I’ve said it before. As a teacher and a writer, I don’t cotton to the concept of being lost for words. Dig around. Thesaurus it! Be like Shakespeare and make up the words you need. Nonetheless, as I teach Senior Girls Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet Jacobs, I find myself at a loss for fresh ways to describe the horrors of slavery. I keep saying “insidious” and “corrosive”, “unimaginable” and “incomprehensible”, but honestly those words just seem lame.
How do we talk about the horrors people perpetrate upon each other? In grad school a professor once told us that you can’t talk about something until you can name it.
“Take domestic violence,” she explained. “Until the phrase ‘domestic violence’ was coined, the behavior was extremely difficult to identify and talk about.” She went on to explain how once that two-word phrase became shorthand for a much larger concept, people started to get help and laws were made.
The past two weeks have been a little crazy in my all-girls Senior English classroom. I’m guessing most of my suburban Philly private school students had never heard of Harvey Weinstein, weren’t big Louis C.K. fans, and honestly couldn’t name a single Kevin Spacey movie. (Of course the Netflix devotees among them knew his name even if they never plunged into the ever darkening depths of House of Cards.) But the Matt Lauer revelation brought the sexual harassment conversation to the masses. Wait, Matt Lauer? Isn’t he, like, the face of American mornings? they asked.
Perhaps part of the frazzle in my classroom is a result of me listening to too much NPR and checking my Google notifications far too often for the next revolving reveal. I ran across Megyn Kelley’s statement and sent it out to my Seniors. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=htFS9wcojyk I’ve never even heard her speak before, but I appreciated what she said.
I listened to Terry Gross talking to New Yorker journalist Jane Mayer and New York magazine journalist Rebecca Traister about Anita Hill and the need to define the different levels and layers of unacceptable behavior. Is it “sexual misconduct”, “sexual harassment”, “sexual assault”, or “sexually inappropriate behavior in the workplace”? https://www.npr.org/2017/11/30/567430106/for-years-anita-hill-was-a-canary-in-the-coal-mine-for-women-speaking-out
As Steven Colbert said “Today, Matt Lauer was let go from NBC’s the ‘Today Show’…due to ‘inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace.’ Not to be confused with appropriate sexual behavior in the workplace, because that…doesn’t exist.” http://youtu.be/veVBbxZyzKU
And now Al Franken, my fandom and fealty for whom I’ve had to adjust in the last 48 hours, dammit. All I keep doing is hoping and praying that something doesn’t come out about Colbert or John Oliver. Please God, please.
There are a lot of smart people uttering a lot of indignant, disgusted, horrified words about how bad things are in our world right now. But “words, words, words,” as Hamlet says. Are the words making any difference or are they just saturating our minds and our beleaguered consciences? Is the relentless repugnance of this important conversation going to create yet another backlash wave of hopelessness and disengagement? With the daily barrage of stories detailing the systematic atrocities perpetrated by famous men in power, I’m hearing more and more resigned, cynical, and perhaps, one could argue, realistic words from even some of my most idealistic and humanitarian people.
“That’s life.” “That’s the way people are.” “That’s America.” “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” “People are going to go for what they can get.” “What do you expect?” “Everybody does it.” “I’m used to it.”
At the same time, we shouldn’t lose hope. The Hague takes a lot longer than social media’s Court of Public Opinion, but my friend Michele Mitchell is still traveling all over the world showing her 2016 film “The Uncondemned” about the 1997 Rwanda Tribunal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=383M6eDj3rU and last month Ratko Mladić was finally convicted of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide by the ICTY, in a trial that took over five years to complete.
So, I searched the internet for new words to use for the five days we have left of discussing Harriet Jacob’s account of slavery. The list is taped on the podium ready for tomorrow’s classes.
#harrietjacobs #incidentsinthelifeofaslavegirl #teachinghighschoolenglish @mlmitchell70 #theuncondemned #megynkelly #stephencolbert @colbertlateshow #mladic #thehague #sexualharassment #inappropriatesexualbehavior #wordswordswords
I appreciate your ability to put into words what is too difficult to do… and to talk to these young women in a way to penetrate their conscience…. xo
Aww thank you so much Christine!! 💔