Blogs

Assignment #1:

 Pose and address a question/dilemma/claim about “voice” and the classroom, or, more broadly, about voice and learning.

Consider these questions if/as useful:

How are you understanding/defining “voice”?

What do you see as the promise and/or the challenges of students (and others) finding and using their/our voices in learning?  In schooling?

How do you understand the relationship between “voice” and listening?  voice and dialogue?  What part might performance play?

You might want to think about these (and other) questions in terms of gender and/or in terms of learning in particular contexts and spaces (e.g. classrooms, prison, theatre, life).

Draw on texts (our shared texts and, if you want, others that are relevant) as well as experiences, again if and as relevant. 

Some thoughts about finding your way in/delving into your paper:

“When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.”

                                                                                                                ---Adrienne Rich

I live in the walled community of Haverford College but also in a second institution—the hospital.

I don’t know why I haven’t spoken of these experiences in class.  Or maybe that’s a lie because I know exactly why.  At any given moment I am either in searing pain, trying to discretely smother the flames burning down my arm, or else I am using all my mental capacity to follow discussion while my brain is hazy from pain medication.

         I started this class thinking silence was a finite task, one that I would struggle to “complete”, as if that would be even possible. I moved from shallowly thinking it was all about pulling myself out of the noise of modern technology to frustration with the rhetoric of silence as a political statement. Now I’m working more and more toward a knowledge that silence is with me daily, in those ways that I have been wary of, like taking time to be completely silent, but also in what I refrain from saying when I am speaking. Specifically, I have found myself thinking about and responding to Hummingbird’s paper on self-silencing, and our class discussions about who may presume to speak for someone else. Do they have to be of the same background racially? Do their genders (and their perceptions of what that means for their daily life) need to match up? Do they have to be from the same socio-economic class to speak to the privilege or lack thereof that accompanies varied levels of wealth? Can I, as only barely culturally Jewish, even speak to that side of myself as influencing my life? I don’t presume that there will ever be a definitive answer to any of these (although there are definite opinions that I have read and heard expressed, both in class and in readings). I do hope, though, to create a greater understanding of silence as ever-present, especially in my exploration of self-silencing personally in the context of speaking for someone else, as their story may relate to others or me.

Webpaper 2

Lately, I’ve left our class with anger nipping at my heels as I trudge back to Denbigh. Thoughts, complaints and unspoken words swirl through my already over-full mind and I just want to scream. But I don’t. Instead, I shut myself in my room and wish I had splurged for that journal I saw in the bookstore a week ago. It seems wrong, but out of desperation and lack of proper medium, I’ve turned to this essay to help me sort out my thoughts regarding my own role in our class, and also the role of silence.

I am exhausted when I leave our class. I feel the weight of my unpacked thoughts making me so heavy. My silence, I will readily admit, is self-imposed, but I won’t take all of the responsibility. I feel silenced because I just need space to think. Such heavy topics deserve a response that has been thought out. But there is no time for silence. For it seems that we would much rather talk about it than observe it.

Today, I returned to my site with a friend. As we were sitting on the lounge behind Rhoads South, looking at the field without a single person, she told how she dislikes being in an open space on her own. She mentioned the feeling of loneliness as she stands there in the middle a huge grass lawn, surrounded by nothing but the air and sounds of nature, which surprised me. It seemed to me that an empty open space made her insecure and feared. However much I try to understand the logic behind her feelings, I cannot imagine myself in such condition. I am not brave enough to walk in a strange wood alone; however, when it comes to a place familiar or known-as-safe to me, I enjoy being in an open space. It is relaxing to me when I am able to cast a look faraway and up high above, to realize the green field so big and the blue sky so high. I attribute personality to our difference. While I tend to enjoy my own personal space, my friend cannot stay without an accompany. While I am looking forward to being on my own, my friend feels insecure when she is alone. As such, even though both of us love to be outside in nature, criterias defining our favorite places differ.

For most of my life I was brought up in a household where my father thought he could control us. I stayed pretty quiet when I was younger and followed my mother’s lead. My mom had plenty of opportunities to speak up and say something to him but I believe she stayed silent because she didn’t want to cause any problems. After a long day of work, the last thing she needed was an argument with my father. But as my siblings and I grew older, we also grew tired and angry of having to keep our mouths shut just to make him happy. I don’t even think that I kept my mouth shut because of my dad. I think I did it to make my mom happy.

Looking back at this experience, I see silence as being equal to obedience or even fear. Even if I were walking down the stairs to get out the door to run to the bus stop, my dad would yell at me in Khmer to “keep it down” and point his finger accusingly at me. His booming voice and index finger made me feel so small and helpless. It made me feel like I couldn’t ever do anything right, like I was a disappointment. He wanted me to walk around quietly and conduct myself in an unobtrusive manner, like all the other Asian women he had come across. Even if I were quieter walking down the steps, I knew that if I did what he said then I would be reinforcing his control on the rest of the family. His controlling ways were unbearable and unhealthy for my family and I had to find a way to stop him.

Where I am sitting now: in a Starbucks on Broadway near 110th St, on the Upper West Side of New York, nearly 10 o'clock on Saturday night, the only place and time I've managed to get internet access and a modicum of space and time to myself. Better do this posting now; tomorrow will be full with rehearsal, and I need to practice my parts before that. This is actually OK with me as a way to live (so far...) The pleasure in the work to be done, and the stimulation and challenge of what I'm learning, more than outweigh the physical fatigue. So I sit and try to travel mentally back to the Labyrinth, and to my time there on Thursday, only a couple of days ago. My path from there to here is like a labyrinth in itself, twisting and turning through different locations and activities, meeting new people, trying to keep track of the threads of different conversations, different communication processes. I'm grateful for the opportunity to think myself back to the peaceful moments at the (Bryn Mawr) Labyrinth, just as I was grateful to have an assigned hour of contemplation. It makes me think, now, that integral to our ecological disaster in the present-day world, is the sheer pace of our life, the speed of it, the quantity of activity and experience we expect to pack into every day. How on earth can we expect to be aware of what is going on around us, of the existence and concerns of non-human beings, of the effect we are having on them and they on us, when we have assigned ourselves a more than full schedule we can barely keep up with?

Hello Everyone!

I just read this amazing post from wordpress and I absolutely love this quote and just wanted to share this!

"So, I guess my lesson is that sometimes going and watching the swifts is just a nice way to pass the time, but sometimes watching animals live out their purpose in life makes us question our own and helps us better understand our true nature. Fear is an amazingly powerful thing that can bury us under its weight if we don’t keep it in check. If the swifts were afraid of coming home to roost because of the peregrine falcons that prey on them each season, then the whole ecosystem would collapse. The swifts don’t avoid their journey because of the battle that awaits them at that chimney, they show up every year without fail and remind us that the journey is hard, but we have to go on it anyway."

http://theperpetualvagabond.com/2012/09/18/the-swifts-conflict-decision-making-and-following-my-dreams/

I am a firm believer in the lessons and teachings of the natural world and this is a beautiful one.

Hope your weekends are swell,

Sruthi