The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
Topic: Creative Non Fiction
I was supposed to read half of this book this weekend, in preparation for the presentation we have to give shortly. Well, I couldn't put it down! I read through the weekend, finishing up at 2 A.M. this morning. I was so moved I wrote up sort of half-review, half blog-style piece of prose this morning, which I'm posting here. I can't wait to see the movie now! Copied verbatim:

Geez, I have soooo much to say about this book!

First, I've read a lot by Alice Walker, but not TCP until now. In my early twenties I became enamored with several female African American writers and tore through the works of Zora Neale Hurston, Maya Angelou, & Alice Walker. The world opened up to me reading these works, a world I was marginally familiar with, being both female and poor for my entire life up to that point. Angelou's work affected me particularly with regard to my views on raising children, for she is the one that taught me that one can have a life and children too.

Of Alice Walker's works, I have read Meridian, The Temple of My Familiar and Possessing the Secret of Joy. An interesting point for those familiar with TCP, the characters of Adam, Tashi, Samuel and (I think) Nettie turn up again in The Temple of My Familiar, and Tashi's story is told in its entirety in Possessing the Secret of Joy. Of all her books, Possessing the Secret of Joy touched me the most, perhaps because I was newly feminist and politically interested in the lives in women when I read it, or perhaps because I identified in some small way with Tashi, who had her sexual being shattered at a young age, and spent a good deal of her life dealing with the consequences. Imagine my surprise to see the genesis of these characters! I had no idea and it will certainly become of focal point of the presentation I will eventually give the class I'm reading TCP for.

As for TCP itself, WOW! How skillfully this tale is told through a simple scheme of diary entries and letters. How tragic a story and yet how redemptive, how transformative it was. I really came to care about these people and of course was outraged when they were treated badly, which they often were. How I adored Shug Avery!! How I deplored and hated Pa.

I thought Celie's transformation was most remarkable. Damn, can you imagine her life? Not to spoil too much, but her story grabbed me by the teeth from the get-go, what with the opening scene of incest, and would not let me go.

This story is fiction, and yet, it is not. This is a tale, told with brutal honesty (my favorite kind), of what it was really like at a certain point of time for poor black women in the rural south, and to a lesser extent, poor white women as well, at least with regard to sexual abuse and exploitation. I've lived in the south or on its border for most of my life, and I know the brutality and openness of racism here. Yes, it has changed significantly in the last half-century, but some southern white men have had the legacy of slavery to overcome as much as blacks: whereas blacks have had to work their way through the generational victim aspect of it, white men have had to recondition themselves with regard to generational and violent oppression. This psychological aspect is rarely explored--the psychological effects of slavery on the population from generation to generation. It's as if it didn't even occur to us that this might be propelling some cycles of racism and poverty.

Oh my, I've digressed, haven't I?

Back to Celie, Nettie, Sofia (!) & Mr. _______. Well, just some damn fine nuanced characters. I really appreciate how Walker even gave Mr. _______ a redemptive touch as well. There comes a time for most of us when we must look back with the pain of regret in our hearts. As I imagine Shug Avery might say, "Ain't none of us perfect."

God. This aspect has stirred all sorts of contemplation within me. Shug Avery's god, the one Celie eventually comes to adopt, is positively the most freeing spiritual experience I've ever witnessed. If there is a god, this is what I want it to be like. This is the god of love, of freedom, a god I could love if I were so inclined. FTR--I'm not. But I love the decidedly Buddhist feel of it. God, I don't believe in; connection is something else, though. I know there is a plug-in to the spirit of the world because I have felt it, and I have recognized it in others--Walt Whitman to name one. It's a wonderful feeling of wild abandon to love--but not denying the pain, rather loving it too, for its value as an agent of growth and change. In short, something to be celebrated, along with all the goodness.

This is getting quite wordy, so I better stop. If you've read this far, you're a peach!

A Squish in the Dark
Topic: Creative Non Fiction

Tradition can be a strange thing. Freedom is sometimes stranger still. The two ideas are exalted in our culture, even though they seem at odds, and it can be hard for a young person to know which is better in any given situation. Sometimes when the two meet and conflict, a person can end up questioning both. Take the day I turned 18 as a case in point.

I turned 18 years old on February 7, 1989. Jeremy, my boyfriend at the time, had just turned 18 a few months before, as had most in his tight-knit group of friends. He and this circle of friends had a tradition that they would take advantage of every possible freedom as soon as it was granted to them. Thus, he and many of his friends spent their 18th birthdays making the rounds at various adult entertainment establishments in Louisville.

I was the first girl in our group to turn 18, which only occurred to us as we were planning my coming-of-age party, but we decided that tradition was tradition and gender was not a factor worth considering. I had, of course, never been to an adult establishment but I had spent a fair amount time in my childhood leafing through my Dad?s old copies of Playboy, so I thought I had some idea of what to expect.

Louisville?s exotic clubs were generally located in two places at the time: downtown and on what was commonly referred to as ?The 7th Street Strip.? We started out at Blue Movies, an adult book/video store on 3rd Street and worked our way around the three or four establishments in the downtown area. Then we moved on to 7th Street.

As typical American teenagers, we had some money, but not a lot. As a result, we spent most of our time single filing into small private viewing rooms to drop quarter after quarter into the slot that kept the x-rated movie going. These rooms were always small, dark and reeked of sweat and sex. The men in these places always looked at us in disbelief as we made our way in, while the employees were usually suspicious. I was pretty naive at the time, so I had no idea why we were getting so much attention. Only in hindsight did I realize how bizarre it might appear to have a young lady and her all-male entourage sweep past the counter and crowd into a ?private? viewing room.

We reached our final destination at around 3:30 in the morning. We had visited seven or eight of these clubs and I was getting tired and disgusted with all the gratuitous sex on poor quality film, in dives populated by the dregs of society. I can?t recall the name of this last place, but it was roomier than any of the others. This one sold sex toys, magazines and videos in the front while the back contained several viewing rooms and a small theater for ?live shows.? Obviously we could not afford a ?live show? so we found ourselves heading to the viewing rooms, which were considerably larger than the others we had visited that night.

Most of the rooms at these establishments had no place to sit or contained only a small plastic chair in the center. However, this particular room had a long faux leather bench along one side and I moved to sit on it in my exhaustion, placing my hand on the edge of the bench to ease onto it. Before my butt could make contact with the seat, the air was shattered by an ear piercing scream? my own!

Apparently, I had chosen to steady myself in the middle of someone else?s left over sex fluids. At least I assume that?s what happened. To be honest, I didn?t wait around to see what the mess was, I just shot out of the room like a cannon ball, shrieking the entire way, past a dozen pair of apprehensive eyes on men who suddenly lined the hallway.

I waited out front for the boys, who were explaining to patrons and employees what had happened and reassuring them that it wasn?t an assault-type scenario. One of the ladies came to the window and looked out, so I smiled weakly and waved, which seemed to convince them I was okay. I just wanted to get home and lather myself up with Dial soap to kill whatever nasty germs had resulted from the evening?s activities. And I did, many times. Every time I remembered the event, it had a sensory element to it that was like re-feeling it all over again, which drove me compulsively to the showers again and again.

It must have been in one of those showering sessions that it occurred to me for the first time that I was free to make poor choices. I didn?t think of it quite so succinctly as all that, it was more like a vague awareness that I only had half the picture as far as being a free agent was concerned. There was more to it than just doing stuff because you could, life required a bit of discriminating finesse that I obviously didn?t have?and doing something because it had been done before just wasn?t discriminating enough.

Winter 2003

Harvest Homecoming is Decadent & Depraved?
Topic: Creative Non Fiction
Spoofe on Hunter S. Thompson's The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved

?Yes! This is for parking!? the lady exclaims as I roll down my window.

?How much?? I ask.

?Five dollars!? she shouts back, way too perky for my ears this morning.

?Oh, I won?t be here that long,? I reply, and keep on driving.

Taking a left and another left, I find myself in front of Colette and Grady?s house. I park and consider rousing Colette from bed and making her attend this god-awful required event with me. I have the best pot, and I know she?ll be in for a wake and bake, but 9 A.M. is a ridiculous hour to get stoned, so I lock my car and walk the two blocks over to the Harvest Homecoming festival alone.

I really don?t want to go. See, I?ve got this thing about crowds. Hate ?em. They scare the hell out of me, quite frankly. I always have the feeling that disaster is imminent and always conclude that a short fuck like me is a goner when the crowd takes off, en masse, running from whatever chaotic shit it is that I am sure will go down. I?m convinced the human stampede will knock me down and trample me. Hence my search for decadence and depravity at 9 o?clock in the morning?I figure the crowd will be pretty thin.

Being from Louisville, I?ve never even heard of Harvest Homecoming. Festival?s been going on for twenty-plus years and I was oblivious, the way many Louisvillians are oblivious to anything that happens across the river, as if Southern Indiana was communist Berlin. It?s never too late to learn, I suppose, and so I plunge into the heart of Harvest Homecoming.

The first thing you see at Harvest Homecoming is the food. Food vendors literally corner the market selling everything from ?taco bags? and polish sausage steaming in a mess of onions and peppers to cotton candy and funnel cakes. Polish sausage at 9 o?clock in the morning sounds pretty repulsive, and yet there they are, stinking up the streets as I approach the festival. The biggest crowd is in front of the Mason?s donut booth??3 for 99??. I?m tempted to get line but when I see a fat guy walking away from the counter chomping on a donut dripping with glaze, I think of my own spare tire and decide against it.

Walking along, I look for my cigarettes but realize I left them at home. 9 a.m. is just too goddamn early. Asking a street vendor, I learn that Chef?s Diner?straight ahead?sells cigarettes for an ungodly price. No matter, I gotta have ?em, especially since the crowd thickens with every moment and my alarm swells with it. The diner is a small steel trailer with barely enough room for four or five customers. The three middle-aged gentlemen at the counter look as haggard as I feel, stooped over cups of coffee, puffing on cigarettes, looking rather defeated. The two ladies behind the counter must be related because they look very much alike, like mother and daughter. Maybe it?s just what Hunter S. Thompson once described?maybe they?re a product of a ?closed and ignorant,? ?inbred? culture.
They?ve only got Marlboro, so I resign myself to it, slide my $4.25 across the counter and saunter out.

As soon as I step outside I?m assaulted by the sight of the anti-abortion booth. Two very old gentlemen, one with an unsettlingly gnarly nose, are running it, still trying to set up their propaganda. I walk up, intent on straightening out these controlling, misguided geriatric rednecks, but think better of it and just take mental notes. Still, I?m extremely offended by their props. The main display is a plaster cast of fetuses in the three trimesters. The fucked up thing is that all three fetuses look exactly the same, only the size is different. All three are perfectly complete baby-looking fetuses, which is just an outright lie, since a fetus has barely left the pig stage by the end of the first trimester. It doesn?t get any more depraved in this world than willful and advocated ignorance. Shame on the liars, shame on them?it?s a goddamn sin to lie.

They?ve got these ?dolls? that are shaped like fetuses and they?ve wrapped each one in a pink or blue cloth. I grab one and stalk off, pulling the fetus-doll out of the pink blanket to find the damn thing has no face, but it does have a penis. I?ve really got to work on my plan to get ?Gummy Fetuses? manufactured and marketed, so I can go around munching them by the handful in front of anti-abortion protesters, letting them dangle?life sized?from the corners of my mouth. I?ll show them depraved?

Walking on, my eyes are drawn to a Baptist church booth in which sits a wheel-chaired woman with no less than ten iridescent pearls hanging from various parts of her face. She?s probably got more piercings than all of New Albany High School, and her cohort?who I assume is her mate?has about half as many piercings in his own face. I can?t help it, I must find out what kind of Baptists these people are, so I ask point-blank. I?m disappointed when they explain that they aren?t Baptists, they aren?t even religious, they just run a Boy Scout troupe, which happens to meet at the church. And here I was hoping that Baptists might be lightening up and really living the Christian life. Should?ve known better.

People are milling about the walkway, sucking on those decadent donuts, pushing strollers or pulling elderly parents behind them. I walk past the Indiana State Police booth, past the Avon booth, and the AFL-CIO, past the arts and crafts booths that sell everything from leather goods to plastic floral arrangements, most of which take credit cards. Boy, Harvest Homecoming sure has come a long way from the community spirit it once conveyed to the corporate-sponsored money-fest it is now. Talk about depraved.

The air is crisp as I walk back to my car, it fills my lungs with its coldness and they are grateful after all the smoke I?ve pumped into them. Crossing the street, reflecting on the morning?s activities, I decide such festivities are not for me. They?re for families living the American dream in one way or another, and the corporations who drain them of their hard-earned cash. The American dream isn?t for me; I have no want of money and, indeed, no money and I doubt I?ll ever make it back to Harvest Homecoming. Harvest Homecoming is decadent and depraved? You bet it is?in the most insipid ways possible, so subtle at keeping small-towners small town?in that bubble that defines ?closed and ignorant? culture.

Fall 2003