Guidebook to Relative Strangers Read online

  GUIDEBOOK

  TO RELATIVE

  STRANGERS

  JOURNEYS INTO RACE,

  MOTHERHOOD, AND HISTORY

  CAMILLE T. DUNGY

  W. W. NORTON & COMPANY

  Independent Publishers Since 1923

  New York | London

  For Callie. Now, always.

  And for our fellow travelers.

  CONTENTS

  By Way of Introduction

  THE CONSCIENTIOUS OUTSIDER

  MANIFEST

  BODY OF EVIDENCE

  INHERENT RISK, OR WHAT I KNOW ABOUT

  INVESTEMENT: ON BALANCING A CAREER, A CHILD,

  AND CREATIVE WRITING

  LAP CHILD

  A SHADE NORTH OF ORDINARY

  WRITING HOME

  BOUNDS

  TALES FROM A BLACK GIRL ON FIRE,

  OR WHY I HATE TO WALK OUTSIDE AND SEE

  THINGS BURNING

  A GOOD HIKE

  DIFFERENTIATION

  A BRIEF HISTORY OF NEAR AND ACTUAL LOSSES

  BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION

  WHEN THE NATION that became the United States was beginning, women writers and black writers needed the endorsement of other people in order to prove their legitimacy. Anne Bradstreet, the first woman writer to publish a book out of the American colonies, opened said book with testimonials from the property-owning white men in whom her readers were bound to believe. One of the stipulations surrounding the only book ever published by the American colonies’ first black woman poet, Phillis Wheatley, was that the frontispiece must feature the clarifying label “Negro Servant to Mr. John Wheatley of Boston.” And so it did. Expected of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, William Wells Brown—all key writers of the abolitionist period—were what we have come to call “authenticating documents” attached to their books. The essays in the book you are reading are steeped in such history.

  I resist the implication that my own merits are not enough to prove the worth of my words. Yet, I want to thank Jon Peede, Kathryn Miles, Lucy Anderton, Sean Hill, Anna Lena Phillips Bell, Emily Smith, Jean Hegland, Lauren Crux, Tayari Jones, Dr. Lawrence Kaplan, and Dr. Nora McNamara. Your advocacy and attention helped move this book out of my study and onto the shelves. I owe a debt of gratitude to you, and also to Samantha Shea of Georges Borchardt, Inc., and Alane Mason of W. W. Norton.

  This book was lifetimes in its production. A complete accounting of those who have aided and encouraged me seems an impossible—and improbable—task. Thank you to the late Mrs. Mudan, director of Foothill Montessori preschool, who taught me that I might be interested in many things at once and yet remain focused. Thank you to Mrs. Nichols, who, when I was in the seventh grade and smarter than a black girl was expected to be and, possibly for this reason, sometimes as disruptive as the literature allows, set me up as the teacher’s assistant in our Honors English class rather than send me to the office. Thank you to Scott, the plainclothes security guard at University High who once lent me a copy of The Autobiography of Malcolm X. I can no longer recall what prompted his offering beyond the fact that we both enjoyed spending the lunch hour in proximity of the same shade tree. The book he gave me, I soon discovered, had been on my parents’ shelves all along. Thank you to my parents and their bookshelves, my grandparents and their bookshelves, their parents and their bookshelves. It was no small thing to grow up knowing there was a body of literature that belonged to me.

  Thank you to the sunset and the sunrise. I am not writing this superfluously. There are too many of us who do not have the chance to see them.

  Thank you to the people who made it clear that they hated me. Thank you to the people who made of themselves examples of the ways that, in the face of such anger, I could proceed.

  This book is written toward a better understanding of moments when I have—and also have not—felt at home. Travel, like motherhood, calls my attention more acutely to new worlds I encounter and those I have left behind. Thank you to all who have welcomed me during my travels. I cannot name you all, for I am abundantly blessed.

  Thank you Ben and Carolyn Van Zante, Bill Ford, Tammi Russell, Scott Cardwell, Rebecca Brown, and Laura-Gray Street. Thank you Priscilla Virant, Dr. Gerald McIntosh, and Sara Schaefer. Thank you Catherine Brady, Valerie Miner, Tess Taylor, Aimee Phan, Patricia Powell, Bich Nguyen, Xochiquetzal Candelaria, and Toni Mirosevich, who were there from the start.

  Thank you to our neighbors, who sometimes plow the snow from our walk.

  Thanks to everyone who aided me on the mountain.

  Thank you to Nana Mary Quintela, Angharad Jones, Shannon Graham and Carlos DeLeon, Emily Bruce, Carrie Leilam Love, Matthew DeCoster, Charlene Hall, Rhowen Dalrymple, Barbara and Gene Ferguson, Papa Joe and Mama Maria, Misty and Mary, Allison and Alyssa, Ms. Shusta, Mrs. Tibbs, Mrs. Kalli Gladu, Dr. Giles, all the unnamed sitters and teachers, and Cole. The essays in this book—and, beyond the book, my whole life as a mother—would read quite differently without you. If you care for children, my child especially, you have my gratitude.

  Thank you to Colorado State University, San Francisco State University, Randolph-Macon Woman’s College (now Randolph College), the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and Stanford University, the institutions where I have taught and learned. Thank you to all the colleges, universities, high schools, libraries, and other institutions that have invited me onto their campuses. Thank you to the Hermitage Artist Retreat, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Norton Island Eastern Frontier Society, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Program, Ragdale, the Rocky Mountain National Park Artist-in-Residence Program, Blue Mountain Center, and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. Thanks to Chris Merrill and the University of Iowa/U.S. State Department Outreach Tour, to Anthony Deaton and the U.S. State Department Speaker and Specialist Program, and to 49 Writers. Thank you Centrum, the Minnesota Northwoods Writers Conference, the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference, the Furious Flower Poetry Conference, Yari Yari Ntoaso, the Dodge Poetry Festival, Bread Loaf, the Bread Loaf Orion Environmental Writers Conference, the Napa Valley Writers Conference, Cave Canem, and Yaddo. If you are in any way responsible for making a haven for artists, thank you.

  Thank you to all of the editors of the journals and anthologies who first accepted or encouraged these essays: Virginia Quarterly Review, New England Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Shaping Memories: Reflections of African American Women Writers, Colors of Nature, Rumpus Women, Ecotone, Black Nature, Wither, and Orion magazine. Thank you to the archives and libraries and universities and books and articles and poems and podcasts and conversations that helped me write this book.

  Thank you to Vanessa Holden and Mariama Lockington, to Beth Hessell and Lydia and Isaac, to Bayliss Camp and Drew Sutton, Janet Yu and Andrew McClelland, Kristen Schmid Schurter, Megan Lavelle, Megan McCarthy, and Megan Wilkerson, to Kim Wilson, to Rayshana Ali Black, to Regina and her family, to Dudley Edmonson, Drew Lanham, and Rue Mapp. Thank you to Aunt Ellie and Uncle Jim, to Mary Tesch Scobey, to Julie Black, to Uncle Jesse, to Uncle Edgar, to Aunt Jeannye, to my dear cousins, and to all my relatives, whom I love. There are people who believe the writer’s talent is individual, but I understand myself to be indivisible from the people I relate to and from the people related to me. Thank you to my sister, Dr. Kathryn Dungy, and her husband, Tim Voigt; to my grandparents, all of them; to Mom and Dad, the Drs. Claibourne and Madgetta Dungy. Above all, I offer love and gratitude to my husand, Dr. Ray Black, and to my daughter, Callie. Kinship with you has made me.

  THE CONSCIENTIOUS OUTSIDER

  An artist goes to an artists’ retreat, or colony as they are often called, to get away from t
he things that typically sideline her in life: insistent phone calls, cooking, dusting, running errands, preparing lectures for class. I was not yet married and was nobody’s mother, but my work/life balance was frequently tipped in ways that hindered the artistic pursuits that both economically and emotionally sustained me. Within the retreat’s carefully constructed atmosphere of tranquillity, I was free for a month to focus on writing.

  When two of my fellow colony guests began to talk over dinner about The Hours, I stayed mum. For one thing, they were talking to each other, not to me. Furthermore, I was on a retreat, and I didn’t feel like putting energy into explaining why I hadn’t seen the film or read the book. I’ll tell you now, from everything I’d seen, heard, and read, the story struck me as slightly overwrought and, well, white, and I hadn’t mustered the mood or time to care about it. But it’s hard to explain to a table full of white folks that sometimes I’m just not interested in spending time or money on films and books that focus on the melancholy of the white experience.

  The lesbian writer hadn’t seen the film, either.

  Let’s not call her “the lesbian writer.” The other is too frequently identified by that which sets her apart. I don’t want to follow that convention. Let’s give her a name. Let’s call her Seattle.

  Seattle’s motives for not having seen the film were more carefully reasoned than mine, a fact I learned because she was pressed to justify her position to her fellow colony guests in a conversation she later referred to as “the one where I was backed into a corner like a hissing, feral beast.” This despite the fact that her initial proclamation of disinterest in the film had been made in the context of a dialogue with just one other person. We’ll call him DuPont Circle.

  Opening her conversation to the table, Seattle laid out the basic reasons she had not seen the film, several of which had to do with its representations of lesbians. In a point related to her argument, Seattle asked us to name ten out lesbian actors working prominently in Hollywood. This was 2003. I want to believe that in the intervening years things have changed for the better, so I challenge you to play along at home. The party at our dinner came up with Ellen DeGeneres and Rosie O’Donnell. Seattle said, “I’d like to point out that neither one of those women was comfortable coming out publicly until she had solidified her career. Still, that’s two. I asked for ten names.” No one had anyone else to add. “I’ll make it easy on you, just give me three more.” People mentioned Jody Foster, but at the time she wasn’t out.

  “But L.A. is totally progressive! Are you trying to suggest that Hollywood is closed to gays and lesbians?” asked a writer from Long Island.

  “I’m just looking at the numbers,” said Seattle. “Tell you what. You’re a writer. Name some lesbian writers whose work gets talked about these days.”

  There were six actively publishing writers at the table. The poet from the north of England knew no one, DuPont Circle named two authors, and I nodded to second Pacific Palisades’ nominee. That brought us to a total of three names.

  “I haven’t heard of any of those people,” said our girl from Long Island.

  “My point exactly!” Seattle pounded her fist on the table, thinking our lack of familiarity had confirmed something.

  I felt vindicated in my disinterest in a film about middle- (to upper-middle-) class white women. My indifference to other people’s anxieties was not, apparently, unique. The general lack of knowledge the table betrayed about lesbian literature and film confirmed my suspicion that Americans often don’t care much about the things that concern people who aren’t like them. The difference, as Seattle’s situation made clear, is that, whereas the conscientious outsider will likely expend some thought and care justifying her reasons for not seeing a film that (mainstream) critics and audiences agree is the film of the season, the mainstream masses don’t bother with realities that don’t concern them.

  Even that word—mainstream—troubles me. Who decides which stream should be the central stream, the authoritative path, for depictions of our diverse worlds?

  Consider a friend of mine who, three weeks into the fall semester of his second year as a student in a prestigious creative writing graduate program, found himself so dejected he felt compelled to call me at the artists’ retreat. “Half my poetry craft class has dropped. Half! Today, I overheard one guy repeat three times that he would have dropped except the class was ‘stupid and easy’ and so he was going to stick around.”

  The course was being taught by a young-appearing African American woman who boasted, among her many qualifications, several books, a Guggenheim, a faculty post at an Ivy League institution, numerous teaching awards, and a position on the Board of Governors of the Poetry Society of America. Her syllabus consisted primarily of books by black women writers. My friend was relatively certain that the people who had dropped the class, all white, and predominantly male, had done so because they just couldn’t stand to be, as he termed it, “decentered.” A sister was teaching a class about writing by black women. Clearly, the content would be “stupid and easy,” if not downright unworthy of the time. What could black women possibly teach about the craft of poetry?

  Back in the colony’s dining room, our friend from Long Island added perspective. “Maybe no one’s talking about these writers because they’re not any good.” She was certain this explained her (give it a name) ignorance. If a thing hadn’t crossed her threshold of experience it must not be worth noticing. She took a large bite of pie and smiled through pink lipstick.

  I uttered my first words of the evening, which were something like, “Christ Almighty!” and left the table under the guise of returning my plates to the kitchen.

  When I came back, the seventh member of our company, a composer from Williamsburg, was beginning to understand Seattle’s point. “This is sort of like blacks in Hollywood. For so long there were so few and the only roles they could play were maids.”

  “No black woman has played a maid in a movie for, like, twenty years,” said Mrs. Long Island.

  In my normal life as a professor I give lectures on the representation of black women in American film. I had numbers and films to dispute her claim. But I was at an artists’ retreat, not in the classroom. I was supposed to be able to get away from my normal life. Why should I have to be the expert tonight?

  “Maybe not maids exactly,” said Williamsburg, “but the point is that there was a limited opportunity for many years and that limited opportunity meant that there was a limited scope of representation for blacks. Isn’t that right?” He turned to me.

  Williamsburg was on the path Seattle had tried to pave, but things could turn against her again at any moment. “Help me out here,” Seattle pleaded.

  There’s no way around it. When you are the only one at the table, eventually they will always turn to you. “Right,” I said.

  It had been barely five days since I’d completed the twenty-eight hours of travel that returned me from my first extended trip to Ghana. I was still jet-lagged. I was feeling a little queasy even before the conversation began. I wanted to make as short work of my involvement as possible. “Sure,” I continued.

  “What are you talking about?” Long Island was incredulous. “There is a load of opportunity available to black people in Hollywood today! Didn’t Halle Berry just win an Oscar?”

  In the history of the prize, only Halle Berry, as a highly sexualized conduit for the redemption of a white man, has won an Oscar for best leading actress. At the time of our conversation at the artists’ colony, the other two Oscars, for best actress in a supporting role, had been awarded to black women for roles in which they were conduits for the redemption of white people (Hattie McDaniel—as a maid—and Whoopi Goldberg—as a medium). This was before Jennifer Hudson, who had the opportunity to serve as a conduit for the love life and redemption of light and lovely Beyoncé Knowles; before Octavia Spencer, who, in 2011, played a maid; and before Lupita Nyong’o, who played a slave. Of the seven black women who have won an
Academy Award for acting, the only exception to this pattern has been Mo’Nique. One entertainment news outlet reported that, as Mary Jane in Precious, Mo’Nique “wore no makeup and even grew hair under her arms” so she could play the role of an abusive mother who was ugly outside and in. That night at the artists’ colony in New York, I told the table what I knew about the poor odds of a black actress winning the favor of the academy if she didn’t play the help.

  “But black people are the mainstay of popular American culture. The movies, hip-hop, everything. Everybody wants to be a part of black culture. Everybody loves it. Both my sons are dying to be black.”

  There was too much in Long Island’s statement for me to tackle at once. Speechless, I sat with what I thought was a blank face.

  “Why are you blinking your eyes at me that way?” She was a mother. She was used to identifying faces like mine: contempt in the guise of indifference.

  “Give them two days as a black person,” I suggested. “See what they think after that.”

  I was full of fear for these boys from Long Island. They had no idea what they were hoping to get into. And how could they? When and how and why did they embrace black as something they wanted to be? Did the black people they so admired come from staid middle- (to upper-middle-) class families like the one in which I was raised? Likely no. Likely, there was some other experience they were after. When did they first start noticing black people, and when they noticed us, what was it they thought they discovered?

  At the end of my first three weeks in Ghana, I found myself in a house with a satellite television system tuned to CNN. I watched the U.S. news for over an hour, then I flipped to a local station and caught the end of a Ghanaian commercial wherein a big-boned black woman walked into a room and every man whistled in admiration. At this point I realized what had been odd about watching the U.S. network after several weeks of not watching American TV. Hitherto, the only television I had watched in Ghana had been either the news broadcast each evening by Ghana TV or Big Brother Africa. (There were eight contestants left when I started watching, only one of whom was white.) The images I saw in television programs, commercials, billboards, and magazines were almost exclusively black, and I could wander around the city for several days without seeing a white face. Outside of the historical context that can’t be ignored in a former Portuguese, Dutch, and British colony, it got so I hardly thought about white people. I loved it when people spoke to me in Twi, assuming I would understand the local language. What a relief it was to see people like me at every turn, not to be the obvious outsider, for a change. But, when I’d watched CNN, I had only seen white people.