{"id":6471,"date":"2010-07-11T13:54:46","date_gmt":"2010-07-11T20:54:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/?p=6471"},"modified":"2010-07-11T13:59:35","modified_gmt":"2010-07-11T20:59:35","slug":"6471","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/2010\/07\/11\/6471\/","title":{"rendered":"Poverty, Invisibility, and Dignity: Thoughts on 40 Years of The Bluest Eye"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Claudia<\/a> at The Bottom of Heaven<\/a> kindly invited me to blogging event<\/a> around the 40th anniversary of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.\u00c2\u00a0 I was thrilled to participate.\u00c2\u00a0 It is one of my favorite books.\u00c2\u00a0 I had wonderful experiences with it as a student and later as a TA, teaching it to undergraduates in a women’s studies course.\u00c2\u00a0 Although I am not a literary scholar, I deeply appreciate the symbolism and metaphors used in this book.\u00c2\u00a0 It was where I first experienced quality classroom learning on issues of race, class, and gender; and the first time I learned to facilitate those discussions.\u00c2\u00a0 Without question, I wanted to celebrate this with Claudia and the other bloggers.<\/p>\n

<\/a>
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nAt the end of The Bluest Eye, Claudia describes Pecola as a contrast:<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed.\u00c2\u00a0 And all of our beauty, which was hers first and which she gave to us.\u00c2\u00a0 All of us \u00e2\u20ac\u201c all who knew her \u00e2\u20ac\u201c felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her.\u00c2\u00a0 We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness.\u00c2\u00a0 Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor.\u00c2\u00a0 Her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. \u00c2\u00a0Her poverty kept us generous.\u00c2\u00a0 Even her waking dreams we used \u00e2\u20ac\u201c to silence our own nightmares.\u00c2\u00a0 And she let us, and thereby deserved our contempt.\u00c2\u00a0 We honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty, and yawned in the fantasy of our strength.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/em><\/p>\n

I think a lot about this passage because, to be frank, I just don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know.
\n<\/a>
\nLet me tell you what I mean.\u00c2\u00a0 I have this colleague or friend or relative who lives in another U.S. city.\u00c2\u00a0 It can be anyone of those gleaming metropolises far away from The Deep South, a place that already feels a bit superior simply for not being a slave state 150 years ago.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe New York.\u00c2\u00a0 Or Providence.\u00c2\u00a0 Boston, San Francisco, Chicago or Philadelphia.\u00c2\u00a0 Like many, these folks from Minneapolis or Seattle or Bangor are caring and giving.\u00c2\u00a0 They were shocked when New Orleans was devastated.\u00c2\u00a0 They click their tongues in worry about people on rooftops and trapped in attics.\u00c2\u00a0 They try not to show their disgust when they see the grunge and filth around the edges of those images.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not that they are being, you know, judgmental; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just that they, personally, couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t imagine living that way.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 But they do care, so when their church started gathering supplies to send, they gave.\u00c2\u00a0 And when that same church brought down a group of do-gooders to rebuild homes, they came.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We came and built a house on a street that was just terrible,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she or he or they will tell me, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153there wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t anything left on that street, it was just a mess.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 And then, the surprise, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153but you know, I recently saw a picture, and that house we built?\u00c2\u00a0 Well, know there are four more and you wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even know it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the same street!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 They tell this story with pride and surprise at what can happen when do-gooders get together.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s really an example of the power of people, you know?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 Also, they watch Treme.\u00c2\u00a0 So between the show and that house they built, well, they really get New Orleans.
\n\"\"<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Her poverty kept us generous.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em>
\n<\/a>
\nThat passage sticks with me because when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m faced with those situations from my story above, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what to do.\u00c2\u00a0 I am thankful, without question.\u00c2\u00a0 Please don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t doubt for a second that I am so, so thankful to each and every person who thinks about New Orleans.\u00c2\u00a0 The people who watched those days unfold with us just as sick and angry as we were, and were so thoughtful and kind.\u00c2\u00a0 I am grateful that folks are monitoring the oil spill and wondering about the coast.\u00c2\u00a0 That is for sure.
\n<\/a>
\nBut also?\u00c2\u00a0 When I hear those stories above?\u00c2\u00a0 I sort of want to be sick.\u00c2\u00a0 I want to serve back their superiority on a plate of snappy come-backs.\u00c2\u00a0 I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to be in a place that is pitied.\u00c2\u00a0 And frankly, after all I’ve seen, done, heard, and lived in this place, I know that it is not a place to be pitied, period.
\n<\/a>
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153And she let us, and thereby deserved our contempt.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em>
\n<\/a>
\nWhen something terrible happens, something so awful that our common humanity compels us to act on it \u00e2\u20ac\u201c why does this become a source of pity?\u00c2\u00a0 Before September 2005, no one cared of the poverty and inequalities that existed in the Lower 9th Ward, in Gentilly, in the Treme — places that now hold the collective imaginations as symbols of endemic and systematic disparity.\u00c2\u00a0 The poverty set the stage for the disaster, yet did not compel true action until it became a spectacle.\u00c2\u00a0 And then, it became a place of pity.<\/p>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nClaudia discussed this with me as I was struggling with ending this piece.\u00c2\u00a0 In an email, she wrote:<\/p>\n

How can we assist people and populations in need with mutual respect (and empathy? openness?) right now, in 2010, without using their suffering to affirm our own sense of virtue and self worth? And perhaps, more controversially, how do those of us whose way of life has been weakened and is in need of repair, accept help appreciatively, but in a way that makes pity and contempt unwelcome? (That line – “and she let us, and thereby deserved our contempt” – is arguably one of the most haunting and most troubling in the book! How did Pecola “let” them? Through silent acquiescence?) Maybe the answer begins in breaking silences, naming these awful, awkward moments, and how much of our well-being is based on the illusion of “us” vs. “them.”<\/em>
\n<\/em>
\nWithin this context, part of the legacy of The Bluest Eye is in this complex issue of giving and receiving.\u00c2\u00a0 Disasters of unthinkable proportions will continue into our future, compelling people to act.\u00c2\u00a0 Is there a line between curiosity over an event so monumentally catastrophic that it must be seen to be understood \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and respect for those who are living through it?<\/p>\n

As for naming those silent, awkward moments… I agree that it is important.\u00c2\u00a0 But then what do we do?\u00c2\u00a0 Breaking the illusions of “us” and “them” means that we all take some responsibility for the inequalities in the world… and then make the hard choices required to address them.\u00c2\u00a0 And this, unfortunately, seems like something we will still be discussing when The Bluest Eye celebrates another 40 years.<\/p>\n

What do you think?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(Thank you, Claudia<\/a>, for the invitation to participate!)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Claudia at The Bottom of Heaven kindly invited me to blogging event around the 40th anniversary of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.\u00c2\u00a0 I was thrilled to participate.\u00c2\u00a0 It is one of my favorite books.\u00c2\u00a0 I had wonderful experiences with it as a student and later as a TA, teaching it to undergraduates in a women’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6471"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6471"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6480,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6471\/revisions\/6480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}