Overly Emotional

Lately I have been feeling overly emotional; almost crying at every twist or turn. Today, I told my student, just start writing. Write your story, whatever it might be. She told me, "I have no story worth telling." I told her, "Everyone has a story." I asked her how she would respond to Patricia Hill Collins's text, Black Feminist Thought, the reading for that day, just off the top of her head. She confided in me, "I want to be an ally, but it is really hard." She is a white student, a repeater of mine, and we have always had a good connection. She is smart, she knows what is going on in terms of her privilege, she reminds me of me. I validated her; affirmed that it is hard to be an ally. I also explained that it is her responsibility to confront the reasons why it is hard for her, to write about that. Mostly, I just told her to write. And I think I told her that because I too, need to start writing. I almost started crying while my professor was lecturing today. This was for a few reasons, mainly, that it brought me back to my re-education. I remember being an undergraduate learning feminist theory; luckily, I went to a school where the feminist theory I learned was mostly women of color feminism/material feminism, feminist theory that matters, at least to me. And it changed me. I remember reading Alice Walker's, In Search of our Mother's Gardens, which I recently reread for my comprehensive exams, and all I could think about was how deeply impacted I was and continue to be by those women's words. I think that it is through these words that I learned more about myself, and my privilege, than I ever could have from white people writing about privilege (although, I think this is important as well.) I think it was so important because what I learned, was that their feminism was not meant for me, but at the same time, it was exactly meant for me. Professor Kildegaard taught me about standpoint theory, which has been problematized as essentialist, exclusionary, and a slew of other things. While I can see these critiques, I will say that learning this lesson, that those from the margins see the dominant much better than those in the center see the margins, changed my life. I realized that much off the time I am on the inside, although my queerness, femmeness, lower-classness, complicates this. But although these multiple identities complicate my privilege, they do not erase the fact that I navigate the world as a white person, and that as a white person, I perpetuate many of the injustices I critique, although, I hope to work in solidarity with those around me. But my allyness does not dismiss the pain I have caused. This I know. I have been working with high school kids, teaching them a "Disrupting Privilege" curriculum. You know what is hard? Teaching a bunch of students, who are students of color, immigrants, refugees, single mothers, lower-class that they still have privileges. And these students have been countlessly hurt by people who occupy similar positionalities as me. They have no reason to trust me. None. Except listen to their stories of being privileged and marginalized, of being pulled over by the police for being perceived as a bad kid, but which could definitely be attributed to the fact that this perception is due to her racial identity, as a black woman. I heard from a Latino boy that his family used to not be able to cook their traditional food without going to a special grocery store, but now Walmart and Target sell it. They read this as progress. They force me to confront my identities all of the time, to reign them in, attempt to facilitate conversations with and not at them. I remember, as an undergrad, Dr. Conrad told me to never stop using my voice; that my voice was important. That was one of the first times I had ever felt that way. I remember reading Malcolm X and running back to my room. In tears, I wrote. I wrote that my privilege was ultimately connected to someone else's oppression, to violence, and to pain. I wrote that our histories were connected, and that they were connected because my whiteness is acceptable, whereas blackness and brownness, have not been, in normative society. I wrote, by hand, I scrawled. When went to work for an Environmental Organization that summer, they asked me, "What is the biggest issue facing our society." After listening to people drone on about capitalism, and alienation (which, are significant and very real problems) I said, "Racism." I was made to feel silly, slight head nods, and a "Yes, racism is one issue for sure," from the leader. I was in Boulder, so of course, I was made to feel silly. But my feeling was then, and is now, that racism, as complicated by other intersectional identities, is the biggest problem facing our society. I would change that now, maybe to say that white privilege is the biggest issue facing our society, as it really isn't about hate, but about normalization of whiteness, and perpetuation of whiteness as an ideology. Yes, I would change it to that. My professor told me that she would be offended if I didn't ask her to be my advisor. I asked her immediately. She told me that she was invested in my work. I still sometimes question why? She had a student, an undergrad recently, who she said, reminded her of me, in a good way. She asked me to TA with her on a feminism and intersectionality class. She is a Chicana, queer, feminist. I do not know why she is invested in me, why she would want me to teach with her, work on a piece together. It is an honor. She is one of the only professors of color I have ever had. But I remember writing in my first class with her, reading performance work (the first day of class), reminded me of the work feminists of color have already been doing forever. I do not know women of color feminism better, or embodied in the same way as women of color, but my respect for it resonates in my body, in ways white feminism never has. I think that impressed her. One time, after confronting a weird situation in class, and leaving in tears, she followed me out, hugged me, and told me that what I said was important. That class was terrible, but it did confirm the notion that there is potential and possibility in the relationally we experience with those who are different than us. This does not erase our complicated pasts, and identities. We cannot ignore or deny those things. But we can work through them. We do work through them, when we are invested in making the world a little better. I told my student to write her story about the challenges of being an ally; about what prevents her from committing to being an ally. This isn't to recenter whiteness, but to push her to a place where she has to reflexively engage with herself. I told her to start writing. Just start writing, see what comes out. So, I came home, and this is what I needed to write because sometimes what we tell others, is really what we need ourselves.

I still believe that I am a writer, after this somewhat miserable break, after somewhat miserable comprehensive/qualifying exams. The worst part: after you are done, you kind of forget what it looks like to live life among the normal. It's like that move about the war in either Afghanistan or Iraq (I didn't watch the film, except the end-so I don't really remember the details)and at the end after all of the horrible things have happened that this man, this soldier caused, he cannot even pick out cereal. He just walks to the cereal isle and stands there because he cannot do anything. It's as though all the things that normal people just do, without even thinking, escape him. And he just stands there, not even really looking, just lost, just waiting. I still feel like I am not finished because really, in the end, I am not finished (This whole dissertation thing is just beginning); but, my body still isn't sure about whether or not I will be starting another question in a couple of days. Although we have discussed it, chatted about trying to reintegrate back into my life, my body has a hard time respecting that. Taking one books back to the library helped a little, playing copies amounts of virtual Scrabble, and real-life virtual video games, An entire eight season Office marathon, sexy time, dates with ma' boo and with friend, movies, all of it...my body is still unsure of what to do. Yesterday, I broke down because I was so tired and I just needed to lay in bed, not doing anything, not even watching T.V. I just had to be done. I wanted to go to yoga today and I could not force myself to get out of my chair. I will go, but not today. I want to do a cleanse, but not yet, not until I get some semblance of normalcy bad in my life. I know it is graduate school, I know this is what is supposed to happen. I know taking these exams doesn't make me a smarter/better person, but it does make me think in theory, and thinking in theory does not always equate to the thinking about the body. And that is the most challenging thing, what does the body do after you have trained it to sit and type for hours on end. How do you train your mind to stop thinking "that" way, that pretentious academic way. What now? The performance anxiety should be calmed, but it isn't, because my body isn't sure what to do now, so there is anxiety about that? I am not sure how to reinvigorate the relationships that are invariably changed because of my six-month hiatus from their lives. And how do I think about myself, as a femme, a queer scholar, an intersectional feminist, and anti-racist? Does completing this project change how I think of myself? How could it not? I am excited and nervous to proceed, not just with my project, but with my life. But I am gonna keep going, keep pushing towards reclamation of queer femme-ininity, and try to reforge new pathways through old relationships. I only hope they are as forgiving of myself, as I am trying to be.