Writing the "American" Self

I would be lying if I said I was an angel when I was a kid. I am the youngest amongst a very close-knit network of cousins and admist their 5+ year older voices, I was constantly trying to find ways of my own to be heard. I don’t remember when I started being so mischievous, but I was, and if someone couldn’t find me, nine out of ten times I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing. For example, there was one instance when I was about six, while my brother was babysitting me, I left the den where he was watching television went and found a stack of my mothers blank checks and proceeded to practice my “signature” on each one of them for about and hour. Then I made a trail of them going from my bedroom, down the stairs, through the living room, kitchen, and back up our back staircase, leaving the last one just outside the door to the den. Or when I was younger than that, I decided to turn my bedroom door into my very own canvas, where I drew what I thought was a lovely array of stick figures and squiggles with my Crayola crayons. I did stuff like this all the time, and to deal with the constant blame I was receiving, I decided to create an imaginary friend and start blaming everything on him. His name was Charlie. I don’t why it was boy, or where I got the name Charlie (there were no Charlie’s in my life), but upon my parents’ discovery of whatever recent act of misbehavior I had performed, I would immediately say “It wasn’t me, it was Charlie!”

I would say that Charlie’s presence in my life lasted from the age of four to about seven or eight.  As I got older and began to realize that my parents obviously didn’t believe me, I started to quit blaming Charlie and just start denying that I did anything wrong (which also failed). However, the name stuck with my father. When I would say “I swear I didn’t do it! I don’t know how your shaving cream got all over the refrigerator door!” he would respond “Sure you don’t Charlie.”

In a miraculous turn of events, I started playing soccer, and in turn, stopped with all these kinds of antics, but “Charlie” stuck. My dad now calls me Charlie more than he calls me Katie. Growing up, I could hear him screaming from the sidelines at my soccer games “Go Charlie!!!” or when I call he always answers “Hey, Charlie.” It’s is a nickname I have gotten used to, so I don’t think for a second when he calls me by that, but when I do, I think it’s funny that my mischievous childhood friends managed to weasel his way into my identity for good.

My youth often places me outside of Charlestonian norms. Being raised in Colombia gives me a certain cultural edge which places me just outside of what seems to be the standard American experience. But really, these are perhaps subtleties which are inescapable when different cultures clash. For example, when I was about seven years old there was a certain level of normalcy to being invited to the birthday party of every child I had ever met. Dresses, balloons, clowns, soda, and cake were staples to these parties- as were party favors. Nothing unusual about this, I have often experienced party favors in America ranging from candy and flowers to photographs and  glasses. But never have I gone to an American birthday party and received a baby chick.

As such, I gained a companion during one of my many social engagements that quickly became my best friend, it had little choice on the matter. My family thought it best to keep my chick at our mountain house which we often went to during the weekends and holidays. Living in the city, our mountain house was an escape from the city life which we retreated to as much as possible. Thus, I only saw my flightless friend a couple of days a week and was able to note its growth from tiny yellow creature to fully functional brown menace within a few months time. At that point it seemed that the only game we played involved some sort of chase scene.

Upon arriving on one such weekend and having had no time to play with my chicken, I was called by my grandmother for lunch. It was chicken soup, sancocho, as it is called in Cali. I thought little of it as it is a traditional dish which my family often enjoyed, and so it went that the weekend passed and I had not gotten around to going by the chicken coup or the garden. The next weekend, I walked to visit my dear friend but found no one. I searched out the groundskeeper thinking he if anyone would know where it was, but the vagueness of his answer put me under the impression my chicken was out and about. Giving it personal freedom I settled on a different venture and spent the weekend with few cares.

Arriving again to the mountain house, I was surprised once again at my inability to locate a fat flightless bird with little curiosity. Alas, I commented to my mom of my frustration and was nonchalantly informed that in buying the chicken feed the groundskeeper had made a mistake and bought a fattener instead of a regular chicken feed. My chicken had become so overweight that it had been in danger of a heart attack, which would spoil the meat. It had not died in vain as it had gone to feed us that delicious soup to which I had second helpings. My conscience was not actually burdened as it had been so long since I had eaten my friend, and this was the first time I was introduced by my mom to the concept of altruism. I am not a vegetarian, but I did love that chicken.

Vladimir Nabokov began his memoir with a rumination on the nature of existence. He pictured life as a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. The darkness’ beings the vast periods of pre-birth and post-death. I had read these words as a junior in highschool while spending one of many afternoons in my family’s dark, musky home library. In my freshman year of college, I would take astronomy and begin to truly understand how relatively short and small my life is in relation to the universe and time. Furthermore, this concept made me want to apply it to my life itself. How many cracks of light- of true understanding- would I have before my death?

Far before any of these instances of amateur enlightened understanding, there was a different sliver of light, a florescent wonder which shot out in a crease from between my sister’s door hinges and helped to define me and my existence. It was the bright yellowy fog that illuminated a surreal scene. The two eternities of darkness were the wall and the door; it was the state of knowing that she had cancer and then it was the occurrence of seeing it unfold before me.

I could see Liz’s life change. I could see my mother change and, with the recognition of the lump in my throat and the guilt I felt for spying on something so personal, I could feel myself changing. As my mother cut my sister’s already thinning hair to prepare for the wig, I watched through the door. My footsteps fell silently. My thoughts ran quickly. This was cancer. This was chemotherapy. This was barely an adolescent being and I was her sister. At the young age of nine, I watched the beginning of what would be my sister’s thus life long battle with a nameless cancer of which she is the only documented case.

It was the morning of our fourth grade field trip to the Bronx Zoo when my father cradled me like an infant. His eyes went red and watery, and he told me, “Liz has cancer.” At first, I thought his eyes were sweating. I thought his voice was cracking because he was tired. I made up excuses to rationalize the simple act of crying. In my head, my father was impervious to human nature. I wonder now who it was that told me that crying is a form of weakness. In retrospect, it is probably the strongest I have ever seen my father.

That day, he told my teacher. He paced the halls while he waited to speak with her. They talked and she consoled me there after. But I was nine. I was at the zoo. I played in the petting zoo and I chased butterflies. It didn’t hit me until I got home that day. I was too young to understand the concept of loss and the possibility of death, but I was mature enough to understand that my family was upset and shaken- a shifting, but strong unit of six people trying to save her by whatever means.

I had to know what was happening. It was my first time using a dictionary on my own. I looked up cancer. For a girl who never studied for tests, forgot every scrap of homework with its gargantuan fonts, and felt disconnected from numbers and history, I had to learn. This was my first independent study. I was leaving the first eternity of darkness and entering the crack of light.

My light was a newly discovered desire for knowledge. At night, I would trespass into my mother’s new medical library and borrow books that were half the size of me. I would read and stare at pictures that made absolutely no sense to me. What was happening to my sister?

My parents became ghosts that floated in and out of the house. My mother would stay with Liz at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York City for what seemed like weeks at a time. My father worked arduously to compensate for my mom’s absence from their business. While the topic of cancer was fraught with confusion, this new set-up was something I understood and I realized my place in our reconstituted family. My job was to foster a sense of independence and responsibility. Success in this endeavor meant my parents could devote themselves more fully to the crisis at hand. I started recording my assignments, bringing them home, and actually doing them. I studied for tests. I founded an art history club. I watched out for my younger brother and sister. I painted. I wrote. I taught myself about the world and relationships. I needed to feel connected to my own education for my sake and for that of my parents.

Education set us free- and by that, I do not just mean my newfound love for academics. I became emotionally intelligent, able to experience and understand a range of feelings and ideas because I could understand the mechanics and clinical aspects behind sickness, death, and most importantly, life. And my struggle and eventual obsession with learning led me to a liberal arts college that would help me further develop the independence that I discovered as a fourth grader and continue to cultivate. And even last year, when I got the phone call that Liz was sick again, I reminded myself of what survival means- the definition, the struggle, and feeling of reaching it. I remembered the way my small hand curved around her bald head when she slept in the children’s ward of Memorial Sloan Kettering as I waited for her to wake up after one of her eight major surgeries that occured even before her thirteenth birthday. Survival means “on top of life” and both Liz and I are indeed, on top of life- watching it while we experience it, sometimes getting lost in it, and reminding ourselves that we will only accept our second eternites of darkness after our cracks of light have been as enriched as possible.

It is Spring in Charleston, you can tell, for all the flowers and buds have awoken from their cold slumbers to greet the warmth of the changing seasons. Among them all, it was the tuliptree that caught my eye, so vibrant and beautiful with color. Walk down the streets of Charleston on the South side of Calhoun, and you will probably see what I’m talking about. Also known as the Japanese Magnolia, the tree is native to China, but was cultivated and brought here from Japan, thus they got the name–information so graciously provided by my green-thumbed, greenhouse fanatic of a mother. The tree produces blossoms in the early spring, petals of bright fushia, set against a background of pure, clean white. The petals change in color based on age and location, however each blossom is so breathtakingly beautiful that I considered hard about picking them and filling my house with. However, I did not, not wishing to end their lives any sooner than they are already doomed to end. Soon the blossoms will outlive their own beauty. It seems in nature, the flamboyant colors never last long, but always make way for the enduring green that follows. Thus will happen with the magnolia, for it is after all a tree. Leaves will poke through, knocking the fragile petals to the ground. They will scatter about, become trampled, or wither into a sad carpet of brown shrivels, as happens every year. But following close behind the dismay of the petals, the green will take over, and the comfortable hue of summer will paint the city streets yet again. You may have noticed the tuliptree in this purple state, but wait until Fall comes back around and those once-green leaves will turn to a bright yellow, before going through the motions of the cycle once more.

Beowulf (Johnny) charges through wind and freezing water to fight Grendel!

Having long been the kid who spends her days at the stable, I grew up reading as many non-fiction horse books as I could get my hands on.  In middle school, when English classes became more than the construction of scrapbooks and show-and-tell, I found myself bored with the “circle time” books we were forced to read.  When I graduated to classic literature like Emily Dickinson and the Canterbury Tales, I couldn’t help but feel the stifling structure of this cut-and-dry curriculum.  We never took the time to explore anything past the surface of these literary classics–the only discussion felt dry and pruned as if even the teacher cared nothing about our understanding.  Up until now, I had a very intolerant taste for literature.  It wasn’t until my junior year that a teacher named Mrs. Lewis (who everyone affectionately referred to as the Dragon Lady), really helped me to find my interest in literature.

When she announced that we’d be reading Beowulf during the year, the groans were entirely audible.  It was the same story we’d read two or three times in the past.  Little did we know Mrs. Lewis had a different plan for the story.  Instead of gathering around the table and listening to each person painfully stutter out a couple of paragraphs at a time, Mrs. Lewis told us that we were to each read and present our own interpretation of the tale.  The task seemed daunting at first, and the members of my group found ourselves lost from the start.  A visit to Mrs. Lewis was just the antidote.  Despite our grumbling and groaning, Mrs. Lewis suggested that we look a little deeper into the text–try to find connections that would interest any modern day reader.  Like myself, most members of my group were film majors at the time.  A spark from Mrs. Lewis sent us immediately to work on making a trailer for the story itself.

But the project didn’t go as easily as planned.  We each took portions of the tale, realizing on our own that we actually had to read and absorb.  But it was the reenactment that brought this story to life.  A suit of armor made entirely of tin foil coupled with a vicious golden retriever gave us our story.  And the trailer didn’t go without a few touches of our own, namely a little extra drama, romance, and of course, fire.  Lots of fire.  On the presentation day, the entire class was brimming with excitement over watching the trailer–apparently some of our classmates had seen us filming a scene in the freezing winter ocean and had become curious about the final product.  The point here isn’t that we’d made an embarrassing rendition to a classic, or even that Johnny–our very own Beowulf, was mocked up until the day he walked across the stage at graduation.  Instead, something magic happened that day.  Readers and viewers alike had become entranced by the magic and mystery that was already alive in the original Beowulf classic.  And that was the day I realized how much I had been missing.  Thanks to Mrs. Lewis and a crappy little digital recorder, I went on to become an English major in college.

And it turns out our trailer must have made an impact on someone — it wasn’t three months later that Hollywood announced its own production of a film honoring Beowulf.  Great minds think alike, I guess. 🙂

Published at the young age of twenty-seven, Frederick Douglass’s autobiography was written with an agenda. As such, the introductory letters seem only to legitimize and authenticate the value of the narrative. Furthermore, as discussed in Smith and Watson’s Reading Autobiography, we come to the the very important role of audience and addressee (236). We encounter the link between the narrator as ex-slave addressing the sympathetic audience who would be the only one seeking to read his story. As such I believe the Douglass was writing for a mostly Northern demographic and we encounter him addressing this same demographic with almost disdain at the end of chapter two when he confides: “I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy.” This revelatory statement chastises the audience, enlightens, and instructs. Here we are handed the irony of claims made by the pro-slavery fanatics, and the sorrows which accompany its implications. Through a call for emotion Douglass is referencing the solitude of slavery and its inhumanity. It is crucial for Douglass to refer to the north in his narrative because he is writing for the northern audience. As such he is unmasking the evils constantly surrounding the people who he is addressing. He makes this inhumanity poignant by expanding on the subject and pressing the issue by comparing the singing of a man cast away on an island to that of a slave singing. Douglass’s rhetoric is aimed at disarming slavery and furthering the abolitionist movement. Through shaming, enlightening, confiding, and addressing his audience, Douglass’s narrative succeeds in communicating the torment of slavery.

When you’re young, female, literate, and known among your friends and family as “a writer,” there is no better gift in the world that everybody can think to get you than a new journal.  I got pink ones, black ones, red ones, leather ones, plastic ones, small ones, big ones, flowered ones, paisley ones, and ones with little padlocks and tiny keys.  I got them for my birthday, for Christmas, for Easter and for Valentine’s Day.  I got them in boxes, bags, stockings, and baskets.  I got so many new journals that I never wanted to see another journal again as long as I lived.

I never thought I would regret my ready reply, when asked on those stuffy evenings I was thrown together with my numerous and silly distant relatives, to their pleas of, “And what is your favorite subject in school?”  Their eyes always seemed to come out at me as they asked this, ready and twinkling with all the hopes of an adult who has used up all his chances and must rely on those of the youth; the future.  “English,” I would say.  “I like to write.  Stories and poems,” I would add, with enough prompting.  It was an answer that, in its first formulation, surprised me as much as it delighted them.  In a sense, it was me realizing what I “do”, and what I would probably “be” at my core for the rest of my life.  I never thought I would grow to regret this reputation as much as I did when I realized I had signed on for a steady flow of ugly journals that would continue indefinitely (the last one I got was on this past Christmas).

But when I hit my awkward stage–a phenomenon that occurred somewhere in between puberty and my infamous 7th grade “makeup phase”–a strange thing happened.  I started to write in the journals.  First, I preferred the ones with locks on them–after all, my pages-long ruminations on the gym teacher I had a crush on were much safer under the protection of a plastic padlock the size of a ping-pong ball.  But later, when the plastic padlock broke one night while I was inserting the plastic key, and when I realized that I was the only one who cared about Mr. Giles’ nice green eyes, I started writing in whichever one from my collection most suited my mood and purpose.  I would write private things in the pink ones, dramatic fiction in the red ones, and thoughtless things in the black ones.  I used the obscenely flowery ones–the most loathsome–for scrap paper, and I used the unlined ones as sketchbooks.

But whatever I was writing, and whichever ugly journal I chose, I was writing.  I was practicing what I knew I loved to do, but was not sure how to practice.  I would sit wherever it was quiet and safe-feeling, in the oddest nooks of my house or backyard, and let my pen spill to “somebody” other than myself.  And when I had run out of things to say about my latest crush or my stance on cats versus dogs, I usually felt very clear-headed and wonderful.  When I would go back and read my writings later, I would experience an array of disgust, pride, amusement, confusion, and nostalgia.  I would wonder who I had been imagining I was speaking to, how I had thought of that phrase or that imagery, and consider how I might produce the same writing under different circumstances.  I began to peg those things as audience, tone, mood, style, and the bewildering process that is revision.  In short, I learned how to write.

“I trust the great novelists to teach me how to live, how to feel, how to love and hate.  I trust them to show me the dangers I will encounter on the road as I stagger on my own troubled passage through a complicated life of books that teach me how to die.” –Pat Conroy

I wanted to start with the quote from Pat Conroy’s memoir My Reading Life, because when I read it, it struck me as something so singularly true yet unrealized within me.  When I was younger, I didn’t like reading much.  I read Goosebumps and Animorphs and the usual canon of books that children of my generation read fervently.  This was, however, seemingly the only books that I read as a child and I started and stopped reading them in the 4^th grade.  I always loved to write, but did not waste time in reading, something I regretted as I got older.

When I reached 7^th grade I picked up White Oleander from my mother’s book shelf and began to read it.  I honestly read it because I was strictly forbidden to do so, the same I could say of many books I read in high-school.  After reading White Oleander I became obsessed with reading, either because I was entering my awkward angsty teenage years or because I finally found a book that didn’t sugar coat anything and finally presented a world that mirrored what I felt.

Having to read things like, The Chocolate Wars and The Outsiders in middle school didn’t provide for me what I yearned for in books, they seemed to gloss over serious subject matter and dumbed it down for my “reading level” I was envious of the kids in older grades, I saw them reading Ayn Rand and Faulkner and I, too, wanted to do the same.

Finally, in 9^th Grade we were given The Scarlet Letter to read in our American Literature class.  It was, and is still, to this day, one of my absolute favorite books of all time.  Hester Prynne’s struggle was so real and intense to me and I was amazed that an author could create a character so completely they seemed completely real. In reading Hawthorne’s prose I was finally opened to the world of great literature and I hungrily read each page, savoring his words and wishing that I had found him sooner.  As I went to a very, very small private school in a very, very small southern town, the reception of Hawthorne was not reciprocated by my classmates, often hearing them begrudge the archaic writing.

In reading Hawthorne, and subsequently Fitzgerald and Miller’s “The Crucible” my passion for reading was awakened that year.  The truth and honesty with which those authors wrote inspired me and opened my mind to what great literature was.  It was a turning point for me as I strived to read more and more of the great authors and, in turn, struggle in my writing to accomplish the honesty and beauty that pervades the pages of the great literary works.