A Letter to My Daughter on November 9, 2016

November 9, 2016

My dearest Eleanor,

It is a month before your second birthday, and you are sleeping in your crib. You don’t know this, but your dad and I have been awake pretty much all night (and for once, not because of you!). We have been awake, watching the election results come in for the 2016 Presidential Election. And it’s not good, baby. It’s really really bad. Donald Trump has been declared our next president. You’ll read all about this in your history classes, how Trump has vowed to hurt many of the people we love: our undocumented friends, our Muslim friends, our LGBT/queer family and friends, and more. He mocked people with disabilities and bragged about sexually assaulting women. And then he won.

People wanted to say that Trump represents the lowest common denominator of our country, a minority of uneducated, ignorant, and vengeful poor whites. But today we learned that wasn’t the case: Trump won among college-educated whites. In other words, people who had the education and knowledge to understand what Trump said and proposed—many of those people voted for him.

I don’t have the emotional energy to explain white privilege or systematic racism to a toddler this morning, but I need to tell you this: the majority of white women voted for Trump. That means that most white women chose to align themselves with the most powerful (and damaging) force: white supremacy. When you are older, you will have the same choice. And when that choice presents itself to you, I hope that we’ve taught you that your allegiance isn’t to whiteness but to your community. So think of mommy’s undocumented friend with the sweet baby boy, your brown cousins (one of whom is also LGBT), the two four-year-old twins next door who you adore (“hi boys!” you always shout eagerly when you see them). In fact, think of all our neighbors, almost all black and Latinx, who celebrated your first birthday with us. When you’re older, know that our community is beautifully diverse, and for progress to be truly made, we must be committed to supporting and advocating for each and every member of our community.

I also need to tell you this: white men and women voted overwhelmingly to elect a man who is a known, self-confessed sexual predator. They knew this and voted for him anyway. This shows us how many people have accepted and even embraced sexism, the idea that women are objects for men to claim. Right now, you are on the verge of two-years-old; you very loudly state your preferences for when and how to be touched. Sometimes, your stubbornness frustrates us, especially when we are crossing a busy street or trying to take your temperature. But safety issues aside, we want you to know that we respect your boundaries. Every time you say “no!” when I ask for a kiss, I applaud your confidence and self-awareness. When you’re older, people will try to chip away at your boundaries, try to convince you that you are unreasonable for knowing and expressing how you want your body to be treated. Those people are wrong. Those people are assholes. You are the sole owner of your body, and anyone who tells you differently cannot be trusted. Trust yourself, and know that your mom and dad will always support your bodily autonomy. And we will always believe you.

Lastly, I want to acknowledge that you probably see your dad’s and my fear today. You can feel our anxiety, sense our nauseous stomach, hear our shaking voices. That fear is real. That said, when I look at you, I see hope. I see a future generation that is defined by diversity. Still— I refuse to put this all on your generation’s back. I want you to grow up and see adults working fiercely and compassionately for your future, pushing so that your air and water will be clean, you and your friends will be safe and loved, and kids like you in other countries can go to school in peace. The revolution doesn’t begin or end at the ballot box: it starts in our hearts, our families, and our communities. And your dad and I vow to do everything we can to make our world a more loving place for you and your friends.

With all my tears, my love, my heartache, and my hope,

Mommy

Toward Accessible Futures: Disability and Racial Justice Coalition-Building

Here’s a draft of my CCCC 2016 talk.

I want to begin with a problem, then tell a story, and then propose a potential step toward a solution.

Here’s the problem: as recent stories in the New York Times, Alternet, and the Washington Post show, colleges are admitting more disabled students and students of color than previous decades. [1] However, those articles also reveal that while more marginalized students are entering college, few are graduating. In a 2014 article titled “Why Are Huge Numbers of Disabled Students Dropping Out of College?,” s.e. smith reports that “today, an estimated 60% of disabled young adults make it to college after high school, yet nearly two thirds are unable to complete their degrees within six years.” A 2014 analysis by the statistical publication Five Thirty Eight reminds us that race and class are also factors in retention and graduation rates: “But the fact that racial minorities have lower graduation rates than low-income students suggests that, at a minimum, income can’t fully explain the racial gap in graduation.”

While increasing and steady numbers of students of color and students with disabilities are being “allowed” into institutions of higher education, these institutions aren’t rethinking their approach to architecture, student support, and inclusion for students. Problematically, stakeholders are discussing these access issues as separate problems: in other words, the race and disability factors in graduation rates are seen as separate problems rather than intersecting. So, what would composition studies’ advocacy look like if we tackled access issues as not related to race or disability, but in fact, as overlapping biases that require an intersectional activist approach? To imagine that conversation, I offer embodied solidarity as a potential model for composition studies’ advocacy for accessible futures for all of our students. To explain what I mean by embodied solidarity, I first illustrate the concept by looking to the histories of racial justice and disability rights coalition building and then offer a definition.

In April of 1977, hundreds of disability activists entered ten federal buildings across the country to demand that the Carter administration—specifically, the Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) agency—to sign regulations and enforce Section 504, landmark federal legislation that prohibited federal agencies from discriminating against people with disabilities; Section 504 was passed four years prior. While protestors were starved out or removed from nine of ten buildings, over a hundred protestors—mostly disabled people and caretakers—occupied the HEW building in San Francisco for twenty-four days, until the regulations were indeed signed.

An important key to the success of the 504 sit-ins was the support and involvement of both disabled and nondisabled people of color. The Black Panthers covered the protest extensively in their newspaper and made and served one hot meal every single day to the occupiers and protestors at the San Francisco HEW building. White disabled protestor Corbett O’Toole reminisces, “By far the most critical gift given us by our allies was the Black Panthers’ commitment to feed each protester in the building one hot meal every day” (qtd. in Schweik). As rhetorician Shannon Walters writes, “they [protestors and allies] took care of each other’s bodies physically, emotionally, and substantially, living in relation to each other,” and these acts of care and interdependence were key to forming identifications among disabled protestors and nondisabled allies (68).

Additionally, many of the disabled protestors themselves were people of color who centered a race analysis in their disability activist ethos. At the sit-in, protestors of color described their experiences of racism and ableism on a panel titled Minority Disabilities Panel. On that panel, Margaret Irvine described how minority disabled people are the “poorest” and “lowest” in society (qtd. In D’Lil). Joan Johnston, a black mother of a black disabled child, testified that “I am now fighting for our civil rights for the second time in my life” (qtd. In D’Lil). These testimonies modeled an intersectional approach to access: rather than seeing race and disability as completely separate or completely the same, Irvine and Johnston detailed how racism and ableism overlap in complex ways to create additional and different obstacles for disabled people of color.

Susan Schweik frames the Black Power of the 504 sit-ins[2] as a model of fluidity and embodiment in political solidarity, writing that “bodies and body politics are not clearly demarcated entities in the world but instead are ‘wounded, stumped identities, open, bewildered, and political.’” Furthermore, Walter’s concept of rhetorical touch also highlights the role of the body in identification between rhetors and audiences. She describes rhetorical touch as “a potential for identification among bodies of diverse abilities that takes place in physical, proximal, and/or emotional contact.” In my definition of embodied solidarity, I echo Schweik and Walters’s emphasis of the body in political organizing and rhetorical production. Put simply, embodied solidarity, then, is an activist method of rhetorical invention and delivery that moves bodies to perform care to and advocate for different bodies, just like the Black Panthers did for the 504 protestors. Furthermore, embodied solidarity asks activists to reflect on how our bodies are at once open, separate, and enmeshed. In this way, embodied solidarity is inherently intersectional, in both its invention and delivery: it pushes us to consider how overlapping oppressions impact different bodies, and then asks us to perform care and advocacy for bodies that are both similar and different from our own.

So what would happen if composition studies applied the same model of embodied solidarity practiced in the 504 sit-ins to the modern day inaccessibility and hostility toward disabled students and students of color at the university? For the rest of my talk, I focus on how two distinct trends within composition studies both invested in embracing non-typical language use in the classroom, language diversity and disability rhetoric, can practice embodied solidarity and move the writing classroom closer to an accessible and inclusive future.

For scholars such as Geneva Smitherman, Vershawn Young, and Victor Villanueva, embracing language diversity in the classroom is a major step writing teachers can take to support the linguistic, educational, and emotional development of our students, especially students of color. To dismantle the supremacy of Standardized English (and whiteness), and the violence it enacts upon students of color, Vershawn Young and others have called for writing teachers to embrace code-meshing, the act of merging language variations. By centering students with various home languages in the writing classroom, we can create learning spaces that welcome and encourage students of color.

Similarly, disability rhetoric scholars urge teachers to reframe the writing classroom to center non-normative bodies and minds with a similar attention to language. For example, Brenda Brueggemann and Michael Salvo write about the experiences of deaf students in the writing classroom. Both describe how a phonocentric—meaning sound-centered—approach to writing, literacy, and education marginalizes deaf students and hurts their confidence. Brueggemann and Salvo, alongside disability rhetoric scholars such as Jay Dolmage and Patricia Dunn, argue that if we prioritize disability in our teaching practice, then our teaching becomes more inclusive for all students—disabled and nondisabled.

Both language diversity and disability rhetoric circles argue that we should center non-normative approaches to language in our teaching practice, and yet, these conversations rarely converge. Separately, language diversity and disability rhetoric encourage the academy to include and even celebrate students of color and disabled students. So I wonder, could these streams be even more powerful if they practiced embodied solidarity and considered how racism and ableism work together in the classroom and the academy at large?

Scholars such as Nirmala Erevelles and Andrea Minear demonstrate how race and disability are co-constitutive, building upon each other. Blackness and brownness are pathologized, and disability is racialized. So, knowing this, what if the Committee on Disability Issues, Language Policy Committee, and diversity and disability caucuses and standing groups in CCCC worked together to address how the academy marginalizes students of color and disabled students?

Currently, CCCC has two policies confronting these issues: Students’ Right to their Own Language and the Disability Policy. In Students’ Rights, disability is only mentioned in the annotated bibliography and not the statement itself. Similarly, the Disability Policy mentions race only once alongside other identity categories, gender and class. Both policies lack embodied solidarity by neglecting to address how racism and ableism intermingle and create additional barriers for disabled students of color. Scott Wible’s work demonstrates that language policies are inherently material, as they are shaped by their material and political context and lead to material effects on our lives. Therefore, our organization’s policy statements are a potential site for practicing embodied solidarity and can push our field, teachers, and policy makers to consider how literacy instruction and the academy in general marginalize students in multiple, overlapping ways.

Such policies could open dialogues about nuanced, transformative strategies of teaching and serving our students. What if, for example, language diversity scholars also called for writing teachers to embrace stuttering, American Sign Language, and neurodiverse approaches to eye contact and gesture? And what if disability rhetoric scholars recognized the ways that writing classrooms reify white supremacy through literacy instruction and pushed for code-meshing alongside closed captioning? If we in composition studies followed the example of the 504 sit-ins and practiced embodied solidarity in our teaching, our scholarship, and in our organizational policies, I believe we could build accessible futures for students of color and disabled students—and of course, disabled students of color.

Works Cited and Referenced

Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands : The New Mestiza = La Frontera. San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute, 1987. Print.

Casselman, Ben. “Race Gap Narrows in College Enrollment, But Not in Graduation.” FiveThirtyEight. 30 April 2014. Web. 27 March 2016.

Cone, Kitty. “Short History of the 504 Sit In.” Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund. 1997. Web. 27 March 2016.

D’Lil, HolLynn. Becoming Real in 24 Days: One Participant’s Story of the 1977 Section 504 Demonstrations for Disability Rights. Hallevaland Productions, 2015. Print.

Dolmage, Jay. “Mapping Composition: Inviting Disability in the Front Door.” Disability and the Teaching of Writing: A Critical Sourcebook. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin, 2008. Print.

Dunn, Patricia and Kathleen Dunn De Mers. “Reversing Notions of Disability and Accommodation: Embracing Universal Design in Writing Pedagogy and Web Space.” Kairos 7.1 (2002). Web. 27 March 2016.

Erevelles, Nirmala and Andrea Minear. “Unspeakable Offenses: Untangling Race and Disability in Discourses of Intersectionality.” Davis, Lennard J., ed. The Disability Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 1997.

Guo, Jeff. “Why Poor Kids Don’t Stay in College.” Washington Post. 20 Oct. 2014. Web. 27 March 2016.

Patient No More: People with Disabilities Securing Civil Rights. Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability. Web. 27 March 2016.

Perryman-Clark, Staci, et al. Students’ Right to Their Own Language: A Critical Sourcebook. Boston, Massachusetts: Bedford / St Martin’s, 2015. Print.

Schweik, Susan. “Lomax’s Matrix: Disability, Solidarity, and the Black Power of 504.” Disability Studies Quarterly 31.1 (2011). Web. 27 March 2016.

smith, s.e. “Why Are Huge Numbers of Disabled Students Dropping out of College?” Alternet. 20 June 2014. Web. 27 March 2016.

Smitherman, Geneva. “CCCC’s Role in the Struggle for Language Rights.” College Composition and Communication 50.3 (1999): 349-76. Print.

Tough, Paul. “Who Gets to Graduate?” New York Times. 15 May 2014. Web. 27 March 2016.

Villanueva, Victor. “On the Rhetoric and Precedents of Racism.” College Composition and Communication 50.4 (1999): 645-61. Print.

Walters, Shannon. Rhetorical Touch: Disability, Identification, Haptics. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2014. Print.

Wible, Scott. Shaping Language Policy in the U.S: The Role of Composition Studies. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2013. Print.

Young, Vershawn Ashanti. Other People’s English : Code-Meshing, Code-Switching, and African American Literacy. New York: Teachers College Press/Teachers College/Columbia University, 2014. Print.

 

[1] Amy Vidali’s work on students with disabilities and the admission’s process reminds us that the admissions process is still loaded with traps and barriers for students with disabilities.

[2] The 504 sit-ins were not the only time in which the rhetorics of disability and racial justice merged. More recently, we can see efforts to mobilize disability activist groups to support BlackLivesMatter by disability activists like Lydia Brown, as well as radical coalition-building at Occupy Wall Street.

To My Daughter: The Story of You

Dear Eleanor,

You started as a faint pink line. Forty weeks later, you arrived into the world covered in every color goo imaginable.

Two days before you were born, I woke up in the middle of the night with cramps. The pain started in my back and radiated to my belly every twenty minutes or so. By the time morning hit, I felt the cramps every fifteen minutes. I called our doula, Michelle, who confirmed that it indeed sounded like I was in early labor. Your dad emailed work and started his leave. We spent the day watching How I Met Your Mother and resting between contractions. I called my mom and dad, who were excited and anxious. Within a few hours, your grandma booked a flight out to DC from California and was on a plane.

I thought we would be in the hospital by the time your grandma arrived, but my contractions never really sped up. By the time I went to bed, they were more intense but only ten minutes apart. Your dad and I tried to sleep through the night; I was so tired that I was able to fall asleep between contractions. For the second night in a row, I slept in 10-15 minute increments.

The next morning, the contractions grew in power and strength, but the timing was still off. They would speed up to every three minutes then slow down to every fifteen minutes. Michelle arrived and massaged oil on my belly, massaged my feet, and walked me around the block over and over again. I remember one neighbor eyeing us skeptically as I leaned into Ryan on a street corner, rocking and breathing through the contraction as Michelle pushed my hips. All the walking paid off, and in the early afternoon, we finally drove to George Washington University Hospital.

The rest of the day and the night is a blur. I declined an epidural, which was always the plan. I wanted to see what my body was capable of. Since the labor seemed to be progressing quickly, everyone agreed it was a good idea. Throughout the next twelve hours, I used a variety of pain management techniques: I breathed and swayed through contractions, rested my body in the hot shower, squatted lower than I ever squatted before, listened to music, and at one point rhythmically punched either your dad or the nurse in the arm.

The pain of labor is now wrapped in fog. I can’t really remember or describe the pain, but I know I felt it. As the night progressed, I started asking about epidurals and even a caesarean delivery. But really, in the back of my head, I knew that I didn’t need them. True, I had never experienced such pain before, but I also never experienced pain with a purpose. I was able to forge through the pain knowing that it heralded the promise of your arrival. I amused the room by announcing I would get an epidural next time; everyone was shocked that even as I was trembling and sweating through the pain, I was not afraid of going through this again.

Finally, the doctor announced I was ready to push. By then, I was exhausted. The exhaustion was harder to handle than the pain, so I was eager about reaching the final stage. The doctor saw my excitement and cautioned me that pushing can last up to two or three hours. I ended up pushing for over four.

Everyone in the room told me I was strong. Here I was going on forty-eight hours without good, solid sleep, pushing with all my might. But the reality is that you were born thanks to the strength of everyone in that room. I cannot stress this enough: your birth was a group effort. I needed every arm that was in the room. Nurses Becky and Courtney held me during my toughest contractions—even though I was completely naked. Your grandma literally held my head up when I had nothing left during pushing. Michelle always had the right thing to say or the right position to try. The doctors never rushed me, never forced any intervention upon me despite the slowness of my labor.

But really, you should know what a rock your dad was for me. From the first contraction to your birth, your father instinctively knew what to do. He was playful and teasing when I needed to laugh. He was protective when I was too tired to advocate for myself. He held my leg during pushing and witnessed you emerge covered in every bodily fluid (and he was kind enough to wait a few days before confessing that I did indeed pee on him and the doctor). I leaned on your father in every way that night, and he held me up physically and emotionally.

When you finally arrived, you were immediately placed on my chest. I wish I could say that I sobbed with joy, but I was too tired and too dehydrated to produce any tears. Instead, I felt relief and warmth from your body. When I spoke, you looked directly at me with your piercing grey eyes; you already knew me. You grabbed your dad’s finger; you already knew him. Instantly, we were a family.

I had to stay in the pushing position for another two hours as three doctors stitched me up. Leading up to the birth, tearing was my deepest fear. But really, the tearing and stitching weren’t all that bad; the fear was worse than the tearing itself. Sure, I was uncomfortable during those two hours, but I had you to hold. I inspected your face and your hands. I immediately noticed your long fingers and proudly declared that you have your mother’s hands. After an hour, you were weighed and then quickly latched onto my breast for your first feeding. Four hours after your birth, you, me, and your dad were wheeled into the postpartum room; all of us, so tired from the two days of labor, fell quickly to sleep.

And that’s the story of how I surrendered to the pain of childbirth; of how I opened my body and you squirmed out; of how a group of strangers, friends, and family paved a path for you to come into this world; and how I fell in love with you for the first time and your father for the millionth time.

With love,

Your mother

The Optimistic Beginning: My Goals as a PhD Student

Tomorrow, I will begin my journey as a PhD student at the University of Maryland. I’ve wanted this for so long; I knew during my senior year of undergrad that I wanted to pursue a career in academia, and I have been working towards that goal ever since: earning an MA , teaching at a community college, and, finally, moving my little family across the country. Here I am, both in disbelief that I am here and completely ready to start.

The library at the University of Maryland, aka my new home for the next several years!

As this is the last night of my non-student life for many years, I wanted to think about my goals for my time as a PhD student. I’m not talking about the obvious milestones grad students have to fulfill in order to compete in the job market: presenting, publishing, professionalizing. No, I’m talking about those intangible goals, the ones that are not measured by hiring committees but by the satisfaction of spirit.

I want to be the kind of scholar who finds wisdom everywhere: in books and journals, but also in late-night conversations among best friends, in the blogs of teenage women, in the advice given by a father to his daughter, in the life stories told by a mother or a grandmother, in a protest sign held by a young man. Most texts that have inspired me to write and research are not academic writing. Rather, they are the musings, stories and confessions I hear from all corners of life. I want to remember that our culture’s values and wisdom are embedded in the stories we tell everyday.

I want to be the kind of scholar who centers her work on social change. I believe so hard in the power of writing, and I hope to harness it to not only inch towards an academic job but to also advocate for justice. In order to do so, I will have to acknowledge my privilege—race, educational status, sexual orientation. I will have to seek out the perspective of people who live in the intersections of marginalization; then, speak with them, not for them. I will stumble; I know this. But I hope to learn from my missteps and grow as a scholar and activist in the process.

I want to be the kind of scholar who devotes her energy to teaching and a transformative classroom. I want to refuse the scholar/teaching dichotomy and embrace both identities simultaneously. I taught community college for three years, and I saw how accessible higher education opens minds and doors for adults of all ages. Many of my students rose above hardship and tragedy with their own strength, the support of their community, and the skills and opportunities they carved out for themselves at MPC. In the classroom, we learned, laughed, played, wrote, read, performed, and shared; my students taught me how to create a family within the walls of a classroom, and I will carry that lesson with me wherever I teach.

I want to be the kind of scholar who is committed to her work but also to her personal life. I am only here because of the support and sacrifice of my family and my partner, and their love and enthusiasm fuels me everyday. My partner gave up everything he knew to move to Washington D.C. and support me and this crazy dream of mine. Connecting with the people I love, both here and back on the West Coast, will make me a better scholar. Their encouragement gives me focus and clarity when everything is out of whack. I am committed to being a kick ass scholar, but I am also committed to being a kick ass daughter, friend, sister, and partner.

I want to be the kind of scholar who stretches her mind and challenges herself to understand new and opposing perspectives. I want to seek out seemingly contrary ideas and find the connections. A comfort zone is meant to evolve, and I have to be ready to question my own deeply held beliefs and find truth in other (but not all) mindsets. Rigidity is not good for scholarship nor for personal growth, and I will try to resist the temptation of settling for easy answers when more nuanced and truthful explanations are out there, waiting to be understood.

These are just a few of my objectives for the next five or six years. Of course, everyone starts off optimistic. My next step is to consider and write down specific steps I can take to achieve this ideal. Then, I will have to learn self-forgiveness, because there will be days when I don’t check my privilege or I blow off a student or I snap at my partner. These things will happen because life is messy and priorities battle it out for our energy. Still, I believe in my goals. On the day that I graduate, I want to not only be proud of the Doctor of Philosophy title bestowed upon me; I want to also be proud of the work I did in the field, in the community, in the classroom, and in the home.

And you know what? Right now, at this very second, I feel like I have a fighting chance.

When Beauty and the Beast and the Steubenville Case Connect: A Conversation about Consent

Last year, in a rush of nostalgia, I bought a DVD of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. As a child, I fell in love with the film, excited about Belle’s obsession with reading and acceptance of her outsider status. I was also an avid reader, and I never really understood where I fit until my junior year of high school. I saw myself in the nerdy brunette princess, so as an adult, I was thrilled to revisit her story. However, about forty five minutes into the movie, I was disgusted. I already knew that most Disney princess movies were problematic in their portrayal of women and romance, and yet, Beauty and the Beast prompted a fit of righteous rage that I didn’t fully understand until recently.

So what brought on my repulsion of Belle’s story line? In order to understand that, we have to discuss the Steubenville case. Last month, two young men in Ohio were convicted of rape. A young woman was passed out at a party, and two football players violated her body, bragged about it to friends, and posted pictures on the internet. The sentencing of these young men brought out all the rape sympathizers, with TV anchors and community members attacking the rape survivor and mourning the future of the young rapists. The story is horrifying, from the rape itself to the threats the survivor has received on social media. But the thing that scares me the most is what this news story illustrates about our society at large: we, as a culture, do not seem to have a clear understanding of what consent looks like.

We have tried for decades to define rape. But the challenge with defining rape is that it is a legal term, and so rape sympathizers often use legal definitions and standards when trying to decide whether or not someone was raped. These same people are obsessed with the “grey areas,” the cases that couldn’t be proved in a court of law: what if both people were drunk? What if the victim was drunk, consented, then changed his mind? What if? So many women I know have experienced sex in this so-called “grey area,” where they are not sure if they were raped; however, they are sure that they didn’t want to have sex, and they are also sure that the partner knew they didn’t want to have sex. If we had a solid, clear, and fair definition of consent, those so-called “grey areas” wouldn’t seem so grey. Watching the footage from the Steubenville case has shown that, in rape cases, the victim is guilty until proven innocent. In the court of popular opinion, whether or not the victim gave consent is often considered secondary to the drinking habits, clothing choices, and past sexual history of the victim.

Rape is often defined as any sexual action without express consent. It should be simple, but obviously, if people are unable to label what happened to Jane Doe in the Steubenville case as rape, society is not quite sure what consent is. If we all had a clear understanding of consent, we could help communicate to young men and women what consent actually looks like.

This brings me back to Beauty and the Beast. When watching the film for the first time fifteen years, I was horrified by relationship between Belle and the Beast. Their relationship was not based on true love, but on Stockholm Syndrome. Belle was imprisoned and intimidated. Falling in love with her captor was her only path to freedom, so how can we know if she was truly consenting to a romantic relationship with him? When survival mode kicks in, a victim will do anything to secure his or her freedom. How can anyone genuinely consent to a romantic relationship in that situation?

Belle only agreed to be Beast’s prisoner to free her father. Fear and desperation are not how a loving, respectful relationship starts.

I watched that movie as a child and saw nothing wrong with the relationship between Belle and the Beast. I idolized Belle, and thus, I idolized her abusive relationship with the Beast. I also saw nothing wrong with Prince Phillip kissing Princess Aurora while she was unconscious in Sleeping Beauty. Even though both of these women did not have the capacity to consent to any sexual or romantic advance, their stories are meant to illustrate love and romance to the next generation of both men and women.

See this? This is not consent.

Frankly, it terrifies me that we have not come to understand consent. As a society, we need to sit down and learn what consent looks and sounds like. I can tell you what it doesn’t look like: it doesn’t look like a woman passed out at a stranger’s home. It doesn’t look like a woman held captive for weeks. It doesn’t look like a woman forced into a long sleep from a magical spell. We need more stories about men and women clearly and freely expressing their sexual desires and agencies. We need to see our heroes and heroines ask for consent before touching. We need to teach our youth that talking about consent with sexual partners is not only necessary: it can be steamy and hot. It can familiar and comfortable. Our cultural myths should illustrate that talking about sex, consent, and respect before initiating a sexual encounter (which includes all physical touching) leads to safe and fulfilling sex lives. Because if we can model conversations about consent, we can build a society that supports survivors, educates both men and women to be respectful partners, and empowers individuals and partners to define their sexual desires and boundaries.

On Love, Memory, and Loss

In 1959, William Mahoney slipped an engagement ring on the finger of Geraldine O’Connor, the daughter of a successful San Francisco mortician. Because of Geraldine’s nearsightedness, William’s romantic proposal sounded something like this: “put on your glasses.” Geraldine reported that she did just that, saw the ring, and “it’s been there every since.”

Geraldine and William Mahoney are my grandparents. I’ve always loved that story; my grandpa’s straight-forward, no nonsense proposal, and the way my grandma made it sound, many years after my grandpa’s passing, like it was the most romantic moment in history.  When I found out yesterday that my grandma passed away, I forced myself to remember that story, and the many others she told me and we experienced together.

For the past several years, I watched my grandma’s mind slip quietly into the oblivion of dementia. It started when I was in college, and by the time I started grad school, she did a great job of mimicking conversational norms, but it was clear to those who knew her that she was no longer truly present. After a while, we became accustomed to grandma’s condition, numbed to the sadness of her cognitive departure. Dementia is a cruel disease, one that robs loved ones away in a slow decline, and after a while, death just seems inevitable. That is, of course, until the death itself actually occurs.

Since the news hit, I have been flooded with memories of our adventures and conversations. For the first time in years, I am remembering her as the woman who signed me up for tap lessons, took me hiking throughout the summer, bought me my first computer, and taught me how to properly eat at the dinner table. The frail body that haunted my eye lids is now replaced with the image of my grandma wearing old-fashioned glasses and long shorts, heading to the tennis court. Within the same day, I feel like I lost my grandma and got her back at the same time.

I was my grandma’s only grandchild. She showered me with affection and attention, with particular devotion to my education. She fulfilled many of the mandatory responsibilities of grandparenthood: she made cookies, we picked apples, she taught me manners, and she celebrated my triumphs. Until middle school, I spent Monday nights with my grandparents every week. Her house is my childhood home, the space where I feel most connected to my past and my family. It was where I feel home.

As I grew older, I realized she was more than just my grandma. She was a world traveler, a dog-lover, a devoted Catholic, a volunteer, a flirt, an educator, a loyal friend, a tennis player, and singer. She loved her friends, her sisters, men, and chocolate. And she loved me, so completely and fully, and her love helped to power me through my childhood and young adulthood. This is the woman I remember, the woman I will carry inside of my heart for the rest of my life. The dementia already stole years away from me and my grandma; now that she is gone, I will not let it also take away my memories of her vibrance, humor, and affection.

But Now You’re Beautiful: My Defiance of the Weight Loss Dichotomy

“You were always pretty, but now you’re beautiful!”

An older man told me this after I lost 50 pounds in 2011. I like to think that my reply sounded something like this: “Honey, I’ve always been beautiful!” But honestly, I was too stunned to respond. I don’t mind– in fact, I love–hearing that I look great, but when I hear that I look better, I am immediately frozen with a mixture of rage and shame. Did I look that bad before I lost weight? Should I feel shameful about how my body looked last year?  Should I somehow distance myself from my old, fat self?

Within that backhanded compliment lies the false dichotomy peddled by the weight loss industry: every individual is actually two separate people, a fat person and a skinny person. We see this in those god awful before and after images in weight loss commercials. You know the ones I’m talking about: the before picture always features some woman in bike shorts that are two sizes too small and a tiny sports bra, which would make almost any woman have stomach rolls; additionally, the woman never wears any makeup, her hair is flying all over the place, and she is always frowning. Always.

This image is contrasted with the after image of a dancing woman wearing a flowing red dress, pristine hairstyle, and natural makeup. She is confident, ecstatic, and skinnier. This “after” image, we are told, is the ideal to which we should aspire. The before and after pictures are lined up side-by-side, reinforcing the notion that fat self and skinny self are different people.

But I refuse to accept this false dichotomy because I don’t want to see myself as a before or an after. I don’t want to look at pictures from early 2011 and cringe at my double-chin or flabby arms. I want to look at those pictures and love myself, because despite what the weight loss narrative has led us to believe, fat me is still me, and hating myself is unacceptable. The reality is that I don’t see those bigger years as sad, pathetic, or shameful times; I had some pretty amazing life experiences when I was well over 200 pounds. And my “before” pictures tell a different story from the dominant narrative: a story of love, adventure, and strength.

At my heaviest weight, the man I love more than anything in the entire world got down on one knee and proposed to me. Despite the myth that bigger women are chronically unloved, my now-husband declared to the world that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me.

I love this picture because the raw happiness and excitement radiates off my smile. To this day, I believe that this is one of the most beautiful pictures of me.

Another myth is that fat people are slow and sluggish, but this next picture tells a different story.

I am 217 pounds in this picture. I had trained with my friends for a 5k, but accidentally ended up running a full 10k. My friends, who had ran somewhere between a 5 and 10k, joined me to cross the finish line. I never thought my body was capable of running 3 miles, let alone 6.2. I ran the entire track, never stopping for water or bathroom break, amazed at how my body continued to move despite my exhaustion and lack of preparation for the event. I have since finished a half-marathon, but nothing will ever compare to the sheer awe I felt that day when crossing my first finish line surrounded by friends and pumped full of endorphins.

You see, I don’t know how any weight loss company could use the above pictures for their ads. I look blissful in the first pic, and fierce as shit in the second. These pictures do not reflect the myth that all big people are deflated, lonely, and sad. Furthermore, why would I want to separate myself from these images? When I look at these pictures, I do not see a woman who is simply pretty; rather, I see a beautiful, strong woman who is surrounded by love and friendship. I see a woman capable of pushing herself physically and mentally. Honestly, I see me.

You Are Loved: Ramblings on Healing, Grammar, and Tragedy

I used to spend my summers volunteering at a camp for families facing childhood cancer. During those weeks, counselors would write each other notes of support and encouragement, especially when a counselor went out of hir way to help make a camper’s day. These notes would provide a burst of  confidence, sometimes through an inside joke or a quick expression of gratitude. I have received hundreds of these notes—not necessarily because I’m an extraordinary counselor, but because of the sheer amount of time I spent at camp. And after all these years, there is one that I remember vividly, one that I hold close to my heart; it ended with the simple phrase: “You are so loved.”

Even today, just remembering that sentence floors me. She didn’t say “I love you,” even though she might have felt that way, because the note wasn’t about our friendship. Instead, she was reminding me that I was beloved by the greater camp community, and the hugeness of this love continues to humble me.

Today, as I was reading the horrific news about the shooting in Connecticut, that phrase rushed into my mind. I found myself repeating it in my mind; the pulsing rhythm of repetition was soothing.

I’ve been trying to decide why its such a powerful phrase, at times even more so than I love you. And I think the secret is hidden within the grammar of it all. There’s a funny thing about this phrase; it’s in the passive voice. English teachers are supposed to teach their students to avoid the passive voice at all costs; MS Word will cast its green squiggly line of shame underneath sentences written in the passive voice. Why? Sometimes, it’s an issue of clarity: the subject of the sentence can be muddled in passive voice. The action itself can be buried. Consider the difference:

I rode the bike.

The bike was ridden by me.

Which is clearer? More engaging? Yes, yes, I will concede that the active voice is, more often than not, stronger and more accurate writing. But the phrase You are loved seems to defy that rule.

In the sentence, You are loved, you is both the subject—the one doing the action—of the sentence and the receiver. You is passive, in the sense that you is not doing the loving in this sentence, and yet you is still the subject—the actor. And what is you doing in this sentence? You is deserving of love, earning love, receiving love—a vast love from known, unknown or even a multitudes of givers. You is being showered with love, just for being you. And I believe that the knowledge that we are loved can help us transcend and help us heal.

After I heard the news today, I wanted to tell everyone I care about, “you are loved.” I wanted to tell it to my students, my dog,  my coworkers, my neighbors, and strangers. I wanted to because I think we forget this sometimes. I think we forget that we are loved. By someone, by our community or village, by our friends and our family, by our coworkers, by the people we serve and those who serve us—it doesn’t really matter. All that matters is that we are loved. It breaks my heart to think that there are people who don’t know this, who don’t know about humanity’s vast capacity to love not just our closest confidantes, but strangers, just because they are human; after all, just today, millions of people poured their tears, prayers, and hopes over the nation for a group of strangers. We did this out of love.

I welcome the conversations that will come up about guns, education, society, and mental health. Institutional forces must be analyzed, evaluated, and challenged because they shape our realities. I am open to any rational and civil dialogue about how to make our communities safer. And I’ll be ready to do that tomorrow. I really will.

But right now, more than anything, I just want everyone to know that

you are loved. 

Mid-Semester Teaching Reflection

It’s almost midway through the semester, so I thought this would be a good time to reflect on some of the experiments I’ve been attempting in the classroom.

1. Teaching Reading

The Experiment: This isn’t so much a new teaching practice as it is a new subject. For the first time, I am teaching reading as a college course. Many people are confused when I say that I teach reading at the college level: “Shouldn’t college students already know how to read?” Well, these students all know how to read. They can read a paragraph aloud, but what they often can’t do is comprehend or remember it. So, what I teach is really academic reading: building vocabulary, assessing understanding, making connections, remembering new information, and creating study guides from dense texts. This is a big shift from writing; even writing instruction that emphasizes the process of writing has a product that is assessed by the instructor. There isn’t really a product for reading– just the process. It’s much trickier to assess a student’s process than a final product.

Result: I think I am getting the hang of it. Basically, my approach is to model different aspects of the reading process– aspects that strong readers often do without realizing it, such as using context clues, making connections, finding the main idea, and organizing content– and then have students develop their own strategies for those aspects. I have found ways to introduce new media, play, and kinesthetic learning into my lesson plans, so I’m starting to feel more at home in the reading classroom. For example, this week, we reviewed different ways to organize the contents of an essay: outlining, summarizing, and mapping, among others. We created a map using the students’ bodies, paper, and some yarn, and then they put the papers on the ground so they could visually see the relationships between the different concepts in the essay they had read in class.

2. Texting with Students

The Experiment: Anyone who teaches at a community college can tell you that many students are uncomfortable using email. In the writing lab, I often have to help students register, sign in, and send an email. In fact, research confirms that many young people of color are not accessing the internet at home; rather, they are accessing it through their smart phones. So, in order to make outside communication more accessible to my students, I signed up for a Google Voice phone number and distributed this to my students. Students are able to text me, and Google Voice forwards their message to my phone. My personal number is still private, and if students ever text anything inappropriate, I can easily turn off the forwarding feature. Furthermore, I told students I only accept text messages, and I gave them hours (7:30am-10pm) when they could text me.

Results: So far, many more students are contacting me outside of the classroom. And strangely enough, their writing is much clearer than it had been through email. This is a writing style they understand, and they seem to appreciate the ease of contacting me after class. I haven’t had a need to turn off forwarding yet, and I believe I won’t need to this semester.

3. Twitter

The Experiment: In my Teaching Writing in the Digital World class, I read this article about Stanford Study of Writing and new literacy. I found it interesting that the researchers found a correlation between writing on social media and a new awareness of both audience and message. Also, it was noted that by limiting the number of characters allowed in a composition, websites like Twitter can actually help students learn to be concise and get to the point quickly. I realized that I could harness these benefits in my reading class. Once a week, I post a reading on Twitter, and students tweet me back either their response or the main idea of the article.

The Results: Loving. It. On a personal note, I have now been officially introduced to Twitter, and I am hooked. On a pedagogical note, my class often discusses how to summarize the main idea of a dense text, and by doing so on Twitter, students are forced to locate the main idea and cut out all of the filler details. Plus, they seem to have fun with it. I was actually surprised to learn how many students already tweet; after all, so few of my former students were familiar with blogging. I also try to maintain privacy, so I have a separate Twitter account specifically for this class, and  I do not follow students (except for the five or so who specifically asked me to; I wasn’t expecting that!). I suggested that students who wanted more privacy could create an alternative Twitter account for class, but no one did.

4. Student-Created Lesson Plans

The Experiment: This is the result of re-reading Paulo Friere’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed during the summer: I question whether I am promoting liberatory education or the banking concept of education. Specifically, I was struck by his point about teacher-created syllabi; he believes that it is presumptuous that teachers assign readings they assume will help the students without any feedback from the students. Hence, my lesson plan assignment was born.

In my freshman composition course, students work in small groups. The groups pick the theme of their assigned week, alongside the readings and homework questions. To help guide them, I chose an incredibly broad theme, power, and then encouraged them to choose a specific theme within that. The idea is that students are choosing topics, readings, videos, and questions that they believe are pertinent to their experiences.

The Result: I’m still evaluating this experiment. To give students enough time to create the weekly lesson plans, I supplied the readings and assignments for the first five weeks. The theme was Power in the Classroom, and the students read Friere, hooks, and other authors that critique the handling of authority in traditional classrooms. That helped students understand my motivation for the lesson plan assignment, and they were totally on board.

The first student-ran week was… well… it was okay. The students were overwhelmed; they admitted that they don’t read a lot outside of class, so they weren’t sure where to find readings outside of the textbook. They also admitted to waiting for the last minute, so some of the requirements of the assignment (such as a presentation about why they choose that topic and the readings) slipped by the wayside. The second group seems to have much more enthusiasm for the project. They even did additional work and have been leading activities in the classroom. Each of the students in that group seems to have a personal connection with the theme they chose (the power of the media), and that has motivated them to come up with creative ideas and fun readings.

Also, I’m thrilled by how students interpreted the theme of power. Next week, the group is discussing the power of clothing. Towards the end of the semester, a group has chosen the topic of power and law enforcement. These are concepts I may have never discussed in class, so I feel like I’m learning too.

All in all, I am happy with the way the semester is going. I feel like I have opportunities to try new things, and my students have been given me feedback throughout the semester. I feel like I’m growing as an educator, and I can’t wait to see what the remainder of the semester brings!

The Politics of Surviving Childhood Cancer

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness month, and awesomely, my Facebook news feed has been flooded with pictures, videos, and status updates reminding the world that, yes, children can and do get cancer. I fear that many Americans think that the only children who actually get cancer are the sweet and oddly prophetic bald kids in movies and television shows who exist solely to prompt a healthy character to re-evaluate his or her life priorities. No, childhood cancer is definitely real, and it’s often a much more trying experience than pop culture lets on.

In fact, the cancer itself is typically only one part of the struggle for a family struggling with childhood cancer. In addition to a child being forced to consume poison in hopes of survival, there are the mounting bills, the building tension between parents, the social isolation of a sick child, and the unavoidable neglect of the siblings. You see, the cancer and chemotherapy are not removed from our day-to-day lives; rather, they are planted directly in the middle of the complex web of survival any family tries to weave.

Specifically, with the election around the corner, I can’t help but acknowledge the influence politics has on the experience of childhood cancer. What often goes ignored is how the experience of a family dealing with cancer is shaped by the government policies surrounding health care. So today, I am going to break down three ways that childhood cancer is political, in hopes that you are inspired to advocate for families with childhood cancer on a legislative level.

1. Accessible Health Care 

It’s a no brainer that cancer treatment is expensive, but opponents to health care reform often argue that no child would ever be turned away because of lack of funds. However, while it may be true that many foundations and organizations exist to help families without insurance navigate the exorbitant costs of health care, the cancer treatment is only part of the story.

What folks may not realize is that a cancer diagnosis often occurs because the parents took their child to the doctor for a seemingly benign issue. My brother was diagnosed with leukemia after he had been taken to the doctor because of a stubborn flu.  Other children or young adults are diagnosed when their parents take them into the doctor’s office because of a pesky cold, achy legs, or a sore back. And just like “adult cancer,” early diagnosis can make a world of difference for the prognosis of a child cancer patient. Therefore, parents need to be able to take their children to the doctor for regular check-ups or for that flu that just won’t go away without worrying about the cost of that visit.

2. Discrimination in Health Care

Look, I understand that people from both sides of the spectrum dislike the Affordable Care Act. I realize that the individual mandate is controversial to liberals who see it as just feeding more money to the insurance companies and to the conservatives who think that any mandate is an impediment on their freedom. Still, everyone seems to agree on one thing: discrimination based on pre-existing conditions sucks. What happens after a child has survived cancer? Even when that child grows up, she is still a cancer survivor in the eyes of the insurance companies. And cancer survivors have health care needs well past remission; they have to deal with way more check-ups than the average person, and they often have to cope with long-lasting side effects from the chemo, radiation, and/or surgery. So no matter what happens to the ACA in the future, we need to ensure that discrimination based pre-existing conditions stays far far away from the grubby hands of the insurance companies.

3. Paid Family Leave

When a child is sick in the hospital, who stays with him? His parents. Unfortunately, this level of parental devotion is often implicitly discouraged by the workplace. The Family Medical Leave Act is a start, but a truly pathetic one; it provides up to twelve work weeks of unpaid leave for eligible employees.  Let’s break this down.

First: twelve work weeks. Over the course of a year, my brother was in the hospital for way more than twelve work weeks during his treatment. Twelve work weeks is simply not enough for families in similar situations.

Second: unpaid leave. Families with childhood cancer still have to pay the rent or mortgage, utilities, student loans, credit card bills, car insurance, gas bills, and more. Those things don’t stop as soon as a child is diagnosed with cancer. What are parents to do when they have to choose between preventing eviction or being at the hospital when their child is undergoing surgery? It’s an impossible decision to make, on both a practical and emotional level, yet parents who work have to make this decision all the time.

Third: eligible employees. In order to benefit from the FMLA, a parent has to either work for a government agency or a larger business. In addition, that parent has to have worked there for over twelve months. So, if Dad was just hired at a new job one month before Daughter was diagnosed with cancer? No guaranteed job protection for him. If Mom is an adjunct instructor at a university that pays for her son’s health insurance? This is a true story, and yes, Mom has to continue to teach everyday despite her son’s health because adjuncts have no job security to begin with and he is on her health insurance.

Maybe you think paid family leave is just too good to be true. Well, the majority of industrialized countries would beg to disagree.

Really, these three issues are just scratching the surface. I could go on and on about how defunding special education is hurting childhood cancer survivors who return to school with special needs because of their treatment, but I’ll leave that for another day. The reality is that childhood cancer is about more than just bald heads with radiant smiles—although that is definitely a part of it. The political world impacts a family’s ability to focus on physical and emotional healing, as well as the joy of being a family, and the more we are aware of how laws and policies shape the lives of families with childhood cancer, the more we can advocate for the health and well-being of all children.