Bone Marrow Transplants: The Search for a Match

A friend of mine recently presented me with a question to use as a place to begin research for this paper. She had been studying blood types in one of her classes, and after asking about my family’s blood types, she inquired, “If you and your brother have different blood types, how could you give him bone marrow?”

            Out of nowhere, while sitting in class the other day, a yawn escaped from my mouth. “Oh no,” I thought to myself, “I just yawned in the middle of class and my professor saw me! And I’m not even bored or tired…it just… happened!”

When I was young, I was that kid. I was the kid who everybody hated, and who hated everybody, and enjoyed it. My peers singled me out from as early on as I can remember. Having very few friends, I developed a hobby, bolstered by an overactive imagination, of sensationalism and overreaction; some time around the fourth grade I decided I was an alien from outer space.

The story was elaborate: my alien parents had switched me with the real Rachael, and used the human child's DNA to make me an exact copy of her. My real self, the alien, had blue skin and eyes on long stalks, and seven fingers on each hand.

I had been mildly unhappy with all the readings for Critical Feminist Studies, even the ones I enjoyed, without knowing why.  As my participation dropped off, my discontent, rather than diminishing, increased.  Cixous's call to hear from women had spoken deeply to me, and the volcanoes were churning down below.  Some of the things that were thrown out in the eruptions follow.