Getting Uncomfy

I think what stands out as a common thread between these pieces, and also the element most relatable to what I already understand, is that growth is an extremely uncomfortable process. It's even painful at times, or maybe "cringe-worthy." It's pretty excellent advice, in my opinion, to lean into that feeling of cringiness, or dissonance, or whatever you want to call it. Instead of cutting out things that give you that feeling, dig your heels in and get to the heart of it. In other words, refuse to placate yourself.

Myers' ideas about "outlaw emotions" makes me think about bell hooks and her consciousness raising groups. If silence is the thing that keeps us viewing these emotions as solitary, unrelatable experiences, then pointing at the emotion and calling it by name is necessarily a powerful act. I think it's like what Sue Miller calls "facing your dragon." Find the painful nugget at the center of the piece and scream at it until you feel better. Regret feels like failure feels like embarrassment -- I can't think of anything more dragon-y than that.

I spent most of last summer fine-tuning my Peace Corps application, and based on my usual golden child status, felt like I had a reasonable chance of being accepted. I've wanted to join for the majority of my life, and have met with recruiters, gained experience teaching in foreign countries, etc. So when I was rejected a few days before Thanksgiving, my life kind of felt like it flipped out of order.
Metanoia to me is like dropping some papers on the ground, picking them up, reading them in their new order and realizing that there's potential in getting your hands dirty/messing things up a little. It's kind of hard to make sense of these concepts in concrete terms, so I don't know if that metaphor really follows. All I know is that I ended up being pretty thankful for that rejection by the Peace Corps; things tend to happen the way they're supposed to, and it's up to us as writers to figure out how to put abstract ideas in their place, and to pull meaning from pain and disappointment.

Earlier this week, I cleared out my old blog I started in 2010 that I had been using to host my illustrations, writings, and general swathe of nonsense on a public internet space. Y’know, like a damn fool. But that was eight years ago. I was thirteen years old, convinced my thoughts and creations came out as good then as they would ever be. Yikes. More than 80,000 posts went bye-bye and although I felt a little sad immediately afterwards, ultimately a great weight had been lifted. My new blog went up, with some salvaged content from the old one, on Friday.

Revision in action! (You know how when you’re a cranky teenager learning math and you’re constantly wondering when and how you will ever use the quadratic formula in the real life? This is the English equivalent of that.)

Thinking about that after spending some time with these readings was interesting; obviously the context of a blog written over the course of years and years is a bit different than revision in the sense that Harris talks about, but I actually see a stark difference in the way I ran that blog than I do the way I write my papers. Ideas were never fully realized and I never expected to return to them once they were written down, so my writings were rambling and wrought with errors. A horrid final product, perhaps, but I understand this is how most people begin the writing process.

I identify heavily as a one-draft writer. I don’t think I can honestly recall one instance where I voluntarily revised a piece of my own writing extensively; only in the context of an assignment. I say this with a grain of salt, but if I honestly thought there was something in a paper that should have been changed or improved, I would’nt have turned that in. But through these readings was also my introduction to the process of internal revision; the idea that writing remains a discovery, but the more ideas are mentally edited to align with the intention of the author, the less the author feels like they need to be changed, improved, or perfected when the sentence is written.

There is, however, the matter of growing older. As with my blog, I am convinced that anything I try my best to write at any given time will, by default, be the best thing I can possibly write at that given time. I type and delete in real time, edit and cut before words even make it on to the page. Strange enough, the more time passes, the more I learn, the more my tastes change, the more I understand why revision is worthwhile.

The Dread of Revision

There is absolutely nothing I dread more than returning to a piece that I have written in order to revise it. It is damn near impossible for me. In the Harris article it talks about single-draft writers seeing papers that they have written as being," Done, dead and done, done, finished done"(13). I feel that way every time I write something for a class. I will spend mass amounts of time preparing the script for what I will write in my mind and will then give myself just enough time to get it done before it is due. This method worked well for me throughout the years but as I have taken more and more advanced classes I have began to notice just as the article stated a lack of depth to my papers. Sure they sound alright and they get me passing grades, but they went from being A's to B's and even the occasional C. I would compare my pieces to those of classmates that do well and think,"dang I can write this well but I am not," their papers sounded like what I had planned out in my head but never seem to get out on the paper. This has really made me think that I should really put more effort into revising. Revision just was not something that I saw as being all that important.
Revising has really always been something I have struggled with even though I know that at this point all of the things that I do right need to be revised in order to be up to the standard that is required for my courses. I have a fierce jealousy of those who are able to do stellar revision. I kind of always viewed it as just change a word here or there and run spell check. Bam paper revised. Man I wish it worked that way. When ever I attempt revision I feel like I really have no idea what I am actually doing.
Creating the re-genre piece has been one of the actual moments where I can say that I have truly enjoyed revising a piece that I worked on previously. I do not know if it due to the fact that it is being done in an entirely new way so it feels brand new or if I spent enough time away from it in order to enjoy it again. Hopefully this is the start of a brand new bright future of revision. I hope I can gain access to the ideas expressed in the Murray article in regards to new discoveries both in the content of my pieces and a deeper look into my own writing.

Maybe give me insight between black and white

Y'all, from now on, I totally want my blog post titles to be pertinent song lyrics. I just decided this is a thing I'm doing now. This week's title is from "Closer to Fine" by the Indigo Girls!

After I read Muriel Harris' piece, I came to the conclusion that I'm usually a multi-draft writer. I have a "preference for beginning at an exploratory stage" (180) and a "preference for open-ended exploring" (182). I also have a tendency to resist closure (184). In some cases, though, I prefer it. Usually this when I'm writing about something I don't care about (which thankfully is rare these days) or when I don't have the time or energy to think about it anymore. I sometimes get "impatient to finish" (185) and it's satisfying to feel completely done with a piece of writing, even if I decide to revisit it later.

Even though I usually describe myself as a multi-draft writer, I'm kind of torn between the two extremes. This makes sense... as Harris says, the drafting process is a broad spectrum and the majority of writers fall somewhere in the middle.

" . . . all the evidence we have and, more importantly, our own experience tells us that most writers are not one or the other but exist somewhere between these two ends of the continuum." (178) 

I'm trying to keep this in mind, but it's still interesting to consider how to categorize myself based on Harris' exploration. I think I'm a multi-draft writer because I've grown as a writer. Like all y'all, I've been in college studying writing and rhetoric for years. Multi-drafting is a pretty recent development: before college I was mostly a one-drafter. For example, at the beginning of the writing process, I never felt comfortable writing to discover what I thought. I had to discover what I thought, and then write, like Amy.

"Amy explained that she sometimes felt that in high school or as an undergraduate she should have written outlines to please her teachers, but she never did get around to it because outlines served no useful purpose for her." (181)

I used to feel super insecure about writing outlines, and I still don't like it. At least, I don't like the traditional outlines I learned about pre-college. The ones that usually look like this. I mostly ignore that stuff these days and outline however I want, usually with some kind of stream of consciousness freewriting process. I think this is similar to the idea of pre-text writing described on page 175.

I honestly love the process of "rewriting," as Don Murray puts it. I like experimenting with revision, even when it's hard. It's a fun challenge! I agree with what Murray says at the beginning of his piece, that rewriting isn't  " . . . seen as a burden but as an opportunity by many writers" (123). I think I enjoyed reading his piece more than Harris' but both of them are valuable and interesting in their own ways. I usually value rewriting/multi-drafting more than one-drafting, so it's easy for me to connect to Murray here. But I don't think one process is inherently better than the other. There's also a lot of overlap and it depends on the writing context!

I think Murray's section on "The Implications for Teaching" is super cool. Here he presents a list of things educators should consider while teaching writing. I value a lot of these ideas, especially the start of the list, when he says that "students classified as slow may simply have the illusion writers know what they are going to say before they say it" (140). Hell yeah! "Stupid kids may not be stupid" is kind of an obvious statement, but this was written in 1978, and a lot of writing teachers are still ignorant about this stuff today. I also love the last line of his piece.

"The better we understand how people write - how people think - the better we may be able to write and to teach writing." (142)

Addie, Patrick, Elise and I are all in Karen Uehling's nonfiction class right now. Like Elise mentioned in their post, it's interesting to analyze the process of revision in two different classes at the same time. These are actually the only two classes I'm taking this semester. It's kind of strange and beautiful. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed that I have to think about my writing process so intensely, but it makes sense to explore this stuff more as we reach the end of our undergraduate experience. Introspection is a valuable ability! I really appreciate the opportunity I have this semester to push it further.

Writing as exploration

Harris observed the differences in composing behaviors of one- and multi- draft writers, one of which is the time the writers decide it is time to “transcribe.” One-draft writers expressed the need to know a direction for the piece before they start writing while multi-drafters begin writing before they know what their topic is.

Because self-proclaimed multi-drafters like Karen and Cindy can complete “formulaic” writing drafts once, it makes believe multi-drafting is a creative process (181). I think it’s interesting to think about how purpose affects the writers tendencies to create one or multiple drafts in different situations. I have traditionally been a one-drafter but recently I have been working to change my writing process. Now in some situations I create multiple drafts because I started writing early before I knew what the topic was and the specific piece I am thinking of had other, work-related significance. The kind where I needed it finished by the deadline but it still needed to be a quality story. Not all of my school papers get the same attention. I share the tendency of one-drafters to start writing when I have a clear direction in mind, but if I am being honest with myself it is because I’ve had unreasonable expectations about my writing. I am discovering a process to let go of those expectations and begin to view writing more as exploration. I need to be less boring about it!

Although they make some of the same points, I personally liked Murray’s writing style a lot better than Harris’ because it is more conversational and the academic research is more subtle. Murray begins with a delightful and compelling baseball analogy by writer Neil Simon to make his point about the positive views of revision renowned writers have. One similar point between Murray and Harris is revision is a key part of the writing process but  “one of the writing skills least researched” and one that students are not introduced to in early writing classes (Murray, 121). Since revision is integral to good writing because it is the very process of discovering what you intended to say, I wonder why it has been so commonly understated in university writing classes. Perhaps it has something to do with external constraints like time since students often take other classes and maintain a balance of homework between them all. I think that is why purpose matters when discussing composition behaviors because they can differ greatly depending on purpose.

I would be surprised if there was one of us in the class who has never been torn apart in a workshop. It seems inevitable and absolutely a part of the learning process. I think this is what many of the students in The Emotional Work of Revision are referring to. This fear that showing peers unpolished work will leave us to be perceived as less than, or even poor writers. It is a valid fear as we each explore ourselves as writers and the world around us. This fear is founded in the teacher with the red pen, as we spoke about earlier in the semester. But, there is value to this process. The value lies in both sides, in my opinion. There is value in fearing being torn apart; it pushes each of us to bring our best work to the table. It encourages us to take the time to do on the fly revision, explore foggy topics, and find new ways of seeing subjects. The act of having a difficult workshop also grows us as writers, and becomes an important part of the process. No fighter walks into a championship fight without having their lights knocked out a few times first. The same goes for our writing. Professor Myers is referenced in the piece as encouraging an emotional venture into a messy first draft. I can't help but wholeheartedly agree. The first draft should often be an expulsion of all thoughts on the subject, a solid stone which we can carve a clearer picture out of. Yet, we must also be able to streamline our thoughts cohesively on a first try. How else can we sound eloquent at the dinner table?

The other piece, Composing Behaviors of One and Multi-Draft Writers, touches on this concept more thoroughly. I think there is something to be said about creating a first draft which is pleasing and illustrates the idea we are trying to illustrate. In fact, as I've said before, for much of my writing life I was a one draft writer. It seemed that by overworking a piece, the sincerity risked being lost. The writing became too technical, too emotionless. This process of revision, in my opinion, is reflective of the word replacement process. These examples were images or ideas I was too attached to but weren't operating in the intended manner. And so, we must reflect on what each piece of a piece is doing for the larger picture. We must adopt a universal view as well as an individualistic one. In many ways, this creates a schizophrenic revision process with advanced writers. One in which each syllable is moving the piece forward and deserves focus. Yet, the larger picture must always be in tighter focus. We must live in each moment and know our arc all the way to the end.

This level of revision is difficult for an individual. How can we truly create such a distance between ourselves and a piece we have written that we can possibly perceive a stranger's understanding? We can certainly reflect and improve technical parts of a piece: clarity, flow, arc. But, how can we remove the intended underlying meanings from our already fully developed preconceptions? This is when sharing becomes important. This is where we as writers must face the fear of getting emotionally rampaged by our peers and know that an audience intended piece was never for us, we already know what we are trying to say, but for those who haven't seen the world through our lenses yet.

Reconciling Revision

As a writer, realistically we realize we’re going to revise our pieces. The process however can be very different depending on the type of writer we are. For some the revision step is completed in creation and construction. One-draft writers revise as they write, with little to no revaluation only progression forward as the piece is completed. For one-draft writers, revision isn’t considered a major focus of the piece because they come into the draft with a set direction, and the piece is constructed around this set plan. I personally believe academic writing, and the structure of academic writing pushes a one-draft format. With most academic writing I feel confined, and almost caged into a topic with little to no creative license.

Whereas, for multi-draft writer’s revision is the construction. They create a framework as they write, and then return to the piece over and over building upon the initial framework, altering it, and allowing the piece to change as it develops. The changes the piece of writing can face can be minimal to a complete reconstruction of the writing and these changes can be done in a short period of time or with significant lapses in time between revision of drafts. For me I find myself a multi-draft writer the more engaged and connected to the piece I feel. If I enjoy writing the piece, I’m more engaged and more willing to develop the drafts and work on them.

Although my dislike for academic writing because of the feeling of a rushed confinement to a linear structure, many appreciate the one-draft nature academic writing provides and they carry this structure into other types of writing. For most one-drafters, revision is done in the moment as they are writing their piece. The lack of returning to the work and reevaluation of what’s written leavers the writer with less reflection but a solid completion. In Harris’ article, “Composing Behaviors of One or Multidraft Writers,” a major point of interest or significance for me is when she writes, “The one-drafters move quickly to decisions while composing, and they report that once they are done with a paper, they prefer not to look back at it, either immediately re-read it or at some future time, to think about revising it.” (Harris). For typical one-draft writers, they work the piece onto paper, and once they reach the end its reached its final point of completion. As I writer, this is where I differ from a one-draft structure particularly when I’m writing about a topic, or style I’m passionate about. Once I reach the end of the paper, I want to go back, review, re-read, and reevaluate my creative decisions rather than having the finality of closure. This fast pace and quick decision time I think allows for more limited organic development, because one-drafters have already committed to a direction before they even start writing.

I never considered revision and the importance it played in the writing process until taking the revision theory class last semester, and Murray’s internal revision piece really struck a chord with me is the importance of discovery within revision. Discovery dictates how we write, what we write, and it helps us develop a directional heading within our writing. I think often that one-draft writers miss this opportunity because since the revise as they write, it limits the amount of discovery and the organic nature of the writing process in some ways. At least I know that’s definitely the case in my own writing, because the less investment into the discovery process, the less revision I do, and the less revision the more linear and less developed I find the draft. Although I may never feel truly done with a piece, I do know however that if I’m no invested in the piece, and I don’t enjoy the piece the less I’m willing to discover about it and the less I feel connected to it.

Revision ex, in, e-ternal

An important piece of information is given early in the Harris article is that extensive revisers are more capable of detaching and gaining distance from their writing, where non-revisers are less likely to be able to achieve this. This simply shouts to me "Walk the walk (embrace revision), and benefit." I love reading about all the varying composing behaviors which are discussed in Harris' article. It helps me remember that I'm one of many and not some isolated nut who writes in some fantastically fucked-up pattern weirdly different from everyone else. Writers compose both good and bad shit in many varied ways. I rarely battle disinterest anymore, but often have anxiety early-on with prescribed writing assignments. The anxiety usually abates after the first revision or two. While I'm a big fan of sentence-level revision, editing words and finding an eloquent way of saying something, if appropriate, I don't worry about it initially anymore. Why bother? That sentence or paragraph you're editing may not exist in a later draft. What's most important initially is that you're focusing on relaying a specific message to an intended audience. It isn't always that simple, but often it is. Focusing on the larger picture and purpose first, and eventually you'll get to a point where the rewarding sentence level revisions are appropriate. Sometimes I don't even have to do such intimate revisions, they just occur in the process of draft revision. 

I usually knock high school writing courses, especially when thinking in a revision context. As I think back on it in this moment, I wonder if being exposed too deeply into revision theory early on would have been a turn-off, therefore causing me to buck writing entirely. Teachers were happy if you were mildly enthusiastic about writing - pushing revision too heavily would have seemed like too much work and a waste of our time. Dunno. Perhaps I'm trying to justify my shitty K-12 writing education and the tired teachers pacing themselves to retirement or a better opportunity. If we move on to love writing in college, we are lucky if we are taught to embrace revision. A serious writer isn't concerned about work, but rather looks forward to the challenge and laughs at the muck-ups. More than ever I love throwing my writing to the curb and starting from scratch - some of my recent initial drafts have been simple warm-ups, excursions leading to true inner wants, interests, and needs relating to writing, perhaps graced with a new grand idea somewhere in the process. Its fun, even if my grand idea turns out to be a shitty one the next week, or day.

I love Murray because his writings about writing and revision are so authoritative and confident. I've noticed that my writing often shifts from confident to not-so- confident, often within the same paper. The shift is often as simple as going from making solid declarations to sounding as if I'm asking a question - and it goes back and forth. Murray's definition of writing is spot-on, using language to discover meaning in our experiences and communicating it. When thinking abou that, as well as the confidence a write may or may not reveal in their tone, I love the Elie Wiesel quote "I write in order to understand, as much as to be understood." Sadly whenever I hear or see Elie Wiesel's name, all I can think about is how the Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner was swindled by Bernard Madoff to the tune of millions. 

Thinking about pre-text always fascinates me because I identify with it. I think pre-text has a huge impact on the authority of our writing and is used in some way by both single and multi-drafters. Someone may argue that some don't pre-write but I would argue that we all do to some extent, even if we don't know how the paper is going to turn out or even what we want to communicate... writing begins with some pre-thought. Its important to me throughout the entire writing process. I know there's an argument that it doesn't necessarily lead to better on-paper/ screen writing, and cannot be measured, but I think pretext is an important part of my writing, even though it can be a hindrance as well as a helper. I sometimes pre-text too much or do so in a worrisome way, and often forget the exact way I had it thought out and therefore become frustrated more than might be healthy. Similar to the account of William Lutz, I compose some of my best pre-texts while driving, riding my bike, or exercising at the Y and I'm often compelled to halt my activity in the spirit of getting my thoughts notated somehow (like a dog on a mission I can improve it, or what I'll say while I'm doing anything aside from sitting at a keyboard. One of my favorite ways to pretext lately is immediate TTT (talk-to-text) on my phone. I can get a thought out almost as quickly as I can think it. I also think of things I want to know answers to or ideas to research later on. I admit, less than 25% of my pretext ideas don't make it to any final draft, but that's okay because its the only way I can live half-sane without having to get straight to my keyboard. I think my actual writing process closely resembles Lynn Z. Bloom's. I don't really know who I think I am or wtf I'm doing until I sketch a bit, and even then It can be "sketchy." 

There's mention of the real-world where we may not have the time luxury of redrafting, but If one becomes familiar and comfortable with revision, eventually it becomes primal allowing for quicker effective edits on a time schedule. There's mention that word processing might be advantageous to rewriting, but I also believe that writing well by hand the first time around is an art which shouldn't be discounted. I don't entirely dispute the notion that multi-drafting does not always produce better papers, its also about heart. Someone who doesn't have heart for the art can be told to draft multiple times, and do so, but if that person doesn't really believe in themselves or the practice, then shitty drafts may continue to result like a self-fulfilling prophecy. "I don't really believe in this redrafting shit, but I keep doing it because I'm told to." I think there's a lot of faith required of writers to invest in themselves.

Re-re-re-revising

It's interesting to be talking about revision in two classes at once -- in Karen Uehling's nonfiction class, we just read a piece by Patricia Hampl called Memory and Imagination. This passage stood out to me:

"It still comes as a shock to realize that I don't write about what I know, but in order to find out what I know. Is it possible to convey to a reader the enormous degree of blankness, confusion, hunch and uncertainty lurking in the act of writing?"

This uncertainty Hampl talks about was in my mind while reading both of these essays on the process of revision. I tend to side more with Harris' multi-draft writers, those who need to take their sweet ass time getting to the point, and often don't even know what the point is until actually arriving there, or maybe some time afterward.

I can also sympathize with the feeling that a piece of writing is never really "done." I get a feeling for when it's complete-ish, but I can always go back to something I've written and find a few things to improve on. I think that's what terrifies me about publication -- once it's out there, I've kind of forfeited my ability to revise. I had a poem published once that I later made some changes to, and now I feel weirdly misrepresented by the early draft that's available for folks to read, while the "true" draft sits in a notebook somewhere in one of my desk drawers. If I somehow were able to find it, I'm positive that I'd still be able to find things to tweak and improve.

When Murray talks about this fear of "the absence of discovery," I get a glimpse of the way I used to write. I spent the majority of my academic career (I'm including middle/high school in this) as a single-draft type of writer. I never got along well with teachers who forced rough drafts on me, rejecting all manner of creative or abstract brainstorming activities. For me, writing an essay was as easy as sitting down and finishing it all in one go.

I suppose this speaks also to the simplicity of the assignments I used to receive, but it was some time after I started college that I changed my tactics. I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but writing, now, is a fairly messy process for me. It involves oodles of internal revision, thinking about writing, thinking about thinking, and thinking about what I've written after actually writing it. I think about my writing in the way I might think about someone else's poem that I'm workshopping -- what does this mean to me? What do I take away from this?

Thinking about my writing in the context that it has something secret to offer me, like it's a way to tell myself something that I didn't know I knew, is a powerful motivator to revise. Once I can kind of figure out what the point is, I'm able to revise from that frame of reference. For me, writing is kind of like dreaming. It's normal, but it's also magic, and I have a lot to learn from critically analyzing it after the fact.

Hi All, I think I've figured out how we can all get notifications, but it isn't the simplest thing in the world. from the main Blogger screen (white background, as opposed to our course blog with the water droplet background), Click on Settings, then click on email. In the next screen I believe we would each have to add each other's email addresses.

My blog posts here are entered on behalf of my personal gmail account, as opposed to my student account. When I went to settings/email, Dr. Ballenger's email was pre-populated in the "comment Notification Email" box. I added my student email there, as well as to the next box which is "Email posts to" and I received the notification of my test post in my student email. Dunno if everyone wants to go to the trouble, but that's the solution that would work if everyone was willing to add everyone else's email to their settings. I would like to receive notifications. If all students replied to this with an email address to which they'd like to receive notifications, we can all enter them in and receive notifications with links.

@ Belenky et al. DANG Y'ALL 👏

This reading is fascinating and exhausting. While I read the first section on "silence," I thought a lot about my mom and my grandma (her mom). Both of them are powerful, independent women, but while my mom has progressed significantly in trusting her knowledge and voice to guide her in life, I still see a lot of similarities between my grandma and the "silent women" described here. As Belenky et al. describe, women like this have experienced life in a way that has made them very suspicious of words.

"Words were used to separate and diminish people, not to connect and empower them" (24). 

This mindset breeds in isolation. I think pages 23-34 are a powerful exploration of the effects of isolation on development. I had a very isolated childhood - although I was encouraged to communicate and play, I usually was only able to communicate and play with myself, my dogs, and my parents. (I was home schooled until 4th grade.) After I was placed in public school, I rarely had positive associations with learning, similarly to women like Ann and Cindy: "Most had been passed along from one grade to the next, as all those words just slipped past" (33). The isolation I experienced in my earliest stages of childhood later combined with trauma I experienced in my adolescent years, and my skepticism of learning continued to grow. School was hell. I never thought I was smart or good at things. Authority figures sometimes told me I was articulate and precocious and a good writer, but I never felt smart.

Even when I started college I never really felt smart. I felt like an imposter who slipped in because I got lucky. For the first couple years, I learned everything by listening, and I rarely participated in class discussions, like the freshman Rachel (37). The section on "received knowers" on pages 35-51 is super relatable, because I only started transitioning out of this mindset in recent years. My big turning point was around 2014-2015, when I started working at our writing center. I was so insecure I didn't think they would hire me... but they did. This was when I was truly inspired to find my real voice and abilities, think for myself, and trust my own decisions. This was when I finally started taking control of my education, when I realized what I actually care about and what I want to learn. This was when I found the rhetoric program. This was when I found my people.

This is why pages 45-48 are so compelling to me. The idea that received knowers start to become less dependent on others for knowledge when they are "thrust into roles of responsibility for others" (47) is particularly convincing, because I know how true it is personally. My biggest shift in my attitude towards learning happened when I started helping others with their own learning.

"Through listening and responding, they draw out the voices and minds of those they help to raise up. In the process, they often come to hear, value, and strengthen their own voices and minds as well" (48). 

My confidence in my writing continues to grow the more I help others with their writing. I know how to do things, and I know how to help other people figure out how to do things. This has helped me in so many ways: I'm happier and more self-assured, and I'm able to see my life more clearly as a developing narrative. I'm in a place where people look to me for advice, and I actually feel qualified to give it. Sometimes I even feel pretty smart!

A self-made mirror

I saw a post on social media earlier this week that went something like “Girl’s don’t mature faster than boys, girls are punished at a much earlier age for behavior that boys are excused for well into adulthood.”

Holy hell, if this article didn’t epitomize that theory for me. Everything seems clearer to me now about the way women are socialzed, especially those who experience explicit oppression, and now I’m pretty ticked off.

The example used about “all bears in the north are white” illuminated this in the most clarity for me, and although in the article it was framed as the product if a culture that emphasizes shared experience rooted in reality, it reminded me a lot of those word games I used to trick my friends with in elementary school. They went something like, “If Johnny buys green paint and paints his white house green, what color is The White House?” “Green.” “Johnny’s not the president.” “...What?” Oh, that shit made me laugh. Good times. Looking back now, that playful bit of verbal manipulation doesn’t seem as harmless as it did then. It feels like it embodies a certain trend of American culture; if you are an independent critical thinker, you must give an answer immediately, you must be sure of it, and that gives you the authority to tell those who can’t or what answer what the truth is, regardless of whether or not your assertion is grounded in logic, reality, or any combination of the two.

“Thinking for themselves violates their conceptions of what is proper for a woman.” I winced at that line. I also cringed at the story of the new mother who simply could not leave her own mother for fear of not knowing what to do to care for the baby she had literally carried and delivered. It is amazing to me that language is powerful enough to trap women in the delusion that their own innate maternal compulsions are simply not valuable enough to be truly listened to, let alone acknowledged to exist at all, when compared to outside directives from perceived ‘authorities’. I love my mother, but if she tried to tell me how to raise my own baby, I’d probably bite her.

The ideas about the knowledge of one’s self routed in the transmission of language also fascinated me. On a little tangent, us illustrators have a little holiday every year on February 1st called Hourly Comic Day. The celebration is in the name; every hour, we make one comic about what we are doing, thinking, feeling, eating, working on, talking to, and just generally how we are experiencing our lives that day. I adore this day. It’s a chance for me to see my peers as people, in a sense, even if they are not right in front of me, for the comics’ sole focus is the illustrator. Artists often disappear into their art; the product is where the value lies, not the producer, in the eyes of the consumer. But in these wonderfully thoughtful, intimate comics, the subject of the product /is/ the producer, and all the consumer’s attention and appreciation is funneled to them. Drawing is definitely a language I use to communicate, and the way others use it to convey their experiences of their own self is just great. They draw their wardrobes, hairstyles, piercings, surroundings, and expressions with a level of self-awareness that is sometimes comical but never not earnest. It is, all in all, a 24-hour introspection of ourselves, and it’s so enjoyable and enlightening we cannot help but share it with everyone in our circle who wishes to know us as we know ourselves.

It’s nothing short of abuse to rob someone of their ability to know themselves. If one doesn’t know themself, one cannot express themself, and if one cannot express themself, one essentially cannot exist. 

Language as a consensually validated symbol system

My first reaction is I enjoy how Belenky et al. present research in the form of personal stories from women in their study. It gives the piece a human touch I think necessary for a conversation on the relationship between silence and epistemology. Also, after reading this I feel  privileged to have grown up in a supportive house and community where I was allowed to play and communicate with others since, according to the authors, it is a foundation for learning. At first I was skeptical of the notion that self isolation is connected with disconnection from the social world, that "individuals remain isolated from others; and without tools for representing their experiences people also remain isolated from the self." (26).

After more consideration it makes complete sense. I thought of a concept I learned in Lit Theory & Criticism called the mirror stage (from the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan) and how essentially babies (people) first understand their own self image through negation of the other, whether their mother or a crib-device holding them up. Either way, they get a sense of their own image through what they are not, the idea is they understand for the first time, Oh, that thing I see in the mirror is my mother, and she is holding something. I am not my mother, therefore that 'something' she is holding is me. Thinking about our identity as a construct created through socialization and the negation of the other is jarring because it threatens the sense of individuality (and ego) we hold onto in American culture.

I went off on a tangent but it relates to the text because Belenky et al. argue "exterior dialogues are a necessary precursor to inner speech and an awareness of one's own thought process." (33). What I understand is since play provides children with their first metaphors it prepares them to enter the "consensually validated symbol system" that is language (33). It hurts me to think about women like Ann and Cindy who had no such experience, who grew up in physical and emotional isolation and completely unprepared for school from the very beginning because they were not allowed the important first step of meaning-making.

It is interesting how absolute Truth is so central to the silent women making them dualists, seeing things in polarities-- black and white, right and wrong, etc. They view authorities as having the Truth without awareness knowledge could be a construction. Honestly, I did not think of reality as competing subjective truths as I do now, I thought there was one Truth too. In a way, I entered college as a "received knower," my freshmen experience is similar to those mentioned by women on page 38, I relished in having so much in common with my friends and I could not distinguish my own thought and opinions from theirs (this is embarrassing to admit but it's true). I wonder if many people feel like this when they enter college? My peers who are reading this, what do you think? I feel like my college experience has been a journey of dissociating myself with others and finding my own truth, my own distinctive voice. I recognize I am more privileged than the women in the text, but it still made me think about my own experience with silence and knowing.

Thinking about the world in B&W

Its a hard truth to swallow that there are people out there with very little experience, drive, or discovered imagination to write or speak about themselves and the world around them. It also sounds as if not only aren't there any tools for some, but no drive, nor even the slightest clue that such wonderful things exist. The silent "...women believe that the source of self-knowledge is lodged in others." (Belenky, 31) Until page 32 I was wondering to myself "What makes these women silent, why have they no imagination, are they from this country?" Turns out they grew up mostly in isolation, living fairly cut-off from communities, had few friends, and violence rather than words was used to influence decisions in others in the home: childhoods with neither much play or dialogue. This is so sad and being faces with these facts is tough to swallow. 

I suppose I assumed these unfortunate situations existed, I just haven't been given so much information about how it can affect someone exposed to it, and I'm in a bit of a down mood as digestion of much of this material made me sad. It makes me feel lucky that I've had mostly good experiences in life, thinks a lot of us take for granted. Failing, or not being able to develop one's own voice and a sense of being able to talk and think things through sounds terrifying. It sounds like outer speech is important to identifying inner speech, and I'd never thought about it before because I thought we all had imaginations and complex thoughts going on in out minds, and for all situations. Its amazing to read about how detrimental the imbalances in life can be to our brains concerning complex language and thought developmental processes.

An example was given early on, the retrospective account of Bonnie and her daughter, where Bonnie just thought that her baby needed feeding when she cried, rather than considering possible alternate reasons. I imagine this was very early in her motherhood because it doesn't take long before you can smell the poop without question. I mention this because of my gender studies course I'm taking, where we've been debating a lot lately about whether or not women have natural motherly instincts. Some say yes, and some say no. I think most of what we know and do is learned behavior. I believe animals are more likely to have initial born instincts compared to human women and men. I think people assume that women are better with children because they are likely thinking about the road ahead and post-birth a lot more than fathers are, and the mother's forethought, or apparent readiness is observed as instinct, where I think mothers are just more prepared than many fathers. We assume, and are happy to do so, rather than to think more deeply about the possible reasons why many mothers are seemingly better with children than men. I think I just scribed-out some personal thoughts.

When I was young I had an amazing, wild imagination and still do at times. I even had categories of imagination. I think many of the people described in the reading must lack imaginination, such as the russian peasants mentioned early on int the reading - they said they could only comment or say something if they had actually done it, whereas I have no trouble talking or writing about things whether I've done it, or seen it, or not. Perhaps my own imagination is one of those learned activities, and maybe I wouldn't do it if I hadn't learned it from somewhere. I don't know.

I think its possible that the silent women may think blind obedience is necessary with authorities because they've never thought to question, or thought about reasons why they might want to question them - reasons why or ways in which person's of authority may abuse or misuse their power. They have no contextual experience in which to challenge it, leaving them powerless and unaware of their basic human rights. I think a lot of us have that problem with authority sometimes. Sometimes we do see the outside world in black and white.

A culture of power

The part where this reading really began to click for me was on page 47, when Belenky starts talking about how helping people is incredibly empowering for these silent women. I found that sort of heartening in general.

As I interpret it, these women are able to graduate from their "received knower" perspective by entering a position where they're able to uplift other people. It's in conflict with dualism, too, because it shows that there's more than one way to be an authority. The authorities they grew up with were in a position of trying to push them down and make them smaller; a positive authority can use their expertise or wisdom or resources to empower others. This relates to our last reading, on letting people into the culture of power, and how doing so is a benevolent act toward those who feel disempowered.

I remember talking to a counselor when I was younger, and telling her that I had this constant feeling like everyone but me knew what was going on. Everyone had all the answers besides me. I felt left out of the general motions that seemed to happen around me. I guess I've learned to embrace that, because nowadays it's kind of a feeling that I enjoy. I can use my unique perspective, like the women in this article, to help other people, just like other people can use their unique perspectives to help me become a more well-rounded individual. Being socialized feminine has some pretty serious repercussions both in the long and short term, and I see those things played out in a lot of the people I meet. My little sister is a total loudmouth at home, but very silent around men, and I wish there were some kind of wisdom I could impart that would make her want to stand up for herself, and be an authority on her own life & body.

Knower, Know Thyself--Bruce B

I suspect many of you find "Silence" as a way of knowing alien, especially now as you enter your final years of college.  Can you ever remember feeling the sense of powerlessness that Belenky et. al. describe, one that involves a kind of blind fealty to authority:  "Just tell me what to do?"  These are women whose sense of self is entirely dependent on the judgement of others, and who are flummoxed at the simple question:  "How would you describe yourself?"  I thought the description of how language was perceived as a "weapon" to "separate and diminish" rather than "connect and empower" people was especially poignant (24).  Does that resonate it with at any point in your life?

"Received knowers," on the other hand, probably sound more familiar.  We described this set of beliefs as "dualism" in class the other day, one that involves assuming there is "one right answer," and relying on authorities to tell these knowers what that is.  But Belenky et. al. expand on this in really interesting ways, suggesting that "Received knowers" actively listen (maybe desperately listen) to hear others say things that they agree with, and they actively seek out these kinds of friendships.  Received knowers had no interest in distinguishing themselves from others, though later these friendships could be "transformative."  These are people who "feel confused and inadequate when the teacher requires that they do original work" (40) since all knowledge comes from outside of them.  They receive rather than make.  Finally, and most interesting to me, was the discussion about how influential mentors were in helping "Received knowers" find a sense of self.  They didn't feel "smart" until someone told them they were (49).

Can you see yourself in any of this?  When?  And what happened to change things for you?

From the Mutt’s Mouth

My grandma was born in Gothenburg, Sweden, an idyllic seaside town on the southern coast of the Scandinavian peninsula. Grandpa was born in a hut with a dirt floor a couple dozen miles outside León, Nicaragua. They met at a club in New York City, and since their command over the English language was barely conversational, they danced to get to know each other. After getting married, they had four children and lived happily in a Queens suburb for over fifty years.

Before that, though, they got a bit better at speaking English. All they wanted to do was learn as much as they possibly could; Grandpa read the Peanuts comic strip every morning and Grandma chatted with the neighbors (who were from Australia) for hours while she gardened. They truly wanted to speak and write like Americans, so they interacted with the language as much as humanly possible. And when their children started going to school, they hovered over their shoulders and absorbed all they could from their English homework. Finally, they were interacting with a real curriculum that taught proper grammar, spelling, syntax, and diction to the language they had been grappling to understand since they presented their papers to the immigration officials on Ellis Island.

And they learned that most everything they knew about how to speak and write English 'correctly' was wrong. They started anew out of these elementary school workbooks, right alongside my dad and his siblings.

Reading Delpit's article, I thought of them, and then I thought about my dad, the child of poor immigrants, entering New York's public school system to fall victim to all the harmful pedagogal practices that will ultimately irrevocably oppress minority students and leave the white, middle-class status quo in their predestined positions of power until hell freezes over and then some.

My dad grew up to be the second in his family to attend college (his older brother beat him by two years), graduated from Stony Brook University with a degree in mechanical engineering, and is now a commercial airline pilot for a living. 

But he hates English. 

So is he a 'tragedy'? Did his English teachers simply smile vapidly at my unteachable minority father and concentrate their efforts elsewhere? Is he simply a new member of the white middle-class status quo even though he is a (self-described) mutt?

I truthfully still am confused by what ideas this article was trying to convey. In fact, I was so shocked by the vernacular it used (The Whites, The Blacks, and other such The Nouns) that I made a pointed effort to see what year it was published in, and 1988 seemed a little late for such polarizing language to be used with abandon. But that's the other thing that struck me about the language; even in the title, the word 'Other's' seems to have this racially charged nature about it, so much so that it kind of makes my skin crawl.

Delpit's examples pulled a lot from contained instances that she seemed quite confident to paint as universal truths, which to me were arbitrary. They worked for her points, conveniently enough; the one that made me especially laugh was the example about kids being more or less likely to be exposed to directive language at home based on their race or class. Growing up in a mixed-race, middle-class household, I personally have been told to get my ass in the bathtub on many, many occassions. But I can't remember Delpit ever outlining any norms for The Swedish-Nicaraguans, so who knows. 

I did like the idea of using a student's expertise to their advantage to help them learn, but she lost me when she tried to insist that a universal curriculum that doesn't include these things is somehow 'robbing' them of that expertise. I don't even buy the idea that, in the student's mind, it gives their specialized knowledge less value when it isn’t used in the classroom. Children will pick and hold what they are truly interested in their hearts /forever/, and I think academia gives itself a little too much credit to think they could ever possibly wrestle it from them. Speaking from experience (I, too, was once a child), I couldn’t be bothered to do my math homework, but I could recite the lyrics to Led Zeppelin's entire discography by the time I turned 13. I never got the chance to use that knowledge to make my middle school Shakespeare unit any easier. I'm currently feeling a little bit cheated about that. 

So what of my grandparent's expert knowledge, then, or my dad's? As soon as they got the chance to formally learn the language of their new homeland they were all too delighted to trash the fragmented, awkward prose they had been limping around on and only remedially improving by interacting with the other immigrants in their social circle. English was a way for them to connect, a means out of the social and cultural isolation they would have found themselves in if they couldn’t strike up a conversation with their neighbors. Miraculously, this infatuation with learning English and all the sensibilities that came with it did not result in the ‘cultural genocide’ that Delpit foresees; you can still stroll by my grandma’s house in Bayside and glimpse about a dozen Dala horses sitting neatly in her bay window. Stop in for chat and you’ll be served tea in a cup emblazoned with the Tre Kronor.

Now, in the realm of institutionalized academia, I don’t know how my grandparents would have fared. Neither of them got the chance to earn a college education, but I did ask my dad what, if anything, about growing up dirt poor with two non-native English speaking parents made learning English in school harder. He said it was annoying to have to make corrections to all the numerous linguistic errors he’d grown up hearing in his household, and when he got his English homework his parents could help him with it no better than he could help himself. But that is, essentially, it. He likes to refer to a few fine English teachers who actually prescribed him pertienent, accessible readings that really resonated. Everything else he found doable, but boring.

I asked him, “Did you notice any difference between the way white teachers taught you, as opposed to black teachers, or other minorities?”

He said to me, “Why the hell would you ask me something like that?”

I said nevermind.