Like Lucy, I focused on the different narrative styles that Keene employed to tell Carmel’s story, and found transitions between styles incredibly jarring. We begin with a third person historical point of view, akin to how one writes in academic papers, to a third person narrative, where we lack a complete understanding of what Carmel knows. Then we transition to reading her journals, which help paint a better picture of what she can communicate, to her first person narrative at the end, which is incredibly precise and forces you to realize the depth of the stories she could tell. We slowly become more intimate with her in a way that is almost absurd; she is a mute girl that we can fully understand by the end of the narrative. She, like Hartman explains, is telling an impossible story, and this last section forces you to further grapple with that idea. Like Chloe mentioned, this is further exemplified by the idea that this entire story is written in the space of an asterisk, stating that no definitive records of the school exist, and yet, somehow, we read. In that context, I found this narrative to be incredibly haunting; the idea that we have erased so many people and the only stories we are given are stories of people who have been chosen. More often or not, that choice is because of what has been done to them, rather than as actors with their own agency. These narratives are just our attempt to deal with the idea that we have lost these stories forever,and that we can never lose sight of that.

I found the development of Carmel’s voice, or rather, the changes that occur in how her narrative is told, to be very interesting. At the beginning of the story, the language used to describe Carmel and her family is very factual. It is what one would expect when reading a history book: “Carmel was the lone child among the handful of bonds people remaining at Valdore, the coffee plantation to which Olivier de L’Ecart returned in late July 1803” (86). There is also a constant emphasis on her not talking: “None of the bonds people still present…could recall having heard her utter a single word” (88). Most of the time, others see this as an advantage. For example, Eugenie thinks this will make Carmel a great confidant of all of her secrets. Or rather, she cannot snitch on her. We are often told that the other servants exclude her because they find her silence strange. So in this way, the reader is made to feel like her silence is a disadvantage. Carmel is never shown to explicitly want to learn to speak out loud when this happens.

Eventually, she starts creating her own language and learns several languages at the convent. Even more striking is the samples of her “voice” that appear between pages 124-131. The language reveals someone who is learning to write and speak. It can be very difficult to understand at times. But, within these passages, Carmel’s opinions of Eugenie are revealed, whereas before, she would just be silent and not voice her opinions. For example, when Eugenie tells her she should not study so much, it is written that “I rolld my eyes” (125). So, we can see some confidence or at least her opinions beginning to be revealed. By the end of the story, the language is that of a traditional narrative. It is told from Carmel’s perspective by using “I”. It is not hard to follow, and the language is not as “textbook” as it was at the beginning. Carmel, by this point, is more in control of her powers. She is finally ready to take action, which has been contemplated throughout the entire short story.

I wanted to comment on Sofia’s point about the control of Carmel’s narrative and the incomplete, detached image of Carmel that remains. Although we are told that Carmel begins to move more confidently, these changes occur very abruptly. She switches from not talking and her thoughts/opinions not be known to making it clear where she stands very quickly. I found it hard to exactly pinpoint why these changes occurred and often had to reread pages to see if I’d missed something. We also don’t get to learn much about how Carmel mastered her powers and her night interactions with her mother. So much is still left unexplored.

Like Allison, the relationship between Carmel and Eugénie struck me. It was challenging to read because the power dynamic was so strong for so much of their storyline. Eugénie had such power over Carmel that she was more than willing to yield despite her young age and that was difficult to grapple with. Therefore, when those hierarchical lines began to blur, it made me rather anxious.

I found it fascinating, yet rather unsurprising, when it came to light that Carmel’s connection to Eugénie was more transactional than anything. She was able to gain a form of very limited power through learning from the other girl, which was greatly appreciated in the wake of Carmel’s wholly unjust treatment and position. It brings a certain level of complexity to this narrative that I’ve never heard of before. The depth that Keene lends to these characters is absolutely stunning and it’s something that brings forth an important perspective.

On another point, to echo Sofia, I found the tone with which Keene told Carmel’s story to be rather detached. I feel that I’ve learned little about Carmel through the tone of the narrative that surrounds her. The image that I have of her feels very one-dimensional. At no point do we really get to hear her voice as it is, so I feel like there’s a lot to be questioned surrounding her characterization. It’s interesting that, even in a narrative like this, we never get to hear the voices of those who were so often left voiceless. No matter how much we think we know about these experiences, how much do we actually know?

After reading John Keene’s Counternarratives I became particularly interested in the relationship between Carmel and Eugénie. For me, this relationship out of any of the others in the text put into perspective for me the extremely vast differences in the lives between black slaves and white plantation owners. The two girls (I assume) are around the same age and live in the same place but are unable to communicate due to their different native languages. 

What struck me about their relationship the most was how the line between master and slave began to be blurred as the story progressed, at least on Eugénie’s side. When the girls first meet, Eugénie promptly asks Carmel if she can keep secrets, therefore instilling some sort of trust in Carmel. Over time, Eugénie not only becomes dependent on Carmel just for household needs, but also for emotional ones too. Keene writes, “Eugénie had always mistaken Carmel’s dutifulness for devotion. Now she saw her slave as her primary source of emotional support, so she was initially kind and solicitous…” “…and reimposed their longstanding hierarchy” (Keene, 114-15). However, Eugénie was still very aware of her mastery over Carmel, often exercising her power over her when Carmel did not live up to Eugénie’s standards. Carmel, unsurprisingly, did not cherish her relationship with Eugénie except for her access to Eugénie’s books and other intellectual material that Eugénie was given at the convent. 

While a relationship like this was probably not uncommon during the times in which Keene writes about, I thought it was compelling how Keene narrated the story of two girls of the same age with tremendously different experiences and backgrounds and how they both interacted. I appreciated that although the conditions that Carmel were placed under were heinous and completely unjust, she was still able to indulge her appetite for learning.

America is Failing its Black Mothers

2019 marked twenty years that Dr. Denise Johnson had now been practicing. In her mind, the years she’d walked the halls of Princeton, labored at Harvard Medical School, and completed her years of residency all seemed so long ago, that she could barely recall them. Instead, her everyday routine for the last twenty years consumed her. Awake at five-thirty. Shower. Eat breakfast. Arrive to the hospital by seven-thirty. Change into her scrubs. Greet the nurses at the nurse station. Check her clipboard that contained her appointments for the day. Nothing new.

However, what seemed to still shock others (including her colleagues) was the large number of patient transfers that she received each year. Seeing “Transfer” at the top of her clipboard, no longer surprised her. In fact, she glanced past the names of the patients and instead, focused on the answer listed for “race/ethnicity.” As usually was the case, her transfer patients were predominantly African American mothers. She knew that the reason why she looked at this piece of information, differed from the reasoning her white colleagues used when they viewed it. Some would argue that it was wrong for her to view this information first. To use it to make a judgment. But she knew the data. She understood the stats. She knew that regarding this information a certain way could save this mother’s life…and therefore, even the life of her child. So, when each transfer patient walked into the room, she was ready. Ready to listen. She already knew what to expect.

And yet, the expressions on each mother’s faces revealed that she did not. Dr. Johnson could see the dejection on each mother’s face, already debating on whether or not to bring up her list of concerns this time. What would make this doctor listen? After all, this was her first child. She didn’t know what to expect. Of course, the doctor must know better. She just needed to rest more. But, why was her pain still here? And the swelling? Some days, she could barely move. Her blood pressure was constantly up and down. But, at each visit to the ER, they condescendingly looked down at her over their clipboards. Was she eating unhealthy? Maybe try eating healthier, drinking water, and resting. And follow up with your primary doctor/ OBGYN, they said in an exasperated, irritated voice.

And so she did…again. Her white doctor, who spent ten quick minutes running off a list of questions, barely noting her responses before moving on to the next one. And she left…with all of the same concerns. So what to do? When your insurance only covered certain providers? Providers who didn’t listen. Who made you feel uneducated and wrong for asking questions? A few looked for one last hope, which is how they ended up in her office. Not really expecting much different. But then, they took in her hair. Her skin tone. Similar to theirs. And the relief appeared. They related all of their previous concerns, previous trips to the hospitals, etc. She listened as they spilled out every complication, every concern, and she took every precaution. She ordered tests. She analyzed the risks. And she knew what to look out for. She imagined that this patient was at least one new mother saved. At least, one other family intact.

Writer’s Notes: The issue that I’ve chosen to focus on is the disparity that exists for African American mothers who die at greater rates due to complications for childbirth in comparison to their white counterparts. I found a few articles giving a brief history of the issue, but one that I found most interesting was “America is Failing Its Black Mothers” published by Harvard Public Health. One of the social determinants that is influencing the disparity found is African American mothers’ concerns about their pregnancies and complications experienced afterwards not being taken as seriously as white mothers. Their symptoms and concerns are disregarded. Although this article explores many different elements of the issue, the voice of African American doctors and their experiences with patients seems to be missing. Therefore, I chose to write from the perspective of an African American OBGYN. Specifically, I wanted to give a brief history of her experience over twenty years since the maternal mortality rate has been increasing for the United States since at least the 1990s. I wanted to highlight that not much has changed in regards to listening to black mothers over the decades. I tried to implement this by mirroring it with her simple routine. I imagined that African American doctors are more attuned to certain needs of their African American patients. Where does the obligation come in then? How does race begin to influence their judgments? How should that influence future changes in the health system/ training? I struggled with finding a tone that I was satisfied with.

Islamophobia: irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against Islam or people who practice Islam

First known use of Islamophobia: 1923, in the meaning defined above

Your word is Islamophobia.

Can I have the definition of the word?

Islamophobia is— 

Dad told me I should never run for public office. 

While Mom cooked dinner, he was always watching CNN in the living room. Someone was always yelling, someone was always getting criticized, and sometimes the name Hussein was thrown around with vitriol. He told me that he didn’t know if I could take it.

They both told me I couldn’t be like them; that I had to be something more, someone who could make a life for himself, someone who could do something with my life.  

But they told me of course you and him were at the top of the class. Of course I wanted to go to that high school. Of course–

Dad finally converted and got baptized last year.

He never seemed to pay attention to Father during mass, so I didn’t think I needed to either; I just stared at the missal in front of me and pretended to be interested in the texts for next week. I just needed to get through the next 2 hours–

I told my mom that I wanted to bring Lunchables to school instead of the food that she cooked. 

I got so caught up in how they were making weird faces and said that my food stank and I spent the whole rest of the day trying to figure out if my collar still had curry on it or if my shirt still smelled. 

I don’t know why we watched so many Bollywood movies; it wasn’t like we were really from there. Nothing comes from where I’m from. And everyone thinks they know where I’m from. Of course it all made sense to them.

Of course I could win this spelling bee.

I-S-L-A-M-O-P-H-O-B-I-A.

That is correct.

Process notes:

This ended up being more about me than I initially anticipated, which was honestly not the direction that I intended to go with this piece, but I felt like it helped bring everything together in my mind. It also made this super personal and at times felt impossible to finish. I was really happy with how I framed the piece (another implicit of course thrown in there). I had fragments of thoughts that I knew I needed to throw in,and wanted to make it feel like a stream of consciousness, so I needed a nice way connecting all these discrete thoughts together, and feel much more satisfied than I initially anticipated I would be. I don’t know if there exists a space for the voice I was representing just because it is unique to the past 20 years or so and it feels really weird that the voice I end up speaking from is mostly my own, but hopefully enough innocence was conveyed in order to capture the voice of someone who doesn’t quite understand everything that has happened to him yet. 

Reading Carmel’s story in Counternarratives was honestly a little depressing. It hit me on the bottom of page 89, after we had been told the stories of Carmel’s parents and their deaths, and we now began the story of Carmel, and the tone of the narrative just deadpan leaves Carmel to her own devices. Carmel seems to be this constant in chaos. She reminds me of a feeling I often feel, where I am fine and ok but little things that stress me out or upset me keep piling up, like droplets in a bucket, until eventually there is just way too much water and the bucket overflows. Carmel is steady, just going about her life and being pushed around, until eventually her bucket overflows and she erupts.

But the important part is her apparent silence until the moment of eruption. She is so alone in the chaos, she has no voice in the narration except in her eruptions which are hardly intelligible. Perhaps she has not option to join the revolution? Perhaps she is perfectly aware and choosing to stay enslaved? Perhaps she does not know she has a choice? It is unknown. She has no voice, even though the narrative is giving light to her story, the tone is so perfectly detached so as to leave her completely alone. And that is sad to me.

So then the question remains, to what degree are we seeing Carmel? What does it mean to be seen, to have one’s story be told, and how? Even when she first erupts, and she draws on the wall of her master, he doesn’t even get to see it (p. 95). Is the detached description of her image enough, or does the narrative perfectly leave something detached so as to emphasize the inability to understand Carmel and her situation? Perhaps the key of narration is to ensure one does not have the consolation of empathizing, but instead has to deal with the agony of an incomplete, detached image.

Source of definition:  Merriam Webster

populism (noun)

1. support for the concerns of ordinary people.

Ordinary Person 1 comes from humble means. Her mother, a high school teacher, raised her to value education. At the moment, and for the next several years, Ordinary Person 1’s primary concern will be maintaining a high GPA so that she can earn a merit scholarship to a top medical school.

Ordinary Person 2 hates her job but knows that, in the long run, the job benefits will be worth her monotony. She spends her days teaching high school students basic math concepts, who instead of listening to her, rely on tutors and Khan Academy to help with their homework. Ordinary Person 2’s primary concerns are calling her daughter and remembering to feed the dog.

Ordinary Person 3 could not care less about what was happening in the news. She spends her days playing cards, taking old-person pills, and inquiring after her friends’ grandsons. Her most immediate concern is the marriage of her granddaughter who is 25 and still in school. When Ordinary Person 3 was 25, she was married and had a child.

Ordinary Person 4 went on a date last week, which he thought went very well. He is concerned that his date never followed up; did he do something wrong? Perhaps it’s his fault for letting his grandmother set him up with her neighbor’s granddaughter. It would have been great to have a doctor in the family.

Keene’s vocabulary and tone in Gloss, or, The Strange History Of Our Lady of the Sorrows most closely reminds me at first of the language used by older textbooks I’ve read on specific topics, which fits well the source he draws from, which appears to be an historical account of Catholics in Early America (strangely, I could not find any record of this book online). However, with closer reading of the opening paragraphs of Keene’s imposition, it becomes clear that, while the sentence structure and vocabulary carries that same formulation as the text it is amending, the focus is very different. The focus on the characters and aspects of everyday life draws the spotlight to Carmel, as opposed to what one might call the “bigger picture.”

As he proceeds throughout the piece, the piece becomes more narrative and less informative in tone, but still includes some aspects of the more informative style. For instance, Keene writes on page 120, “She slid the book, under the bed, and — Some time later, she felt something tugging at her hand and foot.” This sentence, while conveying information included in narrative but not in informational accounts, still uses a slightly stilted tone. The abrupt “Some time later…” transition and the lack of adjectives and adverbs contribute to the deviation from a standard narrative style.

There’s a brick in the side of the wall that sticks out a bit more than all the other bricks. It’s jagged, grey, densely solid. Beneath the brick, the inscription lies:

STONE FROM DOUGLAS HALL

OLD UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

1856-1889

It is old. It is original. And it is conveniently located in a frequently used passageway. It is set into the side of the building called Classics.

This brick has heard so many things.

Its original home was in a ten-acre plot of land on the corner of 35^th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue. Its father was Senator Stephen A. Douglas, author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, and its brother Bleeding Kansas. This brick listened to the groans of 123 slaves and the murmurs of liberty conspiracies. It held the weight of contentious elections and suffered the shakes of civil wars. It was saved from the fires that demolished its original standing place, and was carefully placed into a new home, uninterrupted on 59^th street.

This brick then stood by as students hustled past. It listened to the clicks of heels as students traverse to class, whispering names of Kant, Plato, and eventually Arendt and De Beauvoir. Has listened to the Latin twinge of the Chicago Boys and the galvanized politics of future senators and scholars.

This brick has witnessed the first kiss of a girl on the brink of love; the chuckle of a boy with a pen and epiphany in hand; the sniffles of the people in limbo, waiting for a grade or an answer or a direction; the scrape of a back being pushed against it by enemy forces; a grunt as someone tripped; the drunken giggles of kids headed back to the dorms; the rain, snow, sleet, and sun of changing seasons and many years.

We don’t notice the brick, and perhaps it doesn’t notice us. But it has absorbed us. In it are all the elements that influence our now. Should we choose to notice, we might inform our next.

Process notes:

I was inspired by the tone of the narration in John Keene’s novella, which was kind of a weighted matter-of-fact. But I was also inspired by a paragraph I read in John Lanchester’s novel Capital which describes the history that occurs on a street called Pepys Road. But all the histories described are single clauses that just hint at bigger, broader narratives. It was hard for me to recreate the effect, but it’s quite wonderful. I also wanted to be accurate with my history of the brick I noticed. I learned a lot about the history of The University of Chicago that I hadn’t realized, especially since I walk past this particular brick almost every day. I think there’s something powerful in taking a moment to reflect on all of the little things that make up one big thing and how that influences the ultimate construction.

“As an homage to this pre-1890 legacy a single stone from the rubble of the original Douglas Hall in Bronzeville was brought to the current Hyde Park location and set into the wall of the Classics Building.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_University_of_Chicago

https://www.chicagomaroon.com/article/2017/11/21/dean-boyers-bike-tour-leaves-stephen-douglass-slav/