Throughout the quarter, I’ve found myself grappling with all of the different techniques we’ve explored about writing effectively and responsibly for the purposes of social change. It seems clear to me that the work we’ve read has the ability to make a political statement and inspire thought with regards to social change, but there wasn’t a single, identifiable approach as to how this can be done correctly. Anne Boyer’s The Undying seemed to be at odds with the philosophies of Hartman and Keene, who advocated for leaving gaps in narration when retelling the stories of those who have been historically silenced and are no longer with us. Boyer, on the other hand, believes that it is her responsibility to “tell” rather than to leave intentional gaps, because to put the responsibility of filling them onto the reader would not do justice to her narrative. I suppose the takeaway from this is that when writing for the purposes of social change, careful attention should be paid to the medium and goals of the writing. There doesn’t seem to be one effective approach, but rather, the writing this quarter has made me aware of many of the challenges of this type of writing. The method of tackling those challenges depends on the specifics of the work, which will perhaps inherently be likely to cause controversy or disagreement.

My question is: What is the difference between writing for the purposes of social commentary versus social change? How should/do writing methods differ when the goal is to inspire thought in readers versus when the goal is to create actual change through the writing itself? Are these both possible (especially the latter)?

Below is a picture of my creative assignment, which I will also bring to class on Wednesday:

Process Notes:

Inspired by the Bread and Puppet Theatre’s “40 How-Tos,” I wrote three how-tos on womanhood. I admit that mine ended up being more directly “instructional” than those of the Bread and Puppet Theatre, but I felt that this was necessary for my work’s relationship with social change. While writing and drawing, I kept in mind the afterword to “40 How-Tos.” I hope that I was able to make a statement in this short piece of work. The form of the manual was one that I wouldn’t have thought to use to tackle the issue of gender equality or social issues in general, but I liked how the format allowed me to represent the idea that society is constantly “instructing” women on how to look and act. I also enjoyed drawing illustrations to go with the words, and I’d be curious to hear from others what they added to and/or subtracted from my message.

In “On Chinese Acting,” Bertolt Brecht completely subverted my understanding of “good” theater, writing, or other forms of art. I’ve always thought that the goal of such work is to create empathy within the audience; the more that the viewer is enveloped by emotion provoked by the characters and plot, the better. This strategy, Brecht says, is characteristic of the European theatre. The Chinese theater, however, is characterized by the alienation effect through which “Any empathy on the spectator’s part is thereby prevented from becoming total, that is, from being a complete self-surrender” (131). It seems as though this distance created between the audience and the events of the play challenges the notion that the work has to feel “real” to be successful. In a way, more agency is placed in the hands of the audience members. Rather than being “tricked” into feeling as though the fiction that’s presented is reality, an audience member “feels his way into the actor as into an observer. In this manner an observing, watching attitude is cultivated” (131). 

Kat’s point that “the meaning attached to historical context is rendered void by the success with which the European acting style recreates reality” made me wonder how this technique could be a useful tool when creating art that’s intended to inspire social change. As audience members, we are made to interpret certain events through the lens of a repeated message. Viewing the “mundane” with the significance imparted on it by the theatre over time removes the power from the audience and is probably more prone to promoting conventional interpretations of happenings without questioning them. Perhaps the ability to make audience members more aware during their consumption of issues that have been “refracted,” as we’ve been discussing, through this alternative approach to theatre would allow for social issues to be viewed through a new lens with heightened awareness.

I’m 18 years old and I still see my pediatrician. In the past, my mother has taken me to that yearly appointment. As a child, most of my anxiety attached to doctors’ appointments was concentrated around the procedures that took place before I even entered the exam room. 

Measuring my height was always the fun part. I’d step onto the platform of the stadiometer, standing tall and proud, eagerly awaiting the verdict. Welcome to this year’s round of Is Ketaki Still Growing? When you’re a girl who stood 5 feet and 9 ½ inches tall at age 15, the answer to this question is something everyone wants to know. After a certain point, the verdict was consistently “no,” and I’d step off the stand knowing that the weighing scale awaited me. 

If the nurse neglected to announce this result, my mother would, without fail, ask “And what was that?” After taking my blood pressure, the nurse would hand over the mental health form. My mother looked over my shoulder as I circled every “No” and every “1” on the scales from 1 to 5. These actions were a product of muscle memory. The nurse would then usher me into an exam room. “The doctor will be with you shortly.”

My mother would tell me that I need to start working out again as the doctor arrives with my medical history and the results that the nurses just collected. “You’ve finally stopped growing! And your BMI falls right in the healthy range.” It’s an odd position to find yourself in, wondering who to trust. Science, or your own mother? A strategically color-coded graph, or the woman who raised you? Which axiom to live by: “Science Doesn’t Lie” or “Mom Knows Best”?

At my most recent appointment, I signed a form that put me in charge of my own health. I was 18 years old, which means something, depending on who you ask. In the past, my doctor would ask if I wanted my mother to stay or leave the room. My mother’s eyes would shift towards me. “I don’t really care,” I’d say. My doctor would hesitate. The decision was still mine. “She can stay.” However, at my most recent appointment, this option wasn’t presented. It was just me.

My doctor checked my reflexes and looked inside my ears, examined my spine and investigated my tongue. She freely discussed birth control and sexual health before asking the obligatory questions regarding my extracurriculars and social life. I answered no more honestly than before. My mother’s words echoed in the back of my mind. “Being on birth control isn’t an excuse to do whatever you want.”

I thank my doctor before she leaves, and wait for the nurse to return to administer my shot. I’ve never been afraid of needles. Afterwards, the nurse protects the site with a Donald Duck band-aid, and we head home. 

Process Notes:

At first, I wasn’t sure if I really had a specific doctors’ visit or other experience tied to STEM which was a blatant display of my social issue. However, after reflecting on my experiences with going to the doctor in general, I found that the feelings I’ve been exploring with regards to gender inequality were maybe present in subtle ways. I tried to focus on telling these “stories” as I remembered them, and I think that in the end, writing with this goal at the forefront of my mind rather than with the goal of actively writing about a social issue may have helped with “showing” rather than “telling.” I hope that my writing effectively commented on beauty standards, sexuality/”slut-shaming,” and other related issues that can surface in a medical setting. I also wanted to explore a mother-daughter relationship with regards to these issues as an added layer of complexity. 

While reading Anne Boyer’s The Undying, I was struck by the way she simultaneously reinforces and subverts the writing techniques we’ve explored so far this quarter. Much of her discussion throughout the memoir surrounding the profitability or fetishization of patients’ “cancer stories” reminded me of Agee’s anxieties when writing Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Boyer writes, “At a poetry reading I attend during my illness, a poet is nearly shouting about a cancer she doesn’t have… None of this literature is bad, but all of it is unforgivable” (111). She continues, “I would rather write nothing at all than propagandize for the world as is” (116). One of the proposed solutions to this issue was explained by Hartman and employed by Keene in Counternarratives. They both seem to be proponents of leaving gaps in narration which are necessary for an honest and non-presumptuous retelling of history and of social conditions which they may have not directly experienced. In other words, they highlighted the importance of “showing” rather than “telling,” underscoring the ethical responsibility to do so as an additional incentive beyond the fact that this form of writing is also more interesting to readers. 

Boyer, however, subverts this understanding of the potentially trite “Show, don’t tell.” She writes, “What being a writer does to a person is make her a servant of those sensory details, obedient to the world of appearances and issuing forth book after book compliant with deceptive and unforgivable showing… irresponsibly sparing every ethically required telling” (113). She says that “telling is that other truth, and the senses are prone to showing’s lies” (113). Boyer goes on to explain that “Showing is a betrayal of the real… showing and not telling is not reason enough to endure the disabling process required for staying alive” (113). Contrary to much of our discussion this quarter, Boyer believes that “telling” is a requirement when writing in an ethically responsible way. It is not enough to rely on the senses to illustrate her story, and as the one enduring this painful experience, she has the right to tell readers what she deems important. There isn’t a way that anyone other than Boyer herself can simply process what is being “shown” and then understand the truth behind the experience; this would be to neglect what Boyer calls the “other truth.”

I wonder if the approaches of Hartman/Keene and Boyer are really at odds with each other or if the tactics are simply particular to the types of narratives they are in reference to. Hartman and Keene both wrote with the intention of telling stories that deal with historical oppression and the voices of people who were silenced by that historical environment and are no longer here to share their experiences. Boyer, however, is writing about her own life. When dealing with memoir, perhaps the writer can never incorrectly or irresponsibly “tell” their own story. 

Open letter:

Dear Mr. [],

You started off every year of math class by counting the number of girls in the room. When we outnumbered the boys, you would cheer because when you started teaching at our school, your higher-level classes math classes were comprised of predominantly boys. After forty years of watching your classroom, a tiny microcosm of the world around us, progress, you were so happy to finally see the day when there were more girls than boys sitting in those metal chairs, eagerly awaiting your instruction. I’m writing to you because I’m not sure if that cheer can really be called a reaction to progress, or if it was simply a reaction to change. 

Every year, the second the boys in the room heard that cheer, there was a target placed on our backs. Students daunted by the idea of taking multivariable calculus with a teacher who was none other than a pillar, a “legend,” a rite of passage in our community were told “Oh, you’re a girl so you’ll be fine.” The hours of preparation that preceded my A’s on tests were reduced to a product of my so-called flattery in class or my decision to greet you with a smile when I walked in everyday. 

“It’s honestly creepy.” Those words haunted me, the words of your “other favorite student.” Wasn’t the existence of that label tied to his name enough evidence that I could work hard for my A’s and he could too? No, maybe it is creepy. What did it mean when you called me “sweetheart” in class? What did it mean when you called him “bud”?

All of our successes were met with “It’s because he loves you” and all of our failures were met with “Don’t worry, he loves you.” You were so happy to see that the world was finally catching up, that your classroom was becoming a space that recognized us. But what you didn’t know was that by expressing that happiness, all three years of my experiences in that same space were colored murky by the very problem you thought we had overcome. And it wasn’t even your fault.

Sincerely,

Ketaki

Lecture:

To look around at our schools and to marvel at how far we’ve come, to rejoice at the presence of girls in STEM classes and stop there, to pat ourselves on the back for having a girls’ affinity group and stop there, to celebrate that there is one girl on the co-ed water polo team and stop there, is a facade. 

Recognize that the girls in your classes are quieter. Notice how we only ever raise our hands halfway, how we mouth an answer and wait for you to see and understand and nod in approval before we fully respond to you out loud. These actions are products of the history that people love to claim we’ve overcome. They prevail because we celebrate our victories and stop there.

You may be wondering what exactly can be done, or rather, what exactly you can do. I suppose the grim reality is that to consider the problem fully rectified is to erase centuries of historical oppression towards women. To consider the problem solved is to celebrate and stop there. But this doesn’t mean we should do nothing.

Make an effort to see and call on the girl with her hand half-raised rather than gravitating towards boys who will shoot their fingers up with confidence. When your student weakens her responses by hesitatingly saying “Um” or prefaces her arguments with “This could be wrong but,” reassure her. Make your classroom a space where she isn’t afraid to make mistakes, where she doesn’t feel intimidated or silenced by the louder voices, where her accomplishments and victories are celebrated for what they are rather than why they are.

If you’re feeling skeptical as to the impact these actions can really have, you’d be right to feel that way. Neither you nor I alone can instantaneously correct the harmful behaviors that stem from the conditions in which we were all raised. But let us recognize that our inaction is harmful, and let us do what we can.

Process notes:

Similar to my experience reading Baldwin’s work, I found the process of writing the open letter to be a lot more intimate and personal than that of the lecture. Since I was drawing directly from my own experiences, I felt more comfortable tackling the problem in an emotional and potentially subjective way. When writing the lecture, I tried to shift my tone and the nature of my examples towards occurrences that I think are more common across many/most classrooms so as not to lose credibility or the trust of my audience. I took inspiration from the structure of Baldwin’s “A Talk to Teachers,” seeing that I found his strategy of “painting a picture of oppression,” as Professor Scappettone said, and then laying out tangible calls-to-action to be effective. I wanted to first establish the landscape and cultural moment that I’m asking educators to respond to, and then suggest how they might respond to it. I also tried to be measured in my language in some of the ways I noticed Baldwin doing by suggesting that my solutions are not instantaneous and that this problem is not easy to tackle. I also tried to refrain from placing blame.

I was struck by the seeming intimacy present in Ruskin’s open letter, which became more apparent when contrasting it with his lecture. When using the form of the open letter, Ruskin immediately creates a community from his audience and establishes an intimate connection with them by using the address “My Friends,” and through his use of “we.” In the open letter, Ruskin also includes specific calls-to-action by using the second person. An example of this occurs on page 340, when Ruskin says, “I want you therefore, first, to consider how it happens that cursing seems at present the most effectual means for encouraging human work.” I found this method to be more engaging and personal, and I see how it gives the reader a sense of purpose in relation to the social issue at hand (an interesting technique to consider when thinking about the power/limitations of writing to actually engender change). However, I shared in Lucy’s sentiment that these direct calls-to-action sometimes came off as preachy or condescending, especially through Ruskin’s use of language such as “I want you to…”

Echoing the sentiments of Nayun and Lucy, Baldwin’s letter to his nephew was so personal and so deeply attached to his own experiences and those of his loved ones that it was difficult for his argument not to resonate with a reader. In terms of rhetoric, even though Baldwin’s sentiments and message were not things that all readers could relate to, he drew upon language of love, family, and humanity that made his words poignant for a wider audience. For example, he wrote “For here you were, big James, named for me… here you were: to be loved… And now you must survive because we love you, and for the sake of your children and your children’s children” (6-7). Additionally, Baldwin is measured in his language so as not to be accusatory or isolate certain audience members; he remains sensitive to the fact that everyone in his audience would benefit from truly hearing his social critique and could be agents for change. He does this through including lines like “But remember most of mankind is not all of mankind” (5) so as not to be heavy-handed in placing blame, and “Take no one’s word for anything, including mine” (8) so as not to elevate himself above the audience, something I thought was prevalent in Ruskin’s work. 

When addressing educators in “A Talk to Teachers,” I noticed that Baldwin altered his rhetoric by transitioning away from the very emotional language he used to write to his nephew in favor of specific real-life examples and a clear argument and several tangible calls-to-action. He says, “If, for example, one managed to change the curriculum in all the schools so that Negroes learned more about themselves and their real contributions to this culture you would be liberating not only Negroes, you’d be liberating white people who know nothing about their own history” (683). It was clear to me that Baldwin was sensitive to his audience in framing a piece that would appeal to educators. He also defined education and its purpose in a positive light before entering his critique of the system, which I thought was effective and displayed an awareness of his audience.

Keeping with our discussion of being strategic about what is left unsaid, I found Layli Long Soldier’s use of strikethrough to be particularly powerful. For example, she employed this technique on p. 36, crossing out the word “through” to say “all experience is the body” rather than “all experience is through the body.” The revised version is a much more powerful statement, but rather than simply stating her line this way, Long Soldier uses the strikethrough to draw attention to her conscious artistic choice. I thought this was a nice ode to the intentionality behind every decision a writer makes, and it allowed me to notice some of her choices that I’m not sure if I would’ve picked up on otherwise. She shows readers that what writers elect to omit is just as important as what they choose to include.

Overall, I think Long Soldier’s poetry leading up to Part 2 of the book (“Whereas”) all works to make the reader especially sensitive of the consequences of even the smallest decisions regarding language, punctuation, and form. This makes her critique of specific documents/writings in “Whereas” particularly salient, and helps readers understand the gravity of the modifications she makes and language she picks apart. I found Long Soldier’s response to the fourteen-year-old girl on p. 84 to be particularly poignant and effective. She is very specific about the word choice of the girl and highlights why it is inadequate or not representative of reality.

Below is a PDF of my writing assignment (for formatting’s sake):

Week 6 – Writing Assignment

To Be in a Time of Subtle (In)Equality

To wake up, to feel exhaustion. To snooze the alarm, to hear it go off again. To decide between snoozing once more or having time to put on some mascara. To decide between feeling good and looking good. To decide between feeling sane and feeling beautiful. To resent the fact that you can’t have both.

To go to calculus. To watch your professor command the room. To wish you could answer her questions with the same confidence that she asks them. To wish you could answer her with the same confidence as the boy behind you, even when he’s wrong. To leave the room. To hear him call her a bitch on the way out. To know that she gave him the grade he deserved. To say nothing. 

To come home, to wonder if “home” is the right word.

To move cautiously and with restraint. To fight for a laugh. To fight for a gaze. To fight to be heard. To wonder if your success is impressive or a threat. To check your phone, to stare at the screen, to put your phone down. To walk to the bathroom, to step into the shower, to run water through your hair, to feel beautiful. To look in the mirror. To doubt. To rub off the mascara streaming down your face. 

To write, to reflect, to feel better. To remember to turn your brightness down, to flip the paper over, to have a secret.

To go to bed, to wake up, to feel exhaustion. 

Process Notes:

My goal in this piece was to take the reader through the day of my “subject.” I attempted to capture some of the more subtle injustices that women experience on a day-to-day basis for two reasons. The first is that the social issue I’m choosing to focus on this quarter is gender inequality that specifically surfaces through microaggressions or other subtle offenses. The second reason is that in centering my focus around the day-to-day, I felt like I could simultaneously avoid the mistake of being overbearing with my message. Also consistent with this goal, I attempted to embed subtle suggestions about what’s happening throughout the piece. For example, in the first stanza, I mention the conflict that the protagonist experiences about whether or not to put on mascara. Later in the poem, I include a line that the mascara was running down her face after her shower, insinuating that she decided to put some on.