What I Do With English

Today, I received my BA in English from UC Berkeley. I was selected to speak at the English Department's commencement; this is the speech that I gave.

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When I tell people I’m an English major, the most common response is, “What are you going to do with that?” It’s one of my least favorite questions, but I’ve come to realize that it’s an important one. What are we going to do with English? What have we been doing with it, or in the name of it, in the years we’ve spent as part of Berkeley’s English department?

To most people, all that English majors do is read books, talk about books, and write papers about books. As a result, we don’t seem to be doing very much. But I, for one, value English precisely for its focus on the process of literary analysis. We rarely ask questions that have concrete answers, so our field of study is not defined by the results it produces, but by the practices that help us arrive at our conclusions. No matter what you’re going on to “do” with English, I believe there is value in having learned how to read, how to talk, and how to write like an English major.

English majors read differently from almost every other person I know: we re-read, partly out of necessity, but almost equally out of desire. The second reading is when the words that captivated at the level of story-telling begin to connect to each other across the lines of a poem, or the pages of a novel. Things begin to stand out: a phrase repeated, or not; a pattern, a symbol, a sign. Slowly, something like meaning begins to emerge, simply because we have taken the time to look for it. The pleasure and the danger of this sort of reading is that there is no limit to the number of times that a text can be read. For an English major, reading is never actually finished, only temporarily abandoned, to be reassumed whenever the book is opened again. I think there’s something deeply admirable about this kind of re-reading. After all, a willingness to re-read is also always a willingness to question—and perhaps even counter—first impressions. If English is about the process of re-reading, then it’s also about being continually open to new information, even if that information forces you to change your mind.

The same process of self-questioning is at work when we talk as English majors about the things we read. Looking back on my time spent at Berkeley, it strikes me that so much of my education has been accomplished through informed conversation with professors and with peers, working in tandem to explain, defend, and question our differing perspectives. The purpose of these conversations is not to argue until a single perspective emerges victorious, but rather to strengthen and sharpen all perspectives. In a world increasingly rife with violence that stems from the failure to consider alternate points of view, I believe we need more people who think—and who talk—like English majors. We need more people who are willing to have their opinions swayed by a reasoned discussion, just as we need more communities willing to support this kind of conversation.

As students of English, we’ve learned more than just a specialized vocabulary for talking about the things we read. We’ve learned the importance of continually interrogating our own practices and those of others with the aim of making them better. In the process, we’ve developed the kind of mental flexibility that allows us to think with others, even if we don’t always arrive at an agreement.

So, what are we going to do with that? If you ask me, we’re going to do a lot. Whatever professions we find ourselves pursuing—wherever we live and work, whatever we come to love—we will bring with us a willingness to revise our own assumptions and an openness to the ideas of others. We will model a way of thinking, and ultimately a way of living, that values process over products and individuality over conformity. And we will become integral members of multiple communities, including those that our unique outlook has allowed us to create.

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I might not actually belong to multiple communities yet. But I sure as hell belong to this one:

Alien Appreciation: The Doctor of Doctor Who

There has been an awful lot of Austen on this blog lately, and a regrettable absence of aliens. This post is an attempt to change that.

When I started racking my brain for the last science fiction book I'd read, I realized that it was Jenna Starborn, which sort of doesn't count, since it's also Jane Eyre. But then, before I allowed myself to fall into complete and utter despair, I realized that that might have been the last truly sci-fi book that I read, but it's certainly not my most recent sci-fi media encounter. That title would belong to the absolutely marvelous British television series Doctor Who. Consider this post an appreciation of my current favorite alien, and a not-so-subtle argument about why you should go watch this show as soon as you possibly can.

A lot of people have heard of Doctor Who, but if you're not British (and I'm not), it can't possibly hold the same place in your collective national psyche. The original Doctor Who started running in the sixties, in black and white, and that run didn't end until the mid-eighties. Reruns showed throughout the time when it was off the air, keeping the show as a presence and influencing the lives of generations who might not have been sentient when the show was actually on air. Then, in 2005, the whole thing was rebooted, and the craze kicked off again.

When living in London, I heard a lot about Doctor Who. My friends obsessed over who would be cast as the new Doctor; even my teachers made references to characters from the series, or specific lines and episodes! It was so pervasively cultural that by the time I'd been living there for a couple of months, hanging out with British people and trying to understand what the heck they were saying, I understood a lot about the show without even having watched it.

And then, I watched it. And seriously, wow. Maybe it's because I ran through all of the available episodes of the rebooted series in the course of a month, but that show hit me like a sledgehammer, and a lot of that has to do with the feeling it has, the ambience it creates and how different that is from what I find in so much science fiction--and how much that has to do with the character of the Doctor.

Hard science fiction fans are probably not too satisfied with Doctor Who. The science--which involves a lot of "because we can!" time-and-space travel that isn't even always used consistently within the show's universe (although I'm always far too engrossed to realize this until much later)--isn't really the show's point. The point, as the title might suggest, would be the Doctor. (Tip: his name isn't actually "Doctor Who," and if that phrase is heard, it's usually in response to him introducing himself simply as "the Doctor," which is the only proper name we ever get for him.)

The thing about Doctor Who is that it approaches space, the future, and all of the things you would expect from a science fiction series, with a lot of faith in humanity, even if it is also capable of showing that humanity often doesn't deserve it. The Doctor himself, despite belonging to an alien race called the Time Lords, looks exactly like a human being (although when humans have questioned him about this more than once his answer has been that he doesn't look human, they look Time Lord). But it's more than that. He spends a lot of time on Earth, simply because it seems that he's taken a liking to us--when he says "I'll never stop having to save you," it's equal parts frustration and affection. He believes in the kinds of days when problems are solved without violence--when everybody lives--and he's not the sci-fi hero who goes in with guns blazing. His "weapon" of choice is a sonic screwdriver, and while its powers seems to expand with each new season, most of what it does is open doors! I wholeheartedly agree with Craig Ferguson's sentiment (delivered in song!) that the show represents "the triumph of intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism," and most of that is down to the continued presence of the Doctor, doing his best to save the worlds one step at a time.

I could go on and on about the Doctor, but nothing that I say about this show will take the place of watching it. So, what are you waiting for -- go watch it! If I haven't quite convinced you, or if you're looking for a little more background before jumping in, you should check out this article, or this excellent infographic. But really, just go and watch it, so that I can dissect future episodes to an audience who knows what I'm talking about!

The Gravity of Haunted Places

When I was studying in London, doing my reading for a course about the representation of London in the eighteenth century, I came across a quote that so perfectly summed up the reason I felt (and continue to feel) drawn to that great city:

There is no place that is not haunted by many different spirits hidden there in silence, spirits one can "invoke" or not. Haunted places are the only ones people can live in…

--Michel de Certeau

It became apparent to me in the moment of reading this that it was exactly my sense of London as a place "haunted" by its social, political, and literary history that made me want to be a part of it. Before I had ever even visited, I had expectations about London gleaned from the pages of the books I'd read and loved -- everything from William Blake to Neil Gaiman -- and rather than being disappointed upon arrival that the London I actually saw was none of the Londons I'd read about, I felt even more at home there. It wasn't any of them, so it could be all of them, from Blake's grave at Bunhill Fields to all the names of tube stations cleverly reworked in Gaiman's Neverwhere. I didn't even have to go out of my way to find these associations; I was so steeped in the books that it just happened, I saw them everywhere (perhaps even where they weren't), and they made me feel like I belonged.

At the end of my year there, a friend and I ended up doing one of our projects about how our experience of "texts" -- defined loosely to include books, movies, television shows, songs, works of art, you name it -- had shaped our experience of London. It was a fascinating experience, deconstructing our own expectations and trying to trace them back to the source (my friend, for example, is pretty sure that his love of London began with movies like The Great Mouse Detective and Peter Pan; I, in a slightly more chagrined way, can probably attribute mine to my first encounter with Harry Potter).

It's almost a year since we finished that project -- almost a year since I left London -- and now that I'm leaving Berkeley, I'm beginning to realize that even though I never read anything significant involving Berkeley, the city was haunted for me in a different way. My father came to college here, and while I spent the better part of eighteen years being sure I didn't want to come to college here (long story short: I was stupid), I grew up with his stories about the place, and I always loved the way that they made me feel like I knew it. In the three years I've lived here, I've created a Berkeley of my own, separate from my father's, but still connected. Whenever I study in the North Reading Room of Doe Library, shifting in the the wooden chairs, I think of how he used to sit and study here. The other week, I celebrated the end of classes by getting lunch at the pizza place which used to be my dad's college hangout and which has survived the intervening years in style.

In the past few months, I've been thinking more about this concept of "haunting" in the face of my impending relocation to New York. I had a sense, before I ever visited, that New York would be like the London of the US -- not because it's a big city, or a central one, but because such a wealth of text surrounds it, and was bound to weigh upon my experience of it.

I've only spent five days there, but I'm inclined to think I was right. London and the British Isles still figure more prominently in my reading, but around the same time I ran into Harry Potter and kicked off that particular fascination, I discovered some other young wizards who began to haunt my idea of New York. Diane Duane's Young Wizards series -- beginning with So You Want to Be a Wizard -- follows a couple of teenage wizards living in the New York suburbs, making occasional trips into the city and usually getting caught up in some kind of adventure when they do. I had never been to New York City before March, but at that point Nita and Kit's New York had been a part of my imagination for about ten years, and at times I found their world suddenly superimposed over the one I saw before me: Grand Central played host to intergalactic travel, magical creatures lived in abandoned subway tunnels, and the statues in Central Park could be awakened to aid the virtuous in their time of need.

It's not quite the New York I'm moving to. But it's a pretty fabulous one in its own right -- and if it makes me feel somehow like I belong in this one, I can't complain.

How I Survived my Thesis

If anyone actually checks this blog regularly for updates, you've probably noticed that there haven't been any in about a billion years. (Well, more like two months. But it feels longer.) This is because I have spent that billion years (or I suppose two months) immersed in writing my senior honors thesis.

Because of the SURF grant that allowed me to start researching for this over the summer, I've been at work on this project since the end of June. But really, since I had to research and write a proposal for SURF that was due in March, I have been working on this since February. And really, if we're going to get technical, I've been wanting to write something like this ever since my first English course at Berkeley, where I read Pride and Prejudice in a truly scholarly manner for the first time and fell more deeply in love with English as a critical practice and Austen as an author.

So eight months, or fourteen months, or four years later -- however you want to put it -- I'm done.

It hasn't been easy. It has involved more books, caffeine, and tears than are likely healthy for any single individual to experience. But it's also cemented my belief that this is what I want to be doing for the rest of my life, and it's taught me a lot of important things along the way. Because I am mostly a tissue of things that other people have said and how I have thought about them, I think about the lessons I've learned in terms of the quotations that seem to encapsulate them the best

"If you're going through hell, keep going." --Winston Churchill

My father quoted this to me at the beginning of the summer, and I've been living it pretty much ever since. Life is not easy. But you can't go back, so looking back isn't going to be much help. This thesis, along with the other pressures of life over the last year (ranging from grad school applications to work to volunteering, not to mention those other English classes I was taking), has occasionally felt like hell. But I kept going. And I made it through.

"I hope when you have written a great deal more you will be equal to scratching out some of the past." --Jane Austen

I encountered this gem of advice over the summer when reading through Austen's collected letters. She wrote it to her niece, Anna, who was also an aspiring novelist and often sent excerpts to her aunt to critique. Even though Austen's comments make me doubt that Anna was anything better than an average writer, Austen is surprisingly kind with her honesty.

It's that combination of honesty and critique that made this quotation into one of my thesis mantras. Austen admits that "scratching out some of the past" is hard -- something you have to be "equal" to, and something that takes time. It's difficult to work so hard at something and then acknowledge that it isn't all working, that some of it is bound to be deleted. The only thing that will make you "equal" to doing it is writing more to take its place, and I love that Austen realizes this. It's an encouragement to joint revision of the old and production of the new, one that suggests exactly how intertwined those practices are.

"A poem is never finished, only abandoned." --Paul Valery

I was first given this advice in a fiction-writing workshop, but I've come to realize over the years that it applies almost equally to any form of written endeavor. The bottom line is that nothing will ever be perfect. There will always be some word that can be changed or improved, some new source to footnote, some new direction that your argument ought to address. But if you get so caught up in revision, so desperately tied to making it perfect, you'll never end up with anything. There's a point when you just have to suck it up and tell yourself you're done -- for now. Abandonment is not a forever thing, especially not for me in this context; there is a good chance that at least some of my thesis will survive and wind up as a chapter or two in the first book of literary criticism that I publish somewhere down the road. But until I have to start thinking about that, I'm going to leave the thesis behind for a while and gain some perspective.

Writing across differences

At what point does writing about characters who are different from you turn into an appropriation of a "foreign" (to you) gender, race, ethnicity, culture, religion, or sexual orientation?

I'm not entirely sure why, but I've been pondering this question quite a bit lately. If anything, it's probably because I've been realizing the extent to which the characters I spend the most time writing tend to have life experiences fundamentally similar to mine. They are typically girls or women from middle-middle class suburban families; they almost always have siblings, and two working parents; if their religion (or occasional lack thereof) ever impinges upon the plot, it is within a (generally Protestant) Christian context; and whether I'm writing about the here-and-now, or pre-revolutionary France, or a colony planet in the 23rd century, my main characters generally belong to the ethnic/racial identity that dominates their city, state, region, or even country (excepting, of course, the occasional alien).

I'm not saying that there is anything exactly wrong with the fact that I tend to envision protagonists with concerns similar to mine -- as much as I hate the dictum "Write what you know" for the way it gets bandied about indiscriminately, I do feel it's easiest to write characters whose mental landscapes you can connect with. Following this line of thought, when I do introduce characters whose experiences of the world have been different from mine, they're generally characters whose experiences I've been able to extrapolate or understand to a certain extent through those of my friends and family. For example, I don't feel uncomfortable writing about gay or lesbian characters, because even though I may identify as straight, I have a lot of friends who don't, and who've been frank with me about their experiences (not because I've ever asked, as a way of intentionally "doing research," but because we're friends, and things just come up).

But -- and I can't tell whether to blame this on "middle-class guilt," or too much time spent in English classes analyzing the issues of writing across race and gender, or just being a considerate human being -- I sometimes wonder about the larger implications of people from a supposedly "dominant" gender, race, ethnicity, culture, religion, or sexual orientation writing about characters from different backgrounds that are perceived as less socially accepted or empowered. When I portray gay or lesbian characters as main or supporting characters in my stories, am I doing my part to vindicate the fundamental humanity of a group that has suffered discrimination, or is my portrayal from a position of incomplete experience an appropriation of a subject position I have never personally held? Do some stories only belong to those who have lived through them, and if I as an outsider attempt to write those stories, am I merely buying into a notion of my own dominance that allows me to "know" these people even those I'm not one of them?

At the moment, I'm inclined to think that, provided I am knowledgeable and respectful and honest about the characters I'm treating, there is nothing wrong with attempting to write across such differences. In fact, I think that writing -- fiction in particular -- is one of the most extraordinary vehicles we have for promoting an understanding that bridges these differences, and if everyone was restricted to writing only what they knew, it might do more to promote a cultural insulation than to break it down. But the outcry against those who try to write across differences and are perceived as failing is often so strong that I'm never entirely certain, and I'm really interested in what anyone else might have to say about this topic.

Following the fairytale: Beauty and the Beast

This past weekend, I came down with an irascible cold, but as much as I lamented the loss of time and mental acuity that could have been spent on homework, one brilliant thing did come of it: for the first time in a couple of years (and for the first time ever on DVD), I re-watched Disney's Beauty and the Beast in its entirety.

I was worried, going into this, that the movie might not live up to my memories -- that the sincere curiosity and fiery spirit I'd attributed to Belle in other versions of the tale wouldn't actually play out in the version of it I'd first encountered. I was worried that, despite my (occasionally lengthy) assertions to the contrary, Belle was just another Disney-fied fairytale princess-to-be, possessing a few good lines and a few smart ideas but frighteningly passive at times and with a limited scope to her personal desires (beyond that ur-desire to find herself a man).

And then I watched it, and thank god, I had no need to worry. By ten minutes in, I had actually started making a list of the small things that made me fall in love. The Beast's eyes are the color of Belle's dress, and Belle's eyes are the color of his pelt. Belle wears her hair back in a ponytail! A sensible hairstyle for girls who are doing things, none of this long hair that is always worn down but somehow does not get in the way, ever! (I say this as a long-time defender of the ponytail who has just recently started wearing her hair down more frequently than up.) And the small things soon became big things. Belle isn't just an idiot with Stockholm Syndrome, or the good girl who falls for the bad boy. When she gets angry with the Beast, and can't take his mercurial treatment any more, she leaves! (Okay, of course she does get beset by hungry wolves and is forced to return, but it's the principle of the matter.)

But one moment above all others encapsulated why, for me, the Disney version of Belle is worthy of praise. When her father's horse returns home without him, Belle is determined to find him. She makes her way to the Beast's castle, finds her father locked in the tower, and is about to free him before the Beast arrives. Although the audience can easily see the features of both Belle and the Beast, we're meant to understand that the room is dark, with a single beam of sunlight splitting the room, so that as long as he sticks to the shadows, the Beast can keep Belle from seeing his monstrous appearance.

She can't even see him, and she offers herself in her father's place -- but before she solidifies the offer, she says four small words that made me want to run right into the scene and give her a Strong and Awesome Women high-five:

"Come into the light."

It's not a plea and it's not a question. With this inquisitive face and a tone that's equal parts curiosity and command, she tells the monster hiding in the darkness to come out and face her, expecting from him the same civility that she's offered, equalizing the field of the agreement.

Damn, girl.

Of course, when she sees him, she's afraid -- I mean, I don't care how often we're told that beauty isn't skin deep, if I saw a talking monster I'd probably freak out, too -- but after she gets over the single girlish shriek, she stands up tall and goes through with the bargain.

And -- would you look at that? -- now, they're both in the light. Together. And he's only there because she asked him.

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Re-watching the movie also reminded me of how many wonderful retellings of this particular fairytale I've read over time. I could probably spend another entry on each of these stories, but for now, I'll just mention them.

Hands down my favorite treatment of the story is Heart's Blood by Juliet Marillier, which I read and reviewed last year. It's more of a re-imagining than a re-telling, with a looser interpretation of what, exactly, constitutes a "beast," but that's why I find it so compelling. Well, that and the fact that it's set in Ireland around the the time of the Norman Conquest and that the main character, Caitrin, gains misfit status because her father trained her as a scribe in a time when few women were literate.

Robin McKinley's Beauty is the classic re-telling, which sticks more closely to the original(s) than the more familiar Disney version. However, it's apparently where Disney got their idea for the Beast's library -- and let me tell you, the library in McKinley's version is stunning, and features in more than one scene. (As a side note, I can't actually tell if "Beauty and the Beast" made me a bibliophile, or if my love of books made me like "Beauty and the Beast." I'll probably never know.)

Perhaps the most creative re-imagining I've encountered is the short story "Skin So Green and Fine" by Wendy Wheeler, which you can find in Silver Birch, Blood Moon ed. by Ellen Datlow and Terry Windling. The excerpt on Wheeler's site doesn't do justice to the whole, though it does begin to give a feel for story, which is set primarily in Haiti and makes use of voudoun-flavored magic (and a "beast" with the eeriest appeal of them all, if you ask me).

And of course, if you're interested in where it all started, Project Gutenberg has an e-text of one of the earliest versions of the tale, translated into English for the sake of people like me, who are only belatedly beginning to parle un peu francais.

Alien Appreciation: The 456 of Torchwood: Children of Earth

People of more discerning taste than I possess occasionally complain about the production values and special effects budget of BBC's sci-fi shows, including Doctor Who and its spin-offs. Being one of those people who appreciates less-than-top-dollar effects in sci-fi movies and shows ranging from the original Star Wars trilogy to the best of the X-Files, I can't really understand these complaints. I do realize that the Doctor Who producers don't have all that much cash to create their effects, or consequently their aliens, but although sometimes they seem to overreach themselves and produce some truly questionable costumes or effects, occasionally, they get it right.

The 456 are an example of "getting it right" -- which, in the context of Torchwood: Children of Earth, translates as "generating maximum terror on a minimum budget." From the first episode of this miniseries, when the 456 decide to get the attention of the entire world by simultaneously speaking through all of earth's children, I was suitably freaked, but my genuine horror at this alien race was only heightened by the decision to never show a clear image of their form. They appear inside a specially-designed tank in a pillar of blinding light. The tank itself is filled with toxic gases through which alien forms can only be vaguely seen, and the cinematography makes these glimpses appear even more brief by only focusing on the 456 for brief moments, switching camera angles quickly and preventing the audience from ever getting a clear idea of what the 456 look like. The audience never even learns their true name -- they are called "the 456" after the radio frequency they first used to contact the Earth.

Another part of the terror comes from the perfectly-pitched juxtaposition between their obscured but alien appearance and their clear and familiar method of expression. For although they might seem so incredibly otherworldly, they communicate with the British government by taking over a speaker system and reproducing a normal, human voice...when they're not thrashing about looking like some indiscernible hydra and spewing a vomit-like green liquid at the inside of the tank.

Again, I don't think there's a better way to have represented these aliens -- or really any aliens that are supposed to induce this kind of fear. The fear of any alien obviously stems from the fear of the unknown, but Torchwood takes it one step further and makes the 456 not only the ultimate unknown, but the ultimate unknowable. The pervasive despair of Children of Earth is that humanity is up against a foe so strange, so different, that even all of our faith in knowledge as a form of power cannot overcome the primal dread for the murky or dark.

Of course, later on in the Torchwood miniseries, the viewers are offered a closer look at the 456 -- but the same camera techniques are used, the same spirit of juxtaposition prevails, and the same sickening feeling of fear has a tendency to worm its way through my stomach. I'd say more, but in the words of another Whoniverse regular, "Spoilers!" If you want to get a real feeling for the strangeness of the 456, watch Torchwood: Children of Earth, although I'd suggest watching Series 1 and 2 of Torchwood first, and then making sure that you watch Children of Earth with a friend, a fuzzy blanket, and an incredibly heartwarming movie cued up to counteract its gut-wrenching effects.