I don’t remember.
What I do remember is chicken tenders.
Horsey sauce.
Curly fries dumped into boiling oil. It was August, two weeks left and I could jump: new life, new people, new heartbreak, and for the thousandth time I wondered what it would feel like to lay my forearm against the basket, to solder my wrist to the wire, to smell my own flesh burning through to the bone, to be an active participant in my life instead of responding to what was happening to me, to do something, to do something.
So I did.
My arm and the wire were in contact for only a second, but that’s all it took. I screamed and stuck my left arm into the ice bin, still holding the sizzling basket of fries in my other hand. Coworkers must have found me there. They must’ve brought me to the Emergency Burn Station. They must’ve asked what happened, because I remember saying it had been an accident. I’d been careless, I told them, even though hurting myself had taken all the care in the world.
Later, at freshman orientation, I’d wear long sleeves to cover the bandage and, later still, a four-inch leather cuff to hide the scar, a purplish rectangle of chicken wire that would, over time, fade to a horizontal line bisected by two smaller lines. In other words—an F.
F is for fear.
F is for fly.
F is for French fry.
Later, I’d get a job as a food runner at a fancy southwestern restaurant. Cheese sticks, stuffed mushrooms, jalapeño poppers in wire mesh baskets, boiling oil like knife tips on my skin. I couldn’t believe the want.
And later, after I’d left that college and another; left the country and another, I’d find myself in Chicago in a bar with a woman I didn’t know how to love. When she reached to pay for my drink, her long sleeves pushed back, revealing faded scars that climbed from wrist to forearm. That night was the first time I talked about what I’d done, how I didn’t know why I did it, and how now, twenty years later, I still can’t explain the pull toward danger. There is no: Snap—twenty-one and now I understand it. Snap—thirty-one and now I have healed. Snap—thirty-nine and here I am, invincible.
There’s only me, on the edge of my life.
The whole world is spread out before me.
God, what if?
Stand Here to Save Lives
In a session on casting in Jennifer Peepas’s introductory film course, she brings in an enormous file of head shots, including actors of all races, genders, sizes, and ages, and she instructs her students to imagine the characters they might inhabit. “What kind of story or genre do you think of when you see this person?” she asks. “Is there a specific role or type that comes to mind?” The excitement is visible. These future filmmakers know movies; they’ve been shooting them in their imaginations for years. “He’s the secret agent,” they’ll say, holding up a photo, more often than not, of a white guy. “The superhero, the good cop gone rogue,” and various other examples of the main character. Then, other photos: “She’s the mom!” And: “He’s the terrorist!” And: “The funny best friend,” “The love interest,” “The drug dealer.”
That’s when the discussion starts.
“What makes that guy the main character?” Peepas asks. “Is she anything besides a mom? Why is he a drug dealer?”
The discomfort is immediate. Students squirm in their seats. You can see their brains working, realizing the racism and sexism behind their responses, thinking of excuses, getting defensive, and just before it erupts, Peepas flips the conversation from blame to responsibility. She gives them the data, how year after year, movie after movie, they’ve seen the same stories, the same characters, the same dominant narratives that privilege the same identity groups. “However,” she tells them—and the future filmmakers lean forward—“you are the ones who can change it. You are writers, producers, directors, and media makers. It’s on you to tell new stories, many stories, and to challenge the idea that there’s only one way to represent a person or a people.”
There’s more to it, of course. Throughout the semester, Peepas works to build an inclusive classroom space. She brings in films and scripts from a wide variety of artists. And she considers how teaching the elements of her discipline—in this case: scene, structure, story, character—might also inspire a different kind of learning moment, the kind that saves lives.
“The first time I did this exercise, I thought it was just about casting,” Peepas says. “But casting is never just about casting. It’s all a teachable opportunity.”
* * *
For years, I worked in a teaching and learning center at an arts and media college in Chicago. It’s where I first met Peepas, along with countless other educators working to engage students in discussions about race, class, and gender-based oppression. They assign texts from multiple voices and perspectives. (You’d think this would be a given in 2015. Depressingly, you’d be wrong.) They prioritize community building, not just as a Day 1 icebreaker, but rather a necessary component in creating what educator Ken Bain refers to as a “natural, critical learning environment.” They experiment with activities, assignments, and approaches that inform students of identity-based inequity in ways that are discipline specific, pushing back against the too commonly held idea that as one faculty member recently told me, “If students want to learn about race stuff, they can go take a cultural studies class.”
A few examples of the many possibilities: A biology teacher using the Tuskegee syphilis study. A dance teacher using the Kennedy Center’s recent performance of Swan Lake. An app development teacher bringing a mapping project that highlights places where women have made history. A journalism teacher inviting everyone, on the first day of class, to introduce themselves with their name and gender pronouns, opening a conversation with emerging media professionals about how to write ethically about identity as well as setting the expectation that the classroom is an inclusive space where everyone’s humanity is respected.
Systematic oppression exists across all fields; the arts, the sciences, technology, the humanities.
Why on Earth would we not fight it that way it in the classroom?
* * *
Perhaps it’s idealistic to think that what happens in a classroom can make a dent in identity-based violence and white supremacy. Perhaps some people think discussions of systematic oppression should be relegated to a single class (or a single chapter). Perhaps the deck is stacked too high against teachers: faculty of color are ridiculously underrepresented and often face hostile classroom environments, especially female faculty of color. Many are swamped trying to fulfill learning outcomes set by administrators who haven’t been in the classroom for decades, if ever. Some are locked into teaching assigned syllabi with no say in the curriculum. Some have their programs gutted or outright cut. Non-tenure-track faculty, unsure of their jobs, are hesitant to rock the boat in fear of it reflecting negatively on their student evaluations. Adjunct faculty—fully half of the country’s teaching force—are swamped trying to piece together a living wage, often teaching at multiple institutions and without time to attend unpaid trainings. All of our hands are tied as we wait for strategic planning, curriculum committees, and corporate administration, notoriously slow. The current cultural dialogue around higher education deems it—at best—broken.
And yet, every week, we walk into classrooms full of young people, ready to learn.
* * *
In a creative writing class nearly two decades ago, my fellow students and I showed up to an empty room, the tables and chairs shoved out into the hall. It was . . . weird. We were like, the hell is this? It was near the end of the semester and we’d been busting our asses on final rewrites. Exams were coming up in other classes and most of us had jobs, often more than one, to cover rent and tuition and unpaid internships and maybe food? Also: the pressures that come with future plans and familial expectations and what am I doing with my life? Also: student loans and a shitty economy and continuing job loss. Also: social lives, the ebb and flow of love and loss. Also: th
e quiet, individual mountains we were each trying to climb: sickness and sick parents and single parenthood, violence and healing, addiction and recovery, and the daily instances of sexism or racism or homophobia so prevalent and relentless it’s a wonder we haven’t set the walls on fire.
All this to say: we were on edge.
Our teacher came in and told us that today we’d be taking a break. Today, we would just talk. “Today,” he said, “we’ll try to remember why we’re here in the first place.” We’d been with this man long enough to trust the process. His class was what safe space really means, allowing us to push past comfort zones into difficult work and difficult discussion. He asked us questions. It went like this: “If writing is your art, stand against that wall,” he said, pointing to one side of the room. “If writing is your job, stand against the other wall.” Then he’d indicate the empty space between and give us permission to stand there, as well—imagine a spectrum as opposed to a binary—whatever best illustrated how we felt in that particular moment. Then, one by one, he invited us to explain why we’d chosen to stand where we were standing.*
The discussions were incredible. We dug into definitions of art, of audience, what it meant to be a working writer, submission and publication and the editorial process, and the contributions we hoped our work would make to a greater cultural dialogue. We listened to each other, sometimes physically moving across the room based on what someone else said.
Our teacher asked, “What is missing from this conversation?”
He asked, “What steps do you have to take to get from where you’re standing now to where you want to be?”
He asked how we thought our work would be perceived. “If your writing is political, stand against that wall.” He pointed. “If it doesn’t have anything to do with politics, stand against the other wall.”
I didn’t have to think about it—not political—and when it was my turn to explain, I said, “I write love stories.”
Across the room, an openly gay student was backed against the opposite wall. “I write love stories,” he said.
Next to him stood a young woman of color. “Me, too,” she said.
To this day, I struggle to explain what happened in that moment. All of the clichés apply: lightbulb, lightning, ton of bricks. I’d just turned twenty, from a very small, very sheltered town in southeast Michigan, and while educating me and other white, straight students was most certainly not these students’ job, the simple gift of their perspective cracked the world open. It was the first time I’d considered how a person could be perceived differently based on their identity.
My discomfort was immediate. I felt my cheeks turn red, overwhelmed with shame for all I didn’t know. But truly, who has time for such things? As Justin Campbell wrote at the Los Angeles Review of Books: “People are dying out here; we don’t have time for bullshit.” My teacher stepped in, flipping the conversation from guilt to responsibility. He gave us data. He assigned readings from multiple perspectives and invited us to develop our own.
He said, “You are the ones who can change it.”
He said, “Where do you want to be standing?”
I walked across the room to the opposite wall.
* * *
In faculty development workshops, I shove tables and chairs into the hall. “If you’re here to teach your discipline, stand against that wall,” I say, pointing. “If you’re here to save lives, stand over there.” I point in the other direction and then indicate the empty space between.
Sometimes, teachers give me a look: The hell is this? Others have worked with me long enough to trust the process. But always, I’m grateful for the willingness to share.
In the decade that I’ve been asking this question—at institutions both within the academy and the community, graduate professors to kindergarten teachers, at educational conferences across the country—teachers have spread out across the spectrum, a bar graph of bodies. They explain their frustrations, their fears, the lack of resources and institutional support.
And yet.
Years ago I listened to Jen Peepas talk about an activity she wanted to try in a unit on casting. I remember she stood at the exact center of the room: teach the discipline, save lives.
We let ourselves dream.
What would that look like in my classroom?
What would it look like in the world?
twenty, or Good Lord, It’s Me, Jane.
12
I picked the littlest puppy. She had a leaky eye. We named her Duchess and she slept in my bed and did tricks: gimme that paw, gimme the other one, hold a cookie on your nose until we say go and then flip it in the air. I’d throw sticks into the lake behind the house; she’d leap off the dock, paddle around, and bring it back, tail wagging, so proud she’d found it. One time a boy I went to school with—I remember his real name but will here call him Dickwad—went out in our rowboat, catching turtles in a bucket. Later, he stood at the end of the dock and threw them in the water for Duchess to fetch. She swam and swam and swam but the turtles, of course, were already gone. She came back exhausted and defeated, tail between her legs, like she’d let us down. And Dickwad laughed. He laughed. He laughed. I felt something in my hands then, climbing up my arms and into my chest. I wanted to punch him. I wanted to attack, to shove him to the ground and pummel him, my sneakers in his groin and stomach and face. It’s the first time I remember wanting to touch a person in violence. I could imagine myself doing it, could feel his bone crack under my fists, his skin stuck in my fingernails.
13
Occasionally I meet other adults whose mom or dad had been their school principal. We share a look. Sometimes we high-five. Then we tell each other how the stoner kids our parent put in detention regularly locked us in our lockers, ruining marijuana for us to this very day and we all know that’s the real crime here.
13
Let’s talk about sex education. In public schools. In the eighties. In the United States of America.
We were separated into two different rooms. The girls went with the nurse, and the boys went with the gym teacher in the knee-high athletic socks and short shorts and keys on a very long string. Disclosure: it’s possible that gaps in my memory are filled in with every television show ever made about high school. Was there really a gym teacher with knee-high athletic socks? There must have been. There always is! He’s loud and tall with hairy arms and he takes the boys to their own room and shows them—what? What did you learn in that room, guys? Erections, right? STDs? Sperm meets egg? Did you learn about women’s bodies? I’m especially curious about the boys who grow up to become government officials. What about consent? My research says no,* and if that’s the case, I’m interested in how you first came across the concept. Last week, a college student came to my office hours. He had a question about the assigned reading, a personal essay by a woman about sex. He was wondering, I mean, he knew it wasn’t my job and all, but could we talk about what consent, like, looked like? He’d never heard the word. He wanted to be sure he was doing it right. He wanted to be a good person, a good man. He wasn’t sure who to ask.
I was floored.
I thought about the conversations I have and will have with my son. I thought about conversations in my classrooms, at colleges and universities regarding sexual assault policies, in the media about rape—Cosby, Ghomeshi, Brock Turner, and the powerful letter Turner’s victim read aloud at his sentencing, which in my opinion should be required reading for all men and boys, for all women and girls. “To girls everywhere,” she writes, “I am with you. On nights when you feel alone, I am with you. When people doubt you or dismiss you, I am with you. I fought every day for you. So never stop fighting, I believe you.”* Jesus, we need to hear that, whether we’re sixteen or sixty. We need real conversations about our bodies and our rights, in our culture and our literature and those terrifying girls-only rooms with the school nurse watching videos.
Like this:
A cartoon girl, drawn vaguely t
o resemble a bubble with lips and yellow pigtails, comes running out of a door marked bathroom and says, “Oh no, I’m dying!”
A cartoon rabbit hops over and says, “Why do you say that, Judy?”
“Because I just went to the bathroom and I’m bleeding!”
Big blue cartoon teardrops shoot out of her eyes.
The rabbit chuckles. “You’re not dying, Judy! You have your period!”
The word period appears on top of the screen in big bold letters.
“My period? What’s that?”
Cut to a diagram of the female reproductive system. Bright red arrows run through squiggly lines connecting blobs marked ovaries to a triangle marked vagina. “You’re becoming a woman, Judy!” says the rabbit, hopping across the diagram, not unlike those Energizer Bunny commercials.
Fade out.
Or this:
Fade in to a wide shot of a racetrack. Lined up at the starting gate are hundreds of cartoon sperm looking eerily similar to the minnows Michigan children catch in bogs and light on fire. One smiles big—a toothpaste commercial star appearing on his white teeth—and waves at the camera. We know we’re rooting for him because he’s the only one with a defined face. Then a gun fires, and—they’re off! The track is a long pink tunnel and the minnows swim top speed, little bubbles coming out of their mouths. Some get too tired and stop, or they bang into unseen obstacles and disappear. Our sperm, though, pushes admirably on. We’re excited. We cheer, as if we’ve put money on this sperm and the payoff is 5:1. Soon, our sperm is the only one left and we see what he’s been swimming toward: a white cartoon egg, exactly like the one you eat hard-boiled for breakfast except with a face: big red lips and lashes over her eyes.
The Wrong Way to Save Your Life Page 6
