-Write 1 paragraph on something you learned about writing’s relationship to social change—perhaps using a favorite text as a guide, with the wisdom of hindsight.

A couple texts that especially inspired my understanding of writing and social change were: Anne Boyer’s “The Undying,” Nick Drnaso’s “Sabrina,” and finally Layli Long Soldier’s poem “38” in her collection “Whereas.” Every single one of these works reshaped how I perceived an aspect of society — or more actually, had failed to perceive, previously. In doing so, these works alerted me to the way I understand happenings in society, and how I am often apathetic without realizing it. For example, in “The Undying,” for the first time in my life I realized how the cancer survivor is always the Other — the mother, sister, lover, etc. Never is the person affected the center of the story, and in that, an inherent injustice is committed against the pain and suffering of the affected individual. Especially being someone who wants to pursue a career in health, I was both astonished and disappointed in myself for my failure to realize this earlier. “Sabrina” juxtaposed the banality of everyday life with the horror of senseless violence, presenting society’s reconciliation of these cosmically different entities through their exposition in media. When horrible things happen, rarely is my first thought the aspect of temporality in the lives of the side characters (Sabrina’s boyfriend, her sister, etc.). How they digest what has happened over time, and how that changes them gradually, is never emphasized. Rather, the projected immediate pain of what has transpired is all the mind paid to these side characters. “Sabrina” not only drew my attention to this temporal aspect, but also highlighted the devastating effect of social media and online anonymity on the grief processes of horrible occurrences in the modern day. Again, Drnaso made me rethink what I had originally not even thought to think about. Finally, the poem “38” touched me in a way that stimulated feelings of both shame and determination. On one hand, I grew up learning about the crimes committed against the Native Americans for the entirety of my education — however, indigenous people were always portrayed as victims, those reeling from the blow of ignorant white men. Never were they depicted as layered individuals whose actions could serve as deliberate poetry, whose experiences not only created great pain but also engendered profundity. Again, the poem exposed a layer of my ignorance to things so obvious they should have been ringing in my mind at the slightest prompting — but somehow escaped even the slightest notice. My experiences with these three outstanding pieces have led me to the understanding that writing allows the author to draw attention to aspects of social change that may seem obviously necessary, but nonetheless are met with apathy or unknowing. 

-Write 1 question you have about writing and social change that emerges from your work in the course.

What is the most common form of writing that authors discussing social change have used? Why? Is that form actually the most effective, or the most easy, or the most palatable?

WEEK 9 WRITING EXERCISE

^linked to PDF form

Process Notes: I wanted to merge the forms of manifesto and instruction manual to come up with a post-breakup code for those identifying as women after a relationship with a man. This merger represents the amalgamation of many of the tropes and facts I’ve learned through my research on the topic in the course of this class, manifesting that in a sort of pass-down lesson to women in the future. I utilized the footnote, as well, in way that I hope reflects the ways we’ve seen it used in the readings. I struggled with where to draw the line between sarcasm and seriousness — I think if I choose to put this in the final project, I may have to pick one or the other and really dig into it. I would appreciate feedback on whether the piece reads as too in-between sarcasm and seriousness, and if so, how I should proceed.

Bertolt Brecht’s “On Chinese Acting” explores the concept of cognitive dissonance within the realm of acting, as well as specific types of acting. Specifically, Brecht poses the example of a scene in which “a girl leaves her family to take a job in a big city,” and as her mother hands over the girl’s packed bags, she says, “well, I think that’ll be enough.” Brecht explores the considerations that must go into acting a such a line through a comparison of Chinese and European acting techniques. Brecht’s philosophy dictates that giving a mundane event the significance of a theater production necessitates — when done well — the acknowledgment of the deliberate efforts on part of the actor to make the mundane event appear significant. The definition of what exactly is mundane is, after all, predicated upon history and the “historical nature of a given social condition.” The event of a girl leaving home to go work some place else is commonplace, having taken place millions of times as a normal, expected facet of society. Therefore, the mundanity of an event is historically contextualized. To avert the cognitive dissonance that inevitably arises upon the masking of what is an objectively mundane event, with painted-on (subjective) significance no less, further necessitates “handing [the mother’s line] over for criticism.” Such “handing over” is inherently a mutual act, with the actor of the mother being the “giver” and the audience being the “receiver.” This act is displayed to its fullest potential with the alienation effect, precluding the mirage of an actor so ensconced in their own play that they aren’t conscious of their own action of giving. Brecht’s interpretation of Chinese acting is engaging in the depth with which it analyzes the audience’s psyche to the level of the subconscious — however, at the same time leaves one questioning the merits of straining for the impossible — bridging that cognitive dissonance with such sincerity and skill that even the audience forgets the historical context of an action or line. Or, even better, the meaning attached to historical context is rendered void by the success with which the European acting style recreates reality.  

EXERCISE

“I need medication,” my friend says, stepping forward to the Pick-Up Counter. 

The pharmacist, a short Asian woman with hair tied back in a no-nonsense ponytail, blinks. “Okay. What kind?” 

I nod at my friend reassuringly, before realizing I’m two steps behind and she can’t see me. She steps closer and leans over the counter. “Plan B.” 

“Generic or brand name?” It’s two minutes past nine in the morning, and I can still hear the sleep in the pharmacist’s voice. “Generic is ten bucks cheaper.”

My friend turns to me, her eyes searching. 

—

At 2:48 AM in the early hours of that morning she texted me, frantic. She had never used or needed Plan B before — for as long as I’d known her, she’d always been cautious and smart and only reckless when she knew she could laugh about it the next day. Five minutes before the pharmacy opened I had met her at the corner of the plaza, between a bank and a liquor store. She didn’t say much, looking down at her feet, mostly. 

“It’s only been, like, five hours,” she whispered, just before we walked through the automatic doors. 

“You’ll be fine.” I squeezed her shoulder. “This is so common. That’s barely any time passed at all. You’re totally fine.”

—

When I meet her eyes I shrug. “Generic works just as well. I’m pretty sure.” 

She turns back to the pharmacist, nodding. 

I nudge her boot with mine. “Hey, he gave you fifty, right? Looks like you made a profit.”

She giggles, before pushing the paper dollar bill across the counter. 

The pharmacist gives a small smile, too. “Do you want me to put it in a brown paper bag?” 

Her words make me think of Mr. Dolphus Raymond from “To Kill a Mockingbird,” who drank pop out of a paper bag to trick the town into believing his behavior was the product of alcoholism. That was the first time I realized you could manufacture the semblance of shame — and that there were things more important than shame. I watch as my friend accepts the paper bag and wonder what to her, at that moment, is more important. I wonder if she knows, even. 

It’s not until we’re walking to my apartment — it’s closer to the pharmacy than hers, and she wants to take the medicine as soon as possible — that I realize the pharmacist said next to nothing about the intake instructions. She didn’t even ask for my friend’s ID to check if she was old enough to buy the medication (in Illinois you have to be 17 or older — any younger and you’ll need more than just a paper bag). Standing in my kitchen I toss the bag to the side and take a pair of scissors to the plastic covering, which seems unnecessarily difficult to open, almost pettily so. We read the instructions, with “in 72 hours” and “soon as possible” sticking out but not in a more important way. 

“Make sure to keep track of your next period, okay?” I ask, wondering if these are the things pharmacists are supposed to tell you, and feeling a strange sense of kinship at the absence of her instructions — perhaps she knew we would have pored over the directions anyways, even if she shouldn’t have. Perhaps anything more than the paper bag would have been excessive, even though it shouldn’t have. Perhaps she was groggy with sleep, and forgot. “If it’s more than a week late, tell me,” I continue. 

She nods, and we spend the next half hour watching a reality TV dating show until her bus comes.  

PROCESS NOTES

In this assignment I wanted to explore the concept of shame and what shame is worth in the context of female reproductive healthcare. The experience of buying an emergency contraceptive pill is often shrouded in secrecy and taboo, compounding upon the already existing stigma around birth control with the notion of irresponsibility and sexual intimacy. Especially in moments where one party is more responsible for the situation– in this exercise, the friend’s partner is depicted as the responsible party given the financial burden he takes on — the experience involving dynamics of shame and information deficits are unique to the friend, a woman. I wanted to play with the notion of kinship between women in this excerpt because the notion that the pharmacist already understood that any further instructions beyond the brown paper bag would be didactic is something I wanted to explore — what is said by the unsaid, essentially. Again, I’m struggling with discussing this subject without falling into the realm of heteronormativity, and would appreciate any suggestions about how to work on that issue in my pieces.

Anne Boyer points out how the healthcare system succeeds in both failing and over-medicalizing breast cancer patients — or even those without breast cancer who are misled to believe erroneous diagnoses. When it comes to the diagnosis and treatment of African American women with triple negative breast cancer, for example, Boyer notes that individuals within that demographic are less likely to be diagnosed but more likely to die from the illness. Boyer also contributes her unique perspective as a single mother, noting that “it should be no surprise that single women with breast cancer, even adjusting for age, race, and income, die of it at up to twice the rate of the married. The death rate gets higher if you are single and poor.” The system in particular lets down populations that are already underserved. 

The injustice of this institutionalized neglect is exacerbated by the expectations placed by popular culture on survivors and those presently affected by the illness. Cancer survivors are expected to tout an almost iconic appearance, and literature on survivors is most prized when it is not written by the survivor themself, but rather about an Other — “always about the sister, wife, or mother-in-law, all of the dying women with a bald head and none of them with a voice.” Literature written by the person experiencing the pain itself is less palatable than when sourced from observers experiencing the illness second-hand. And, as Boyer sharply notes, “women’s suffering is generalized into literary opportunity,” an act of exploitation rendered inaccessible to those actually experiencing the suffering. The form of a memoir brings this exclusion of the affected individuals out into the open, for within a memoir form there exists no narrative of the illness without the author themself — “I” and “cancer” become inextricable, and as such, the injustice done to patients robbed of their voice and mistreated by the system enter the spotlight. Only when such a usable platform is made available for those already exhausted by the war with the illness itself can social change come about. Part of the reparations for the wrongs inflicted upon women by the healthcare system, as well as the sensationalization of the archetypal illness by the mainstream, starts with allowing those affected by breast cancer to have a voice to expound upon the experience in totality — not only the aspects that can be marketed and capitalized upon in advantageous ways. Restoring this agency necessitates providing affected individuals with the option to choose and deliberate upon “what is written about it, or not written about it, or whether or not to write about it, or how,” essentially carving out a space to  answer the “disordering question of form.”

The difference in assumed responsibility as a writer from a lecture and a letter standpoint is stark. When Baldwin writes to his nephew, he follows his claims with supplements about how people will likely tell James contradicting things in his lifetime, acknowledging that they will say “you exaggerate.” In response to this, Baldwin urges his nephew to “take no one’s word for anything, including mine, but trust your experience.” He takes this approach, which accounts for James’ youth and therefore impressionable naivety, because in this letter format Baldwin must also take on the responsibility of being the one who has sought out James’ attention in a direct letter — as opposed to a lecture, which is not addressed to any particular person but rather the group of teachers in general — and therefore obliges Baldwin less, on a personal level, to account for the doubts that the individual reader may face. Additionally, the letter to his nephew is of emotional significance given the close familial ties, and therefore Baldwin takes on a gentler, and in some ways kinder, rhetoric. For example, whereas in the lecture Baldwin bluntly sums up the stereotypes involving African Americas in America as “happy, shiftless, watermelon-eating darkies who loved Mr. Charlie and Miss Ann,” in his letter to his nephew, he states that “these innocent and well meaning people, your countrymen, have caused you to be born under conditions not far removed from those described for us by Charles Dickens in the London of more than a hundred years ago.” The depiction of those who have brought about their oppression as “innocent and well meaning” sounds nearly sarcastic when read directly after the lecture. However, it is evident that in the letter format, especially when addressed to a child, Baldwin’s diction is more forgiving and accounts for the variability of individuals’ experiences, as opposed to blanket statements addressed to a general demographic. Whereas the letter format allows Baldwin to address more of the individual contradicting experiences that may come to mind when reading a personal address, the lecture format allows Baldwin to make more sweeping, and often scathing observations derived from his own experience and research. 

Letter

Dear K — 

I have tutored you once a week for four weeks, now. You know my name and my face and my guidance, as I help you tie rubber balloons into knots, pipe cleaners around popsicle sticks. I do all this while you tell me about your day and your teachers and your amours. I was the same way, when I was nine. 

You are the youngest in my eyes when you talk gravely of your romances — or more accurately, those romantically interested in you. Off the cuff you mention tall Jimmy, who has promised you an iPhone 11 for Valentines Day, has promised you the newest iPhone every Valentines Day, though you never accept. You talk of Ash, who follows you around at recess and offers you smooth stones eroded from the edges of the cement sidewalks that line the playground. You giggle at Pierre, who you humbly insist has a crush on everyone in your grade, though every Tuesday after school he tries to walk you and only you home. You speak with not one ounce of shame and with all the regality in the world — it rivals what I imagine of Queen Elizabeth — and more than anything I wish for you to stay nine, stay shameless, stay humble but not bowed. But because you cannot possibly, I write to you now, for the most lonely thing of all is to bow your head for the first time and see nothing but your two heavy feet.

There may come a day — perhaps the day you read this — that Jimmy grows peeved when you rebuff his offers of grandeur and fulfillment. He may wonder how it is possible that you could refuse such a gift, from such an outstanding suitor — and rather than believing it possible of you, he may believe it impossible of your sanity. He may call you crazy, all for turning him down. My dear, the first time someone calls you crazy, questions your judgment, I urge you — dig in your heels with all your strength, whether that be in the tanbark of a playground or the carpeting of a classroom, or the duvet in a bedroom. The divot your carve will long serve anchor to your dignity, the core of your sense of self as a whole person in this world. Dig in your heels for it is your right, your rational, thoughtful, premeditated decision. Feel in the callouses that form from this repeated act, the stubborn testaments to your sanity.

My dear, the day you choose to open this letter, it may be too early for you to know simply through experience that this world is changing and those who previously ran it are reacting poorly. It is no longer accepted to call a woman stupid or hysterical outright (though I promise some will still do it, and they are to be feared the least, for at least they are candid). But there will be little transgressions that chaffe — eyes that glaze over you when you speak of things academic, intellectual, professional — voices that start just before yours ends, ears that seem not to have heard what you just said — past amours who speak of you as if your mind is something to be feared, your decisions erratic and baseless — and that, you will learn, is an allostatic load which has chaffed many strong and valiant women raw. When this happens, K, that is your cue to dig. And when in doubt, let me tell you a little secret — when Dorothy chanted “there’s no place like home,” she did not click her heels, as the director Victor Fleming would like you to believe — she dug them, firmly, into the ground.  

Best, 

Your Art Tutor

Lecture

A Talk for Pre-Medicine Students, etc.

It should be immediately obvious but it is not: that we live in a state of utmost crisis. Not one rooted in war, or economic destitution, but in a woman’s right to her own soundness of mind. 

The era in which a wife could be sent away to a mental institution on the basis of hysteria at her husband’s demand is not as long ago as we would like to believe. The medical institution, held above all to the standard of “first, do no harm,” provided a false justification for systematically gaslighting women — and still does, to this day, doubting the reported pain levels of women, diagnosing women for psychological conditions later than men, casting doubt on psychosomatic conditions that largely affect women. 

Nowadays, the ramifications differ but are even more dangerous in their subtle creativity: when dissatisfied or heartbroken, men eagerly declare their ex-girlfriends to be “crazy” or “manipulative,” and there is nothing that can be said in rebuttal — because “you didn’t see it,” and indeed, you weren’t there, couldn’t possibly have been, all that’s left is an uneasy feeling in your stomach that one wrong step and next time you’re the crazy one. Tom Haverford in Parks and Recreation, a popular television show, said it best — “She broke up with me. Didn’t really tell me why. Luckily when you’re the guy, you just tell people she’s crazy. ‘Hey Tom, I heard you and Lucy broke up.’ ‘Yeah man. Turns out, she’s crazy’ That’s what they always do on Entourage.” That’s Season 3 Episode 3, titled “Time Capsule.” Look it up if you don’t believe me.

The ripple effect goes beyond petty breakups and gossip. Indeed, female leaders in the workplace are dubbed bossy, or hormonal, simply because their judgment and decisions infringe upon the comfort of their fellow employees — and to have their firmness (of position and mind) believed, to have their decisions respected, they must go to great lengths — dressing differently, wearing just the right amount of makeup, lowering their timbre, just to get on the same playing field. When one of the most qualified candidates in history ran for president, she was dubbed as “shrill,” and lacking “stamina.”

One of the prominent clinical symptoms of hysteria was fatigue. Lassitude. Exhaustion. Sound familiar? 

Therein lies the danger — modern-day gaslighting of women has catastrophic effects, not only on individuals, but on the fate of the nation — and this sort of gaslighting cannot be disproved by rigorous clinical trials. Modern hysteria is diagnosed in the stratosphere of subjectivity, far beyond the glass ceiling. Those who object are, well, nasty. Should probably get that checked out.

Process Notes

As someone who wants to eventually go into the medical field, the role that medicine and paternalism within healthcare has played in contributing to our society’s systematic sexism is particularly interesting to me. The fingerprints of sexism are all over medical documents — ranging from diagnosis of hysteria, which has been a topic of interest to me in the context of my project, to negligence cases in modern childbirth and reproductive care. For that reason, I addressed my lecture to students intending on pursuing medicine. 

I thought about a number of different recipients for the letter — ranging from a fictional ex-boyfriend to Donald Trump, and finally settling upon a young girl. I wanted to write something that could serve to help, to prepare someone for the future and what it holds for their perception of their own mind and sense of self. I set out to write something that would have helped me and my peers who have been affected by these issues. 

Something I’m struggling with is the inherent heteronormativity of this subject matter. I want to figure out how to make my language more inclusive, or at least discuss the subject matter with consideration extended for those who don’t fit into the molds of “male” or “female” but have still been institutionally gaslit or had their mental stability questioned. I would really appreciate feedback on this issue, or suggestions about how I could possibly alter my terminology. 

Originals 

“Hysteria is a kind of pathological by-product of the Victorian-Wilhelminian bourgeois social system with its sexual confinement, emotional oppression, and social suffocation.” (On the “Disappearance” of Hysteria: A Study in the Clinical Deconstruction of a Diagnosis, Mark S. Micale)

“If we show emotion we’re called dramatic. If we want to play against men, we’re nuts. And if we dream of equal opportunity, delusional. When we stand for something, we’re unhinged. When we’re too good, there’s something wrong with us. And if we get angry, we’re hysterical, irrational, or just being crazy. But, a woman running a marathon was crazy. A woman boxing was crazy. A woman dunking, crazy. Coaching an NBA team, crazy. A woman competing in a hijab. Changing her sport. Landing a double cork 1080. Or winning 23 grand slams, having a baby, and then coming back for more? Crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy, and crazy. So if they want to call you crazy, fine. Show them what crazy can do.” (Serena Williams)

Exercise

Process Notes

Powerful women addressing the prevalence of being shamed and gaslit is something I wanted to explore thoroughly in this course. When it comes to people whose success depends on what others think of them, such as public figures, it makes sense that it’s instinctual to cover up or gloss over threats to their mental integrity or sanity. However, I loved how Serena Williams directly addressed the people who have dubbed her as “crazy” due to her reactions in games / to certain depictions of her in the media, tying her experiences to those of women all around and specifically athletes. I integrated her statements into the historical definition of hysteria, while also incorporating interiority from an anecdotal experience to add the element of a present narrator. Layli Long Soldier’s poetry inspired me to play around with the formatting and add spaces where I felt them necessary to manifest the knee-jerk reactions which could not be put into words. 

Layli Long Soldier’s poem titled 38 is striking in how it directly addresses her writing style, and subsequently, addresses potential critics who expect her to be “minding what the rules of writing dictate.” She notes that “the history of the sentence will be honored by ending each one with appropriate punctuation such as a period or question mark, thus bringing the idea to (momentary) completion.” However, Soldier proceeds to discuss the Dakota 38, the largest legal mass execution in recorded history. History glosses over the tragedy, with the movie Lincoln completely omitting its occurrence. As Soldier’s discussion of the Dakota 38 progresses, her structure gradually deviates from that which she started with, notably at:

“When Myrick’s body was found,

his mouth was stuffed with grass,”

where Soldier breaks from the traditional grammatical structure and inserts an indentation – a space without words. She follows that “Real poems do not “really” require words,” and likewise, the Dakota 38 + 2 Rider’s memorial horse ride is not a speech or documentary, nor of “plaques, statues or gravestones” – it too is an act without words.

Thus in the deviation from the typical grammatical structure that Soldier anticipates her writing will be critiqued against, her response is literally one that does not require words – communicating through the trauma, and through the negative space – similarly recreated on page 8 – that this sort of trauma cannot be written about or encapsulated in the expected structure. Soldier communicates that to do its authenticity and pain justice, a deviation from the traditional structure is not merely a poetic flourish but a necessity.

TO BE IN A TIME OF GASLIGHTING

(CW: mentions of sexual assault)

To sip from a soggy paper straw. To dump the foamy dregs before recycling the cup. To sit and work at a round, sticky wooden table. To peek at her screen and ask, what of? To gaze blankly at the huge portraits of white men all around us while reading. To read about white men, written by white men. To walk out the big room together. To shed how they loom over us — like (a) brittle exoskeleton(s).

To chat around the kitchen isle. To have a white male roommate. To have a guy over on a Saturday night. To get the text: “can you make him leave?” To reconvene the next day over the kitchen isle. To feel gross for having a guy over on a Saturday night. To remember, your roommate doesn’t have people over, he sleeps by midnight every night (except when he doesn’t), he lives what I should already know to be an ideal lifestyle (except when he doesn’t). To establish better ground rules, boundaries, for next time. To apologize for making your roommate feel “not seen.” To feel worse after, for it. 

To skinny dip in the lake with friends. To keep your underwear on because you have a boyfriend now. To wish he were here. To smoke weed from a small glass pipe with the curious design of rainbow marble ribbons. To feel your youth come alive with the vapors in your throat. To feel his head rest on your lap as he stretches out on the couch. To realize — he is not your boyfriend — he owns this house, where your friends are staying for the night. To feel his hand creep under your shirt. To arrive too slow at it; to prevent it from groping your breast. To stand. To fall over onto the soggy carpet. To say nothing, because he said to chill, it was no big deal, nothing even happened. To drive back home with your friends. To have a head that aches. 

To shake the orange pill bottle because it is new and makes new sounds. To push down the orange tab. To shake out a capsule. To look up at your roommate who has just woken up (it’s noon, except when it isn’t). To tell him, it’s my anti-depressant, Prozac, when he asks what of. To admit it’s new, you just started this week. To nod when he says I seem more anxious than depressed. To swallow when he starts talking of how the snow will be slushy, today.

PROCESS NOTES

Gaslighting in the modern day has taken on an entirely different form because of what is considered okay or “politically correct” to say about women. The way people get around overtly gaslighting others is much more subtle but just as nefarious in the allostatic load it takes on one’s perception of their own sanity. The looming latency of modern gaslighting is represented by the first paragraph, involving the room full of portraits of white men. There is very little said, but everything felt, and much needed to be cleansed of despite an objectively uneventful experience. The following paragraph about the roommate is drawn from both personal experience and the experiences of those around me, who have been similarly oppressed by the idea of a “healthy lifestyle” or the “right way to do things.” Subtle slutshaming, in conjunction with the irony of a man not feeling seen (despite the undeniable female experience of constantly being othered) are expressed in the “acceptable” channel of a roommate — a snake literally living in the garden. The third paragraph discusses an experience with sexual assault that so many women grapple with in retrospect — specifically, when the sexual assault has no physical proof and is brushed off / minimized by the aggressor, leaving the victim questioning their own reaction to the assault and making it more difficult for them to process what happened. The final paragraph embodies a modern form of gaslighting — in which a woman’s experience is not only exposed and picked apart, but invalidated by external observations / opinions, specifically from those who feel obliged to having a say. The pain of having one’s experience bulldozed so nonchalantly, both figuratively and literally having to swallow the pill of this microaggression, is meant to communicate through the last stanza.