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Since I'm currently working on a challenging new piece, I've decided to post this blog entry from February 2011.
When the first method you go to is not your own >So, I’m working on an essay revision this week. It’s one that I’ve taken entirely too long to do, but, in my defense I have three – somewhat – valid reasons to situate against the procrastination and fear of rejection that has kept me from finishing this. The first concerns the figure about whom I write. She’s shown up in my dreams lately. Twice. The first time she appeared as a spectator in the crowd of a basketball game. As I walked in to take my seat, she stood up and asked me if I was finished. No pressure? Unfortunately, all I had was excuses as an answer. Not cool. In the second dream, we were a team in some kind of scavenger hunt. She seemed really cool in that dream; not intimidating at all. After the second dream, I decided that I have to stop working on writing that involves figures near bedtime lest Madea or T.D. Jakes show up in my dreams. Spooky. A side note though. My dreams about this figure has led me to see how much I value the approval of folks that I consider elders or mentors. I won’t go so far as to call myself a people pleaser, but gaining the approval of the folks I work with and or respect has always been important to me. I want to do right by them. These tendencies are inspire and complicate my work. I always see rhetorical activity at home, so I look at the teachers, preachers, and figures that I’ve come into contact with the most as the site of my work. I aim to figure out what they’re doing as a way of honoring them; a show and tell kind of gesture that says to the field “see how neat the rhetorical practices are of Black women teachers, preachers, blogs,” etc. The challenge in being a Black feminist is that I know I have to critique at home and that’s the work I’m still trying to do. Where this figure is concerned, the challenge feels great because I’ve seen what happens when people have tried and failed to incorporate her work into histories adequately. They get spanked. The second thing that keeps me from finishing it is my sense that I’ve sent this piece to the wrong journal. There was a notorious backlog for the journal I wanted to send this piece to when I first considered submitting it. At the time I was a grad student preparing for the job market and didn’t think I could spare the time involved with submitting to that journal, so I sent it to my second-choice journal thinking that I’d receive feedback faster. I did. Ironically, one of the readers instructed me to send the piece to my first choice journal because the content of the piece speaks directly to an important historical moment within my field. Revising for the second journal has been muy difficil because it has forced me to shift my thinking about this piece. I’d like it to be a recovery of a figure’s rhetoric that makes a critique of the disciplines historical memory and the narrow ways Black women’s activists work is taken up recognized and incorporated into contemporary scholarship. To make it fit for the second journal, I’ve had to think more about purpose and what understanding the rhetorics within Black women’s activism does for broader understandings of the rhetorical campaigns of historically marginalized communities. Totally different argument, right? I think the second argument can be really important… if I can finish it. These two challenges lead me to my third. The framework I want to use to analyze this figure’s rhetoric is so heavily influenced by another scholar’s analytical model that I wonder what, aside from looking at a different site, am I doing that’s different. What do you do when the first method you go to is not your own? How much should you attribute? I guess you go back to work. I’ve said enough here for now. I have spoken
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 I posted the picture to the left on my instagram account a few weeks ago. I took it on a rainy Sunday night at the Starbucks closest to my house. There are Starbucks everywhere in the Northeast. The only coffee shop that outnumbers the chain is Dunkin' Donuts, the "H*& of the Northeast" as I like to call it.
The caption for this instagram picture was "fresh out of paragraphs." That night the statement was true. Working on a recommendation letter had exhausted me, not because I felt I had done anything physically exerting that day - it was a Sunday - but because I just didn't have anything else to say. And yet, I felt like I had to go on. I knew who the audience would be. I knew that this student needed this position. I wanted to help them in the best way I could. Writing is so frustrating at times. Some of the other posts I have included on this revived blog talk about my expansive understanding of writing. The irony is that while I love to say that I am a writer, that I teach writing and that I work for an institution where many forms of writing are recognized, my struggles are real. I have SO much to say sometimes that I don't say anything at all. Scope! And then, I hear things like this: "You have revisions to finish!" "That's not a REAL article" "Will it give you a CV line entry." "Does anyone even care about this?" My inner critic is relentless. Two things are helping me mute this critic. The first is my Audible account. I'm currently listening to Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. It seems like common sense that the experience of listening would be quite different than reading but I marvel at how differently I understand her book when I hear the dialog in it or he exposition. As a listener, I recognize the nuances of her craft much better. Adichie does so much with characterization. In one sentence she gives some of the most intimate and insightful aspects of a character's personality. Obinze is legible to me. Auntie Ugu seems like someone I know. I even see in D.K. the younger version of some of my students and Adichie's description of him makes me think about my own assumptions when teaching students that were born in Africa but have spent their whole lives in America. Although I wonder how long her sentences actually are, her prose inspires me. What would happen if more academics listened to the prose of creative writers? Surely our rhythm would shift. I want to write in this more conversational way (hence this post). This book's popularity is well-deserved. The other shaking shift is my start in a well-known national bootcamp for faculty. Because a number of my academic friends have completed the program, I was excited to begin. Last Sunday night was the first group call and just as I was sitting there listening and contemplating opening a Word Document to ediit something (who knows what it was), the moderator asked us not to multi-task. It was as though she were sitting right there with me in the home office. One of the lessons I took away was about consistency. Accountability is a good thing. In my small group of strangers, I feel a greater need to report my finished work. Because of this, I've made the effort to go to the library everyday even though I am visiting my parents this week. Arriving by 9 a.m has some perks. One of them is that I am remembering that this is what I used to do, before the year of exams, before the dissertation, before the twenty-five mile commute to campus, before starting at the university where everyone on your side of the hall keeps their doors closed and the construction outside your window has not ceased in three years. This is what I will do. This is what I do. Do. ~I have spoken~ “Writing is the greatest faith based initiative in the earth. What determines a writer is your ability to keep your fear and doubt down and your faith and hope up.” ~Junot Diaz
“Whether we think of ourselves as researchers, composition theorists, creative writers, linguists, rhetoricians, or historians, many of us not only teach writing but also participate in various writing practices. We all do language. That is our greatest strength, and it is what makes what we do so much bigger than how we draw the disciplinary boundaries around both our field and ourselves. As doers of the word who teach others to do what we do, we have obligation to do it bigger and to reach every place and everyone we can reach.” ~Gwendolyn Pough, “It’s Bigger than Comp/Rhet: Contested and Undisciplined” The unfortunate theft of my ipod and GPS last month has become a good thing. At the time, discovering that some mofo had went into my truck and riffled through my console in order to get my GPS, its cord, and my ipod made me feel vulnerable. I was definitely in a new place. Replacing those items – though costly – has introduced me to several discussions about writing that are helping me expand my vision of what I can do in this new position at my new university. I splurged on the replacement ipod, purchasing a slightly used one that holds my entire itunes library. The additional space allows me to create all types of playlists and download numerous podcasts. My workouts are better for it. While huffing off the calories, I now listen to Brene Brown, NPR’s “Fresh Air” and a British NeoSoul podcast. My outlook is also better for it. The inspiration I felt when I heard Junot Diaz make the statement that appears as the first epigraph reminds me of the way writing used to be for me.. I wrote short essays because I was so excited about the way I was learning to understand my spirituality that I wanted to share it. Ideally, I thought I was leaving some kind of memory to my students and family. Marketing the book or becoming some kind of spiritual guru was never a goal for me. I just wanted to share my story in written form. If I had the courage, I could have easily shared those same stories in a different form.. That’s another discussion though. The memoir form for me is a place a discovery. I’ll never forget the impact of the essay I wrote for my Creative Nonfiction class when I was getting my M.A. I had been reading about cognitive functions in composition at the time and the term “Cognitive Dissonance” resonated with me because it described that process of seeing things happen with your eyes, but not processing those events for what they were. I used that term as the title for an essay I wrote about watching the effects of my aunt’s battle with MS but not really seeing that she was dying. I struggled with that piece and went to my workshop proud of my ability to articulate that event. When my classmates told me how palpable my pain was and my instructor left the classroom crying because my writing made me think of the sister she had just lost, I came to see the power in telling my own story. I didn’t relish in making my readers cry or laying bear the pain of my loss. For me, that class taught me that writing enabled me to make sense of and name the things in my life. It taught me that what I’d gone through could produce greater understanding. I never felt more like a writer than I did then. After that class, I pushed myself to take the few essays I had started writing on the insights I was gaining and turn it into a collection. I simply wanted people to see what I had come to see, to learn or unlearn without feeling like I was selling something. I have yet to feel like my writing holds the same purpose. My work, as Pough says in the second epigraph, is bigger than comp/rhet. I can give more to my students, my community, and myself when I think of all the ways I know to write. I'm on really rich soil.. It's a good thing. ~I have spoken~ Yesterday morning, “C” called with some disturbing news. He had gone to FB to post a birthday message on one of his good female friend’s page and discovered that she – “A” – had passed away.
She was only 33. To say that the news was shocking is an understatement. Even though “A” was diabetic and was still grieving the loss of her father two years ago and the grandmother who raised her just months ago, people close to “A” said she had turned things around. She had recently returned from a trip to Las Vegas and, aside from telling people that she felt really tired, she seemed to be in good spirits. Seemed is the key word. “A” has been on my mind a great deal today because even though she was a very out-going person, somehow, with all those people around her, no one knew how ill she was or how dark things had become in her life. As I am treating this nasty case of acute bronchitis and an ear infection this weekend, hearing about “A” has made me think more about why nets work. While we live in an increasingly digitized age where social networking has taken the place of face to face interaction, I, personally, need a network for several reasons. Accountability In undergrad, I developed a group of girlfriends who became my besties. We lived in the same dorm, partied together, celebrated each others birthdays, and stood by with four-letter insults and other more destructive tools when we had to deal with tired, no good significant others.. We became women together and after college we stood together in wedding parties and the funerals of our loved ones. It’s a good thing that I don’t need to call them regularly to know that they care, because I haven’t been the best with calling. Fortunately, I know that within a few minutes of talking to them, I’ll be reminded of the convictions I sometimes lose sight of in this work and a bigger purpose in my life that they, as my sisters, know. They keep me accountable even though miles separate us. Visibility Even though I’m an only child and find some comfort in daily periods of introspection and isolation, I could have never prepared for the isolation of graduate school. I was lucky, depending on how you define it, to have two fellowship years where I could be isolated with my thoughts. Had it not been for my graduate network of scholar besties, I would have stayed in my house and been consumed with my thoughts. Through their insistence that I come out with them for coffee, trips to the gym, dinners, or whatever else, they kept me visible in the world and made me remember that someone’s expecting to see me. I needed that then. I hope I did the same for them. Priorities Apparently, the solitary academic life can become worse when you get into the professoriate. I have a small – as in two or three people – network that I deal with on my current job and I’m not happy with that number, but I’m grateful for them. Had it not been for my colleague/neighbor/friend “P” noticing how sick I was this week and insisting that I go to the doctor, I wouldn’t have gone. I would have told myself that it’s the end of the semester and that my students need to more help than they should need at this point. “P” helped me prioritize my own wellness and I’m glad she did. I’ve been an introvert and I can get lost in my thoughts. Sometimes those moments help me think deeply enough to figure out the things I’ll teach or write. Other times, I need to be guarded against that inclination to be alone. My networks work because they are that guard. ~I have spoken~ When I left for work yesterday morning, gas was $3.10 for regular unleaded at the station closest to my house. When I came home last night after my evening class, it was $3.16. Today when I came home from work, it was $3.30.
Why is this ironic? And cruel? 1. I live twenty miles from work. 2. I drive an SUV. Let’s hope for gas prices to drop. |