Sunday Morning

It is remarkable how the Annunciation Greek Orthododx Church on Westnedge Avenue in Kalamazoo, despite lacking the trappings of an Orthodox church in an Orthodox country, still generates the intense feeling of being watched. The Alpha and the Omega (Revelation, 22:13), manifestations of God's infinite expanse picked out in blue against yellow stained glass, cooly observe us from high on the far wall. Saints stare in at us from the stained glass windows, exhorting us to put a name to a face and a deed. The church's modest majesty is concentrated on the far end around the altar, where a man in white is swinging a censer of incense. He wears a white cloak with the crucifix embroidered among other patterns on the back and sings intermittently, in English, to a gilded crucifix. The sensation of sanctuary emanates from the far end of the church. The man in white walks up and down the aisle with the censer and bowed Greek matriarchs make the sign of the cross upon their chests as he passes. The incense smells like myrrh or something else old that you only hear about in old books and maybe once came across in a supplies shop for musty fortunetellers. The smoke turns violet where it curls in the light of the Alpha and the Omega.

Words that I cannot understand reach out and pull on me. One of the chanters says “the liturgy for today can be found in pages 64 to 65 of the Divine Liturgy books.” I reach over the pew in front of me and grab the liturgy book from the seat pocket. The cover is not attached and the rest of the book slides out from in between my fingers but I convey the book to my lap before it disintegrates entirely. The liturgy is in Greek on the right side and in English on the left. Pages 64 to 64 cover the end of the “We Have Seen the True Light” and the beginning of the “Benediction Prayer.” I think it odd to split the assignment, but what do I know? The man who spoke recites a tale about the persecution of the Christians and the imperfectability of man. It does not match up with what I am staring down at and I feel very lost and wonder if I misheard. Here I am, a young atheist intruding upon a ritual I do not understand in the slightest, surrounded by Greek matriarchs. One of the women gives me a questioning look as the might in white passes among us again with the censer, off to my left and up the aisle from behind (I am sure he can see me writing this) and again I do not rise to make the sign of the cross while everyone else does. My eyes meet with the closest parishioner and her look is right—what am I doing here?

All say the Lord's Prayer in Greek and then in English. I remain silent. Amen. It is time to receive communion. I remain unmoving. I avert my eyes as the woman who stared me down earlier heads towards me. “You can receive the bread if you'd like,” she says and immediately the restraints evaporate. I begin to rise but the man in white has already finished the service and disappeared. Standing in the middle of the aisle I am caught up in the current towards the exit but instead I am greeted and introduced and reintroduced a few times on the way downstairs for coffee and pastries.

Dennis Andruson tells a story to a Bulgarian about his grandfather, who fought communists in Bulgaria in 1919 (perhaps their ancestors shot at each other), before taking me aside to talk about his daughter. She has just finished a book about the history of Greeks in Kalamazoo, he says. He hands me a book spanning the history of Greeks in America from 1453 to 1938 and tells me to go ask the priest to borrow it.

The priest, the man in white, is now Father Raphael Daly, wearing black and speaking comfortably with some of the children. He jokes about their lack of enthusiasm and tells me that I may borrow the book Dennis recommended, but he would not be surprised if I did not bring it back. I say nothing but that I am interested in church architecture and history, and he says that martyrdom is not just historical, that “people were murdered for what we just did up there and it's not just historical.”

The book starts with the end of a war and ends with the start of a war, spanning from the end of the Byzantine Empire—the last great Greek empire—with the fall of Constantinople to the beginning of World War II in which the Germans, Italians and Bulgarians occupied Greece.

The air raid sirens are stretching their lungs in preparation for...something as I walk to Greek Fest. My skin prickles as the wail reaches its peak, a grim reminder that war is why many Greeks left their homeland and came to settle in places like Kalamazoo. Among the most dramatic in recent memory is what the Greeks call the Great Catastrophe, when the hot-headed Greek elite invaded the metamorphosing Turkish Republic in 1922. The next year the Turkish nationalist Kemal Ataturk had bested the Greek military, which had not only failed to prevent the creation of a unified Turkey but had lost control of the Greek city Smyrna—now Ismir—situated on Asia Minor. In the ensuing exchange of populations, a million and a half Greeks were introduced into modern Greece, then a country of only six million. Some emigres settled in the Macedonian region. Others came to America.

The Orthodox faith and Greek Fest are two integral means by which Kalamazoo's Greeks, originally a displaced people, have come to embrace, maintain and celebrate the culture of their homeland in a new home they have made uniquely their own. “We maintain our faith first,” Elias Kokkinos had told me about being a Greek in Kalamazoo. They do not desire to convert anyone but they also do not want to isolate themselves. Elias takes pride in contributing to the continuity of the original Christian chruch. His manner of speaking is refined, brisk and business-like. He gave me his office phone number. He has a secretary with whom I can leave a message if he is not in. He is Stacy's (of Theo & Stacy's) brother-in-law and helps run the Dionysous Restaurant and Theo & Stacy's.

I arrive too late to Greek Fest—it has already been colonized. As a casual anticapitalist I cannot help but wrinkle my nose at the Coors Light logos plastered everywhere. The beer tent is selling Alfa, an Authentic Greek Beer that is the authentic Greek Coors Light. Vaguely defined “tickets” have supplanted common currency in this alternate-universe Greece, and a Coca-Cola costs two. In a certain light, it is an amusing commentary on the concept of currency itself. The Dionysos Restaurant provides the food for the event, which is only appropriate: Greek Fest got its start in the basement of the restaurant. The festival exploded in popularity when it was introduced to and embraced by the people of Kalamazoo, as the event's history is summarized in a happily-ever-after way on the official website. Embrace it they have; the festival grounds teem with throngs of people soaking up the Authentic Greek way of life—mostly through their stomach linings. Dionysus himself—ancient Greek god of drink and ecstacy—would probably have liked to see a bit more ecstacy. Teenagers scrounging for summer pocket change staff the food tent. One of them pronounces “gyros” correctly (silent “g,” roll the “r” into its alveolaric cousin “l”), but I cannot tell if she is Authetically Greek or has been instructed in pronunciation for purposes of authenticity. Bryce Buffenbarger, a recent convert to the Greek Orthodox Faith, observed of Greek Fest that “there's like 20 restaurants in the area all owned by Greek people. So it's a display of their capitalism, their making themselves, how they founded themselves in this area.” As a result, Greek Fest looks like a tourist trap more than a celebration of culture. Or, it looks like the American Dream.

The priest is an overgrown rosy-cheeked Irish altar boy, full red lips, cherubic face and all. He knows only, as Dennis puts it, “a few words in the original tongue,” that is, Greek, but “he sings beautifully.” Dennis had chanted that day in the service and his voice was hoarse but he nevertheless talked continuously, always with broad gestures. When I arrive the next week to talk more with Dennis and return the book I borrowed from the church, the priest tells me he didn't expect to see me again, figuring I'd “gotten my quotes and moved on.” I felt compelled to apologize for disrupting his expectations—still unsure if those expectations were because of my West Coast secularism—because he'd stuttered out the end of his sermon when I walked in. He says later that he's allowed to be rude because he's not Greek. He does play a strong foil to their hospitality, though while I did not ask him what he meant I got the sense he was acutely aware that he was not constrained by Greek cultural norms. The Greek for hospitality is “xenophilos,” or literally “love for strangers.” The priest had used it that morning in commendation of Greek Fest.

In my experience when conversation in Greece turned to Greek-Americans it almost invariably came to the conclusion that Greek-Americans try to be more Greek than Greeks by amplifying perceived norms into iron laws of conduct. I heard that they were deadly serious about the Orthodox religion to a fault, utterly buy into the “traditional” Greek dress for celebrations (the Greek Fest website does have a prime example of this; the “traditional” Greek look, with frills and fluffy slippers and silly hats, was invented by Greek intellectuals in the early 1800s—it is polyester history), and abuse the exclamation “opa!” It could have been that the post-service social crowd at the Annunciation is mostly native Greeks living in America (as opposed to Greek-Americans born here) with a few non-Greeks among them, but nevertheless the accusations ring hollow. As Greece is a very old country, what it means to be Greek has changed tremendously over time. Before the Orthodox Church, the Greek identity relied mostly on shared language. Once Christianity settled in, it was a matter of language and religion, especially after the birth of Greek nationalism in the 1820s, prior to and during the Greek war for independence from the Ottoman Empire (Dennis would like to add here that the only way to get a room full of Greeks to stop fighting is to push a Turk into the room). Today Greek identity rests on language and heritage. If the priest practiced his Greek a bit more it would not have been too hard for him to claim some kind of Greekness in previous eras, especially given his Orthodox faith. But it seems today that only Greeks speak Greek. It is easy to understand the devotion of many Greek emigres and Greek-Americans to the Greek Orthodox Church. Their language and their faith are the two best tools for the maintenance of their cultural identity in the face of the all-consuming American morass. It is how Greeks survive as Greeks.

Sunday Morning from Steven C on Vimeo.

Final Piece Responses, Weeks 9 & 10

Andrea: You've found a truly fascinating subject for your second profile. On one hand, I want to hear nothing but details about Lisa's life for the full thousand words, but on the other hand we all need a focus of some sort. You start down the path of talking about Mira's skepticism toward higher education but I feel you wander some in the middle of the piece in order to give details about Lisa without tying it in tightly enough with Mira. You return to the subject of Mira's education at the end, but by then the piece is over. If only it could be twice as long! Failing that, if you want to refine the focus on the irony of Lisa's education and the specter of Mira's, I would start from the penultimate paragraph (fantastic quote, don't lose it no matter what) and write from there.

Marina: Your piece did a good job of convincing me that it was worthwhile. Never once did I think to myself "why are we talking about the arts and feminism again?" so you have won that "uphill battle" to represent these artistic women in a supportive way. You've also expertly woven a current event--The Tempest production--into the fabric of the story to keep the focus grounded. One thing I might want to see included is a bit of a statistical breakdown of women:men at K and across the country, for comparative purposes. You also mention two departments, music and theatre, as heavily female. I'd like to hear why (especially from those involved), and if it's a K thing or a countrywide trend.

Simona: Being a migrant worker sounds like living in the Wild West and you did well painting that life in a sympathetic light, even without tracking down and talking to any migrant workers (which I could imagine would be difficult to do. Good thing you had translators with you!) I like the focus being on these migrant rights activists, and they stand tall in your piece, doing good against all odds like the sheriff in a western. The scenes that really captured by interest were the ones in which you were actually there, like pulling up to the abandoned migrant camp and then going into detail about the risks involved (and skillfully returning to it later to mention that abandoned camps sometimes get turned into meth labs). If you can do this more and springboard off of your experiences travelling with these activists into stories and details about their job and the life of migrants, your piece will be even stronger.

Claire: You touch on several topics related to the smoking ban that are all interesting on their own: how effective is it, really? What's the effect on businesses? What's the effect on smokers and non-smokers (and also that strange hybrid species that you mentioned, those that "don't smoke" but are happy to bum cigarettes anyway)? I think you should consider focusing more singularly on one of these topics, since each seems to prove to have meat on its bones and you can really dig in and sock it to--well, somebody. But I don't want to push you away from making a more general statement on smoking in Kalamazoo if that's what you want to do; just while reading I kept going "oh I want to hear more about that, and that, and that too!" So maybe pick something while acknowledging the interconnectedness of it all.

Anna: Tons of detail and life packed in a tight space here, just like the trades center itself. You mentioned when you brought up the idea for this piece in class that the center has had problems with the soup kitchen or whatever it is adjacent to the building. If you're looking for a conflict to introduce into your piece you may want to pursue that further, but as it stands I'm not sure that the piece strictly needs an overt conflict to drive it. In lieu of that I can sense an implicit tension in the piece, its varied history chief among them alongside the mild unreality of artists having a place to gather and work in close proximity, as in "what happens if we wake up from the dream of art that is the trades center?"

Jessica: Your process writing is concerned that this article is too much like a news feature and I am given to agree. You've got some fascinating details about Streeter--I like especially how he is one of those people who seems to know somebody everywhere--but you've got to make me get into him as a person. Swap out some of the statistics for stories or bury the numbers inside of something that keeps me interested, and those kids that got into the Ivy Leagues? I don't care about them because the piece anonymizes them. I'd say either add some character to the success stories, or leave them out, or let Streeter own those successes as his own in the narrative.

(Joel and Myles forthcoming after class)

Sunday Morning

I am at the Sunday service of the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church on Westnedge Avenue in Kalamazoo. Greek hymns fill the air, filtered through speakers, enveloping myself and two elderly women who perfectly fit the part of Greek matriarchs. They stare intently at their hymnbooks and I drill a hole into my notebook with my eyes. One pew up, where I should have sat (instead of, predictably, at the very last pew), the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom is in the seat pocket. Two men and a woman sing praises to the Lord from a rotating podium that spins comically when they lose their place on the way to the next hymn. A man in a white cloak with the crucifix embroidered among other patterns on the back sings intermittently, in English, to the gilded crucifix in front of him. His back is to us. His voice lacks that certain accented rasp of a Greek elder. He is younger and fairer, and his hair is brown with the subtlest reddish tinge. It absorbs some of the color of the rich wood that frames the altar.

The Alpha and the Omega (Revelations, 22:13) stare down at us all from high on the far wall. Despite lacking the trappings of an Orthodox church in an Orthodox country, the Annunciation church still generates the feeling of being watched. Saints stare in at us from the stained glass windows, exhorting us to put a name to a face and a deed. The church's modest majesty is concentrated on the far end around the altar, where the man in white is now swinging a censer of incense. He walks up and down the aisle and the matriarchs—there are five, now—make the sign of the cross upon their chests as he passes. The incense smells like myrrh or something else old that you only hear about in old books and maybe once came across in a supplies shop for musty fortunetellers. The smoke turns violet where it curls in the light of the Alpha and the Omega.

Red electric lights shaped like candle flame glow above images of saints, Jesus Christ, and the Virgin Mary, except where one real candle flickers above an image of two haloed men conversing. Icons to be deferentially kissed are directly in front of each of the two rows of pews, and beside them burn a square of white candles with a cross picked out in the middle of each with red. Two crystal chandeliers are suspended above the aisle, flanked by lanterns reminiscent of the censer. The church is an echo chamber, for sights, symbols and sound. Iconography and hymnal chants amplify one another. Even with constant chanting, every disturbance is magnified by the intermittent silence: the creak of pews under restless bodies, paper turning, the squeak of my pencil, feet shuffling on the carpet—they belong to the greeter who eyed my notebook in between her perfunctory Good morning and mine.

Other languages add an undeniable mysticism to that which is already present in religious ritual. Words that I cannot understand reach out and pull on me. I wonder idly why the Catholics stopped saying the Mass in Latin, but then I remember why. One of the hymnal men says “the liturgy for today can be found in pages 64 to 65 of the Divine Liturgy books.” I reach over the pew in front of me and grab the liturgy book from the seat pocket. The cover is not attached and the rest of the book slides out from in between my fingers but I convey the book to my lap before it disintegrates entirely. The liturgy is in Greek on the right side and in English on the left. Pages 64 to 64 cover the end of the “We Have Seen the True Light” and the beginning of the “Benediction Prayer.” I think it odd to split the assignment, but what do I know? The man who spoke recites a tale about the persecution of the Christians and the imperfectability of man. It does not match up with what I am staring down at and I feel very lost and wonder if I misheard. Here I am, a young atheist without a drop of Greek blood in me, watching a ritual I do not understand in the slightest, surrounded by Greek matriarchs. One of the women gives me a questioning look as the might in white passes among us again with the censer, off to my left and up the aisle from behind (I am sure he can see me writing this) and again I do not rise to make the sign of the cross while everyone else does. My eyes meet with the closest parishioner and her look is right—what am I doing here?

Finally, children. They at least can be disrespectful in the way only children know how to get away with—by running their mouths. They can distract from my futile struggle to appear distanced without appearing ignorant. A mumbling under breaths occurs as the congregation is called upon to join in on a piece of liturgy.. I expected to hear the strength of conviction in their voices or at least for them to have it memorized. I don't know why—there's a lot of liturgy in these books. The children are restless but they are here at least, come to perform the Sunday chore. All say the Lord's Prayer in Greek and then in English, with only I and the youngest child in rebellion, I quietly and she incoherently noisy. Amen. It is time to receive communion. I read somewhere that it's against the rules to receive communion as a non-believer and I do not want to ruin the sacrament even if it makes me stand out even more. I avert my eyes as the woman who stared me down earlier heads towards me. “You can receive the bread if you'd like,” she says and immediately the restraints evaporate. I begin to rise but the man in white has already finished the service and disappeared. Standing in the middle of the aisle I am caught up in the current towards the exit but instead I am greeted and introduced and reintroduced a few times on the way downstairs for coffee and pastries.

“We maintain our faith first,” Elias Kokkinos tells me when I ask him on the way downstairs about being a Greek in Kalamazoo. They do not desire to convert anyone but they also do not want to isolate themselves. Elias takes pride in contributing to the continuity of the original Christian chruch. His manner of speaking is refined, brisk and business-like. He gives me his office phone number. He has a secretary with whom I can leave a message if he is not in.

Downstairs buzzes with socialization among plain wood paneling and white plastic floral tablecloths. The separateness of the upstairs, between priest and parish, me and them, has disappeared. Dennis Andruson tells a story to a Bulgarian about his grandfather, who fought communists in Bulgaria in 1919 (perhaps their ancestors shot at each other), before taking me aside to talk about his daughter. She has just finished a book about the history of Greeks in Kalamazoo, he says. He hands me a book spanning the history of Greeks in America from 1453 to 1938 and tells me to go ask the priest to borrow it.

The priest, the man in white, is now Father Raphael Daly, wearing black and speaking comfortably with some of the children. He jokes about their lack of enthusiasm and tells me that I may borrow the book Dennis recommended, but he would not be surprised if I did not bring it back. I say nothing but that I am interested in church architecture and history, and he says that martyrdom is not just historical, that “people were murdered for what we just did up there and it's not just historical.”

(less overbearing descriptiveness and a real conclusion forthcoming post-Greek Fest)

Posse's Got Your Back

A college dropout came to Deborah Bial in the 1980s and told her that he wouldn't have dropped out if he'd had his posse. Thus goes the creation story of Bial's Posse Foundation, which creates “posses” of ten to 12 high school students from a common geographical area and sends them to one of 37 liberal arts schools that are a part of the program. There, the posse acts as a support group for its members and a springboard for greater cross-cultural communication for the school community. The posse comes in together and they leave together, in four years time, with a college degree. Why then, in the fall of 2009, was Evelyn Rosero on the verge of leaving Kalamazoo College?

As a Los Angeles native who'd spent her life moving between the ethnic and multicultural neighborhoods of that cosmopolis, Evelyn was able to avoid drowning in the college's sea of whiteness. It is just another culture to her, and she moves between cultures effortlessly.

“I'm all about diversity,” she says, and indeed her everyday life is an ongoing collision between cultures of every stripe. She is a member of the Black Student Organization and performed in the organization's annual Cultural Awareness Troupe. Her boyfriend is white, and she's made friends with people from Africa, the Caribbean, and all corners of the States. A Catholic Jesus hangs crucified on the wall of an institution with Baptist origins, indicative of an intermingling of two religions whose historical animosity has sparked full-scale war as recently as the 1970s. Any bland cultural homogeneity that Evelyn encountered at college was not daunting in the least, but instead something to be changed and made more interesting bit by bit. It's part of what the Posse Foundation set out to do.

After months of intensive bonding with her posse, Evelyn came to Kalamazoo. She was a vanguard, the first Kalamazoo College posse. She watched her friends make other friends, integrate themselves, and she felt her posse coming apart. She wondered to herself whether she could go to them for support. Her father left for Los Angeles, to look after her mother's swelling belly—a baby brother whose birth Evelyn would miss. At a couple thousand miles out, the safe harbor of family is shrouded in fog. Evelyn felt her father's pillar of support shrink in the distance, and homesickness set in. Doubt crept in with the first October chill.

“Why am I here?”

“Am I good enough to be here?”

“I don't know if I can do this.”

“I don't care.”

“I want to give up.”

Was Evelyn going to be the remainder of the Posse Foundaton's touted 90% graduation rate? Every posse has an on-campus advisor that works with the posse for a minimum of two years and meets one-on-one with students biweekly. Evelyn went to hers, Amelia Katanski. “I cried the entire hour,” she said. “I could barely talk.” But Katanski gave her direction: talk to her friends directly, independently, and see how they felt.

Evelyn found that she was not alone in her homesickness. But while she could find support in her posse, solutions would have to come from somewhere within herself. She often wondered how, at the same age, her mother had managed not just to arrive in America from Mexico, but find a suitably comfortable space and start a family. Her mother came from a childhood of selling candy on the streets and skimming off the top to buy a sandwich, at seven years of age, because her own father—Evelyn's grandfather—spent the family's money on drugs and women. Her father attended college in Ecuador for two years before being forced to leave the country “for political reasons.” She had come to respect her parents' experiences, but how was Evelyn's experience supposed to compare? Was she faltering because she was did not have her parents' fierce tenacity, who had risen from destitution and endured unrelenting hardship to give Evelyn a shot at a college education that she was now not even sure she deserved?

Evelyn's mother told her the experience was not less, but the same. “The difference is that we're here for you. You have a stable place. As long as you have food each day, you'll be fine.” A total change of scene is absolute no matter whether moving within a country or between countries. Whereas her parents did not have a preceding point they could return to, Evelyn did. That familiar pillar of support would always be there as a safe place. And she had her posse.

After a pause, Evelyn concedes that her crisis of faith “was the biggest moment of my life.” It is the meaningful hesitation any of us places before such a statement, to ensure for ourselves and our listener that we truly mean what we say. Everyone: her posse, her friends, Amelia Katanski, her family, knew that “if I gave up I'd be pissed off at myself.” Her personal Statement of Faith hangs above her desk as a testament to her words:

Be it known that at the start of this great journey, The Posse Foundation has every confidence in Evelyn Rosero. We have no doubt that should Evelyn maintain focus and have the courage to follow her dreams, she will graduate on the Quad in the spring of 2013 with the entire posse at her side. She will leave Kalamazoo College with four solid years of learning, adventure, and accomplishment, and Kalamazoo College will be a better place for having had her.

She reads it everyday. “I trusted the process and, oh my God, it's working, it's working,” she says. “No matter what, we're still a posse together. We're a family. I love my family. I love my posse.”

Apologia Judt

Do note that I mistakenly linked to Judt's "Edge People" in my previous post, instead of "Girls! Girls! Girls!" as I meant. This has been remedied. "Girls!" is more a piece of narrative journalism than "Edge People," but the latter gives a better sense of who Judt is. If you do not already know about Tony Judt, read "Edge People" and then "Girls!".

I myself hadn't heard of Tony Judt until I learned he was dying. It is a tragedy I am particularly familiar with, to go on unaware of a great contemporary writer until they are dying or dead, to stumble upon a person I Should Have Read. The same happened with Art Hoppe, whose "Execution, 1957" is a phenomenal piece of narrative journalism and about which I would be writing except that it requires no defense. Jon Carroll, who writes about Judt here, is to blame and to thank for both bittersweet introductions.

Tony Judt is dying. He has Lou Gerig's disease. He writes about it in "Night," (which is quoted in Carroll's article but I will link to it in full here as if I have not given you enough to read already) which also serves as the introduction to a series of reflective articles that have been appearing both in the New York Review of Books and on the NYR blog. The NYR labels it as "memoir," and indeed it does not strictly qualify as narrative journalism as Judt is not a journalist. He is an academic, a scholar, a "public intellectual," as he derisively indulges the label. But I feel that "Girls!" in particular (and "Revolutionaries," to a lesser extent) incorporates enough storytelling in its non-fiction to be worthy of examination as a piece of narrative journalism. This particular kind of journalism is about writing from within the story, after all, and in "Girls!" Judt writes about sexual harassment in the academic world from the deepest point of immersion possible--his own life.

The elements of story necessary to narrative journalism are present and clear; there is a lede which relies on Judt's own unorthodox position--both as history chair at NYU and the only unmarried man under 60--for its grabbing power. It carries on to compound the intrigue with an attractive graduate student (the reaction being: he's the chair of history at a prestigious university--a sensitive position during a senistive time-and he goes for her? What?) and that constitutes the beginning. The end is similarly identifiable. The middle is, appropriately, in the middle. Beginning, middle, end: bam, it's a story.

But the reason "Girls!" is a good piece of narrative journalism and does not merely suffice as one is that there is an element of investigation--both of self and of the subject--wrapped up in the self-reflection. Judt is not just telling us about this one time he was chasing tail in 1992 and Oh Boy, is there a knee-slapper at the end of this one; we are going on the hunt for the Why with him.

And the reason "Girls!" is not just a good piece of narrative journalism but is in fact a great one is because when the piece departs from the immediate storyline we do not depart from Judt. After introducing his graduate student crush, he takes us straight to the 1960's as the beginning of the hunt. But we don't just go back to the 60's; we go back to Tony Judt, circa early 60's--hormones and all (and probably a way less cool pair of glasses). From there we can go on to cultural critique, indictment, and the typical Judt soapboxing, and when we start to wonder Hey, where'd that hot ballerina graduate student go, Judt drops an ancedote to bring the piece back to earth, to remind us what we're getting all red-faced about up in the zero-visibility cloud cover of abstract intellectualism. It makes a point, it tells a story, it leaves the reader's mind buzzing.

Oh, plus he totally gets the girl at the end.

Defense Forthcoming Posthaste

So that you all may read while I prepare my defense: www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/mar/11/girls-girls-girls/

I never did understand how to construe the word "posthaste."

Personal Essay Responses

John: Your lede is a great piece of work because it plays with my expectations superbly in the space of a few words. It all centers around the phrase “leaving me with one elastic night that lords over my past like a thick, morning bayou mist.” Describing the night as “elastic” makes me understand how it stretches across that era of your life, and aside from it being a delightfully atypical use of the word, I am led to assume you'll ram the point home with a verb like “stretches” to build on the elasticity. But then, shock! For the night does not stretch but it “lords,” and the night takes on new dimensions of domination, transcending its elasticity to become nigh omnipotent. I love words. Also I am a complete sucker for intense descriptions like “thick, morning bayou mist.” Some people say descriptions like that are overwrought and allow the reader none of their own substitutive imagination, but I'd like to hear them say that when they read that phrase and their lungs feel like they're full of heavy damp air.

Myles: You write about something that few people are willing to confront, even though it is a reality throughout the country. The history of this country is so wrapped up in race that it often feels like it is impossible to grasp it, that it is too big to look at all at once—so it is better to just pretend it isn't there. Maybe we used to be a racially tense country, but that all got ironed out during the 60's, right? No—and because it is such a huge and hugely important subject, I'm glad you start out small, in your high school's locker room. You zoom us out some during the course of the piece, but by the end we're still dealing with relatively small parameters—your hometown and its neighbor. This is a good thing. We get no answers, even though you proclaim at the end that “Saint Joseph must change,” but hell, we're not going to get a systematic solution to American racial tensions in 900 words anyway. You've made us see, or reminded us of, the reality by the end of the piece, and that is sufficient.

There is a similar dynamic in the San Francisco Bay Area that I was reminded of while reading your article. San Francisco itself is on the Peninsula, on the west side of the Bay, and while it is of course a multicultural city the Peninsula taken as a whole is more affluent and more white—taking San Rafael on the other side of the Golden Gate into account, this is especially true. The East Bay, by contrast, is a relative concentration of poor blacks, especially in the cities of Richmond and Oakland. Even San Jose to the south, in the heart of Silicon Valley, has a prevalence of Asians and Indians. Anyway, I was once listening to the blabbers on some local morning radio talk show blab away about the blacks in the East Bay, and they were skirting a very obvious matter—that the East Bay blacks were by and large also the Easy Bay poor—until their astute guest simply came out and said so. The hosts, their pathological self-delusion shattered, could do nothing but agree.

Wow that was way longer than it should have been.

Andrea: In our workshop it seemed as though we came to a conclusion—or at least a group consensus of sorts—about everybody's piece. Our time focusing on your piece concluded with Marin urging you to narrow the focus of your piece down to your relationship with your father which you immediately resisted, saying you'd tried a dozen times already and would rather run from the prospect. I agree with her that the real story of your piece is that relationship, and I want to take this opportunity to echo her suggestion. This piece is about that relationship; it can't not be about it. Basically, if you're going to write about this experience that changed your entire relationship to pain (which is a phenomenal thing to say on its own, hence slanty-worded emphasis), you are going to have to address that paired relationship, the one with your father. This isn't a biography of him, so at least you don't have to take it on directly. But maybe try to catch a glimpse of it in your own peripheral vision (as we can sometimes see things more clearly that way) and then communicate that glimpse throughout your piece; stress how strongly your father's character is reflected in the way he calmly commands you to literally come back to life. Start with that scene, I say. Plunge yourself and your reader into the deep end from the very start.

Jessica: I was confused by your conclusion at first, and wondered if you left out the part where everything got fixed. But that's societal training, right? I'm not conditioned to accept when somebody simply accepts that they have a problem; it's got to get fixed. And therapy does that, right? This subtle subversion of our assumptions pervades your piece, and it is why I ultimately liked the piece. This story isn't really about your eating disorder, after all; it's about your experiences with therapy—namely, how it didn't work for you. Hell, you really own your problem; you figured it out yourself, and even tried working on it yourself. Figuring out that you had an eating disorder was the last thing you needed help with, and that really helps you to assert yourself over it and not make you a victim of your problem. It makes your conclusion possible, but maybe focusing less on the strict chronology of your disorder and more on your reflections on therapy from both a personal persepective and also as kind of a psychological institution would make your final verdict more convincing the first time around.

Simona: Your piece made me—a lifelong American citizen who had not been out of his country in any appreciable way until study abroad—feel the anticipation of coming to America. I already knew how it was going to end, of course, having grown up in this twisted country, hating all its faults and taking all the good parts for granted. Nevertheless, I couldn't help feeling like a five year-old Romanian child myself when reading your piece, and found myself relating to a sort of anticipation that I have never experienced myself. Without a doubt, your dialogue communicates these feelings most effectively. Maybe it is helped by the fact that from an early age we, as children of a nation of immigrants, are saturated with the archetypal immigrant's story and so my response is a trained one. Maybe I want a better sense of where you—and, by extension, I—are coming from, a sense of the place I am leaving behind. And of course I cannot wait to see how you heighten the tension and tragedy of the ring, and transform it into a truly powerful metaphor for your American experience.