Anthropology Times

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

In reading Brackette Williams, in reading through her interviews, I am struck by the fact that she does not at all write/speak in ordered lists. She speaks in layers. She speaks with context. In answering questions it is as if she is all at once several entities inhabiting the sphere surrounding a topic. In an interview (Categories are alive: interview with Brackette F. Williams) she says, “we all already know you can’t make objectivity, rather you can make all kinds of objectivities – just get enough people in a room.” I read this and thought that it echoed this thinking I was having about how Williams writes. I’ve been listening to lectures on literature, on the American novel, and I smiled at the thought that this woman writes anthropology like someone who reads literature and loves literature. She illuminates. I’ve been listening to the Open Yale course, The American Novel Since 1945 with Professor Amy Hungerford, and the novel at the moment is Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood.  At the close of the last lecture, Professor Hungerford brought attention to how O’Connor’s writing is filled with body parts. A character looks through a window and sees a knee, a hand reaches through a car window, etc… I thought, too, that this speaks to my impressions of how Williams writes/speaks. I have the second lecture on O’Connor still. I am curious as to Professor Hungerford’s discussion of body parts in O’Connor and how that discussion might help me better read Williams.

More next time…

Yours ever,
S.

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

It’s been a little over two years since the death of my good friend and it’s starting to be/to feel that he is dead in the way that my (paternal) grandmother is dead, in the way that my great-grandmother is dead. It’s not exactly the same; it’s as if he’s just crossed over a threshold, and time is no longer out of joint. The elements have done their work. The pain is less sharp when I pass his building and in its place there is a warmer, deeper feeling, a more than (>).

It’s not as though I frequently engaged in fantasy that he was secretly still alive, but still I feel as though I’ve given up on that in a way that leads me to believe that I did engage that fantasy on a subconscious level. It’s a matter of going from that sense of “I wish I could tell him this or that” to a sense of his being part of that cosmic consciousness that knows.

I can’t immediately outline the cultural model guiding my thoughts and feelings on death. That’s to say that these transitions in my thinking about my friend’s death are not part of any conscious belief system. I feel as though I’m observing my family, my small Mississippi Delta town, my Southern community in my thinking on death.

My best regards,
S.

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

It’s been a while since the post on soda drinking. I feel a bit removed from that discussion at the moment, but I will say a few things. The white people in group one could only socialize with black people who agreed that white culture defined normal or certainly that white norms superseded nonwhite norms. It appears that in California, propaganda surrounding immigration issues strongly encourages this view.

It’s unlikely that I will take classes over the summer, so I hope to interview people about their cross-cultural experiences here in California. I will be thinking about my minimum goals on that front (Conduct X number of interviews over the summer — that sort of thing). I’ll talk some more about my experiences in Mississippi, too.

This past week I’ve been lost in thought about my most recent semester of study and planning my summer math and chemistry review and kick start for the next semester.  I should have more to say on this topic soon, too!

Yours ever,
S.

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

The lack of sleep over the past week seems to be crashing in on me all at once so just a few quick thoughts… I’ve enjoyed the work of this semester and the people/personalities I’ve encountered seem more familiar to me. I like the math/physical sciences culture.

So, postponing the conversation from the previous week once more….

S.

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

I will have to postpone the continuation of the conversation from last week. Finals are upon me and I need every minute of time. I do believe that it was a bit ambitious to both skip intro to chemistry and opt for the honors option as well. Still, it wasn’t necessarily the wrong decision since I appear to prefer being over-challenged to being under-challenged. And I believe the extra challenge resulted in a bigger improvement in my study skills.

Back to the books and notes,

S.

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

When I was a teenager in the Mississippi Delta it was common for white teenagers to share soda from a single can with their friends, passing the can back and forth between them. Among black people in the area this was taboo behavior. Black siblings would not share a can of soda in this manner let alone just friends. This was a commonly known difference. For groups of friends that included white and black teenagers, the soda sharing situation most often worked itself out in one of two ways:

1. The white friend offered the soda can to a black friend with the expectation that the black friend would feel flattered and included as well as an expectation of receiving credit for not being racist. Refusal of the soda was taken to be a hostile and unfriendly gesture on the part of the black friend. (Group 1)
2. The white friend recognized that the black friend was uncomfortable with soda sharing but made efforts to communicate an openness to sharing soda with a black friend, perhaps by placing the soda can where it was easily accessible to the black friend. If the black friend did not drink from the soda can, the white friend tried not to take it personally. If the black friend did drink from the soda can, the white friend showed recognition and gratitude that the black friend crossed a cultural barrier and understood that some level of reciprocation might be expected. (Group 2)

I will give analysis of this next week. In pondering what has made certain cross-cultural experiences in California more comfortable or less comfortable, I’ve been put in mind of what types of considerations accounted for that difference when growing up in Mississippi.

So, until next time…

S.

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

I haven’t talked a lot with California locals about how they deal with cultural conflict. I hope to conduct interviews in this area that may help me gain a better understanding. In Mississippi and the South generally conversations about race and racism and cultural difference were common place. Either I don’t know how to start those conversations in California or they just aren’t happening as much or both. One of the first women I met in California was a traditionally-minded middle class white woman. And while on the surface we seemed very different, our willingness to talk about differences made friendship a real possibility. My conversations with her may have unfairly raised by expectations for the level of cross-cultural dialogue in the area as I did not have an appreciation for how exceptional she was on this front. I want to find that good cross-cultural dialogue again. If I don’t take classes over the summer, I will definitely make this a summer project.

Yours truly,

S.

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

I’ve continued to ponder some of the cross-cultural difficulties that I’ve experienced in Southern California, but I’m afraid the work of the school semester has swallowed me up whole.

I have been pleased that my ability to do math has almost returned to “normal.” I never had any flashy math talents, but I was consistently good at it. When I was younger, I mistakenly gave too much credence to the importance of flashy math skills. I believe a number of young math and physical sciences students make this same mistake. While some amount of natural ability may be important to maintaining interest, doing the work is mostly just consistency and putting in the time.

I don’t enjoy chemistry in the same way that I enjoy math and physics, but I have been thinking of this semester of chemistry as good practice at putting in the time… reading and working problems. My study skills are slowly improving.

More culture talk next time.

Yours ever,

S.

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

There’s a picture of me with my grandmother from some time in the 1970s. We both have on three-piece polyester pant suits. We looked alike in someway beyond the physical. If the picture were set in motion it’s almost certain that we would move alike. In those moments when I’m jumped outside myself, when my analytical skills are at a peak and I observe myself fully, I see her ways.

I’ve been thinking lately that I should read some Mississippi fiction. I’ve been away for quite some time and I wonder what differences there may be in how I relate to the the fictional reality.

Until next time,

S.

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

I will continue with that conversation concerning white people on TV by describing a  situation with which I had some difficulty. My interlocutor appeared to be a traditionally-minded middle class white woman. She was talking to me about her home life and detailing a list of things she does for her husband and children with undertones of passive-aggressive complaining set to a positive and bouncy beat. I recognized the form of her speech. I’ve heard it many times in movies and on TV. It’s a speech that I associate with a common way that middle class white women speak about being wives and mothers. And while I recognized that speech, I do not have the lived experience of hearing women talk this way around me my whole life growing up. I have had little access to the traditional grouping of responses to this speech.

The women with whom I would tend to be friends are the types to have responded that this woman’s husband and children could learn to be more appreciative of the things she does for them. The TV and movies that I watch that depict middle class white women giving this type of speech also tend to have this type of commentary. And this one type of response overwhelmingly makes up the mass of my experience with this stereotypical speech. Now, I knew enough to know that my interlocutor was not seeking this type of response, but it was the first one that came to mind for me and I did not immediately know what the alternatives were. And so, I smiled politely without giving any significant verbal response. There was tension.

Quite some time later, I believe I was able to figure out the response my interlocutor expected. I was to have complemented her on what a good mother she was and to have confirmed that there were all these things that we women know are important to do and that these things were part of our special intuition as women (an intuition that men and children didn’t share). Given the level of tension following my polite smile in response, I believe that my interlocutor felt that she had given me clear and obvious conversational cues to complement her mothering and I had purposely decided to not do so.

And even if that weren’t exactly the case in this situation, it’s representative of a general difficulty I’ve encountered more so in Southern California than anywhere else I’ve lived or visited – being in the midst of a conversation in which my interlocutor expects a very specific type of response and believes that this response is obvious and natural. Missing these types of conversational cues can significantly affect how others view how nice you are or how well you get along with the group. I’ve found that asking for clarification in these situations usually meets with a negative response particularly with women. Generally speaking, women are expected to know more of these learned cultural conversational interactions than men, and the expectation of this level of knowledge is part of why I believe the demands on a black woman assumed/expected to be middle class white are more than those on a black man assumed/expected to be middle class white.

In my personal experiences with cross-cultural communications, such as occurred during my time in law school in London, my women friends who spoke English as a second language expressed gratitude that I took care in my use of these types of learned cultural conversational cues. Many of these do not reach the level of idiomatic expression that would be found in a language text, but nevertheless are difficult to navigate without specific knowledge of the language culture.

Yours truly,
S.