I’m not what one would call a “fast adopter” when it comes to technology. I’m not someone that’s into gadgets and gizmos and things that light up. I have a laptop that got my through grad school and is still humming along, and recently got a Droid phone because my older model BlackBerry routinely refused to do anything. But we don’t have a BluRay player, and only recently switched over from a 10 year old CRT TV to a flat screen.
Because of this, I figured my resistance to e-readers like the Kindle and the Nook was mainly about me and my general Luddite approach to new technology. BUT a new article came out today that Jodi Piccoult tweeted, and by all accounts, it looks like I’m not alone.
http://www.bnet.com/blog/technology-business/e-reader-bad-news-some-people-want-8216em-but-most-don-8217t/5671
I’ll admit, there are certain aspects of the e-Reader I find really appealing. Instant access, for one. At this point, I order probably 80% of my books online, thanks to a program on one of our credit cards that gives us rewards credits at Amazon.com, feeding my book habit and Brian’s DVD habit. But the annoying part of that is waiting for shipping. Sometimes, when a book catches my fancy, I want it in my hands NOW, not three days from now (if I’m lucky, since I’m far too cheap to pay for something like expedited shipping).
And then there’s the weight and space factor. My husband and I travel frequently, it’s our shared passion. And while I’m not a big fan of flying, I’m a HUGE fan of 5-6 hours of uninterrupted reading time while we get from one place to another. I read fairly quickly, which means I need lots of material for cross-country and international flights. On our last trip to Vegas, I brought 5 books and finished them all before the flight home. That’s a lot of valuable real estate luggage, especially in the days of huge baggage fees and trying to cram as much as possible into my carryon.
But despite these obvious conveniences, I just can’t get behind it. I just love books too much. The actual, physical book. While everyone else was complaining about the weight (and exorbitant cost) of textbooks in college, I was always excited by the slippery stacks of paperbacks for each of my English classes. I love opening books for the first time and getting that subtle crack of a paperback binding. I love turning down and dog earing pages so I can pick them up again later and find my spot. I love the weight of a really thick paperback, how the way it feels changes in my hands as I progress through the story, and the sense of accomplishment mixed with sadness that it’s over when I flip from the last page to the About the Author in the back. I even love the smell of the paper, especially when it’s that slightly offwhite paper that reminds me of the Babysitters Club books I used to read by the dozen in grade school.
And though I feel like a bit of a traitor because of my online shopping habits, I love bookstores. One of my roommates in college and I would regularly take the T down to Coolidge Corner to wander around Brookline Booksmith for HOURS. Upstairs is new books, downstairs is used. We would each walk out with a half a dozen or so new books. Fiction, stuff related to our classes, poetry, sometimes even another copy of a Jane Austen with a really cool cover (we both suffer from an addition to 19th century British women writers). And even the big box bookstores hold a ton of charm for me. I can waste a day wandering up and down the shelves, picking up books with covers that catch my eye and checking out the back for a good synopsis. I’m pretty sure I could easily blow an entire week’s paycheck in one stop at a Barnes and Noble. Which means it’s probably better that I do my shopping online! While clicking through the virtual stacks of Amazon can be a fun experience, the sheer volume of what’s available makes it hard for things to stand out. Searching for titles is far more efficient when I’m looking for something specific, but it just doesn’t have the same effect and makes it harder to discover new things outside of what I was already looking for.
I’m also really, really possessive of my books. I don’t like libraries because I want my books to be MINE. I joined paperbackswap.com in an effort to curtail my spending, but it was just too hard for me to part with well loved, and even not well loved, books of mine. This resulted in a ridiculous number of HEAVY boxes that needed to go from our apartment to our house, but I still couldn’t bear to let them go.
So I’m pretty sure I’m not likely to embrace the e-Reader trend anytime soon. I do have an app to turn my phone into a Kindle, so maybe I’ll test drive a book on that for my next trip to cut down on my luggage burden. But I don’t think anything will replace the book for me.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
On Twitter, social work, labels and language
Warning: objects in the post below may be less coherent than they appear. But I promise, it all makes sense to me!
I have to admit, as much as I resisted the whole concept of Twitter, it’s been a neat little world to explore over the past month or so. I get real time access to lots of stuff I hadn’t considered wanting real time access to in the past. While it’s another example of the technological encroachment on my life that I’m trying to give a little distance to, it’s a handy way to keep abreast of topics and websites that I used to cruise on occasion, and now can find the things that I’m interested in quickly and disregard the rest.
One of my favorite things on Twitter feed is my professional organization, the National Association of Social Workers. Social workers have a hand in a LOT of different areas, including all different phases of the lifespan, so it can be tough to sort through the geriatric stuff (Meaning about older adults, not that the material itselfis old enough for Medicare. Bad pun? Probably.) to get to the relevant material for a juvenile justice worker. But Twitter has proved to be an easy way to do that. Click the relevant links, ignore the rest. Voila!
This is all a very roundabout way of getting to my point: an interesting link came up on my Twitter feed today from NASW. Lee Baca, a sheriff in Los Angeles, was interviewed by the LA Times, and asked if his involvement in mental health and homelessness issues make him “sort of like a social worker in uniform.” He replied “I’m not sort of a social worker, I am a social worker.”
Forgive me for being proprietary, but he’s not. He’s a sheriff, which is a noble and necessary profession. And using his position to highlight issues of mental illness and homelessness is both rare and commendable. But I spent two years in graduate school, countless hours reading articles and writing papers, a ream of copy paper worth of applications and recommendations and a really, really high stress computer based test for the privilege of calling myself a social worker. I’m expected to adhere to a certain code of ethics, to have a particular framework from which I work, and to have a connection to the unique past while helping make a unique future for my profession. It’s hard work!
What burns my butt about it is that he wouldn’t say “I’m not sort of a psychologist, I am a psychologist.” He doesn’t have the training and licensing to call himself one. (You could insert any manner of profession here, like doctor, lawyer, insurance agent… but psychologists do similar work with a different theoretical orientation.) And social work ALSO has training licensing and standards that we have to adhere to. But we’ve, for whatever reason, never had that kind of proprietary control over who uses the term, and how they use it. I can venture that Mr. Baca probably wouldn’t be down with me referring to myself as a sheriff, despite the fact that I work in the correctional system.
It really makes me wonder why I’m so bothered by this, because when you get right down to it, it’s a label. And as a rule, social workers are sort of conditioned to think that labels are bad, and reduce complex people and problems into artificial categories that may or may not be accurate. The “what” of the work is so much more important than the name one might slap on it. It seems contrary to our own values to be concerned with it.
But in other ways, it’s bigger than that. It’s not about labels, but about legitimacy, and having a sense that we have a professional identity that’s distinct and apart from others in the field. For a field that has been so heavily dominated by women since its inception, that struggle for legitimacy is tied up in the complexities of gender and value of work. Nursing has had a similar uphill battle, though pay and prestige are approaching catching up with the work that nurses do. Social workers are lagging a little behind.
And all of it comes back to thinking about how we language our lives. As both a social worker and a writer (however precariously that label might be able to be affixed to me at present), I’m surrounded by reminders of the power of language. As a social worker, talk isn’t just how we communicate, it’s how we help heal. Labels, whether they be helpful or harmful in how they’re employed, are linguistic short cuts to get our point across. How impossible would it be to explain what a mother is to her child every time we used the word? And the sense of power in those labels is something to be aware of for both its utility and its danger.
Do you ever have moments where you just think about how incredible our brains are that we can take what are really just abstract symbols and sounds and make them into things that not only make sense, but connect us with other people? I’m having a “marvel at the wonders of the human mind” kind of day! Whether or not this is influenced by a group therapy session I ran today on changes that marijuana use causes to the adolescent brain and the complete lack of cooperation I got from my clients, I couldn't tell you. :-)
I have to admit, as much as I resisted the whole concept of Twitter, it’s been a neat little world to explore over the past month or so. I get real time access to lots of stuff I hadn’t considered wanting real time access to in the past. While it’s another example of the technological encroachment on my life that I’m trying to give a little distance to, it’s a handy way to keep abreast of topics and websites that I used to cruise on occasion, and now can find the things that I’m interested in quickly and disregard the rest.
One of my favorite things on Twitter feed is my professional organization, the National Association of Social Workers. Social workers have a hand in a LOT of different areas, including all different phases of the lifespan, so it can be tough to sort through the geriatric stuff (Meaning about older adults, not that the material itselfis old enough for Medicare. Bad pun? Probably.) to get to the relevant material for a juvenile justice worker. But Twitter has proved to be an easy way to do that. Click the relevant links, ignore the rest. Voila!
This is all a very roundabout way of getting to my point: an interesting link came up on my Twitter feed today from NASW. Lee Baca, a sheriff in Los Angeles, was interviewed by the LA Times, and asked if his involvement in mental health and homelessness issues make him “sort of like a social worker in uniform.” He replied “I’m not sort of a social worker, I am a social worker.”
Forgive me for being proprietary, but he’s not. He’s a sheriff, which is a noble and necessary profession. And using his position to highlight issues of mental illness and homelessness is both rare and commendable. But I spent two years in graduate school, countless hours reading articles and writing papers, a ream of copy paper worth of applications and recommendations and a really, really high stress computer based test for the privilege of calling myself a social worker. I’m expected to adhere to a certain code of ethics, to have a particular framework from which I work, and to have a connection to the unique past while helping make a unique future for my profession. It’s hard work!
What burns my butt about it is that he wouldn’t say “I’m not sort of a psychologist, I am a psychologist.” He doesn’t have the training and licensing to call himself one. (You could insert any manner of profession here, like doctor, lawyer, insurance agent… but psychologists do similar work with a different theoretical orientation.) And social work ALSO has training licensing and standards that we have to adhere to. But we’ve, for whatever reason, never had that kind of proprietary control over who uses the term, and how they use it. I can venture that Mr. Baca probably wouldn’t be down with me referring to myself as a sheriff, despite the fact that I work in the correctional system.
It really makes me wonder why I’m so bothered by this, because when you get right down to it, it’s a label. And as a rule, social workers are sort of conditioned to think that labels are bad, and reduce complex people and problems into artificial categories that may or may not be accurate. The “what” of the work is so much more important than the name one might slap on it. It seems contrary to our own values to be concerned with it.
But in other ways, it’s bigger than that. It’s not about labels, but about legitimacy, and having a sense that we have a professional identity that’s distinct and apart from others in the field. For a field that has been so heavily dominated by women since its inception, that struggle for legitimacy is tied up in the complexities of gender and value of work. Nursing has had a similar uphill battle, though pay and prestige are approaching catching up with the work that nurses do. Social workers are lagging a little behind.
And all of it comes back to thinking about how we language our lives. As both a social worker and a writer (however precariously that label might be able to be affixed to me at present), I’m surrounded by reminders of the power of language. As a social worker, talk isn’t just how we communicate, it’s how we help heal. Labels, whether they be helpful or harmful in how they’re employed, are linguistic short cuts to get our point across. How impossible would it be to explain what a mother is to her child every time we used the word? And the sense of power in those labels is something to be aware of for both its utility and its danger.
Do you ever have moments where you just think about how incredible our brains are that we can take what are really just abstract symbols and sounds and make them into things that not only make sense, but connect us with other people? I’m having a “marvel at the wonders of the human mind” kind of day! Whether or not this is influenced by a group therapy session I ran today on changes that marijuana use causes to the adolescent brain and the complete lack of cooperation I got from my clients, I couldn't tell you. :-)
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Must Read Monday Continued: More on Wally Lamb
In the wake of my thinking about the portrayal of mental health and illness in the books I read, I had dinner with a former supervisor. She’s a mentor to me, and I love spending time with her. It just makes me a feel a bit more at ease after we’ve talked.
The conversation turned, as it often does, to books. We’re both avid readers with similar taste in books. We were discussing Wally Lamb, and she expressed her frustration that She’s Come Undone was called “a woman’s book,” as if Dolores was supposed to speak for women on the whole. When in reality (well, ok in fiction, but you know what I mean), Dolores was a woman with a lot of struggles who likely suffered from borderline personality disorder. The concept of that being “a woman’s book” reinforced the notion that all women, at least all white women of a certain level of economic prosperity (not that Dolores was rich by any stretch, but her character could afford to attend college and had a benefactor that paid for her expensive and extensive private mental health treatment), were hopelessly neurotic. After over a hundred years of progressive thought in mental health and feminism, we’re back to Freud and his hysterically blind housewives…doesn’t it always come back to Freud?
The whole idea of a difference between a man’s experience of mental illness, or even mental normalcy in a relative sense, and a woman’s experience has been fodder for researchers and theorists for decades. But it gave me pause to think about it going in the opposite direction… do we under-pathologize serious issues for women because it’s simply “how we’re built?” Is it harder to acknowledge and accommodate a range of normal for men because of socialized roles, leading to a greater use of diagnosis to make it concrete and understood, while women just languish in having “woman issues”? Is a greater amount of emotional lability, depression and anxiety considered “normal” for women than men? And is everyone always going to continue to blame everything on our goddamn hormones?
But there are, of course, two sides to every coin. I found Dolores’s voice to be authentically female, but I also found it authentic from the perspective of someone who is suffering from a serious mental illness. I like to think I’m not conflating the two, but it made me wonder how it was received by people outside of the mental health field or without a lot of experience with those suffering from mental illness. Is that what they thought “normal” looks like? IS that what “normal” looks like? Am I the one with some serious questions to answer about my perception of the disruptive quality of mental illness, and therefore, the need for my services? Do I over pathologize to remain relevant?
It reminds me of when I was in high school and desperately seeking to be hipster and literary. I read beat poetry and painted my nails black. I adored Sylvia Plath, and I must have read The Bell Jar a thousand times. In my adolescent experience of the world, that was what it meant to be a young woman, and Plath just GOT ME (said in the most melodramatic, overly teenage ton possible). I now know how sick Plath was for most of her life, and how tragically her story ended. But to my 16 year old self, that was my normal. Who am I to say Dolores isn’t someone elses?
The bottom line is, of course, that there are no answers to these questions. People don’t seek therapy because they’re diagnosed as “mentally ill.” They seek therapy because they feel they need something: support, medication, help solving something they’re stuck on. None of those things change based on a 5 number code on an insurance form or a page from the DSM. And while it can be helpful in conceptualizing treatment and gaining clear outcomes, diagnosis is just a label, albeit one that come loaded with questions and judgments. It doesn’t really matter if Dolores has borderline personality disorder or is like any other woman. What matters is that help and hope are found for those who are dealing with the same issues as she was. And I hope Lamb’s work inspires some women to see that there IS someone “just like them” and find redemptive power in his words.
The conversation turned, as it often does, to books. We’re both avid readers with similar taste in books. We were discussing Wally Lamb, and she expressed her frustration that She’s Come Undone was called “a woman’s book,” as if Dolores was supposed to speak for women on the whole. When in reality (well, ok in fiction, but you know what I mean), Dolores was a woman with a lot of struggles who likely suffered from borderline personality disorder. The concept of that being “a woman’s book” reinforced the notion that all women, at least all white women of a certain level of economic prosperity (not that Dolores was rich by any stretch, but her character could afford to attend college and had a benefactor that paid for her expensive and extensive private mental health treatment), were hopelessly neurotic. After over a hundred years of progressive thought in mental health and feminism, we’re back to Freud and his hysterically blind housewives…doesn’t it always come back to Freud?
The whole idea of a difference between a man’s experience of mental illness, or even mental normalcy in a relative sense, and a woman’s experience has been fodder for researchers and theorists for decades. But it gave me pause to think about it going in the opposite direction… do we under-pathologize serious issues for women because it’s simply “how we’re built?” Is it harder to acknowledge and accommodate a range of normal for men because of socialized roles, leading to a greater use of diagnosis to make it concrete and understood, while women just languish in having “woman issues”? Is a greater amount of emotional lability, depression and anxiety considered “normal” for women than men? And is everyone always going to continue to blame everything on our goddamn hormones?
But there are, of course, two sides to every coin. I found Dolores’s voice to be authentically female, but I also found it authentic from the perspective of someone who is suffering from a serious mental illness. I like to think I’m not conflating the two, but it made me wonder how it was received by people outside of the mental health field or without a lot of experience with those suffering from mental illness. Is that what they thought “normal” looks like? IS that what “normal” looks like? Am I the one with some serious questions to answer about my perception of the disruptive quality of mental illness, and therefore, the need for my services? Do I over pathologize to remain relevant?
It reminds me of when I was in high school and desperately seeking to be hipster and literary. I read beat poetry and painted my nails black. I adored Sylvia Plath, and I must have read The Bell Jar a thousand times. In my adolescent experience of the world, that was what it meant to be a young woman, and Plath just GOT ME (said in the most melodramatic, overly teenage ton possible). I now know how sick Plath was for most of her life, and how tragically her story ended. But to my 16 year old self, that was my normal. Who am I to say Dolores isn’t someone elses?
The bottom line is, of course, that there are no answers to these questions. People don’t seek therapy because they’re diagnosed as “mentally ill.” They seek therapy because they feel they need something: support, medication, help solving something they’re stuck on. None of those things change based on a 5 number code on an insurance form or a page from the DSM. And while it can be helpful in conceptualizing treatment and gaining clear outcomes, diagnosis is just a label, albeit one that come loaded with questions and judgments. It doesn’t really matter if Dolores has borderline personality disorder or is like any other woman. What matters is that help and hope are found for those who are dealing with the same issues as she was. And I hope Lamb’s work inspires some women to see that there IS someone “just like them” and find redemptive power in his words.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Must Read Monday: Wally Lamb
In honor of World Suicide Prevention Day last Friday, I wanted to think a little but about the intersection of my two worlds: mental health and literature. And I'll come right out and say it: for my money, no one writes about mental illness with a gentler hand or more authentic voice than Wally Lamb. I've so far only read She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, but both of those books are, to me, such staggering achievements in character and voice that I can't wait to read more from him.
One of the first things that caught my attention in She's Come Undone is how authetically female Dolores's voice was from a male author. Though there are certainly exceptions, it seems most authors stick to writing from the perspective of their own gender, even if they experiment with other types of "other." So when an author breaks with that, and does it extremely sensitively and deftly, it's that much more of an accomplishment. Dolores's issues with body image, sexual assault and ensuing questions about her sexuality, questions of satisfaction and gender roles in marriage, are are thoughtfully addressed in HER voice.
The voice in I Know This Much Is True is very different, but no less powerful. Dominic struggles with the issues so many family members of those with mental illness struggle with, heightened because he and Thomas are twins: Why them and not me? And really, isn't it still me because I'm here living it with them, caring for them, trying to keep them together? One of my undergrad professors, David Karp, wrote a book called The Burden of Sympathy about the family experience of mental illness. The themes that those real family stories are all present in the Birdsey saga.
Both books have an interesting perspectives on mental health treatment. As a clinician, I'm always interested in how my profession is portrayed in the fictional realm. I get frustrated with the crazy portrayals in shows like Cupid where no real treatment happens and ethical lines are continuosly not just stepped over, but left in the dust. Deinstitutionalization, forensic responsibility, and the relative merits of different forms of psychotherapy that have come in and out of fashion over the sprawl of Lamb's character's lives all run through his narratives. I think he has one of the most accurate and favorable depictions of mental health pros I've read.
But what I love most about Lamb is that none of his characters are JUST their mental illness. Even in classics like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, themes of mental illness can overtake the overall sense of character, and people become their diagnosis. By giving his characters so many layers, Lamb challenges the notion that mental illness is "all encompassing." Which is, of course, how it works for those in the "real world," coping.
I have a lot more I'm thinking about with relation to this topic. I'll get my thoughts organized and continue with this later this week. Stay tuned!
One of the first things that caught my attention in She's Come Undone is how authetically female Dolores's voice was from a male author. Though there are certainly exceptions, it seems most authors stick to writing from the perspective of their own gender, even if they experiment with other types of "other." So when an author breaks with that, and does it extremely sensitively and deftly, it's that much more of an accomplishment. Dolores's issues with body image, sexual assault and ensuing questions about her sexuality, questions of satisfaction and gender roles in marriage, are are thoughtfully addressed in HER voice.
The voice in I Know This Much Is True is very different, but no less powerful. Dominic struggles with the issues so many family members of those with mental illness struggle with, heightened because he and Thomas are twins: Why them and not me? And really, isn't it still me because I'm here living it with them, caring for them, trying to keep them together? One of my undergrad professors, David Karp, wrote a book called The Burden of Sympathy about the family experience of mental illness. The themes that those real family stories are all present in the Birdsey saga.
Both books have an interesting perspectives on mental health treatment. As a clinician, I'm always interested in how my profession is portrayed in the fictional realm. I get frustrated with the crazy portrayals in shows like Cupid where no real treatment happens and ethical lines are continuosly not just stepped over, but left in the dust. Deinstitutionalization, forensic responsibility, and the relative merits of different forms of psychotherapy that have come in and out of fashion over the sprawl of Lamb's character's lives all run through his narratives. I think he has one of the most accurate and favorable depictions of mental health pros I've read.
But what I love most about Lamb is that none of his characters are JUST their mental illness. Even in classics like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, themes of mental illness can overtake the overall sense of character, and people become their diagnosis. By giving his characters so many layers, Lamb challenges the notion that mental illness is "all encompassing." Which is, of course, how it works for those in the "real world," coping.
I have a lot more I'm thinking about with relation to this topic. I'll get my thoughts organized and continue with this later this week. Stay tuned!
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
My "Must Read" List: Gwendolyn Brooks
True to my intention of starting this blog, I want to start writing a series of posts about my favorite books, writers, poets, and all things wordsmith-y. (My original intention was to start this post on Monday and call it my "Must Read Monday." Maybe by next week, I'll be together enough to actually get the post up on Monday!) I figured I would start my "Must Read" series with the poet whose work inspired the title of my blog: Gwendolyn Brooks.
The first poem I read by Ms. Brooks was the English class anthology staple "We Real Cool." As might be apparent from my entries so far, brevity isn't exactly my strong suit. So I'm fascinated by writers who can make an impact with a minimal number of words. Ernest Hemingway (who will surface again in this series) is one of my favorite novelists for this reason. But Ms. Brooks takes word economy to a whole other level in "We Real Cool." In 24 words, she seems to simultaneously capture the swagger and fear of a "lost generation" of African American males in urban Chicago. I see so much of the kids I work with in those 24 words. That sense of thrill-seeking, trying to live on the edge in order to feel anything good, if only for a fleeting instant. It comes in forms of music, drugs and alcohol, fighting. It had a sense of desolation buried under the bravado that only a teenager seems to be able to muster. It's a remarkable piece.
"The Lovers of the Poor" is a stinging commentary on the idea of targeted welfare to those who "deserve it." Though it was written in 1963, the themes are just as relevant in a post-welfare reform world that insists on "workfare" and backing single parents into a corner. The harsh, alliterative edges of the language are clipped and "proper," fitting of the ladies of the Betterment League. It really makes me think about my motives in my professional life. It's kind of a gut check for me. It forces me to examine my own feelings about my middle class status, my whiteness, my position of immense privilege and what I can, and should, do about it.
But my favorite poems is, not surprisingly, "Jane Addams." Jane Addams is a constant source of inspiration for me personally, and for my profession as whole. She took incredible risks and bucked social convention for a woman of her time, in both her personal and professional life. But the thing that has always been most inspiring to me was that her connection was personal. She had a huge impact on systems, to be certain, but the crux of her work was helping each individual better their own individual circumstances. She made the personal political long before the feminist movement made it fashionable. And Ms. Brooks' poem does a beautiful job at balancing those pieces of Jane Addams' life and work. The short, declaritive thoughts like "You matter, so I bother" and "The world might continue" are matter of fact but heavy with meaning. I keep a lithograph copy of the poem on my wall at work to remind me that no matter how insignificant my contribution feels today, the world can change in a small way, everyday.
Ms. Brooks' blend of social criticism and lyricism is something I constantly strive for. She finds beauty in such unconventional subjects and places, which inspires me to draw out strength from unconventional sources.
The first poem I read by Ms. Brooks was the English class anthology staple "We Real Cool." As might be apparent from my entries so far, brevity isn't exactly my strong suit. So I'm fascinated by writers who can make an impact with a minimal number of words. Ernest Hemingway (who will surface again in this series) is one of my favorite novelists for this reason. But Ms. Brooks takes word economy to a whole other level in "We Real Cool." In 24 words, she seems to simultaneously capture the swagger and fear of a "lost generation" of African American males in urban Chicago. I see so much of the kids I work with in those 24 words. That sense of thrill-seeking, trying to live on the edge in order to feel anything good, if only for a fleeting instant. It comes in forms of music, drugs and alcohol, fighting. It had a sense of desolation buried under the bravado that only a teenager seems to be able to muster. It's a remarkable piece.
"The Lovers of the Poor" is a stinging commentary on the idea of targeted welfare to those who "deserve it." Though it was written in 1963, the themes are just as relevant in a post-welfare reform world that insists on "workfare" and backing single parents into a corner. The harsh, alliterative edges of the language are clipped and "proper," fitting of the ladies of the Betterment League. It really makes me think about my motives in my professional life. It's kind of a gut check for me. It forces me to examine my own feelings about my middle class status, my whiteness, my position of immense privilege and what I can, and should, do about it.
But my favorite poems is, not surprisingly, "Jane Addams." Jane Addams is a constant source of inspiration for me personally, and for my profession as whole. She took incredible risks and bucked social convention for a woman of her time, in both her personal and professional life. But the thing that has always been most inspiring to me was that her connection was personal. She had a huge impact on systems, to be certain, but the crux of her work was helping each individual better their own individual circumstances. She made the personal political long before the feminist movement made it fashionable. And Ms. Brooks' poem does a beautiful job at balancing those pieces of Jane Addams' life and work. The short, declaritive thoughts like "You matter, so I bother" and "The world might continue" are matter of fact but heavy with meaning. I keep a lithograph copy of the poem on my wall at work to remind me that no matter how insignificant my contribution feels today, the world can change in a small way, everyday.
Ms. Brooks' blend of social criticism and lyricism is something I constantly strive for. She finds beauty in such unconventional subjects and places, which inspires me to draw out strength from unconventional sources.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Tuesday Musings on Writing
The first cliché in writing:
Write what you know.
But how do you make “what you know” worth reading when what you know is, by all accounts, a fairly pedestrian white middle class existence?
I’m 26 years old. I’m married, to a guy I love very much and even better, like a whole lot. We bought a house with a yard and yes, even a white picket fence. We both work at jobs we like in theory but struggle with in practice. We have loving, if slightly kooky, families who want what’s best for us and have no problems letting us know just what they think that is.
This is not the stuff of literary legend.
Sure, there’s plenty of drama to propel our lives forward. Will our couple ever decide what they’re having for dinner tonight? Will THIS be the weekend that the downstairs bathroom finally is finished? We wait, with bated breath, to see if our hero can locate the missing netbook in the abyss of the last unpacked room! :Cue the dramatic music taking us into the commercial break.:
And I think that’s part of where my lack of focus on my creative work has come from over the last few years. It’s seemed doubtful that I had anything interesting to say.
Thankfully, before I can get too despondent about my lack of tortured artist material, I go to work. I have what some might think is an unusual job: I’m a clinician at a juvenile detention center, doing therapy with adolescent males who are awaiting trial on a variety of offenses, from shoplifting to attempted murder. These are kids from all walks of life, though many of them are exactly the cliché you’ve heard before: poor kids with an ethnic minority background coming from a single parent household, usually with a history of substance abuse and/or involvement with street gangs. But it’s not exactly like living in Stand by Me. For as many kids as I help in a day, I’m pretty sure there’s an equal number who want the white girl to step off and stop bothering them. There’s the struggles that one might expect: engaging parents who are fed up with their kids breaking the law, a legal system that penalizes poor kids more than rich kids (and minority kids more than anyone), the bureaucracy of working for the state. And others one might not (ok, the ones I didn’t when I signed up for this): adjusting to working with mostly men and the woefully stereotypical ego trips that ensue, the relative mountains of paperwork coupled with a reticent fax machine, the feeling of taking one step forward, two steps back when there’s not enough of anything: time, money, staff, hope.
When I contrast what my daily life is like with the kids that I spend a good chunk of my time worrying about, it’s pretty obvious that I’d take my life, domestically docile as it is, a hundred times before I’d want to live theirs. But I have the genuine privilege of hearing their stories, getting to see into a world that I could never be a part of otherwise. Stepping into someone else’s shoes, if only for a few minutes, and attempting to see the world from his perspective, and understand the choices that he’s made, is a daily lesson in minimizing judgment, maximizing patience, and keeping a genuine desire to empathize.
Maybe it doesn’t matter what I, as myself, would have to say. Being primarily a poet and living in the age of the memoir (think: The Glass Castle, Running with Scissors, even A Thousand Little Pieces, tenuous though the writer's concept of reality actually was), it's easy to slip into the trap of needing to write from the perspective of ME, from inside my own admittedly narrow experience. But why? In my professional life, my job is empathize, understand and advocate. The ethos of social work has always been giving a voice to the voiceless (which is, of course, another cliche. But when you look at the history of the profession, it's also accurate!). And, at it's bedrock, that’s what writers do. They take the perspective of a character, someone who is all at once completely unique and still (hopefully at least), representative of some part of the reader that they can connect with. They let you see into someone else’s world you wouldn’t be part of otherwise.
So maybe it’s time to get over myself and just write, and see what happens.
Write what you know.
But how do you make “what you know” worth reading when what you know is, by all accounts, a fairly pedestrian white middle class existence?
I’m 26 years old. I’m married, to a guy I love very much and even better, like a whole lot. We bought a house with a yard and yes, even a white picket fence. We both work at jobs we like in theory but struggle with in practice. We have loving, if slightly kooky, families who want what’s best for us and have no problems letting us know just what they think that is.
This is not the stuff of literary legend.
Sure, there’s plenty of drama to propel our lives forward. Will our couple ever decide what they’re having for dinner tonight? Will THIS be the weekend that the downstairs bathroom finally is finished? We wait, with bated breath, to see if our hero can locate the missing netbook in the abyss of the last unpacked room! :Cue the dramatic music taking us into the commercial break.:
And I think that’s part of where my lack of focus on my creative work has come from over the last few years. It’s seemed doubtful that I had anything interesting to say.
Thankfully, before I can get too despondent about my lack of tortured artist material, I go to work. I have what some might think is an unusual job: I’m a clinician at a juvenile detention center, doing therapy with adolescent males who are awaiting trial on a variety of offenses, from shoplifting to attempted murder. These are kids from all walks of life, though many of them are exactly the cliché you’ve heard before: poor kids with an ethnic minority background coming from a single parent household, usually with a history of substance abuse and/or involvement with street gangs. But it’s not exactly like living in Stand by Me. For as many kids as I help in a day, I’m pretty sure there’s an equal number who want the white girl to step off and stop bothering them. There’s the struggles that one might expect: engaging parents who are fed up with their kids breaking the law, a legal system that penalizes poor kids more than rich kids (and minority kids more than anyone), the bureaucracy of working for the state. And others one might not (ok, the ones I didn’t when I signed up for this): adjusting to working with mostly men and the woefully stereotypical ego trips that ensue, the relative mountains of paperwork coupled with a reticent fax machine, the feeling of taking one step forward, two steps back when there’s not enough of anything: time, money, staff, hope.
When I contrast what my daily life is like with the kids that I spend a good chunk of my time worrying about, it’s pretty obvious that I’d take my life, domestically docile as it is, a hundred times before I’d want to live theirs. But I have the genuine privilege of hearing their stories, getting to see into a world that I could never be a part of otherwise. Stepping into someone else’s shoes, if only for a few minutes, and attempting to see the world from his perspective, and understand the choices that he’s made, is a daily lesson in minimizing judgment, maximizing patience, and keeping a genuine desire to empathize.
Maybe it doesn’t matter what I, as myself, would have to say. Being primarily a poet and living in the age of the memoir (think: The Glass Castle, Running with Scissors, even A Thousand Little Pieces, tenuous though the writer's concept of reality actually was), it's easy to slip into the trap of needing to write from the perspective of ME, from inside my own admittedly narrow experience. But why? In my professional life, my job is empathize, understand and advocate. The ethos of social work has always been giving a voice to the voiceless (which is, of course, another cliche. But when you look at the history of the profession, it's also accurate!). And, at it's bedrock, that’s what writers do. They take the perspective of a character, someone who is all at once completely unique and still (hopefully at least), representative of some part of the reader that they can connect with. They let you see into someone else’s world you wouldn’t be part of otherwise.
So maybe it’s time to get over myself and just write, and see what happens.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
The FranzenFreude Twitter Explosion!
In addition to my new venture into the world of blogging, I've also recently joined Twitter. I know, I'm officially three years behind the rest of the world. I held out because, well, to be blunt... it seemed like a purely narcissistic exercise, contained to 140 characters or less. Embarrassingly, the only reason I joined was to follow update's from a friend's sister's trainwreck of a wedding (there were feathers and balloons and vows that included "will you take this beautiful bride" and "her special day"... I won't say more, because it might become my novel someday, and I'll owe Maria some royalty money). But as it turns out, I picked the perfect time to join, thanks to the firestorm of the last few days known as Jennifer Weiner and Jodi Picoult kicking ass and taking names all over the Twitterverse with regards to coverage of women in the reviews by the New York Times.
I'd be lying if I said I spend much time thinking about what does and doesn't make the pages of a newspaper I don't even read. Especially lately when it comes to reading, I pick things I like and don't spend a lot of time thinking about what "category" they fit into, whether it be genre or literary vs commercial fiction. And I've consumed more than my fair share of stereotypical "chick lit"... you know, the books with bubblegum pink covers that are invariably about some desperately-seeking-love-and-glam-accessories woman traipsing around Manhattan in high heels of masochistic proportions. But I was genuinely surprised that anyone would lump writers like Picoult and Weiner into that category.
I've only read one Picoult book and wasn't wowed. To be fair, it was My Sister's Keeper, and I may have fallen victim to my own high expectations of the book after all the raves I'd heard. Curtis Sittenfeld met the same fate for me with Prep. (Who, I might add, fits oddly into this debate since Sittenfeld IS such a literary darling.) But Sittenfeld redeemed herself for me with American Wife, and I hope I can pick up another Jodi Picoult that will change my perception. But, putting personal taste aside, her books are universally known for being thought provoking and getting at themes of life, death and redemption that those in the "New York glamazon-wanna-be" genre wouldn't touch with a ten inch liner pencil. Yes, it's commercial, but it's commercial because it's readable and relevant. Is that such a bad thing?
And I'll shout loud and proud that I'm a HUGE Jennifer Weiner fan. Her books are some of my favorites, the ones I leave under my bedside table because I want to read them over and over. The characters are like friends, relatable and, most importantly, REAL, no matter the ridiculous situation that Weiner had presented them with this time around. They're emotional, irrational, and flawed... and fabulous because of, not in spite of, that.
Because I'm so personally invested, it stings a bit to hear hear her work denigrated as "chick lit." Yes, it's about women, likely FOR women, and touches on "feminine" themes... motherhood, romantic relationships, bonds between sisters and daughters. But are books that center on masculine themes "jock lit"? Male authors don't seem to get pigeonholed as easily as female writers, which is really the whole point of this entire twittercize. (A stretch? Probably.)
I wish commercial success and critical acclaim didn't have to appear to be diametrically opposed in the publishing world. Does being taken seriously have to equal taking yourself, and your readers, TOO seriously? To the point of coming off as elitist or, dare I say it, snobbish? I used to be the type of person that read LIT'rature and wanted to deconstruct it, understand it, make a brilliant point about it. Now, I just want to enjoy it. And by enjoy, I mean have something that captures my imagination and my emotions, whether its fleeting (as with the more glamazon iterations of "chick lit") or more enduring, like I see in my favorite authors: Ernest Hemingway, Khaled Hosseni, Wally Lamb, Nick Horby, Barbara Kingsolver and yes, Jennifer Weiner. And I think it's from a place of maturity where I can say that sometimes, I just want to read what I LIKE, not what's supposed to be EXCELLENT. And for me, for now, that's good enough.
I'd be lying if I said I spend much time thinking about what does and doesn't make the pages of a newspaper I don't even read. Especially lately when it comes to reading, I pick things I like and don't spend a lot of time thinking about what "category" they fit into, whether it be genre or literary vs commercial fiction. And I've consumed more than my fair share of stereotypical "chick lit"... you know, the books with bubblegum pink covers that are invariably about some desperately-seeking-love-and-glam-accessories woman traipsing around Manhattan in high heels of masochistic proportions. But I was genuinely surprised that anyone would lump writers like Picoult and Weiner into that category.
I've only read one Picoult book and wasn't wowed. To be fair, it was My Sister's Keeper, and I may have fallen victim to my own high expectations of the book after all the raves I'd heard. Curtis Sittenfeld met the same fate for me with Prep. (Who, I might add, fits oddly into this debate since Sittenfeld IS such a literary darling.) But Sittenfeld redeemed herself for me with American Wife, and I hope I can pick up another Jodi Picoult that will change my perception. But, putting personal taste aside, her books are universally known for being thought provoking and getting at themes of life, death and redemption that those in the "New York glamazon-wanna-be" genre wouldn't touch with a ten inch liner pencil. Yes, it's commercial, but it's commercial because it's readable and relevant. Is that such a bad thing?
And I'll shout loud and proud that I'm a HUGE Jennifer Weiner fan. Her books are some of my favorites, the ones I leave under my bedside table because I want to read them over and over. The characters are like friends, relatable and, most importantly, REAL, no matter the ridiculous situation that Weiner had presented them with this time around. They're emotional, irrational, and flawed... and fabulous because of, not in spite of, that.
Because I'm so personally invested, it stings a bit to hear hear her work denigrated as "chick lit." Yes, it's about women, likely FOR women, and touches on "feminine" themes... motherhood, romantic relationships, bonds between sisters and daughters. But are books that center on masculine themes "jock lit"? Male authors don't seem to get pigeonholed as easily as female writers, which is really the whole point of this entire twittercize. (A stretch? Probably.)
I wish commercial success and critical acclaim didn't have to appear to be diametrically opposed in the publishing world. Does being taken seriously have to equal taking yourself, and your readers, TOO seriously? To the point of coming off as elitist or, dare I say it, snobbish? I used to be the type of person that read LIT'rature and wanted to deconstruct it, understand it, make a brilliant point about it. Now, I just want to enjoy it. And by enjoy, I mean have something that captures my imagination and my emotions, whether its fleeting (as with the more glamazon iterations of "chick lit") or more enduring, like I see in my favorite authors: Ernest Hemingway, Khaled Hosseni, Wally Lamb, Nick Horby, Barbara Kingsolver and yes, Jennifer Weiner. And I think it's from a place of maturity where I can say that sometimes, I just want to read what I LIKE, not what's supposed to be EXCELLENT. And for me, for now, that's good enough.
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