today. Every time I hear about the need to crackdown on drug dealers, or the need for more law enforcement—anything that might increase the presence of the law in low-income neighborhoods or spotlight people of color –I cringe. Although arguments for the removal of illegal activities are valid, I always feel—scratch that—I know there are ulterior motives behind why certain illegal activities and groups are infamously publicized in the media.

In Anne’s Silence class we’ve been talking a lot about poetry, and the idea that there is silence on the page surrounding the words in a poem.  In some ways, the white silence around a poem gives the words themselves added weight, because the noise and distraction of typical prose is stripped away, and all that is left are the most important thoughts.  I found a similar phenomenon to be true when reading the “Prisoners of a Hard Life” graphic novel, but rather than being surrounded by emptiness, the words were attached to illustrations.  Growing up, I never read comic strips or any kind of graphic novel, but I have come to really love their poignancy since taking an English course that largely focused on a graphic novel about the Weather Underground.  Stories mirroring Latisha’s, Denise’s, Ramona’s, Angelica’s, and Regina’s are relayed in innumerable scholarly works about the prison system, but somehow their intensity seems much more subdued compared to a comic with illustrated faces jumping out of every page.   Ramona’s story is especially heartbreaking to me because I’ve done a lot of work with sex workers and there is an incredible irony in the fact that carrying around condoms – which can not only protect their own health, but is an incredibly effective public health strategy – can also get women arrested for solicitation. 

“Colored Amazons” really reminded me of was an essay I reading a while ago called “In Search of Our Mother’s Garden” by Alice Walker. I kept hearing Walker in the back of my mind, writing about the ways in which her mother created a home, a domestic space that could flourish and grow. The garden was her mothers pride and joy; it was neatly cared for and tended to every day with a passionate hand. What Alice Walker eventually comes to say is that by choosing to see only what African American women in history did not have, often we forget to see what was created in place of what did not exist. Those voids were filled in many different ways, generally through art. She talks about other forms of expression, such as song and tapestry weaving, many things that are overlooked in historical retellings. Her mother’s garden stood as means of expression as well. It represented her mothers desire to create a home that had always been denied to her.  I was especially reminded of this when reading Gross, who says, “Adhering to the tenets of domesticity was not important to blacks solely as a way of contesting white racism, but on a more personal level it also affirmed them as men and women” (Gross 88). This “home-making” seemed to dominate the desires of African American women that were described in the book. Often, Gross would describe the effects of being unable to recreate a home in the traditional sense and the physically and psychologically violent effects it had on black women during that time.

My avatar is a Hannah Hoch image, a close-up from one of her larger works.  I chose it for somewhat obvious reasons, as it depicts the face of a woman with an open mouth with text, specifically the letters ABCD, between her teeth.  In addition to being visually interesting and being an image from one of my favorite artists, I thought the themes of voice and collage in the piece related quite nicely to our 360.