Writing the "American" Self

In James Baldwin’s “Notes on a Native Son,” the concept of experience drives his autobiographical account. As a writer, Baldwin mission is to put “distance” “between himself” and the social issues concerning the African-American community (6). To do so means that he has to examine his past experiences, which are bleak and drum up a significant amount of bitterness in how he grew up (6). When Baldwin’s father dies, he holds a lot of resentment towards his father for how “contemptuous” his father lived (86). His father’s past is filled with “ruin” and “rage” and becomes a part of Baldwin’s identity; he struggles with these painful aspects for years (87-88). When his father is close to death, Baldwin did not want to visit his father because he’d rather hold on to the hatred he felt, “because…once [the] hate is gone…[he] will be forced to deal with pain” (101). Baldwin’s experiences are constituted with pain and the notion of making himself deal with it.

In Smith and Watson’s Reading Autobiography, experience can be interpreted on how the writer “reflects on the very act of ‘reading’ his own past” (242). Baldwin’s recollection of going to “the ‘American Diner’” in New Jersey with his friend and being turned away from service due to the color of his skin is a moment among many where he feels extreme exclusion and resentment toward white society (95). He walks back onto the street and is overwhelmed with the people walking near him; he believes these “white” strangers are all “against” him (95). So, when he walks into the next diner and is refused again, he takes out his fury and aggression by throwing a mug and shattering a mirror (97). Baldwin expresses his torn identity after this experience as a situation in which he could have been “murdered” and he was “ready to commit murder” (97).

He seems to be always wavering between extremes: he is an American but not treated the same as a white American; he is an African-American but “despise[s]” other African-Americans; he is an American writer but Western culture and literature does not belong to him (6-7). His experience is unique, and as someone mentioned in class, his anger and bitterness come through due to his honesty.

During our group investigation on Monday of Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands/ La Frontera, we discussed how autobiographical concepts play an intricate role in the progression of her narrative. After reviewing the work a couple times I find that the concept of rationality seems to be the most dominant throughout the work. Borderlands deals with the idea of exiting amongst various social groups and having a sense of idenitity with each. Anzaldua explores the difficulty of dealing with the self in relation to her cultural heritage. Smith and Watson explain that rationality in autobiography is “…imbricated in the constant self-other interactions of social worlds; and it must employ storytelling modes, tropes, and self-positionings to tell about itself” (RA 217). Furthermore, “the narrator’s story is often refracted through the stories of others, as in the autoethnographic constitution of the community of identification…” (RA 216). In the preface to her book, Anzaldua writes, “I am a border woman. I grew up between two cultures, the Mexican…and the Anglo” (Anzaldua 1). She presents her self as having a dual identity, and the rest of the narrative deals with coming to terms with each of those in her society. Anzaldua relies on her heritage and stories of her ancestors to develop a sense of her own identity. Throughout the text she offers quotes, poems, and songs that are in Spanish in order to instill a sense of the dualism that defines her. She interprets this as linguistic identity: “I am my language” (81). Since the narrative is written in both Spanish and English, the reader is able to better understand how she relates the self to heritage and society. Anzaldua’s examination of her self sets up the idea of multiple selves, in that there are various ways to define who we are in this very diverse world. By applying the concept of rationality, it is easier to understand how she comes to terms with her dual identity.

My knowledge of who I am or where I come from is limited. When I was born I was passed from one set of arms to the next and for a while, none hung on for too long. I know that I was born and I know that my mother must have been present. I don’t know if my father was there, he might have opted to stay home with his wife. I know that my mother was “big” and that “big” probably doesn’t mean tall because I’m 5’3”. I know that some combination of genetics produced brown eyes and equally brown eyebrows but blonde, curly hair. I know that my mother liked being pregnant, that she liked the attention it gave her, but that she didn’t like raising children. I know it was a closed adoption. And that’s all I know.

No family history, no list of cancers or disease that I’m predisposed to, no medical history at all. No idea of if I have my father’s nose or my mother’s eyes. No idea who my father and mother are or what they do or even if either one of them is still alive.

But I know my mom and dad. My mom’s family emigrated from Poland and hid their Jewish-ness. My dad’s family emigrated from Ireland. My great-great uncle was Al Capone’s attorney and turned him in for tax evasion and was subsequently shot down on the street. His son was a decorated air force veteran who was awarded the Medal of Honor and the O’Hare airport in Chicago. My mom’s brother played football for the Cleveland Browns and is a die-hard Broncos fan.

I bet I traded up. Traded a family who was happy to trade me for a family full of doctors and lawyers and Indian chiefs and mob connections and hero status and a long list of accomplishments that puts a lot of pressure on me to be something.

I’m made up of many languages and many places and many cultures – all adapted, none inherent. My mom spoke Polish on the phone to friends when she didn’t want me to know what she was saying about me. The catholic school in the ghetto that I attended to avoid public school preached mass to me in Latin. I was taught Spanish from kindergarten through my sophomore year of high school when I decided French was cooler. I took a chaotic combination of French, Greek, and Latin throughout my first several years of college. (All of which I enjoyed significantly more than my History of the English language class for my English major) I’m a jack of all languages, a master of none. A box checked “other”. All of the above.

I am not a creative writing major, but when I write I know who I want my audience to be. I know what language they speak, or don’t speak. I know what I want them to know and I know what I want to keep from them. I target them.

Perhaps my biggest issue with Anazaldua is my interpretation of her. I feel she spends too much time crawling up onto her high horse and not enough time making a case to her audience. Though I really tried to make myself appreciate her Boarderlands, I had trouble getting over the initial irritation of her language. Its not that I was frustrated by my inability to understand all of which she was writing, I was frustrated by her deliberate and successful attempt at writing something that her general audience would be unable to understand. Though she seemingly attempts to give the reader a deeper understanding of who she and her people are, any understanding becomes convoluted unless the reader is not only multi-cultural but also multilingual. I tried to set my frustration aside and appreciate her attempt but I felt that her approach to making her readers understand and sympathize could have been better executed.

I did like the way that Anazaldua provided different perspectives on various historical events that I was aware of and I appreciated her development, however it all was so shadowed by development of languages that I couldn’t fully appreciate anything the text had to offer.

My paternal grandfather was born in Bergamo Italy, my paternal grandmother Algiers Algeria, my maternal great-grandmother Vancouver Canada, and my paternal great-great grandfather Norway.  What does this mean to me, John Vasoli, a middle class, white kid from a Philadelphia suburb?  Nothing really.  It means I was exposed to somes things other weren’t; in school I ate sandwiches with sopressata instead of turkey, at Christmas, I ate seven fishes instead of turkey (basically I missed out on turkey, which is a shame, because I like turkey in all its incarnations- sliced, baked, fried (my god!), pattied- more than all seven fishes my aunt prepared for christmas or any cured pork product.)  But John, don’t you love wine and cheese, don’t you talk with your hands and pronounce silent vowels. Yes and no.  I’ll take Tastykakes (a philly thing but I refuse to say Hotess, more on refusing later) over cannolis, but soccer over football.  I love baguettes but I buy them from Harris Teeter.

But this should sound familiar to the average American, familiar to anyone really.  What is the difference between someone eating a baked brie and having the last name Crusseau or Smith?  Joyuex or Johson?  If Crusseau has been eating baked brie (or as he would know it brie en chaud) his whole life, does it become a part of his soul, does the brie en chaud feed his idealogical I, his cultural scripts? or does he just shit it out like everyone else?

I’m for the latter; call yourself what you want, eat what you want, talk however you want, just don’t expect it to mean anything to anyone.  Ahhh, the point emerges, the hidden thread of intent comes undone- Anzaldua really bugged me with her pretentious ‘new’ language.  Yes, your name is amazing and when I am old and senile and my children come to visit me and ask me if I remember them, I will sit in my old rocking chair and just repeat, “Anzaldua, Anzaldua”, but I, as a reader, should be given the respect of having a shot in hell of understanding your whole message.

But wait John, you too shout gibberish Italian whenever someone cuts you off on the Crosstown. Yes, this is true, and maybe I have been ignoring it for too long.  Maybe its time I stopped bending over backwards for A academia by writing under ‘their rules’.  No more.  You can spatchia la nunsa getacho bal formaddi!  Formage!

One particular part of Baldwin’s Notes of a Native that stood out too me was the anger that would show through at certain parts of the narrative. Baldwin’s experiences growing up in Harlem during the Jim Crow era is extremely important in regards to how it is reflected in his writing. In Smith & Watson’s Reading Autobiography, experience is defined as “already an interpretation of the past and of our place in culturally and historically specific present”(31). After reading segments of David Shields’s Reality Hunger, I could not help but think back to Baldwin’s narrative. While I would not go so far as to say, “Anything processed by memory is fiction,” I do find the idea that “it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen”(60). Baldwin’s explanation of the “Negro problem” as being the result of neither class being able to look back on the history, in my mind represents and almost national experience. I find that any of his memories pertaining to his father are also subject to Smith & Watson’s conception of “experience.” When Baldwin reflects on the time when he returned to see his very ill father, he says “it was only that had hated him and I wanted to hold on to this hatred.” I think that this reflects the notion of memory is subject to time. Baldwin goes on to explain that he didn’t want to see his father in a state of ruin because “it was not the ruin I hated”(101). Another scene that delivers an interesting interpretation when looked at through the experience glass is the Princeton dinner scene. With out questioning whether or not he never realized that he had not been served his three previous trips, and that he accidentally took someone else’s food thinking it was is, I think it is still interesting to read the passage within the contexts of memory and experience.

There is an old bridge at the end of Pitt Street in the Old Village of Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. In fact, it is a really old bridge. The remnants of this bridge have somewhat of a history, and different reconstructions of this old bridge have been erected at the same site since before the Revolutionary War. Throughout the years the bridge has connected the end of Sullivan’s Island to the Old Village of Mount Pleasant; that was until 1927 when for some reason or the next they decided to not rebuild the old burnt down bridge. The bridge currently extends half of its original length and has become quite the landmark for tourists to visit on Sunday afternoons. The view from this old bridge is nothing short of spectacular as one can gaze out beyond the marsh-grass to Fort Sumter or simply sit and behold the ocean’s melodious dance with the changing tides setting a rhythm that only nature could provide. The church steeples rising above the peninsula’s historic skyline have given credence to Charleston being dubbed ‘the holy city,’ however this term can take on a whole new meaning when one witnesses the sun setting over the harbor from the old bridge, especially on one of those days when you catch the most amazing mixture of oranges, and pinks, and blues that seem to have been painted on the sky — by who’s hand, it matters not. Sometimes if the moisture in the air spent the day forming just right you can witness a dazzling display of clouds with different hues each as vibrant and as moving as the last. One becomes enchanted by the overwhelming forces of nature that play upon the senses. It is as if nature herself was trying to attain some new degree of pleasure. One does not normally reference a man-made construction like a bridge when trying to express the awesome power of nature. However, back then, they were not trying to capture some truth hidden like the one at Walden Pond – no – they were trying to capture crabs, and lots of them.

Now-a-days grass has been laid down, benches have been installed, and two rows of carefully planted palm trees run down along the expanse of the bridge giving it a quaint charm. But that is not the ole’ bridge they knew and loved. For them the bridge was a place to escape—a place to get away from everyday hassles or whatever was weighing down on them at the moment. The old bridge was a place where they would sit, jump, run, play, swim, fish, crab, flirt, find god, or what have you. It did not matter why they were there – they simply were. There was once a young boy of an insignificant age that found part of himself on that ole’ bridge. He would go down to the bridge with his family carrying nothing but a bucket of raw chicken, a length of rope, and a foldable metallic crab trap that would eventually contain that night’s dinner. The crabs used to congregate against the wall of the east side of the bridge, and he knew it, but more importantly he knew of a better spot – a secret spot – beyond the other side where he would lay his trap. To kill the time that passed as the crabs made their awkward lil’ dance towards the raw chicken he would throw his line in the water hoping a sheephead or a big-ole red fish would bite. His friends would ride their bikes down there and join him in his effort to live life as slowly as possible. More so than anything else, the old bridge was a place where he could relax. When he and his friends weren’t indulging in a placid state of mind they would jump off the tower that was a few meters or so away from the bridge. He and his friends would swim over to the tower and climb its wooden ladder until reaching the first platform. They could only reach the ladder at high tide, and besides they knew it had to be deep enough for them to jump in without hitting the bottom. Anyone who wasn’t wearing shoes when trying to get to the wooden ladder paid for it by getting cut on the oyster beds below that were concealed by the greenish-brown colored Carolina water. On one late afternoon, after considerable heckling from his friends, the young boy found himself on the up-most level of the tower looking down 60 feet below. The young boy of an insignificant age found himself in a moment of extreme self-doubt and fear. But then again, you only live once he thought to himself, and then jumped forth, and before gravity had begun to take its natural course he found himself gazing at the most incredible sunset of his life.

NATURE & How It Healed Me…..

I thought he was the one. The one guy I had dated that was my missing puzzle piece. We were perfect, but we were young and youth was fighting against our relationship. We had dated for two years when he said he needed some space and thinking back on it so did I, but at that moment I was lost. I took it pretty hard. Not wanting to do anything but sleep, go to class, come home, sleep, repeat. I was a wreck living off of Cheeze it’s and red wine and going through boxes of tissues every night. Later I found out my parents were calling me “Marianne” behind my back referring to the emotional character from Jane Austen’s “Sense & Sensibility.” Anyway I went on living in this depressed, overly emotional state for about a month until my dad flew down to get me. He helped me pack a small bag (yes I was that pathetic at the time) and then we went back to his home in Connecticut. There he took me to the Sound. We went everyday for hours. It was early spring and still pretty cold, but the sun on my face felt good. We walked on the rocks and all around the water for hours in silence. This is just what I needed. Ever since that long weekend in Connecticut I realized I was missing more than just a boyfriend/best friend I was missing nature & the outdoors in my life. My relationship with my ex had turned into the same old same old and I was cutting major parts of my life out to be with him. I was ignoring my need to be outside to have adventures both personally and physically. My dad knew this and without giving me some lame speech about how “the boy was never going to come back and how I should really move on” he showed me. I started to realize that I needed to make myself happy before I could make someone else happy. I took up hiking and rock climbing. I also started to pet sit for my neighbors, which allowed me to get outside with dogs. I love dogs and going on a run or walk with them is so freeing.  I also began to start writing outside. This opened all new worlds for me. Writing in bed with the lights out and crying doesn’t really get you anywhere. You tend to only write really depressing stuff that is often a self-reflection of what is really going on in your personal life; however outside in the sun you can write about anything. Nature freed me from the restraints I was putting on my own work and for that I will be eternally grateful. Now a days I can be found in a hammock by Colonial lake pondering my next poem, or out walking on Sullivan’s finding inspiration for my next short story, where ever it may be though I am usually outside.