Web Paper or Special Event

Antonia Aguilar Cole

Professor Dalke

Emily Balch Seminar: Changing Our Stories

4 September 2016

Choosing A Label

Jasmine Stanton

September 4th, 2016

ESem Section 019

4598405

In this day and age, people have no other choice but to come together. People all around the world come together in order to accomplish a shared need or want. Despite race, class, gender, and sexual orientation, we as people have so much power. With this power we can accomplish anything we want to, as long as we come together. Recently gay marriage was finally legalized after years of protesting and fighting for the right to love. If people hadn’t set aside what they believed in and who they loved in order to come together and help a group of oppressed people, then gay marriage would of not have been legalized in America. Another movement that is still ongoing and has slowly been improving is the Black Lives Matter Movement.

Race and class and gender remain as real as the weather. But what they must mean about the contact between two individuals is less obvious and, like the weather, not predictable.

This is what June Jordan said in Report from Bahamas.

The ending of a discussion is never truly the end. The ideas and emotions provoked during an intimate sharing of personal insights and opinions always linger within the individual. These newfound notions swirl into a never ending vacuum of thoughts that continuously work to change one’s identity.

            In the essay Report from the Bahamas, 1982, by June Jordan, the author discusses the various ways our identities can united us or drive us apart. Jordan often reflects on how other people’s stories and identities cause her to become conscious of a certain factor, like race, class, or gender. In particular, when Jordan is visiting the Bahamas and decides to bargain for typical tourist souvenirs, the contrast between herself and the women who make and sell these items is striking. Everyone involved in this transaction is a Black woman, but despite this shared identity, their differences are far more pronounced, at least from Jordan’s point of view, than their similarities.

I am half Mexican and my other half consists of Greek, Russian, and Hungarian. I stick with saying “Half-Mexican and Greek”. I identify as Mexican because I am more involved with my maternal Mexican side. I am Greek but I am not as integrated in the culture as much as my Mexican side. 

 Two years ago during a friendly neighborhood Halloween party, I was struck speechless after someone commented about my ethnicity. A neighbor and I were talking and began discussing about our ethnicities. He was curious about mine because I have curly hair but light olive skin. I told him I was half Mexican and half Greek and he suddenly became more intrigued. He was also Greek and started questioning about how involved I was with the culture. 

Kate Weiler

Report from the Bahamas Reflection

1982

I have a friend.  One who has always been involved in my life and continues to. Yet after I went to boarding school and she stayed in the inner city I started to notice some changes. One day in particular stands out when I became aware that those changes shaped us as different individuals. June Jordan’s “Report from the Bahamas, 1982” portrays a narrator who feels distant from others who outwardly seem similar to her.  Her identity, although has comparable aspects to those she encounters on her vacation (her skin color), is made up of her own experiences and makes her different from those she encounters on this trip to the Bahamas. Through explaining my own story/experience I can connect to the story June Jordan has told.