Writing American Cultures Studies of Identity, Community, and Place

edited by Sam Schrager

Writing American Cultures: Studies of Identity, Community, and Place, edited by Sam Schrager, consisting of narrative non-fiction essays by students from the academic program Writing American Cultures (2011-2012) at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington

Published by: The Evergreen State College Press Olympia, Washington All photographs were taken by the authors. Design: Steven Hendricks & Aleks Paschenko Typefaces include Goudy Old Style, Constantia, and Gill Sans

Hosted in e-book form by The Evergreen State College Library http://library.evergreen.edu/studentworks/writing-american-cultures.html

The creation of this anthology was for a non-profit academic purpose. Except for public figures or where permission has been given, names of persons in these essays have been changed. This edition of Writing American Cultures is available through The Evergreen State College Library website on a print-on-demand basis. CONTENTS

Introduction by Sam Schrager Through (Un) Disciplined Eyes vii

Ataya Cesspooch Virtual Reservation: NDNs in the Digital Age 1

Linna Teng Khmao Euy Khmao: Colorism Amongst Cambodian Americans 33

Auricia Guardado El Viaje Que Cambio Mi Vida: A Life-Changing Journey to Central America 59

Jack Sukimoto JA/LA: Shifting Meanings of Japanese American Identity, Culture, and Community 89

Olivier Matthon Under the Radar: Notes from the Wild Mushroom Trade 121

Meredith Hobrla ABCs of Dirtbag Climbers: The Scene in Joshua Tree National Park 159

Kyle Sullivan-Jones Joey’s Voice: Family and Community Support for Students Diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder 193

Melanie Curran Lived-In Experiences of Architecture in New Orleans 221

Writing American Cultures

Studies of Identity, Community, and Place

Introduction by Sam Schrager

Through (Un)Disciplined Eyes Sam Schrager Through (Un) Disciplined Eyes

Imagine giving students the chance to dig deep into some corner of everyday life that fascinates them. To get ready, they learn how to do fieldwork and write a research proposal. Then they go off for ten weeks to talk with folks, absorb what’s happening around them, and document what they see and hear. They report on their study weekly to peers and faculty. By the end, many are able to craft a narrative that takes a fresh look at their topic from an original point of view.

This book consists of eight top-notch essays from such projects, composed by students in my ethnography seminar in the Writing American Cultures program at The Evergreen State College in 2011-2012. It shows that with time, guidance, and an open horizon of possibilities, undergraduates can tap into culture-at-the-present- moment in ways that are revelatory and a pleasure to read.

A few words about how the contributors treat their topics:

Ataya Cesspooch considers how Native people are building community—a “virtual reservation”—through the Internet. Her essay looks at a range of videos on YouTube, what their makers think about the interplay of innovation and tradition, and how such representations affect viewers. Ataya includes scholarship about new media and the long history of Indian appropriation of technology, and she reflects on implications of this emergent creativity for the future.

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Linna Teng explores the experience of skin color preferences in her Cambodian American community. Interviewing kin, friends and others, she draws out frank feelings about the negative connotations of being khmao (black), insecurities young women face as a result, and their striving for self-affirmation. Linna links her study to scholarship on the transnational phenomenon of colorism. She fills out the picture with autobiographical snapshots and observations on generational change.

Auricia Guardado visits relatives in El Salvador and Honduras, hoping “to put together the missing pieces of my identity.” Her Tia Anna, family matriarch, regales Auricia with surprising history. The search leads to unsettling conversations with her father and mother, who speak about the terror of the Salvadoran Civil War, their flight to the U.S., and their divergent feelings about living here. Auricia’s narrative traces how she comes to terms with her new knowledge.

Jack Sukimoto returns to Los Angeles, which he’d left with his parents while still a child, to learn about cultural change and continuity in the Japanese American community. With perspective from kin and

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acquaintances, his unease about tradition disappearing gives way to subtler considerations of identity and meaning. Jack finds institutions (basketball!), practices, and hybrid identities which sustain aspects of Japanese American life despite geographical and cultural dispersion.

Olivier Matthon, who often works in the woods, seeks out the wild mushroom picking circuit, which exists “under the radar.” At a motel in Willits, California, he becomes friends with a buyer and observes how this man interacts day after day with pickers, most living at the economic margin. Olivier learns how to be a picker himself. His narrative captures the texture of the scene, including the moral code that supports this transitory workers’ community.

Meredith Hobrla, who had spent extended stints as a “dirtbag” rock climber, revisits an old haunt, Joshua Tree National Park, to ponder the lure of the lifestyle. She makes new pals and plunges into the familiar round of adventure and socializing, this time with an ethnographic slant. Meredith’s narrative depicts the climbers’ quirky culture, the limits of their ideology of freedom, and her ambivalent past and present experiences.

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Kyle Sullivan-Jones, who until recently worked as a paraprofessional with autistic students in Walla Walla, Washington, returns for a closer look. He documents the daily life of Joey, the outlook of Joey’s mother, and—with testimony from staff and administration— the chaotic climate in special ed classrooms. Kyle’s study describes structural reasons for the inabilities of schools to serve the needs of students like Joey and the exceptional efforts of families like Joey’s on behalf of their children’s well-being.

Melanie Curran, attracted to New Orleans since her early teens, goes there to imbibe its vernacular architecture. She presents her own experiences of buildings that attract her along with some of the intimate and cultural meanings that they hold for folks she happens to meet. Melanie’s poetic takes evoke the atmosphere in these spots and are illustrated by whimsical watercolors.

What strikes me about these essays as a group are the contributors’ personal positions vis-à-vis their research and writing. Most of them picked a community that was in some way theirs, with built- in advantages of knowledge and of ties with friends, kin, and acquaintances. Those who didn’t begin with such familiarity had other affinities that helped them enter the scene. All of the authors

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displayed curiosity and open-mindedness about their topics, qualities that drew others to collaborate with them. They tested their own critical ideas about social relations, inequalities and values in dialogue with these folks. And they infused their own questing presence into their writing, and so became part of the stories they told.

These essays seem to me as rich in insight, and in some respects surpass, what professional ethnographers might be able to uncover. Such a claim, I realize, cuts against the grain of academic wisdom. In American higher education, serious ethnographic research is the bailiwick of advanced practitioners in anthropology and allied disciplines. It is an activity for scholars, graduate degree candidates, and select undergraduate majors. There is a hierarchy of opportunity, involving specialized qualitative training in specific fields. But the training also involves a tradeoff. In adopting disciplinary preoccupations, ethnographers tend to become channeled into conventionalized ways of seeing the topics they study.

This anthology asks: What is the liberating potential for undergraduates engaging in ethnography? As my teacher Dell Hymes, noted anthropologist and folklorist, pointed out, professional

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ethnographers do not have privileged insight. Like everybody else, we need to make sense of others’ situations and reckon with the partiality of our own perspectives. Hymes believed that “ethnography has the potentiality for helping to overcome division of society into those who know and those who are known.” This is because ethnography is, at its root, “an extension of what every human being must do, that is, learn the meanings, norms, patterns of a way of life.” He said that educational institutions should cultivate this capacity by offering as many people as possible “some disciplined understanding of ethnographic inquiry” that they can apply in “their vocation whatever that might be” (98-99).

The call, as I see it, is for persons in all sorts of circumstances (and not just in college) to have the chance to acquire this competence. Ethnography should be a democratic possession. To become broadly useful to members of a society, it has to be accessible rather than esoteric. It has to stay close to the ground of ordinary experience. It has to be generous in conception, expansive in reach.

It won’t surprise me if some of the authors in this collection eventually have vocations as ethnographers or writers. I like to

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think that they, and many other students in the Writing American Cultures class, gained disciplined understandings of ethnographic inquiry that will prove useful to them as citizens and in whatever kinds of work they do. Our class was not made up of advanced majors in anthropology, folklore, or sociology. (Evergreen doesn’t have departments or formal majors.) These were freshmen through seniors with quite varied interests, enrolled in a wide-ranging, yearlong, full- time American studies program. How, then, did they learn to think ethnographically? They did a life history project that involved a pre- interview, two interviews recording their narrator’s stories, word-for- word transcriptions, and a written portrait of their narrator’s life. A second, short but intense assignment had them document social life and material culture in a town on the east side of the Cascades. In the classroom they used two texts as models of ethnographic theory and method, representation and ethics: Alessandro Portelli’s They Say in Harlan County, a multilayered oral history of a specific place; and Mitchell Duneier’s Sidewalk, a powerful ethnography of street vendors and their associates in a several block area in Greenwich Village.

I have found that such a mix of fieldwork, reading, discussion, and writing makes a good foundation for ethnographic practice. All

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seventy students in the Writing American Cultures class got this introduction to ethnography in fall quarter, alongside their study of history, fiction, popular culture and American cultures—areas of expertise of my colleagues Chico Herbison and Nancy Koppelman, who taught the program with me. As it turned out, about a third of the class decided to continue with ethnographic research in the second half of the year; the rest went in other directions, choosing projects based on scholarly sources, popular culture analysis, or fiction writing.

The essays in this anthology were all influenced by the main theme of Writing American Cultures: the dynamics of diversity, unity and hybridity in American experience. We took our cue from a line by Ralph Ellison: “Here the most agonizing mystery sponsored by the democratic ideal is that of our unity-in-diversity, our oneness-in- manyness” (19). Sources of inspiration for the ethnography students included novels (Ellison, Invisible Man, John Okada, No-No Boy, Daniel Woodrell, Winter’s Bone); social criticism (Thoreau, Walden, Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk); drama (Tony Kushner, Angels in America); memoir (Claudine O’Hearn’s collection, Half and Half); reportage (Joseph Mitchell, Up in the Old Hotel, Joan Didion, The

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White Album); history (Joyce Appleby, Inheriting the Revolution, Douglas Wilson, Lincoln’s Sword); and anthropology (Karen McCarthy Brown, Mama Lola). Rather than define their thinking through a single discipline, students whipped these and other readings and films from the syllabus into a yeasty intellectual and artistic brew.

Regardless of individual research interests, the whole class thought about the stakes of doing ethnography: to orient oneself to others’ understandings of experience; to see one’s own position and its ironies; to find meaningful ways to use what one learns; to counter reductive ideas about human conduct that are as prevalent in academia as on the street. These aren’t easy commitments. They are values at the heart of a liberal arts education.

The ethnographers continued to wrestle with these principles during their research in the second half of the year. But not in isolation. Each week they posted on the class website samples of fieldwork and writing along with state-of-the-project updates. They kibitzed and advised each other; I responded and pressed them all. They came to regard themselves as research-and-writing companions. Rather than expect academic papers, I encouraged them to study the craft of both

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documentary and fiction authors on the syllabus and to write in the vein nowadays often called “narrative nonfiction.” When I received many promising pieces at the end of the fieldwork, I floated the idea of reworking them for publication. The contributors to this collection made the leap.

The leap from ethnographic research to narrative writing energized these students. Since they hadn’t approached the research through a disciplinary lens, they weren’t constrained by disciplinary discourse. Instead, each of them tried to find a voice, form and language adequate to convey what they’d learned. Their fieldwork had originated in personal impulse, and its trajectory was open-ended, turning on unexpected discoveries. It was ready-made, then, to be told as a true story for interested readers. Since their stance was ethnographic, they gravitated to social and cultural matters: traditions and aspirations, troubles and pleasures, commonalities and conflicts. Since they were free to write as they pleased, their essays combined depiction, interpretation and memoir in ways that stretched the usual boundaries of literary reportage.

The uniqueness of these essays comes from the writers’ sensibilities

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at this point in their young lives: their plasticity of consciousness, the specificity of setting and moment, and their relation to the events. We can think of them as conduits. They are taking on the challenge of getting people’s stories right, linking them together, lifting them out of oral circulation and recasting them in written form. It is a risky, thrilling business. How can you be true to your narrators, your readers, and yourself at the same time? Key for these authors is not to detach yourself from what you’re trying to describe. Writing about culture becomes an imaginative act that recreates culture—shared experience to which you contribute and also somehow belong.

At a time when the worth of a liberal arts education is too easily denied, when disciplinary concerns often seem remote from public interests, and when students want to avoid traps of navel- gazing, academicism, and ideological certainties, ethnography is an open path to meaningful study. By pointing to what matters for groups, institutions, and communities, it becomes a tool for active citizenship—for grasping, representing, and even reshaping social worlds. It attunes us to others’ lives.

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I have had the good luck to teach folklore and American studies at The Evergreen State College, a public institution whose curricular flexibility supports the mix of common and individual work that led to these essays. Evergreen’s experimentalism can shed light on what students are capable of given congenial conditions for learning. Still, it’s important to note that even in difficult conditions—settings where time is short, resources scant, interests competing—dedicated teachers are able to use ethnography to change students’ views of the world and themselves. In more favorable situations, there may be a range of possibilities for undertaking in-depth ethnography projects: through a set of classes in a single department, connected courses across departments, a general education focus, an alliance between faculty ethnographers and writers, and so on. Teachers interested in discussing research-and-writing initiatives in the spirit described here are welcome to contact me at [email protected]. We can talk.

I thank my co-faculty Chico Herbison and Nancy Koppelman for making the Writing American Cultures program a hothouse of ideas, faculty librarian Stokley Towles for the insights about creativity he offered the class, and our students, who supported one another’s

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efforts while bent on their own. I am grateful to Steven Hendricks for his artful design of this anthology. Thanks to Bill Ransom for his encouragement to bring it into being, Aleksander Pashchenko for initial layout, Sarah Pedersen for a new library webpage to host it, and Elaine Nelson for the webpage template. In addition to Chico and Nancy, I am indebted to my colleagues David Marr, Matt Smith, Kristina Ackley, Eric Stein, and Steven Hendricks for helping me think about the questions the book addresses. I owe much to Laura Schrager for her keen reading of its contents from beginning to end.

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Works Cited

Ellison, Ralph. Going to the Territory. New York: Random House, 1986. Print.

Hymes, Dell. “What Is Ethnography?” Language in Education: Ethnolinguistic Essays. Washington: Center for Applied Linguistics, 1980. 88-102. Print.

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Ataya Cesspooch Virtual Reservation: NDNs in the Digital Age Ataya Cesspooch Virtual Reservations

What I Want to Tell You

I want to tell you the truth, the way that I see it. I want to be honest with you and shoot an arrow straight into the heart of the matter. To lay my cards out on the table.

But would it matter? Could it make a difference?

Sometimes I think that I’m a collection of all their voices That they erect ideologies inside of me It’s the strength of their bones that Holds the structure in place The treasure of their memories Mixes with the softness of their hair As they whisper to me

I want to tell you stories. The kinds of stories we’re telling today. I want to share with you who we are. I want you to see.

It’s a web, though. Because being Indian is a web. And everything that you are mingles and bashes with everything that you’re not. Have

3 Ataya Cesspooch you seen the ocean during a storm? When the wind is whipping and the waves rise up and fall over each other? It’s like that with those “are” and “are-nots.” But at the end of the day, when that wind settles down, both waves are just a part of that ocean, and both “are” and “are-nots” are a part of being Indian.

Parts of this essay are about me, about me because I’m Native American and when I study Native America I study myself. I can’t take me out of it. So here I am: half Assiniboine/Nakota1 half Northern Ute, born on the rez2, migrated to the city— urban, rez, modern, traditional.

Natives on the Net

A popular t-shirt sold at powwows is light blue with the lettering in white: “FBI: FaceBook Indian.” It refers to the thousands of Native people that have created a community on the Internet. You can find them on Facebook, YouTube, tribal websites, and language programs. They are all over the net, building community, revitalizing tradition, educating, and carving out a place for themselves. Native people are using the Internet as a means to preserve language, exhibit song and dance, create awareness of important issues, and craft videos made for pure NDN3 entertainment.

Modern traditionalism is like balancing on a tight-rope holding traditional ways in one hand and modernity in the other. Native people strike a balance when they use new media to perpetuate tradition. Their technological astuteness demonstrates that they no longer live in teepees and communicate via smoke signals, and the use of technology to reteach a language assures that the foray into modernity is also one into traditionalism. When technology is appropriated to teach a language, the technology itself becomes decolonized. Because the decolonization of geographical space seems near impossible, Indigenous people can gain empowerment from the decolonization of virtual space. While reservations serve as a

4 Virtual Reservations geographical space for Native people, they are rife with problems. A virtual space can serve as a place for what they aspire to be, what they take pride in.

While the videos are accessible to non-Native people, they are designed for a Native audience. In Native on the Net: Indigenous and Diasporic Peoples in the Virtual Age, Kyra Landzelius describes this choice of audiences as a difference between inreach and outreach. Websites designed to teach a Native language and videos with rez humor can be considered inreach, while tribal websites and educational videos can be considered outreach. I will talk a bit about outreach, but my primary focus is on inreach. That’s where our heart is, in the things we create for each other.

There’s been a lot of talk of new media and how it’s going to change the way we live. While definitions of new media vary, the emphasis is on its difference from “old media,” mainly television, radio, video and interactive media like YouTube, Facebook, and blogs that feature user- generated content and provide a forum for other users to comment. With the huge influx of new media, there is a wide range of views on how it will affect the way we live. In Video Cultures: Media Technology and Everyday Creativity, editors David Buckingham and Rebekah Willett question the scope of new media’s potential by asking: Will the growth in access to video production lead to a democratization of media? Or do such practices amount to little more than a trivial, domestic pastime that hardly challenges the power of the established mass media? Is it helping the emergence of a more participatory culture? Or will the ubiquity of video recording technology create a new culture of narcissism, in which the image comes to substitute for real, direct experience? (13)

The democratization of new media is especially important for minority people who are rarely, if ever, portrayed accurately in mass media. Maria A. Kopacz and Bessie Lee Lawton did a study on YouTube

5 Ataya Cesspooch videos made by or about Native people. They note that Native people make up 1.5 percent of the total U.S. population, and yet constitute only 0.3 percent of all entertainment characters, two-thirds of whom are supporting or background figures (243). Most of these figures are stereotypes. They explain that because these media portrayals serve “as key sources of information about Native Americans for most people, media messages perpetuate distorted beliefs about this group and contribute to real-world discrimination” (241).

New media, these researchers argue, provides a chance for accurate portrayals of Native people to be made by Native people. This work is essential because:

Media can help reduce racial prejudice and ethnic stereotyping by providing majority members with opportunities for contact with racial minorities. Even though this contact is mediated and lacks the dynamics of interpersonal communication, if substantial and evaluated positively, it may be sufficient to humanize members of an ethnic outgroup, consequently improving viewers’ perceptions relating to that group (242).

So although Native-made videos may not reach a large non-Native audience or pose a threat to mass media, the work that they do is an essential first step towards educating non-Natives. And though it may mostly be Native people that watch the videos, it is encouraging for them to see a positive and accurate message being broadcast. When viewed by Native peoples, positive outreach can transform into empowering inreach. Thus the cycle from outreach to inreach further strengthens Native communities by providing them with positive images and role models.

I believe that new media can serve as an important outlet for Native peoples to make their ideas known. It is innovative, it is accessible,

6 Virtual Reservations and it is the future. Still, the potential dangers Buckingham lays out cannot be overlooked. Will new media usher in an age where a YouTube video replaces a story from an elder? Will increased modern traditionalism cause a loss of traditional ways of living? Will commercialization of powwow videos start drummers and dancers on a downward spiral of narcissism?

A Word from the 1491s (Some Real NDNs)

“I have been on the Internets since nearly the beginning. Despite my youthful nature I could very well be considered a Web Elder. I remember the Internet before Natives even had computers. I remember when it was all ugly white dudes. Then next came the ugly older white women. Then out of the blue, a Native American chat room appeared on AOL. Which housed all 35 Natives in the entire world who had both computers and could pay their phone bills on time to charge up that 14.4k modem that made those fax machine fart sounds. Everyone was anonymous. A world where even Ryan Red Corn4 could be a full blood. That was, right up to the point where those little roller scanners became affordable. I remember terrorizing the right wing chat rooms with Indigenous communist ideology and political satire on yahoo with the introduction of voice chat. Then came myspace and Natives from all over came out of the woodwork. You could see the best and worst of us. Which is how it should be. Then at some point it got dumb and everyone pretty much picked up and moved camp overnight and we arrived here on Facebook. Even more Natives arrived. Now all the ugly Indian guys are outnumbered by gorgeous Native women. At this point we know that Wakonta has blessed us. It really has forced the Native man to be more efficient in his stalking. But I digress, we have watched Natives progress from not having computers, to being on the Internet, and all the way to Facebook... and here we are moving into the era of Natives putting videos on YouTube. So this is an open plea. There are just a few of us over there making videos. And you guys know who they are. You

7 Ataya Cesspooch have likely watched every single one of the videos from all of the consistent posters. So I am challenging you. Grab your phone, turn on the video recorder, sing a round dance song, tell a joke, tell a story or run around naked like we do. Help us carve out a bigger chunk of that fiber. Occupy some digital space. It’s a rez with no borders. It’s a frontier and it can be a place for us. We are lonely. Will more of you join our camp?” – A Facebook post from April 2012

In the Past

Native people survived thousands of years before the Spanish introduced horses and horse culture to them. We accepted those horses and integrated them into our way of life just as we did the car centuries later. In Indians in Unexpected Places, Philip Deloria speaks about a photograph of Geronimo sitting in a Cadillac. Three other Native men are with him, also dressed in traditional regalia. Deloria explains that the photo of Geronimo in an automobile represents the clashing of two symbolic systems: Indians (“nature, violence, primitivism, authenticity indigeneity”) and automobiles (“speed, technological advance, independence, identity, progress”). He also explains that “automotive unexpectedness is part of a long tradition that has tended to separate Indian people from the contemporary world.” He points out that this way of thinking is rooted in moments of contact where Europeans sought to impress the Natives with their guns and knives. These moments “set expectations about the backwardness of indigenous people and their seemingly genetic inability to understand and use technology” (146).

The stigma of Natives and primitivism is still carried with Native people today. The stereotypes of what an Indian looks like and acts like are ever present in the American imagination. As Native people, we must contend with those fundamental assumptions that, as Deloria demonstrates, are so deeply rooted in the European consciousness. A Tlingit friend once told me it’s our job to break stereotypes. We must

8 Virtual Reservations live against the grain of what Native people are expected to be. Natives on the net do that just as Geronimo’s Cadillac did.

Deloria explains that Native use of the automobile was not limited to a particularly elite group of Indians, but was embraced by any of them who could afford it. At the time many Native peoples were selling their land allotments to the government, which generated large sums of money that many would then use to become mobile. This mobility, especially between reservations, “allowed Native people to imagine an even broader image of Indian country, one that transcended individual tribes and places and helped create new expressions of the pan-Indian and the intertribal” (153).

Cars provided a way to connect with Indians on other reservations. They allowed for the formation of the powwow highway and for more Indians to travel far and come together. While the government was working to define us strictly by our tribes and isolate us onto reservations, cars allowed us to rebel, to connect to other tribes and to migrate, as we had in the past.

The Internet allows us to do those same things. We can connect through media sites like Facebook and form a virtual reservation. Powwows can come to us now through the numerous powwow videos posted onto YouTube. Indians in modernity, women sitting in buckskin dresses updating their Facebook profiles on their iphones. This is Native America, however unexpected. And the idea of Intertribalism is stronger than ever.

What They Say

It seemed like they were always focusing in on all the negative parts. They were focusing on them and either loathing us for them, or pitying us. We were the drunk and listless Indians who were a threat to ourselves and others, or we were the lazy Indians getting rich off

9 Ataya Cesspooch the dirty money made from tribal casinos. Or if they did show some success story it was drenched in pity: some phoenix child who had risen from the turmoil of the reservation to fulfill her true potential.

They were always holding us up to compare to their standards of success, the elusive American Dream. And if they weren’t doing that, they were trying to keep us in teepees and moccasins. Either way, we were failing; too lazy to live out the dream of corporate success and picket fences, or too enchanted by modern technology to remember our traditions.

What they never saw or understood was the beauty in it, and the value of our way of life. They couldn’t understand why we would want to stay on the reservation and how our values were different from theirs. They never could quite grasp the complexity of it, the way that we were living out tradition but in the only way we could, in the present. That meant embracing modernity to the extent that it served our needs and rejecting the parts of it that didn’t. Innovation itself was traditional.

Pine Ridge

Pine Ridge, home to the Lakota. It’s one of the most famous reservations—meaning it’s always sort of been on the radar for non-Natives, unlike most reservations. If it had fallen off the radar since the 1973 “Incident at Wounded Knee,” when members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) occupied the town of Wounded Knee, it was put back on with the recent 20/20 special presented by Diane Sawyer. The special, called “Hidden America: Children of the Plains,” followed the story of three youths on the reservation against the backdrop of high alcoholism and suicide rates. It documented the struggles and hardships that some of the youth have been through and how they have overcome their troubles.

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Rob Schmidt, a reporter for Indian Country Today, described the special as “poverty porn.” He reprimanded Sawyer for not contextualizing any of the problems, and criticized the use of the word “hidden,” saying the word made it seem “as if Americans wanted to help the Indians all along but couldn’t find them.” The question “Why are people in these conditions?” is never asked, and no solutions are to be found. Schmidt says, “It’s not that any of these stories are false or unrepresentative. But they seem chosen for the maximum heart- tugging effect. You’ll suffer with the children in the first half, and you’ll feel their joy as things improve in the second half.” The real problems of a group of people were crafted into a heart-warming television special.

What’s amazing is the way the Native youth responded to the show. About a month after it aired, a group of youth from the neighboring Rose Bud reservation (also Lakota) made a video called “More than that…” which they posted on YouTube. It begins with a fifteen-year- old girl sitting at a desk writing. She looks into the camera and says, “I know what you think of us.” The shot changes to another girl standing at her locker, who continues, “I saw the special too,” as clips of the 20/20 special cross the screen. Then a boy standing the hallway says, “Maybe you saw a picture.” “Or read an article,” another girl continues. “But we’re here because we want you to know,” says a boy, “We’re more than that.” Then one after the other, six different students repeat, “We’re more than that.” A girl sitting on a staircase explains, “We have so much more than poverty,” as music begins along with a sequence of shots of many students who have different characteristics written on their arm or hand. Words like “strength,” “self respect,” “tradition,” “Love”—values they choose to associate with themselves. Here is the power Native people are finding in asserting their own identities through new media. Television is such a powerful media tool, and specials like Diane Sawyer’s can depict Natives as hopeless victims. These youth were enabled with tools and resources to combat racist assumptions and tell their story.

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In Keeping Heart on Pine Ridge, Vic Glover admits that he wishes people knew about the problems that Pine Ridge faces. Glover grew up on the reservation, and his book is a collection of his thoughts on rez-life through the years. While it’s true that the larger world shouldn’t remain ignorant about Pine Ridge, a new problem is created when the information is presented in a distorted way. Sawyer asked a woman from the reservation, “Why don’t you just leave the reservation?” Leave all this poverty behind and go into the world to better yourself? We can get the answer from Glover:

You could say that many of us living up here have given up on the American dream, because we find that the values extolled and pursued by commercial, consumer- driven American society, in and of themselves are illusory, mythological, essentially empty, and selfishly unfulfilling. Where in American culture is the heart? (12)

He believes that the heart is within Indian Country and in the ways of life and beliefs still practiced there. Living outside of the American Dream, people are able to provide real meaning to their lives, through strong family ties and strong cultural identity.

They stay because that’s where their families are, and because that’s where their heart is. To assume that they’re crazy to stay is to assume that they hold the same American values and ideals as those off the reservation. Glover explains that even amidst all the poverty, there is heart. The high school students in the response video explain that there is “so much more than poverty there.” They stay because of their values. The Native value is to help your people. Everything is for the people. You don’t do things for yourself. Leaving the reservation is like leaving your people.

These students demonstrate what Kathleen Turner discovered while studying a different group of Native youth: “Media production

12 Virtual Reservations gives voice to students who are otherwise silenced in their schools and communities. It allows students to represent their experiences and their communities as cultural insiders, instead of the incessant representation and misrepresentation of them by media producers outside their communities” (qtd. in Gibbons 177). The video made by the youth is empowering rather than demeaning. It wasn’t necessarily that Sawyer told a false story. She just omitted some key things, and the ability of the youth to correct her is inspiring.

Indians in Modernity

In the introduction to Reservation Reelism, Michelle Raheja describes a very tightknit community of Native actors in Hollywood who in 1913 petitioned to the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) to be recognized as a tribe called the “DeMille Indians, borrowing the name from director Cecil B. DeMille.

It may have been an ironic attempt to collectivize a group of Indigenous actors whose identifications had undergone a tectonic shift from the specific epistemologies of their multiple homelands to incorporating cross-tribal worldviews influenced by the film industry. Unlike other indigenous nations [with] particular geographical locations with specific treaty rights, the DeMille Indians would be a new entity occupying a powerful, mass-mediated virtual reservation. [They lay] claim to this vexed social and imaginary geography where self-representation and stereotype collide and are continually negotiated… (3)

Raheja shows the reader a real community that had formed. The DeMille Indians clearly had a guiding ideology and leadership, enough to petition to be legally recognized. They were all away from their own people, but craved that community and banded together. This concept of breaking away and forming anew isn’t a modern idea.

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Before colonization, tribes would form bands and different bands would migrate to different places. Sometimes bands would eventually break away and form new tribes. Tribal affiliation became fixed and static with colonization. In this light, what the DeMille Indians were attempting to do was to introduce old indigenous ways of living into the strict legal definitions of the U.S. government.

The need for Native people to be around other Native people has not changed, although the medium in which they connect has. When Raheja speaks of the DeMille Indians forming a virtual reservation, she is referring to film history. These days, the word “virtual” has taken on a whole new meaning with the advent of the Internet. Occupying virtual space these days can equate to having a website or posting a video. The Internet has fostered a whole new way for Native people, especially those away from their reservations, to connect. Through new media, artists and activists can communicate to one another, call upon each other to join them. They are able to collaborate, keep in tune, and comment on what each other are doing.

These producers converse online forming a new virtual reservation and also come together to meet face–to-face at events like the ImagineNATIVE Film + Media Festival. The festival itself serves as a geographical meeting ground, or a hub, for various Native media artists to meet and interact with each other. The most recent festival, the 10th annual, showcased many Native films and media installations. It featured a workshop called “Codetalker of the Digital Divide”:

Codetalker of the Digital Divide will contextualize what “new media” was pre-Internet to what it has become in the current web 2.0 paradigm and how we have used it to tell our stories. Like our ancestors before us, we have always been keen to identify new tools to accomplish a necessary survival task. The multidisciplinary artists honored in this exhibit are renowned masters of this; their example embodies and

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manifests the imperative of being skillfully adept with a variety of disciplines and media. All artists involved, and their exhibited work, reinforce and pay homage to the eloquence and adaptability of Aboriginal artists, languages and worldviews. By virtue of our ingenuity, we are all modern day codetalkers bridging and championing the chasm that, at one point in our recent history, was thought by some to be an unconquerable digital divide.

There were language programs and websites that featured only Native- made videos in over twenty different indigenous languages. This workshop enabled people to turn virtual connections into actual ones by facilitating real world meetings. Thus the virtual community can manifest as a real community.

Some of the people most involved in this new virtual community are the modern-day Native YouTube celebrities. They are spread throughout the continent, occupying virtual space and forming a community. I will focus on two of the most famous members of this community: 1491s, a sketch comedy group; and Tribe Called Red (TCR), a group of djs that remix powwow music into dubstep.5

1491s

The 1491s is a sketch comedy group based in the wooded ghettos of Minnesota and buffalo grass of Oklahoma. They are a gaggle of Indians chock full of cynicism and splashed with a good dose of indigenous satire. They coined the term All My Relations, and are still waiting for the royalties. They were at Custer’s Last Stand. They mooned Chris Columbus when he landed. They invented bubble gum. The 1491s teach young women how to be strong. And… teach young men how to seduce these strong women (1491s.com, their homepage).

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The first time I saw them I thought, what a bunch of funny guys. After, I saw they had some more videos, and then there were more, and then their goofiness was evolving and becoming refined into comedy around real issues. It hit me when I saw one of their REPRESENT videos. It is shot in still frame centered on a church-like brick building (very institutional) and there’s this powwow music playing. Then a young woman walks into the shot. She’s wearing skinny blue jeans and a black cardigan, her medium length black hair pulled into a simple ponytail in the back. She’s got her ipod in her ears and about halfway into the frame it’s clear that she’s listening to the music we are listening to because she starts jingle dancing. Her white Addidas step in perfect time to the beat as she dances out of the shot. She back steps and re-enters, just as the music fades, and she looks as she would to a passerby, dancing to silence. She dances back out of the shot and we can still hear her shoes scraping across the gravel as she continues to dance on. With the scene unchanging, “REPRESENT” comes on the screen followed by the 1491s logo and “collaboration with Native Americans at Dartmouth.”

And I realized: this is a movement. This is a call to Natives everywhere to “REPRESENT.” She’s representing her Native people at Dartmouth. The building is right at the center of the video, clearly stating the setting, the church-like quality of it made ironic when you consider that the Christian missionaries were some of the most dedicated to assimilation. The video asserts that Native people go to ivy-league schools. It asserts that Native people still have their culture. It asserts that that culture isn’t tied up in the regalia, not bound to the jingles on the dress, but can be located somewhere deeper. The video asserts that Native people can go to ivy-league schools and bring their culture and dance on university grounds without a powwow, without a drum, without regalia. It shows that we’re alive, we’re modern, we’re educated, and we still have tradition. It embodies the beauty and truth I have seen and that I love about Indian country. It shows

16 Virtual Reservations little Indian girls what’s possible, provides them a role model found nowhere in mass media.

The REPRESENT campaign has caught on. Already other Native people are creating their own renditions of how they represent their Native roots in the modern day. Recently, a Navajo father and son filmed a video where they fixed their skateboards while speaking in Navajo, and they copied the REPRESENT layout of the film so it looks as though it is part of a series. This is the beginning of a movement.

A Tribe Called Red

Fuzzy images blurred by digital haze. Figures wearing headdresses cross the screen as pixelated clouds glide over the magenta sky. The colors are inverted, distorted. Like viewing something in x-ray or infrared. These images skip and dance to the catchy rhythms of powwow music turned dubstep. The vocables of a round dance song are chopped up and looped back, leading up to the chorus, “Take a look, just one more time, beautiful smile, beautiful eyes, that’s a red skinned girl- hey yah, hey yah, hey, she’s so pretty, she’s so fine, red skin girl I’ll love you all of the time – hey ah, hey yah, hey.” The original song is sung by the Black Lodge Singers of the Yakima Nation, the imagery taken from old westerns—acts of reclamation.

“I started working with video as a way to cope with high school,” explains DJ Bear Witness in an interview created for CBC Block and posted to Vimeo. “I was fortunate enough to be able to do video essays and stuff like that just on my own in my school. I was in the learning disabled school and stuff and I was used to being unable to communicate and get my point across to people. So when I got my first video camera from my grandfather and started getting my ideas out I realized that I could do it. I could tell my stories in a way that got my point across in a way that people would react to and understand.

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“A lot of my work deals with the urban aboriginal experience, as I see it and as I’ve experienced it. There’s this idea out there now, that it’s a new thing, that we haven’t been in the city before. But the thing is that being aboriginal in the city before meant not being recognized as being aboriginal unless you were out there in the buckskins or drunk on the street.

“A big part of what we’re trying to get out there, a big part of what a Tribe Called Red is trying to do is to nurture that urban culture. Electric Powwow is an event that we throw. We’ve done it across Canada and into the U.S. a bit. It’s directed towards, but not exclusive to, urban aboriginal people and aboriginal people of the world over. It’s the kind of event that really reflects what a powwow is. It’s an electric powwow because we’re DJs but we’re continuing a cultural idea. We’re continuing the values that we see the values that you see with a traditional powwow.”

Recently, the 1491s teamed up with TCR and performed a comedy show before one of their electric powwows. This is one manifestation of virtual connections leading to actual connections and culminating in the formation of a Native hub, or gathering for Native people outside of reservations.

Some of the work Bear Witness does for TCR is to take images from old movies with Native actors in very stereotypical settings and to rework and remix them as the music videos for their songs. He explains, “And in all of it there’s nothing aboriginal about it. It’s all stuff about aboriginal people not made or said or done by aboriginal people but by making the video we’ve indigenized these songs and these images. And we’ve created something aboriginal people can understand and can now relate to and be a part of. I see this as an act of decolonization. I’m decolonizing these images. I’m indigenizing them. I’m making them my own. I’m taking them apart and I’m

18 Virtual Reservations making them tell the story that I want them to tell.” This is a new form of visual sovereignty.

Powwows and Camera Phones

YouTube is overflowing with powwow videos. Everything from fancy dancers to drum competitions is filmed and posted to YouTube. The Internet has become so popular in the powwow circuit that at two of the most recent powwows I attended, the Emcee made some sort of reference to it. (It’s important to note that typical powwow Emcees are older men who are traditional.) At the Squaxin Island Sa’Heh’Wa’Mish Days powwow, the Emcee read aloud from a smart phone a grass dancer’s Facebook update about what a good powwow it was. At the University of Washington’s Winter Powwow, there was a street-clothes-men’s-chicken-dance competition and in the middle of it the Emcee commented, “Oh! This is a YouTube moment! You guys better get out your cell phones. Let’s see who will be the first to post it!” In both instances the Emcees were being comical; their job is to entertain the audience and make them laugh. The references they make depict the way that new media has become steeped in powwow culture.

At a powwow when a really talented drum group begins to play, often their friends or family will stand behind them among the back-up women singers and pull out their phones. They will start to record the song to post to YouTube, turn it into a new ringtone, or listen to it later. Why the recording? One reason is to be able to post it online to show people that you were there and what you heard. It’s the equivalent of recording your favorite band at a concert to show your friends later. Why the camera phone? Well, “the camera phone tends to be used more frequently as a kind of archive of a personal trajectory or viewpoint on the world, a collection of fragments of everyday life” (Willett 214). Unlike a video camera, your phone is usually in your pocket and easy to pull out and start filming. Its main

19 Ataya Cesspooch function isn’t to film anything, so the pressure for “quality” videos is alleviated. More intimate and realistic videos can be captured. “Where traditional cameras are used, photos are taken of special occasions, rather than the ‘fleeting and unexpected moments of surprise, beauty and adoration in the everyday’ which some commentators see as characteristic of camera phone photography” (Willett 213).

One of the main differences between filming your favorite band and filming a drum group is that Indian Country is a very small world, especially in the powwow circuit. The chances are that if you’re standing behind a drum group recording them on your camera phone, you probably know members of the group. So it’s a mix between the everyday and the special occasion. It’s everyday in the sense that a person on the powwow trail will attend one every weekend during powwow season, but special because it is a performance of sorts. The use of a camera phone projects a casual kind of filming, which is an important aspect. Without this casual component, the act of filming can be perceived as semi-voyeuristic and can be compared to a non-native person filming the event and “othering” the singers and dancers.

I think another reason to post a video of a drum group is to see how many people will watch it and to hopefully become the producer of a very popular video. One of the most popular drum groups, Northern Cree, has over 700,000 views for their video “Red and White – (Driving Me Crazy).” Why are videos like this so popular? I think it’s because the Internet is one of the only ways to see and hear these drummers outside of the powwow circuit. It’s not on the television or movies, and it’s not on the radio or in Itunes. If you want to hear powwow music, you have to go to a powwow, buy a CD at a powwow, or go to YouTube. Popular drum groups get thousands of views. There should be some sort of system for drum groups where your song reaches Platinum once it gets over 500,000 views.

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Essentially, the video serves as a live recoding of the group, something you will only hear once. Often too, it’s important where the song was recorded. For example, the video of Northern Cree at Gathering of Nations will be popular video because it’s a big drum group at a big powwow. And if you caught footage of them singing at Gathering of Nations the year they won best drum group, you’ll likely get even more hits.

The act of filming a drum group or dance competition and posting it onto YouTube is a perfect rendition of modern traditionalism: to film with a brand new cell phone (modern) a round dance song at a powwow (traditional), and then post the video onto YouTube (modern) for other Native people (traditional) to see carves out a uniquely Native space on the Internet. It serves as an act of reclamation.

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Posting a powwow video to YouTube does virtually what a powwow does physically. In Native Hubs: Culture, Community, and Belonging in Silicon Valley and Beyond, Renya Rameriez interviews a California Native about being in the powwow circuit, and concludes: “His words highlight the power of the powwow circuit to claim sacred territory, temporarily transforming dominant spaces such as school gymnasiums and athletic fields into a safe world, where his sense of identity, culture, health, and well-being are supported” (65). The powwow’s ability to transform a gymnasium into a Native space is mirrored virtually when people post powwow videos on YouTube and transform it into a Native space as well: a place to find culture where you wouldn’t necessarily expect it.

The intertribal concept found at powwows can also be found online. Many videos focus on pan-Indian concepts such as the powwow trail or rez-life. This intertribal focus allows Native people to relate to the videos regardless of their tribal enrollment. This is important

21 Ataya Cesspooch especially for urban Indians who are away from their reservations. Urban Indians make up over half of Native America. For these people it’s important to stay connected to their Native communities. They can do so by reading tribal newspapers online, viewing family photos on Facebook, or watching YouTube videos like the 1491s that are packed with rez-humor. These online spaces can be thought of as virtual reservations or Native hubs. They serve as places for Native people to assert their visual sovereignty. Rameriez explains,

Indeed, the hub suggests how landless Native Americans maintain a sense of connection to their tribal homelands and urban spaces through participation in cultural circuits, and maintenance of social networks, as well as shared activity with other Native Americans in the city and on the reservation. Urban Indians create hubs through signs and behavior, such as phone calling, emailing, memory sharing, storytelling, ritual, music, style, native banners, and other symbols. Moreover, the hub as a social and political concept ultimately has the potential to strengthen Native identity and provide a sense of belonging, as well as to increase the political power of Native peoples (68).

Before, there were books and there were movies, but they didn’t provide that connection. I recently attended a lecture by Waziyatawin, a prominent Native activist and writer. She explained that one of the results of colonization was being disconnected from the land and from each other. The Internet allows us to reconnect. Not in the same way, of course, but it allows for something. Now, you can go online and read the latest news headline about an issue that’s happening and currently affecting Native people. Websites such as Indian Country Today not only work to democratize media, but also introduce people to Native artists, movies, and powwows. It’s a virtual reservation. It allows people to immediately discover what’s happening in Indian country, and to connect around contemporary issues or events. I

22 Virtual Reservations think that’s important not just for the power of a movement and for things to change, but also to give people a sense of community. To break free from the isolation that can come with being away from other Native people.

Something is Better than Nothing

An Indian child without knowledge of his own cultural traditions is like a tree that, when it was young, did not have a lot of trees around to make it go straight up to the sun… [On the other hand] in a great forest, where you’ve got a lot of trees around this young tree, and that one tree grows straight up between those other trees to reach the sun, then it’s going to be strong and it’s gonna be there for two and three hundred years. And that’s the way it is with Indian children. Without that foundation or that circle of tradition, to raise that child in, it becomes weaker and weaker as its years go on (Garroutte 74).

New media allows for some “trees” to surround a youth even when they can’t actually. Hologram trees are better than none at all, right? Trees planted through technology, grown through cyberspace.

Most reservations don’t have many living speakers of their traditional languages and as a result many have turned to technology as a way of preserving and teaching the language to their youth. While having a child watch a twenty minute Bernstein Bears episode translated into Anishinaabemowin6 on YouTube isn’t the same as having them listen to their grandmother tell a story, the reality is that because of boarding schools and assimilation, their grandmother may not know the language. In this case the “trees” needed to support and teach this child how to grow up strong have to come from new media, and that’s okay. Something is better than nothing.

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We are a people of innovation. When given only flour and lard from the government, we created fry bread, and this outrageously unhealthy food is still consumed highly today and has been integrated into the culture. Given technology and the Internet, we are able to expropriate it for our own needs, to use it in a traditional way, to use it to perpetrate culture in a new way – just as our ancestors once did with horses.

Derek

Last year Derek asked me if I would be a part of a film he was working on. I didn’t know him very well; I’d only met him once or twice and we were both pretty shy (he being extremely so). But I knew he was Native and had been home-schooled on the Tulalip reservation, which is where I grew up, so I forgave his awkwardness and decided to do him a favor. There aren’t too many Native Americans on campus and I figured if he was asking me, someone he hardly knew, that he must really be in need. His timidness didn’t help him at all with directing, but what he lacked in directness he made up for in genuine kindness. Derek likes robots and poetry, films and piano, oranges and the rain. He doesn’t like spicy, flavorful, or well, any food besides French fries and pizza, and he doesn’t like the sun. I once saw him walking around campus with an umbrella on a beautiful sunny day.

He graduated from Evergreen before finishing the movie and moved back to Marysville, but in September I got an excited email that it was finally finished. When he returned to Olympia to screen the movie he was full of interesting ideas and notions about Native-made media. Over the summer he got a job with the new Tulalip museum filming storytellers and elders. His side project is a Native sitcom. We had a few interesting conversations about the stuff, but I didn’t think too much of it at the time.

I emailed him to see if he was open to having another dialogue about

24 Virtual Reservations media. He is always on his computer and so he quickly responded “When?” How about tonight, I said, knowing I would be busy the next day. That night I missed a series of buses and didn’t get home until nine p.m. When I checked my email I found a response from him that tonight was good and a link to the videos he had made for the museum. I clicked the link and began chopping potatoes for dinner. There were four videos. They each started with segments of people speaking in Lushootseed,7 then talking about traditional practices and ending with a story. Some of the videos were looped or something because they would play on repeat, and because I was cooking I just let them re-play. I must have watched each of them two or three times, but it was good. I was able to pick up things I didn’t get the first time. I had a moment while stirring my vegetables when I wondered if I was disrespecting the storytellers and elders in the movie by not giving them my full attention. There are grey areas of incorporating traditional knowledge into media.

I spooned my sautéed potatoes and carrots into a bowl and dialed Derek’s number. I wasn’t sure exactly where to begin or what questions to ask, so I started with the films I’d just been watching. I asked him about his experience filming them and he said he found that editing his interviews with people to be very difficult. Watching something on a screen is already taking it out of context, but editing out what they’ve said before or after telling a certain story decontextualizes the material even further. He explained that the films could only be so many minutes long and he struggled with whether or not to include the speakers’ natural pauses. He worried that editing this stuff out would distort their rhythm and present them in a fragmented way.

The conversation was ripe with awkward pauses and a lot of not knowing what to ask next, but it was clear that Derek has given these things a lot of thought as a filmmaker, and he was willing to explore them with me. Some of the questions that came up were big ones: What is lost through media? And can media help us revive the oral

25 Ataya Cesspooch tradition? It can be argued that movies are today what oral stories were in our past. So it’s good that we are filming and preserving these stories. But will this increased use of film have an adverse affect on the oral tradition? And does viewing these stories on a screen instead of in person take away from the experience and the story?

When we discussed the difference between inreach and outreach, he reflected on the museum videos and explained: “I want those videos there for that one Native kid that walks in there with their class someday. If they’re anything like me they’ll be able to learn new things about our culture. And obviously the videos are going to be seen by a lot of other people. And they’ll be able to learn things, too. I mean, there might be some context differences between different audiences, but a lot of our people haven’t had much opportunity to learn much of their own culture, so I think there are a lot of times when the context we carry IS that of the dominant culture. I mean, there are a lot of times when I know that I don’t know all that much.”

He brought up something that perplexed him. One of the elders he recently interviewed was very reluctant to share certain teaching on film. Derek found this strange because he had overheard this same elder speak quite openly of these teachings to Natives and non-Natives alike. We pondered for a moment, and then Derek reflected, “I know one reason people worry about committing things to recordings is the permanence of it. They worry a lot about making sure that the recording is just right. Perfect, you know? Because what would it mean if the recording was slightly wrong and people learned it (whatever it is) the wrong way? I guess it’s probably easier to correct someone when you’re there with them in person.”

When we think about what is lost, it’s a person. You can’t ask a YouTube video to clarify something. The storyteller can never change the story. While preserved, the story also becomes fixed and unable to move. On the one hand, whoever sees the video will be able to retell

26 Virtual Reservations and revive that story. But on the other, who will retell that story? And will they do so in a respectful way? Native culture has been exploited to the point that many elders fear sharing things and keep wisdom far from strangers. By making things accessible online, you make them accessible to everyone, and run the risk of those things being desecrated. Many Native people still carry mistrust of non-Native people, and that feeling can be difficult to overcome.

Derek told me he felt there was a tradeoff. While you lose the whole experience of hearing something in person, the audience that is reached is so much larger than could ever have possibly come to hear the stories in person. He said the level of access is so much greater for film that it makes it worth doing for him. He explained, “These stories used to be free and accessible to us. Despite the risks, we need these stories to come back. We need to reteach the language, and if that means other people can learn as well, I think that’s okay.”

Conclusion

The DeMille Indians effected reverse frontier expansion by staking out their territory in Hollywood, a powerful imagined space on which they could create a virtual reservation. Their acts of visual sovereignty in the films they starred in and their work organizing a collective Hollywood Indian community set the stage for later generations of Indigenous artists who would borrow from, contest, and operate in dialogue with images produced by this first generation of film actors and directors (Raheja 45).

We are doing exactly this: creating a virtual reservation, reclaiming inaccurate images and asserting our visual sovereignty. The community now has no real central location, but has spread across Indian country. “A reservation with no borders.” The community is growing as viewers are encouraged and enabled to create their own

27 Ataya Cesspooch work. Kyra Landzelius forsees the implications:

All represent radically new venues for practicing and configuring indigeneity. They are at once exercises in cultural positioning and survival, but also templates for change, transformative steps in the production of culture. The amplification of indigenous cosmopolitanism via electronic solidarity networks arguably further contributes to, and may possibly accelerate, shifts in the meanings inscribed upon “indigeneity” over time…. As native identity-constructions become newly articulated via new media, the everyday practices and the lives of indigenous peoples are also coming to be shaped (directly or indirectly) by computer-mediated communications (19).

Sometimes it feels good to break free from tradition, and from stereotype. Sometimes reinventing yourself is necessary. But sometimes we stray too far into individuality and long for community and a life with a meaningful worldview. So we oscillate in and out of expected norms, and along the way we find people oscillating that same way. And then we don’t feel alone anymore. Our collective culture is redefined. A bridge is built between the modern and traditional, across the “digital divide.”

“We missed the Industrial Revolution. We will not miss the Information Technology Revolution,” said Chief M. Coon Come, of the First Nations (qtd. in Landzelius, 8). The use of modern technology by Native peoples shows how far we have come. We’re now in a place where most tribes have college-educated leaders who understand the importance of mastering technological advancements to achieve our overall goals. The ability of Indigenous people to easily adopt new technologies and use them as a tool to decolonize compared to our past inabilities to do so is a harbinger for what is to follow.

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Virtual spaces cannot replace real ones. But when real ones are hard to come by, virtual ones suffice. Virtual worlds give virtual space to displaced people in need. They provide a forum for ideas to be created and shared. They allow Natives to reclaim and push back. Being a part of something is a powerful thing. Virtual or actual, physical or digital, space is space, and community, community. They foster growth and inspire us by showing what we can be.

We must use the inspiration drawn from virtual reservations to bring about change in actual reservations. We must not depend solely on technology to preserve our culture; it is only a tool, only an intermediate step towards the full revitalization of our culture. It is our job to use technology this way and to learn from it, so that we can teach the songs, stories and languages to the next generation. Colonization originally stripped us of our culture, and it will be with the tools of colonization that we revitalize our culture.

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Notes

1. One of three bands of the Sioux Nation 2. Slang for reservation 3. Slang for Indian 4. A lighter skinned Native member of the sketch comedy group, the 1491s 5. A genre of electronic dance music 6. The language of the Anishinaabe 7. Coast-Salish language that many of the Coastal tribes in Washington speak

Works Cited

Buckingham, David, and Rebekah Willett, eds. Video Cultures: Media Technology and Everyday Creativity. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Print.

Deloria, Philip. Indians in Unexpected Places. Lawrence: U of Kansas P, 2004. Print.

Falcondaily. “More than that…” YouTube. 12 Dec. 2011. Web. 20 Jan. 2012. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhribaNXr7A

Gansworth, Eric. Sovereign Bones: New Native American Writing. New York: Nation, 2007. Print.

Garroutte, Eva. Real Indians: Identity and the Survival of Native America. London: U of California P, 2003. Print.

Gibbons, Damiana, Tea Drift, and Deanna Drift. “Whose Story Is It? Being Native and American: Crossing Borders, Hyphenated Selves.” International Perspectives on Youth Media: Cultures of Production and Education. Fisherkeller, Joellen, ed. New York: Peter Lang, 2011. 172-190. Print.

Glover, Vic. Keeping Heart on Pine Ridge. Summertown: Native Voices, 2004. Print.

Jasonfinley1986. “Northern Cree – Red and White (Driving Me Crazy).”

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YouTube. 1 Aug. 2007. Web. 16 Dec. 2011. http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=qwsSqiHoUlI

Johnson, Gordon. Fast Cars and Frybread. Berkley: BayTree, 2007. Print.

Kopacz, Maria A. and Bessie Lee Lawton. “Rating the YouTube Indian: Viewer Ratings of Native American Portrayals on a Viral Video Site.” American Indian Quarterly 35.2 (2011): 421-257. Print.

Landzelius, Kyra. Native on the Net: Indigenous and Diasporic Peoples in the Virtual Age. New York: Routledge, 2006. Print.

Mullington, Chris. “Bear Witness.” Vimeo. CBC Bold. Feb. 2012. Web. 10 Mar. 2012. http://vimeo.com/36899601

Raheja, Michelle H.Reservation Reelism: Redfacing, Visual Sovereignty, and Representations of Native Americans in Film. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2010. Print.

Rameriez, Renya K. Native Hubs: Culture, Community, and Belonging in the Silicon Valley and Beyond. Durham: Duke UP, 2007. Print.

The 1491s. “REPRESENT Jingle Dance- 1491s- Kayla Gebeck.” YouTube. 14 Nov. 2011. Web. 18 Dec. 2011. http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=go85gnun0Rc&feature=player_embedded

The 1491s. Facebook. 18 April 2012. Web. 20 April 2012. http://www. facebook.com/1491s

The 1491s. 1491s, 2011. Web. 15 Jan. 2012. http://1491s.com/

Willett, Rebekah. “Always on: Camera Phones, Video Production and Identity.” Buckingham and Willett. 210-229.

Linna Teng Khmao Euy Khmao: Colorism Amongst Cambodian Americans Linna Teng Khmao Euy Khmao

There is a photograph of me blown up poster-sized resting on top of a 1994 stereo system in my mom’s room. It’s a head shot. I’m decked out in Khmer clothes and an uncomfortable hairstyle. Three pounds of makeup and fake diamond jewels. The stylist barked let me do my job when I told her that I didn’t need that crease tape to create the illusion of bigger eyes, or when I said my lips end here when she didn’t put on enough gloss to cover my entire lips. Maybe she thought my lips were too big and that my already enormous eyes could never be too big. Most importantly, she and the rest of the studio thought my skin color was inferior, because with four large flashes and after digital touch ups I became milky white. My complexion – entirely erased. This photo was taken in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. My mother adores it so much that she printed the portrait into a permanent frame, equipped with a lifetime of shellac coating to immortalize the photograph. This is what my mom wants me to look like. This is the epitome of beauty. It emulates everything I am not. I don’t have thin lips, fake spider-like lashes, tape on my eyelids, a thin nose. I am not even yellow. I am brown.

Khmao, “black,” is the Khmer word frequently used to describe a person with dark skin tone. Colorism has been perpetually reinforced

35 Linna Teng in my own Cambodian community. When I step inside these Cambodian walls, everyone else is ready and willing to define me by my color. I get embarrassed. Two shades, no three, it’s actually closer to four shades. I have been taught to feel ugly about my skin. Words like khmao sro aem, “dark but pretty,” don’t help. Calling me dark but pretty is supposed to ease some of the ugly. It’s a step up from simply khmao or kapreak khmao, “dark as night.” I should be happy that I’m not that dark. I catch myself staring at my skin, comparing it to others’. Feeling loads of insecurities when meeting new people, waiting to hate them because they might say something offensive about my skin color. Whenever I would step out of the house to play with my friends, a hat would be tossed in my direction or I would be told to put on a long sleeve shirt. In a community that had such an open distaste for dark skin, we did all we could to prevent ourselves from becoming darker.

We are Cambodian American, clearly distinguishing ourselves from Cambodians in Cambodia. Our cultural interpretations of color are occasionally at odds with the two cultures we live in. We are Cambodian by ethnicity, but our daily interactions with people force us to be American, whether through conscious choice or through subtle subconscious transitions into the mainstream American society. In the Cambodian tradition, colorism exists as something different from the typical American understanding.

In academic discourse, skin tone discrimination is referred to as colorism. Colorism encompasses unequal treatment and biases towards a preferred shade, whether light or dark. In this particular look into colorism, the discrimination is contained within Cambodian boundaries. It is known throughout the Cambodian community that light skin is the standard. There is also a widely accepted notion that skin color is associated with class. This equation of light skin with wealth, power, and beauty is casually expressed in everyday conversations and especially emphasized in the Cambodian media.

36 Khmao Euy Khmao

The popular female karaoke stars are light-skinned women with very stereotypically East Asian features – straight hair, a thin nose, thin lips, and slanted almond-shaped eyes (Rondilla 64). The media reinforces these images of successful light-skinned Cambodians both in Cambodia and in the United States. It is a widely known belief in our communities that those with lighter skin are more readily accepted by society.

In the U.S., many of the studies on colorism focus on the experiences of African Americans yearning to be culturally and physically whiter. “For Asian Americans,” the authors of Is Lighter Better? state, “color hierarchies seem to be as deeply rooted in old-country class distinctions – in the desire to look like upper-class Asians who did not have to do body work out in the sun...” (Rondilla 15). This is definitely true for the older generation of Cambodian Americans. As young Cambodian Americans, my generation has internalized both forms of colorism. We learn at an early age that light skin is beautiful, and, through the American tradition, many of us have also felt the pressures to be white.

Some women have said to me that they had never considered the topic as an issue prior to speaking with me. It’s been internalized, unspoken, and made to be invisible. I am sharing their stories and my own here in hopes of opening a dialogue about skin tone discrimination in Cambodian communities.

We have all used masao threiyh, “skin lightening cream,” at one point in our lives. Our immigrant mothers would buy it at the Asian market or from a friend that had recently gone to Cambodia. They would tell us to rub that creamy yellow paste on our faces to make us “pretty.” We used the creams because our mothers told us to, to satisfy their traditional perceptions of beauty. Conversely, the media reinforced a set standard of Eurocentric beauty.

37 Linna Teng

The transnational market for skin-lightening creams, which is imbedded in colonialism, is a booming industry. It not only encourages women to be unsatisfied with their natural skin color, but has negative health effects. Mercury is a major ingredient in these products (Murphy et al.). Skin lightening products have caused devastatingly severe body burns, allergic reactions, and in some cases even death. But to women of color who have internalized hatred for their dark-skinned bodies, the risk is well worth it. For myself and many young women I spoke to, the use of skin-lightening creams wasn’t taboo – it was normal. If you didn’t use skin lighteners, you had a cousin that did.

Don’t get darker was tattooed onto my skull by first grade.

Vanessa, Part I

First grade bullies. The dynamic duo, waiting under the pagoda, poking at a dark-skinned Cambodian girl’s self-esteem. Harmless? Not quite. They too were Cambodian, no more than six years old. They held the power to destroy Vanessa’s perception of her complexion. “Why are you so dark?” followed by, “Are you even Cambodian?” Forever burned an insecure hole in Vanessa’s heart. Gut-wrenchingly heartless, those two girls ruined Vanessa’s confidence for the duration of her childhood and adolescence. At twenty-one years old, Vanessa is still struggling with her complexion.

Vanessa is undoubtedly darker than most Asian-identified people. Her brown complexion is purely Cambodian. Cambodians are brown. Cambodia is located in Southeast Asia. It’s easy to brush off outsiders that are ignorant of Cambodia’s geography, but how do you brush away the insults when they are internally Cambodian? I am not sure, and neither is Vanessa. She is slender, with long black hair, and modest Coach horn-rimmed glasses. She’s wearing all black – black

38 Khmao Euy Khmao flats, a black blouse, and a black blazer.

It has always been an issue for me. All my friends are Asian. They’re all light, and I’m the only one that is dark. I remember this one time, I went to this high school dance, this one Asian guy was like, “We’re all Asian here.” I guess he thought I was black or something, “Oh, except for her, she’s darker.” Another blow at her insecurities. Vanessa was too sensitive about the topic to react. She is still too sensitive about the issue and freezes up when someone grazes that tender wound that never healed.

Sara, Part I

It was probably 1993 and Sara was in the sixth grade. She would go to school wearing the standard blue slacks and white polo attire, as approved by Mom and Dad. When she got to school, she and her homegirls would go into the Stewart Middle School bathroom stalls and change clothes. Clothes that were hidden in their backpacks, deep down into the pockets that their parents would never rummage through. Black lipstick, big pants, oversized pants. They changed out of their standard uniforms into something cooler. Oversized t-shirts, oversized clothes. Pager with a bandana. My mom accused me of being a gangster girl. Tattoos would also be considered gangster girl. Rap music. Certain friends.

These associations with gang affiliation didn’t bother her. She had yet to get her first tattoo, she had yet to find her first boyfriend, and she had no money for a pager. I was never in a gang. I only did it because it was fashionable. Friends are doing it. So it’s just a phase that we all did. Although she posed, a pseudo-gangster with Pro Wings tennis shoes purchased at Payless and Kmart quarter-sized fake gold hoops, she was harmless. She had the clothes and the questionable friends that made Mom weary. She listened to that gang music – rap. Let’s say I’m a size zero and I wore a size forty pants – Dickies. Sara had that west coast Chola look down, looking like an extra in Mi Vida Loca. Her hair was mid-

39 Linna Teng waist length with a touch of Sun In, a spray-in product that lets the sun naturally dye it. She was also rocking the big sparse fringe bangs that she meticulously curled in the morning, while the rest of her hair was greased up with Johnson’s Baby Oil. I would get really really khmao; it wasn’t even lipstick that I wore. It was the black lip liner that I would use on my lips. Along with my eyeliner, along with my eyebrows. It was all in one, it was only ninety-nine cents. Wet n Wild, which I still use for my eyebrows.

The whole khmao thing wasn’t considered gangster. But wasn’t it khmao culture you were participating in? I asked. American khmao culture. Rap music would be part of it. Anything dealing with khmao is a no-no in their eyes. She said this without any hesitation. The thought of black being negative is so ingrained in her that it became seemingly unnoticeable. She was okay with listening to “black” music; all her friends were listening to it too. Most if not all of her friends were Asian – ordinarily Khmer. To them, it wasn’t okay to be black, because the media reinforced it and because they, too, hated the thought of their Asian skin shifting farther from yellow and closer to brown.

Pamela

It was around Chinese New Years, I was just having a deep conversation with my mom, and my whole life I thought my dad was Cambodian. I knew he was an orphan, but I perceived that he was Cambodian. My dad’s totally one hundred percent Chinese, his family was Chinese, but he was living in Cambodia. That’s why when people look at me, they’re like, “You’re Cambodian? I would have never thought.” I’m like, “I am full Cambodian.” But now, “I’m half Chinese, that’s probably why.”

Pamela is sixteen years old. Born in the United States, she never doubted her ethnicity. Cambodian is a nationality; Khmer is the language and a majority ethnic group. There are minority groups, including Chinese Cambodians and Vietnamese Cambodians, who live in Cambodia but identify culturally and nationally with being

40 Khmao Euy Khmao

Khmer. Pamela’s situation is similar. Her father, being raised by someone other than his Chinese birth parents, never had a sense of Chinese cultural affinity; he only knew to be Khmer. So why would it be a point of conversation throughout her life?

I’ve had people come up to me, at the mall, they start speaking Filipino to me. I’m freaked out. “No, I’m not Filipino. Sorry.” People at my school think I’m Mexican or Spanish or something and it’s totally wrong. No one ever guesses Cambodian, because most people don’t know where Cambodia is. They think it’s Pacific Islander or something. It’s really silly, I know, but it’s what people perceive me as.

From my experience, I don’t think Cambodian girls are very pretty. Cambodian guys are not very attractive either. I think they just look pretty average, I would say. For a confidently secure teenager, Pamela seems to be demeaning the attributes of Cambodians. Much of her candor is attributable to her age. Pamela speaks unashamedly, without being afraid of offending anyone. She implies that our wide features are inferior to those with more European features. Their nose is not like a Caucasian’s nose. It’s not pointy. They kind of have a rounded nose. Some of them are more flat, you’d see like a ‘W’ shape. You know what I mean? Most of the Cambodians I see are brown, but there’s a range of tone. Some could be really dark brown, and some could be lighter. A lot of products to make your skin lighter. The use of skin lightening creams is eerily normalized in her perception of Cambodian beauty. So that’s what a typical Cambodian would be, I would say.

So my grandma, when she came back from Cambodia, she brought a lot of powder and creams to put on your face, it helps smooth out your complexion and makes it soft to the touch, and according to my grandma, it makes you lighter. My mom always talks about in Cambodia, they bathe in milk. That famous singer, Pich Chenda or whatever, she’s really white. She bathes in milk, because she’s all super rich and stuff. I use the creams at night. When I wake up, I feel like my face is softer, but I don’t know about lightening.

41 Linna Teng

It might lighten my dark spots from pimples, but I don’t know about my complexion. I know for sure my grandma and aunts, they all use stuff like that. I hear a lot about people using that, my grandma bought a bunch, because everyone in Cambodia uses it too. It’s really cheap, so it’s common.

After her poignantly blunt views about Cambodians’ inability to be beautiful, Pamela shares her preference for men. I personally like white guys, because they have nice eyes and they have rosy cheeks. Some might think Cambodians are attractive, but for me I feel all Cambodians are related to me in some way. When you meet someone, “Oh hey, Uncle,” or “Hey, Cousin.” I just can’t get used to that, it’s weird. Although marrying a Cambodian would be a default, it would make it easier on culture-wise, food-wise, and raising your kids. I don’t know. I don’t dig Cambodians that way, because I feel like I’m related to them secretly.

I think Asian people want to be lighter. My mom, she really wants to get a nose job. A pointier nose. People always want to be what they’re not. They want to try and enhance their features. This message is something Pamela clearly understands at sixteen. She even puts it in a transnational context. The desire for light skin is a global one. Even in Japanese cartoons, they have whiter features. In Brazil they have papaya lighteners and in Asia we use turmeric. I’m pretty tan, at school people say, “Pam, you’re so tan,” in comparison to other Cambodians. I would probably be a 4 or a 3, because I am lighter, parts don’t match my body but my face is pretty light.

Pocka

This is a really bad tan. I’m really lighter than this. What do you mean? I’m like a sexy caramel color.

Do you not like being darker? It’s not that, it’s just some people; I don’t think people really accept dark skin people. So I feel too dark and they don’t accept you, but if you are in between, then they’ll at least talk to you. Have you had instances where people have insulted you? Well not really, more

42 Khmao Euy Khmao like jokes. “Pocka you’re black.” I get over those. “Pocka you’re black you eat chicken and stuff.” “Yeah I’m black, whatever, it’s who I am.” That’s how I’m feeling right now, but back then it was wrong to be darker than them. I don’t know why. The way they kept on saying it every day. It gets old, but there’s little feelings sometimes.

Pocka is a freshman in college; he’s eighteen and many of his identities are starting to intersect and unfold at this crucial time in his life. Spending time away from many high school friends and more time finding cultural roots proves to be an important aspect of his life. Mixed African American, Cambodian, and Laotian, Pocka is nervous, hesitant to open up to me. He is introverted and bashfully awkward at times. His outlook as a man does not differ much from Cambodian women’s views. He struggles with the same issues of attractiveness. His attempt is to find a balance between what is negatively reinforced and what he actually wants to feel about his appearance. He reveals bits and pieces to me. I push for more intimate details of these stories, but he cuts me short, fearing I’ll get too personal. I understand his boundaries, but at the same time I want him to know that I support and empathize with his struggles with color identity.

You know the N word right? I don’t like that word, but there are people back at my high school saying it. Almost every race says it now. It’s dumb. I got over it by not really listening to it. The summer I was visiting Korea, they were saying it to me and I kind of told them to knock it off. They were like, “Why?” “It’s not good to bring that kind of word over to Korea and it’s stupid to call me that.” The N word is referring to brown skin, but then when I heard them say it I was like, “Well you’re kind of brown skin too so you’re pretty much calling yourself that.” They were using it because I was black. Brown skin. Another word for nigger, but not saying that.

There are a couple of my friends who could tell I was Asian because of my eyes, my name, and kind of my skin color. I used to have straight hair that went down to my back, but then my mom had her boyfriend cut it off. Shaved

43 Linna Teng bald. Now I’m trying to grow it back straight, but it’s not working. It’s only growing back curly. You want to have straight hair? I want to see what it feels like. I tried to ask my mom why my hair isn’t growing back straight, and she says brown skin is more dominant. I don’t believe it.

Shade and hereditary traits come to us in ways we cannot control. Pocka’s wish for straighter hair or a “nicer” tan are things that will not come about naturally. He is reluctant to admit that he once was ashamed of his dark skin or that his friends who teased him about being African American were actually being racist.

That was back when I wasn’t over the N word and I kept thinking why do I have to be black?

Vanessa, Part II

With meeting my boyfriend’s parents, they’re all light. I had to meet his sister and her husband who is white, “Man, he’s gonna think that I’m black.” I went to New York with my friends this summer. I didn’t see any Asian people. Her friend remarked, “Do you think people keep staring at us because we’re not normal? Do you think they think you’re black?” Whenever I go to the Korean market, I don’t go by myself. I just feel like they’re looking at me. I go with my boyfriend. He’s like, “Go by yourself.” But I’m really insecure about going to Asian places when they’re really light-skinned and I’m the only dark-skinned person there.

Vanessa’s insecurity about being mistaken as black has hindered her ability to be independent. Although it might sound ludicrous, her insecurity is real. I too feel that overbearing insecurity when I go to Asian markets. Feeling inadequate and unattractive constantly goes through my mind when I have the darkest complexion in the store.

One of the things I always think of is, “What if they think I’m part black or something?” When I realized that someone in their family married a black

44 Khmao Euy Khmao guy and had black kids, I felt more relieved, even though I’m not black. I’m Cambodian. Because they had a dark-skinned person in their family I felt more comfortable being dark-skinned around all the lighter Asian people.

I’m happy with my skin color. If I had the chance to be lighter I really wouldn’t care to take it. I wouldn’t do creams to make myself lighter. I just wish that if I were to go out, it wouldn’t be noticed amongst other Cambodian people.

I wouldn’t want to become lighter. Just to get that straight.

I don’t need comfort; it just feels good to know that someone else feels the same way too. I’d rather tell it to someone who knows what I’m going through. I know my boyfriend doesn’t care, and I know all these people don’t care, but it’s just when I go outside of people who don’t care to people that do care, and that’s why it’s hard. It’s easier to talk to someone who knows and not someone who will make me feel stupid, but I feel like I’m putting myself out there when I talk about this because it’s something that I’ve always kept inside of me. I don’t want to make it a big deal. “Oh I’m a big baby, I’m crying because I’m darker.”

Vanessa does this thing where she rubs the back of her hand, as if the color would smudge off. As a young adult, she is starting to come to terms with her complexion, but she is still quite insecure with the thought of her skin becoming darker.

I am usually the darkest. My dad is a little bit darker than me. There are darker Cambodians, but the majority that I hang out with are lighter Cambodians. I know they don’t care, I know my friends don’t care about skin color, but every time I meet their other friends, one thing that pops into my head is, “Are they going to think less of me because I’m darker?” I don’t feel ugly, but at times it makes me feel like I could be. I’m not saying I’m pretty, but I know I’m not ugly because I’m darker. When I was little, we’d go to Safeway or something and all the khmao people would be like, “Your daughter has really nice skin color.” Of course they’d say that because they’re khmao. Well, that made me

45 Linna Teng feel better because it made me think, “I like my skin color.” But then you see older Cambodian people, and they’re lighter than you: “Your daughter, she’s so dark; she looks just like your husband.”

Rona

Remember Mai Kachu? Her family was light-skinned Cambodians and thought they were the best thing in the world. They would make comments like, “You get that from your dad.” Blame our dad.

Rona was dying her parent’s hair, disguising the gray with box color hair dye. Her slender frame is casually dressed in a lime green sweatshirt and black leggings. She is surprisingly stunning in clothes that would be frumpy on someone else. Her clean, short nails are painted red. Her hairstyle looks a day old, but it still retains a bit of grace. She has a dog, Pinky, like as in Pinky and the Brain. Pinky is appropriately wearing a pink pullover hoodie that looks like it came from a Victoria’s Secret catalog.

Unabashedly Americanized, Rona is the epitome of the girl next door. She has an infectious giggle and is vivaciously outgoing. Her beauty is striking, but not unapproachable. I get a lot of black guys who ask me if I’m black and Asian. I feel like that’s their pickup line. Either that or they can’t figure out what I am, because my eyes, they’re not too small. My skin as I’ve gotten older is not as dark anymore. A lot of people question what I am and when I go out on dates with a guy, they always ask me what I am. It’s the first thing that they’ll ask, “So what are you?” They’ll ask that.

Exoticized. Yeah. I would say so. For sure. I would have guys say, “Oh, Asian persuasion.”

She classifies her skin color as being medium, but recognizes that she is a darker skinned Cambodian. Medium, I think our complexion would be medium. She speaks on my behalf too; she sees parallels in our color

46 Khmao Euy Khmao and cultural upbringing. Of course when I was younger I wanted to be white. I always wanted to fit in, and I felt like I needed to be a little bit lighter. Or go tanning. Well, actually a lot of the girls wanted to be darker. So I didn’t mind my color so much, but I just wanted to be more like them. I didn’t mind my color so much, but I did, because I wanted to be more American, lighter. I’m darker than most Cambodian people so I would say like a lighter Cambodian. Like my mom’s color.

I asked if she dyed all of her hair blonde. Brown/Blonde, she remarked. It was probably because I wanted to be white. I don’t know how it came about. I don’t know why. I just feel like it was my way of getting in. I would see girls that had blonde hair. I think it was because I was into white guys. I thought that if I dyed my hair blonde, they’d like me more. Now that I think about it, I’d say that’s probably why I did what I did. I definitely thought that I needed to be more white. Feeling an immense desire to be culturally white, Rona used her appearance to do so. She tried tanning because it was what all the white girls were doing. She didn’t want to feel left out, and her naturally black hair stood out like a sore thumb. She needed some signifying attributes to make her feel more white – culturally and physically.

The interesting thing is that she didn’t want to erase her color; she accentuated it. When I was growing up I wanted to be a lot like the white girls. I would want to go tanning. When I started going tanning people were like, “Why are you going tanning, you’re dark already?” I grew up thinking dark was ugly. Being Cambodian and the color that I am, made me terrified of wanting to date a white guy. I was like, “Am I too dark for them?” Rona simultaneously internalized wanting to be lighter and wanting to go tanning. The contradiction made sense, because her bicultural upbringing intensified her confusion during adolescence (Rondilla 68).

When I asked Rona if anyone’s ever called her khmao sro aem, “dark but pretty,” she responded, No. I don’t know what that means. Me khmao.

47 Linna Teng

Me kabreeak khmao. However, she did know these more derogatory terms for referring to someone’s complexion. Me khmao is a shade worse than khmao sro aem, and kabreeak khmao is the equivalent to being pitch black. They made fun of me for it. I would want to do whatever I can by using those products to make me look a little bit lighter because of that. When you are young you don’t want to feel like an outcast. I used to want to stay out of the sun because I didn’t want to get so dark. I would get black, black. I don’t get a good tan black or dark. I get like really black. So I’d try to stay out of the sun.

Compliments about her physical appearance were few and far between, while her cousin Kimly was always praised for her light complexion. I always thought Kimly was the pretty one. People would comment on how light she was and how beautiful her skin. A lot of people loved her skin color. She was mixed. I was kinda hurt by it. I wanted to be better. I would find different ways of being good at something. Whether it was writing or speaking. I love Kimly, but she’s not book smart. I compensated, for sure. I never thought about it, but I did. As I grew older I found myself wanting to be more beautiful. I found myself going into the cosmetology field, and now I’m in the spa field. Maybe that has to do with my past where I was a tomboy. Very dark. So generally I wasn’t the person people would say, “She’s beautiful.” I get that now because I worked hard at it.

The confusing standards of beauty that Rona tried to uphold in her adolescence have only begun to fade. Remember when I said that I hid away from the sun because I would get too dark? I’d get black. Hoping to get a good tan, but I can’t stay in the sun that long. Before I would put a hat on, because you didn’t want to get too dark. Now I don’t really care. You come to realize that actually a lot of people love your skin color.

What Rona and Vanessa are experiencing is true for many dark- skinned Cambodian women: as they grow older, they come to terms with their complexions. They come to realize that many people love their color and that they should too. Words of encouragement from

48 Khmao Euy Khmao outside the Cambodian American community help them to reconcile their distaste for their darker skin-tone. They begin to embrace it and appreciate themselves for who they are and not by what they have internalized throughout their youth.

Sara, Part II

People pay money to be tan. I like being dark and there’s nothing wrong with being dark. At first I thought it was ugly, because guys would only date girls that were half Chinese or had any kind of lighter skin. I used to get jealous or be mad inside for no reason. “How come nobody’s dating me? Is it because I’m dark?” That’s what I probably thought, because dark in my mind was dirty.

No one ever told me, it was just one of those things that people say over and over again. When they say it, it’s not in a way that’s like, “I love your skin color.” It’s more like, “Why are you so dark?” It’s one of those responses where I didn’t know what to say. “These clothes don’t look good on you because you’re too dark.” I guess in my mind, people were complaining about the darkness rather than embracing it.

A complaint more than a compliment.

I started liking my skin color seven years ago. When I was finally able to wear a bikini. At first I didn’t want to wear it because I didn’t want people to look at my skin color, but now, I just don’t care anymore. I live in the United States and here the majority pay money to be tan. Here, they pay money to be dark, but in Cambodia when the sun is out, they’re in the shade.

Yort

For as long as I can remember, my father Yort’s diminutive brown eyes have hid behind metal framed glasses. Sparse dark brown freckles cover his face and neck. A few false teeth fill the spaces between his naturally large pearly whites. Yort’s smile incessantly bears the

49 Linna Teng magnetic charm it held when he was twenty years younger. His hair is a mixture of gray, brown, and black. The brown is artificial, thrown in to make the gray indiscernible. He breaks down an old Cambodian pop tune entitled “Khmao Euy Khmao.” I bust out the portable CD player and queue it up to track 8. The song opens up with a melodic intro, filled with a Cambodian flute called a kloy, and the first words you hear before the verse is Khmao Euy Khmao! “Black Oh Black!”

He explains the lyrics to me. They say when I born, I was khmao, but only my appearance is khmao. khmao skin, khmao shade, but my heart and soul are not dark. A khmao heart is an ugly heart. They can be good workers like everyone else and have good personalities. Can care for their work – light or hard labor.

Okay stop right there, it’s done. No, there’s the guy’s part, I remark. It all has the same meaning. Their skin is dark, but they have a good heart and are hardworking, can accomplish just as much as any light-skinned person. They are the same. On the other hand, they are saying that their partner is upset, because they occasionally go out. They love their partner very much.

This song was born from an older generation. The meanings are vast. You never get tired of listening to the song, and the meanings of songs back in the day are so complex. I don’t know how to say it in English, but the music is beautiful and the meanings are deep. The songs from my generation, you can listen to it a thousand times and never get tired of it. The meanings are still relevant.

Are there a lot of songs that have to do with being khmao? Sro Aem Paula has to do with khmao. Sro aem means khmao too. Paula means her name. Khmao sro aem means khmao, but not extremely dark. Khmao like my skin color is khmao sro aem. Khmao like you is khmao sro aem. Sro aem is not too dark. It’s not too light. Means middle. Go get the dictionary; I have a dictionary you can use. I don’t know how to read Khmer, I remind him. Oh.

50 Khmao Euy Khmao

He gives me more examples of ways in which Cambodians refer to dark-skinned individuals. Khmao kreek, khmao krup, khmao krah ngyut, those all mean khmao. When I was younger, I got messy in the dirt a lot and so I was darker. I was really dark, darker than a ghost. As I got older my color got lighter. I was khmao kreek.

When you were young, what did people call you? My name was Mao. What does Mao mean in English? Mao mean khmao. Black. You didn’t have any other name? No, because when I was born, I was black. My skin was so black, that’s why they call me, “Ah Mao.” The people in the village they laugh. I had a lot of hair, like a monkey. Mao is black but a little less than khmao. The name that they gave me, “Ah Mao,” always got me sick.

When I was around four years old, my grandma and my father had a Thai- Khmer monk from Breayh Svai in Srok Mong in Battambang perform a ceremony for me. My grandma and my father put me in a fish basket and handed me to the monk. They made a ceremony to hand me over to the monk so that he could name me. A name that would give me good health and steer me away from death. The monk gave me the name I have to this day, the name Yort. The name Yort in Thai means tall, high. In Khmer, I don’t think it exists. It has roots in an earlier civilization, not Khmer but Khorung. During that time it meant good warrior, fought well against other countries. That’s why he gave me that name. Since then, my health has been alright, not a lot of complications after that.

In this country there’s not a lot of dirt, so I got lighter. Sometimes I’m lighter than people in Srok Khmer [Cambodia], because I don’t have dirt and sweat. If you wear long sleeves you don’t get the intense heat of the sun and you stay lighter. In Srok Khmer there isn’t a lot of soap either and we didn’t bathe too often. It was hot, which made people dark too. I didn’t wear shirts. Walked around naked and poor. Didn’t have a lot of money. Always in the dirt, unlike in America. In Srok Khmer there’s dirt everywhere. The dusty dirt would make people’s shade ugly and dirty. Something to be disgusted by.

51 Linna Teng

On Wednesday I wake up in Seattle’s Central District, in a cramped, tiny room filled with concert posters and large vintage prints. I get a phone call from my sister Sara, saying she’ll be heading up to Bellevue to support our sister-in-law and our eldest brother in welcoming their first child. My previous plans are shot. I get to the hospital in stale work clothes from the night before. Underdressed for the weather and a bit stinky, I sit in the hospital in anticipation, waiting with all of my sisters – Sara, Sarom, and Saren. Sarom’s five-month-old daughter Jocelyn is there too.

Being the youngest of four girls and one boy is difficult at times. Constant teasing and remarks aimed at an already sensitive girl fueled many plots of revenge towards my siblings. We are a loud, sassy bunch of Cambodians. No remark was too rude, and no menacing facial expression could trigger a teardrop in one’s eye. We stood tough, but with teasing directed towards my skin tone and large eyes, I couldn’t help but grow insecure. As in Rona’s and Vanessa’s families, we get our medium skin-tone from our father. My sisters aren’t that much lighter than me, but the distinctions are clear when my skin tone becomes darker.

With a baby in our midst, we wait, wondering how dark she’ll be. I know, I am not supposed to do this. I should be progressive about skin color, but the truth is that I am not. I have insecurities about my skin, just as women in my interviews have. We tend to deny that we still struggle with perceptions of skin color. We want to be perceived as beautiful, and nowhere does Cambodian society say that dark is beautiful; you can be dark but beautiful, but not dark and beautiful.

Jasmine Maly Teng is born at 6:02 p.m. at six pounds eleven ounces and nineteen inches long. My sister-in-law says, “She’s pretty light.”

52 Khmao Euy Khmao

Two minutes after being brought into this world, the Teng sisters have already searched for our niece’s skin color and are all set to judge her because of it. Her mother made the first comment, and it only escalates from there.

My sister Sarom’s daughter Jocelyn, born at close to nine pounds, is a giant baby in comparison to Jasmine, a mere six pounds. When Jocelyn was born, everyone had remarked, “She’s so light!” In comparison to her half-brother Dylan, who is also part white, she has brown hair and lighter complexion. They would say, “She’s so light,” in an uplifting, proud manner, and deny their preference for lighter skin. Jasmine, whose father is my complexion, is much darker than Jocelyn. He has already jokingly nicknamed her the dark one and Jocelyn the light one. I sit there, biting my lip, trying not to instigate an argument. Who am I to tell him what is right or wrong?

Cambodian New Years is traditionally celebrated on April 13th, 14th, and 15th. However, Cambodians in Tacoma do it a little differently. At the Theravada Buddhist Temple (Wat) that my mother attends, it’s a two weekend long celebration. I wake up early to put on makeup and do my hair in order to get the seal of approval from my mom. She dresses me up in traditional Khmer clothing. A dark patterned silk skirt that folds over like a sarong, a white laced shirt that zips down in the back accompanied by a beaded white scarf folded over my left shoulder, held in place with a gaudy jeweled brooch. She drapes my wrist and neck in gold. Cambodians like to wear their weight in gold. It is a source of pride, wealth, and beauty. I am dressed like a forty- year-old woman, or so I feel like. A pound of eye makeup, itchy lace, and stiff silk completes my replication of my mom.

When we get to the temple I do all of the ritualistic customs foreign to me. There are a million and one things to remember when going

53 Linna Teng to the Wat; I try my best not to be offensive or disrespectful. This also means I try my best to disguise my personality and any feelings of discomfort. There aren’t many young Cambodians my age who are willing to do this sort of thing – get dressed up in Khmer clothes or go sit legs to one side with hands together, palms touching for hours at a time simply for their moms – but for some reason, I do. I do it to feel close to my mom, to my elders, and to my culture. I like to eavesdrop and people-watch, too. It’s not every day that I get to be in a big room full of Cambodians.

I look around, and every year there are more interracial babies popping up. There are more people dressed in professional American clothing instead of the rigidly tight Khmer outfits that are tailor- made specifically for you by a Khmer dressmaker. There are more varieties of food being offered for the monks’ daily meal, food that isn’t traditional. I critique these people who chose to be more Americanized. Then I look at myself, wearing doc martens and a vintage floral dress, and say, “You’re not even Khmer.” I have no room to speak, so my rude judgmental thoughts dissipate and I go back to people-watching.

I look at people’s skin tone, height, overall appearance, and the way they behave. Cell phones are pulled out to distract children during the monks’ chants. Short-shorts are apparently okay to wear around temple grounds. Things are progressively changing. Many of these younger kids are going to be just as tall as me or taller. They speak even less Khmer, and participate in even more obscure Internet subcultures than I did. They will be in more interracial relationships, and there are going to be increasing numbers of interracial children. I look around, and at times I can’t tell if some of the children are mixed race or if they are just white kids hanging out with Khmer kids.

It’s also very apparent in my own family. My sister Sarom has two children: both are part white. The youngest, Jocelyn, just looks like

54 Khmao Euy Khmao a baby with no particularly distinct ethnic traits. She could be white, Mexican, Native, or a number of things, but definitely not Khmer. There seems to be an abundance of interracial Cambodian children and so many Khmer Americans giving their children American names, how will I know when someone is Khmer?

More importantly, will the issues of colorism shift? Is there going to be more of a preference for lighter, half-white babies? This seems to be a trend amongst many that I interviewed: many were uninterested in having full Cambodian children. For most of my life, I knew what it meant to be Khmer. After that day at the Wat, I am not so sure. This shift in interracial children intrigues me. It gives new meaning to being Khmer.

Five years ago, during my visit to Cambodia, I received so many uplifting compliments about my appearance. In that studio in Phnom Penh my aunt said, “You look as beautiful as a karaoke star,” and complimented my lips by saying they were beautifully shaped like grapefruit slices. Lips that were outlined too thin and skin that was lightened to the degree of nonrecognition is the standard of beauty my everyday appearance is held to. Even with an abundance of compliments I knew that the standard of beauty was flawed and I disagreed with it. I promptly went into the bathroom and smeared all of the superficial beauty off my face. My eyes were bloodshot from makeup dripping into them and running down my cheeks. I knew that this standard was wrong, but the age-old tradition of light- skinned beauty is not something the older generations are so willing to let go of. On that day, I defied this tradition as I wiped the mark of beauty off of my face and embraced my natural color.

55 Linna Teng

Sources

Featherston, Elena, ed. Skin Deep: Women Writing on Color, Culture, and Identity. Freedom: Crossing, 1994. Print.

Glenn, Evelyn Nakano. “Yearning for Lighteness: Transnational Circuits in the Marketing and Consumption of Skin Lighteners.” Gender and Society. 22.3 (2008): 281-302. Print.

Hall, Ronald, Kathy Russell, and Midge Wilson. The Color Complex: The Politics of Skin Color among African Americans. New York: Anchor, 1992. Print.

Hundal, Sunny. “The Dark Side of Skin-Whitening Cream.” Guardian. 1 April 2010. Web. 28 May 2012.

Jones, Trina. “Shades of Brown: The Law of Skin Color.” Duke Law Journal. 49.6 (2000): 1487-1557. Print.

Murphy, Thomas, Darell G. Slotton, Kim Irvine, Kom Sukontason, and Charles R. Goldman,. “Mercury Contamination of Skin Whiteners in Cambodia.” Human and Ecological Risk Assessment: An International Journal. 15.6 (2009): 1286-1303. JSTOR. Web. 28 May 2012.

Pierre, Jemima. “‘I Like Your Colour!’: Skin Bleaching and Geographies of Race in Urban Ghana.” Feminist Review. 90 (2008): 9-29. Print.

Rondilla, Joanne L., and Paul Spickard. Is Lighter Better? Skin-Tone Discrimination among Asian Americans. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007. Print.

Auricia Guardado El Viaje Que Cambio Mi Vida: A Life-Changing Journey to Central America Auricia Guardado El Viaje Que Cambio Mi Vida

I grew up in Los Angeles with my mom, Elvia Guardado, my dad, Pedro Salinas, and my aunt, Elly Mejia. Every holiday it’d just be the four of us, no one else. Every weekend they would walk to the corner market on Maywood Avenue and 56th Street to buy international calling cards. Then they’d spend hours on the phone talking to the family in Honduras and El Salvador. I’d run away from the phone, scared to have conversations with the strangers on the other end.

As a young teen I visited Honduras and El Salvador twice. My only concerns were playing lleva and counting down the days until my return to the sanctuary of my family’s small apartment in Los Angeles.

This time, I was here with a purpose. Ahora llego a conectar las piezas que faltan en el rompecabezas que es mi adolescencia. This time, I was here to put together the missing pieces of my identity. Ahora llego con el proposito de apredener, to learn, and to rekindle the relationships that I had taken for granted due to distance, time, and unfamiliarity. But most importantly, llego con ganas, a desire to deconstruct my identity. Esta es mi historia, a fragmented, contradictory, but heartfelt narrative of my experiences in a world I am learning to love, have resented, yet continues to be an undeniable part of who I am. Here, I hoped to

61 Auricia Guardado learn a bit more about my identity, about my familia, mi cultura, y la historia de estos bellos paises, El Salvador and Honduras.

Honduras and El Salvador: Some Brief History

With the simple fact that you had a relative—a brother, a sister, or any relative that was in the organization, in the militia—that was enough to kill you, even though you were not participating in anything. If you had a brother that was in the FPL [Fuerzas Populares de Liberacion Farabundo Marti, a left-wing and guerilla organization in El Salvador], all those organizations, that was enough to be killed. They got your name, and if it matches with the last name of someone else, that was enough. They didn’t investigate you. They killed you. The next day you were dead.

As a human being, by instinct, you know something is wrong. You know what, you are in danger. You suspect when you are in danger. Very often the guerilla was in town, fighting in town. The reason I decided to come here [Los Angeles]: in less than a month they would have killed me. - Pedro Salinas

On my way to Central America from Olympia, Washington, where I am a freshman at The Evergreen State College, I stopped to visit my parents and spent time discussing the Salvadoran War with my dad. Pedro Salinas, a great father and friend, has taught me to live life with a reverence for all living things. Born in San Jose, Chalatenango, El Salvador, in 1964, he witnessed the Salvadoran conflict at its peak. Growing up, I heard his stories of war, death, and poverty. He graduated from the Chalatenango Institute of Technology as an educator, but, due to circumstances relating to war, was not able to obtain employment within this field. He spoke to me about his knowledge of the Salvadoran Civil War.

62 El Viaje Que Cambio Mi Vida

The big movement started when the priests, the teachers had the power to educate the poor people, the campesinos, the big masses of people, about things that were needed to have a balance in society. There were few rich people and too many poor people and that is an imbalance, because the rich people don’t want to give money for education. They don’t want to give money for healthcare and for a lot of things, you know. That’s the point when struggle started. The priests started to educate the masses. It was no longer religious. It was political. They started saying, “The rich people are oppressing you. They are denying you this, and this, and this. Like human beings, you have rights to be educated, to have healthcare.”

The poor people started to open their minds. And the teachers in school started to teach the little kids, first grade, second grade. When they went to the university they were really knowledgeable, and during the seventies, that’s when the thing started. They started organizing, protesting against the government, protesting against the rich people that land should be distributed fairly: if a campesino has twenty years working a piece of land that belonged to the big owner, he had the right to keep that land without any cost because he had already paid for that land for twenty years, thirty years. Those big organizations of students, workers, and unions started demanding better wages, better benefits. They were organizing their unions, and the rich people formed death squads and they started killing these organizers.

If you were the leader of a union or a group of campesinos, surely they’re going to kill you, sooner or later. The government started hunting those people that were educating the poor people: the priests, the teachers, the union organizers. If

63 Auricia Guardado

they kill the president of a union, the rest of the people are going to be afraid to organize and start claiming their rights. When the government started doing that, what they created was hate against the government, against the rich people. People started to organize even more, with more power, for more causes.

Then came the next step in organization and protesting with graffiti, damaging rich people’s property, public property, destroying a lot of things. Then the people, the students, the poor people started to organize in buying weapons. Then come the events where people were in refugee camps in Mexico, in Honduras, and were relocated. Most of those people were women and children and old men. When the army got to the small towns they gave them twenty-four hours to leave. If they were found in the same town they were killed. They had to leave everything—clothes, house, everything. And, all the things that were left, like food, were burned because they would cut down the food source for the guerillas. They would kill the animals. And we lived all of that. With this war, with this revolution, there have been a lot people from El Salvador that moved all over the world: Canada, Alaska, United States, Mexico. That’s why we’re here, you know.

The history of my family has been heavily influenced by la Guerra Civil de El Salvador / the Salvadoran Civil War, and by the socio-political repression of Honduran people. The conflicts in Honduras and El Salvador have been centered on the struggle over land ownership and the oligarchic rule of foreign and local bourgeoisie. Pre-colonization, Honduras and El Salvador were agrarian societies with most of the population working on communally owned lands. With colonization, the invaders laid claim to the land, but peasants mostly continued

64 El Viaje Que Cambio Mi Vida their age-old practices. By the early 1900s, land ownership shifted to large corporatist ventures focused on the production of export crops, primarily coffee, cotton, and indigo. The poor, agrarian farmers worked the land and produced a product, while wealthy landowners reaped the benefits.

Over time, many campesinos, displaced from the land, found work in the factories. But they faced increasingly desperate economic realities. In addition to an immense amount of unemployment and poverty, governmental repression prevented the masses from creating concrete change for the better. Violence reigned in the streets, as the military and political sector of El Salvador brutally killed, kidnapped, and attempted to wipe out any persons or organizations that threatened its power and economic wealth. The United States provided large sums of money and military equipment to El Salvador, and later Honduras, in the fight to “preserve democracy” and protect the economic interests of American companies. Throughout the years, various revolutionary groups attempted to organize unions, strikes, and other demonstrations, but the struggle for economic and socio- political betterment resulted in death for many involved.

Although its history was similar to that of El Salvador, the conflict in Honduras did not erupt into civil war. Like the Salvadoran government, but not as severely, the Honduran government implemented repressive laws and violently lashed out at the people. Elvia Alvarado, an Honduran campesino organizer, states, “In Honduras the majority of the nation’s wealth rested in the hands of foreign companies—United Fruit, Standard Fruit, Rosario Mining Company—and ended up in U.S. bank accounts. Hondurans joke that their country is so poor it can’t even afford an oligarchy”(xvi). Honduran organizers did—and still are trying to—create change through peaceful means.

65 Auricia Guardado

Re-Entering the Unfamiliar: From San Pedro Sula to Santa Rosa de Copan

I step off the plane in San Pedro Sula, Honduras and everything is as I had remembered it. The overbearing heat shortens my breath and I can clearly see the heat waves in the distance. The streets are riddled with American fast-food franchises—McDonalds, Little Caesars, Burger King, and Pizza Hut. There are people everywhere, some jay- walking dangerously crowded roads, some driving ox-carts, others selling fruit on sidewalks, and me, sitting in the passenger’s seat of my brother-in-law’s Mitsubishi truck. A hurried Honduran ambulance swiftly maneuvers through streets I would have thought impossible to drive through. As it approaches our car, my brother-in-law drives onto the curb in an attempt to let the ambulance pass. In awe, I stare over as the ambulance drives away.

Immediately I notice the political presence of the National Popular Resistance Front, Honduras’s left-leaning political party. Graffiti covers the streets. “¡Cuando el invasor sea expulsado y el mata Pueblo ajusticiado, habra Paz! / When the invader is expelled and the killer of towns is brought to justice, there will finally be Peace!” I notice the strange juxtaposition of the natural and the urban, lush green trees everywhere yet a polluted gray sky overhead. Living in the United States, it is so easy to forget about our roots and the borderlands in which we live. The customs and culture are so different, yet the American capitalist images, franchises, and materialism seem heavily present in this big city. Coming to San Pedro Sula feels close to home, yet light-years away.

Tia Ana

In returning to Honduras and El Salvador, one of the things I was most excited about was seeing my Tia Anna. Tia Ana is a sixty-six year old woman filled with stories and incredibly knowledgeable

66 El Viaje Que Cambio Mi Vida about my Mejia-Molina family history. She is large, tall, with short gray curly hair. Her small, piercing eyes and warm, reassuring grin are complemented by the creases surrounding her eyes and mouth. She has a strong, assertive presence. She helped raise my mom, she raised my older sister Aury, and she has continued to play a vital role in their lives as a provider, a support, and mentor. On this trip, Tia Ana would change my understanding of family history, Honduran/ Salvadoran culture, and myself.

Tia Ana’s father and uncles, my great-uncles, were wealthy landowners. As far back as the family can recall, the Mejia-Molinas have been financially well-off. It’s no surprise that Tia Ana, like the majority of my family, continues to uphold beliefs based on economic wealth, evangelical principles, and conservatism. Before my visit, I must admit, this scared me a bit. Since it is polar opposite to my belief system, I was anxious about the way our inevitably political conversations would unfold.

During our first conversation about our family’s past, Tia Ana and I avoided the sun by sitting under the only shaded area of my cousin’s backyard. She sat in a large, swinging hammock that had been discolored by time, and I sat on a nearby concrete block. She said:

My grandfather Ricardo bought a hacienda from Juan Lindo, former Honduran president—La Hacienda Susuite. Large quantities of land, and that generation divided up the land. They gave my mom, your grandmother, a portion, but the person who had bank was your Tio Rafael’s grandfather. His name was Maximilano Navarro of Navarra, Spain.

There was a pause in our conversation as I tried to digest Tia Ana’a puzzling recollection of the Mejia-Molina family tree. As she went on, I realized the relevance of this story:

67 Auricia Guardado

My god, your Papa Rafael was kidnapped by the guerillas in ’85. They took him. The guerillas probably wanted money to buy weapons. Because we owned over one thousand acres of land, plus the Hacienda de Las Canas, plus property in Honduras, they kidnapped him. We had to send a ransom, half a million colones. They took him into the mountains while the Salvadoran military was dropping bombs onto the guerillas. They [the organization that later became the FLMN] harmed us. That’s why we don’t like them.

The kidnapping of my Tio Rafael was a traumatic event that affected the whole family and caused feelings of rage towards the Salvadoran guerillas. This wasn’t an uncommon occurrence. During the eighties, the Salvadoran guerillas adopted militant methods that involved the kidnapping of wealthy landowners and the occupation of land. Both my mom and dad suggested I talk to Tio Rafael about this, but I did not know how to bring up the topic. I didn’t want to cross any boundaries or trigger any hurtful memories for Tio Rafael. I couldn’t fully wrap my head around Tia Ana’s account of this experience. I was shocked that this happened in our family, but I was glad Tia Ana told me about it. Her story helped me understand how the Salvadoran Civil War directly affected our family.

During my stay in Santa Rosa de Copan, I accompanied my Tia Ana and Tio Rafael on a day trip to a rural area near the Guatemalan/ Honduran border. Driving through rocky, dirt roads, I felt we would never reach our destination. We passed several towns, and the more we drove, the less populated and more rural everything became. It was only eight o’clock in the morning and the sun was already bright, burning, and high in the sky. Feeling immense lethargy, I was prepared for a nap. After driving for what felt like an eternity, we found that the dirt road was completely blocked off by a winding river. There was no way to get across and we never reached our destination. Instead, we decided to turn back towards Santa Rosa.

68 El Viaje Que Cambio Mi Vida

After our unsuccessful morning expedition, I spent more time with my Tia Ana, talking about our family history. She spoke to me with an assurance and charisma that left me hanging on every word. Tia Ana made a stunning revelation about my mom and Tia Elly:

No, they were born in San Sebastian, Honduras but we didn’t want anyone in El Salvador to know. I helped them get Salvadoran paper work so they could cross [over to the United States] as Salvadoran. It was easier that way. The one who was actually born there, in San Jose, El Salvador is your dad. You’re half Honduran and half Salvadoran by birth.

With these words I discovered a new dimension of my mom’s identity. She claims to be fully Salvadoran, embracing El Salvador’s unique Central American culture. Because both my parents take such pride in their Salvadoran roots, I did the same. At this point, I felt my stomach sink to the floor. All my life I had thought I was fully Salvadoran, but as I found out, this wasn’t the case. This only added to the complexities of an identity I am barely beginning to grasp. Like many other people with complicated identities, I am learning to acknowledge and question the layers that make up my being. What does it mean to be a first generation Central American queer woman of color living in the United States? Days had gone by, I had engaged in many conversations with familia, and it seemed that everyone but me knew that I was half-Honduran. The stories I heard were changing my perception of my family, history, and identity.

My Tia Ana owns lots of property in Honduras and El Salvador, acres and acres worth of beautiful territory—some leased, some cultivated, and some half-abandoned. On another day, Tia Ana, Tio Rafael, my cousin German and I are visiting a plot of land my Tia Ana recently purchased in the rural northwestern part of Honduras. Their plan is to survey the plot of land. They are currently trying to build a new

69 Auricia Guardado house and cultivate beans, avocadoes, corn, and a variety of fruits. With the sun high in the sky, I venture off into a rocky hillside to help Tio Rafael pick plantains and lemons that are growing there. Reaching the foot of the hill, I’m already covered in sweat and dust. German asks, “Have you ever shot a gun?” “No,” I reply, and we walk away from the narrow dust path we’re following. Before I know it, I have a gun in my hand and I’m pointing towards the distant foot of the hill. “Hit that target over there,” says German. I point, hold the pistol firmly, and shoot. I hear a faint, sharp buzzing sound in my ear and we continue towards the dirt path to help Tio Rafael pick the plantains.

Tio Rafael

I observe my Tio Rafael as he skillfully uses the machete to cut through the plantains. Tio Rafael is jolly and upbeat. A humble, modest man, he likes to talk about his youth and listen to Pedro Infante on the old record player. Every so often he recites El Padre Nuestro in Latin. “Pater noster, que es in caelis, santctificetur nomen tuum / Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be

70 El Viaje Que Cambio Mi Vida done, on earth as it is in heaven.” I think about Tia Ana’s story of my Tio Rafael being kidnapped by the FMLN and about the setting I’m currently immersed in. This hillside, resembling much of the geography of Central America, makes me think of the Salvadoran mountains where the guerillas probably trained, hid, and fought. I find myself wanting to ask Tio Rafael about the kidnapping, but this isn’t the right moment. Unfortunately, I don’t know when the right moment will come.

Un Fin De Semana en El Salvador: Chalatenango

I feel inspired to write, but exhausted. Eyelids barely open, another lengthy, tiring day awaits. Back and forth, running errands for Tia Ana, I find myself wanting to drift off, explore the city. We’re here for three major reasons: Tia Ana is trying to sell property in El Carrizal, the elections are happening, and I’m visiting my Abuelita Emilia in San Jose, near the big city of Chalatenango. On this trip it’s just my Tia Ana, my cousin’s husband Walter, and I. After a four hour car ride from Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras to Chalatenango, El Salvador, we finally approach the Salvadoran/Honduran border at El Poy. The first thing I notice is the colorful, traditional street art that’s been skillfully painted on the side of shops, on lampposts, and on houses: images of colorful birds, trees, and landscapes. I also notice the political flags, art, and signs hanging everywhere. “Vote ARENA” (El Salvador’s Alianza Republicana Nacionalista, Nationalist Republican Alliance, a right-wing political party). “Vote FMLN” (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front). Vote “PCN” (Party for National Conciliation). Images of Mauricio Funes, the current FMLN president, and Che Guevarra are proudly displayed on the houses of some residents. My Tia Ana, an avid ARENA supporter, can’t help but point out why the FMLN is a horrible, unreliable and lying political party, “¡Colorados Comunistas! / Red Communists!” On this trip I have been determined to keep a neutral political perspective, but it’s been difficult since I fundamentally disagree with ARENA’s

71 Auricia Guardado platform and I can hardly keep my opinions in my head. Nonetheless, my family knows I like the FMLN and always have. Word has gotten around that “Auricia es una escierdista / Auricia is a Leftist.”

We finally enter Chalatenango and it must be ninety or a hundred degrees. So different from Olympia’s cold, gloomy weather. I’ve always loathed hot weather—scorching heat, sweaty, clothes sticking to my back. In Chalatenango there are people everywhere, walking up and down sidewalks, across busy intersections, carrying bread in baskets, and cars everywhere, transporting people, fruits, and vegetables. Buses seem filled to the brim with riders, some sitting and some literally hanging out each door.

We pass Chalatenango and make our way towards San Jose, El Salvador to see my Abuelita Emilia, whom I’ve only met once before in my life and have never spoken to on the phone. It is no wonder that my palms are sweaty and my nervousness is at a high. We aren’t even exactly sure where my Abuelita Emilia lives, but as we make our way up the narrow dirt road into San Jose we stop and ask people passing by, “Do you know where the Senora Emilia lives, wife of Santos?” We take a small dirt path leading to the entrance of the house and a small, elderly woman approaches. My words: “¿Hola, Señora Emilia? Soy hija de Pedrito, Auricia, su nieta / Hello, Señora Emilia? I’m Pedro’s daughter, Auricia, your granddaughter.” My Tia Ana, Walter, and I are immediately welcomed. Coming from a place where neighbors hardly talk to each other, it is a wonder that people were able to give us an exact location. My Abuelita Emilia lives in a humble house made of adobe where chickens, ducks, turkeys, cattle, dogs, and cats roam freely, exploring the surrounding corn fields.

As we take seats on the patio and begin our conversations, someone hops off the roof, hammer in hand. My tia, who is named Olympia, has been installing shingles on the roof. She greets me with a smile, a warm hug and joins in on the family reunion. Soon my Tia Ana

72 El Viaje Que Cambio Mi Vida asks, “¿Van a votar en las elections? Para que partido?/ Are you all voting in the elections? What party?” Tia Olympia responds, “Orgollusamente para el FMLN. ¡Claro! ¡Ojala ganemos! / Proudly voting for the FMLN, of course. Hopefully we win!” I believe that my Tia Ana, despite her strong support for ARENA, has always secretly sympathized with FLMN politics. Every time I overhear Tia Ana speak about politics, I hear certain comments that highlight her mild sympathy: “Claro, la educación y los recursos médicos deben ser gratis y la FMLN quiere hacer eso pero secuestraron a tu Tio Rafael / Of course, there should be free education and health care. The FLMN is trying to do that, but they kidnapped Tio Rafael.” It is understandable that many, like Tia Ana, have shied away from leftist, progressive politics, particularly the elder generations that lived through some of the toughest political repression that country has experienced.

My Tia Ana (right) and Abuelita Emilia

Sunday morning, we awake at seven a.m. and drive to the city

73 Auricia Guardado of Vainillas where Tia Ana is registered to vote in the Salvadoran elections. Everyone in El Salvador knows Tia Ana as the conservative, wealthy señora who detests the FLMN because they kidnapped Tio Rafael in ’85 and burned down their Hacienda Santa Cruz. Today, Tia Ana votes for the FLMN! During our time in the Centro de Votacion, people approach to greet her and, perhaps as a way to make her presence unthreatening, she makes sure to let them know that her America niece is a great FMLN supporter and, if I could, I would vote for the FMLN. I just smile, never having said any of the above. Why did Tia Ana choose to vote FLMN? It baffles me, but perhaps it’s a step towards breaking old ARENA family tradition. Many are ARENA supporters, not because they believe in the politics, but because they had fathers, mothers, grandfathers, great-aunts that supported ARENA. In Central America, politics are heavily based on family tradition and for the Mejia-Molinas, ARENA is tradition.

I continue to think about my Tia Ana’s decision to vote for the FMLN. Did my presence influence her decision to vote for ARENA’s opposing political party or could there be some other reason? I suddenly come to a dramatic realization. A few days before Tia Ana cast her ballot, we met with one of El Salvador’s FMLN candidates. In recent years, Tia Ana has been trying to sell her Salvadoran property for as much money as possible, but has faced roadblocks. No one wants to pay the amount of money she’s been asking for, and Tia Ana has been hoping the Salvadoran FMLN government would purchase the land. Maybe Tia Ana was hoping to gain leverage by voting for the FMLN. A vote here, and perhaps her property would suddenly rise in value. Nonetheless, I continue to believe that Tia Ana’s hidden sympathy played a vital role in her decision-making process.

I am witnessing the political process in El Salvador, the emotion of the people, and have been present in conversations only appropriate behind closed doors. As I write this, my palms are immensely sweaty, leaving trails of sweat across my keyboard. This happens when I’m

74 El Viaje Que Cambio Mi Vida uneasy or nervous. Some of my family’s views are hard to swallow, leaving me to confront an ethical concern. How do I react to my family’s very different, conservative viewpoints? I try to remain neutral. Nonetheless, I leave my thoughts on every page I write. I am here as an observer. I am learning, humbly reconnecting with familia. Inevitably, this has been a weekend of politics in El Salvador. Naturally, I’m going through a million and one questions relating to what I’m experiencing, but everything is proving rewarding. Or if not now, it may be in retrospect. I have yet to fill in the blanks with answers, and will probably struggle to do so for a long time. The truth is, there probably isn’t an answer. There doesn’t need to be. My identity is like a living, breathing organism, and the best I can do is embrace the changes as they come.

Bittersweet Reunions

It was an extremely hot afternoon, like most afternoons in Honduras. A few days after returning from El Salvador, the entire family in Santa Rosa de Copan gathered at my Tia Ana’s house, waiting for my mom to arrive from San Pedro Sula. The moment I heard my brother-in-law’s truck pull up on the dusty road, I walked over to the gate, waiting. I greeted my mom last, and as I approached I felt overwhelmed by tremendously nostalgic emotions. It had only been a few weeks since I had seen her in Los Angeles, and I felt so happy having her join me in Honduras, but here she looked different. I noticed the wrinkles covering her face, the gray hairs emerging from the scalp of her head, her hard-working hands also wrinkled. It hit me how my mom is getting older and the changes becoming more noticeable. I won’t always have my mom by my side.

A few days after my mom’s arrival, I sat down to interview her. Before I had the opportunity to ask any questions, she quickly stated, “My name is Elvia Margarita Mejia de Guardado. I was born in 1958 in Las Vueltas, Chalatenango, El Salvador. What do you want to know?”

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Sensing her impatience, I said, “If you want to share your experiences, because I know you lived through a difficult time period, the Salvadoran Civil War, anything you’d like to share.” She responded:

Well, we lived through a lot of worries and we heard the shooting. At that point in time, we lived at the center of Chalatenango and I was pregnant with my first daughter, Aury. When I was pregnant, we experienced the guerilla attacks that happened around Chalatenango, without having much of an idea what was going on. I remember the bombings and I remember hiding under the bed. A bomb fell near our house, shook the entire house. There was rubble from the roof falling into the house. We were covered in dirt. Around this time I could feel my daughter kicking. There was a power outage at the moment I was going into labor. There was no electricity, and nothing I could do because we were waiting for the guerilla attack. At that moment, my sister [Ana] lit a candle and asked the soldiers for help.

There was no other way to get me to the hospital. I was taken in the back of a military car and was taken to the hospital immediately. That’s when they cut open my stomach and I had Aury. While I was in the hospital, the first military attack was taking place. I could see the bombs illuminating the Chalatenango skies from the hospital building. The hospital floor was filled with military personnel, thinking that it was going to be taken over by the guerillas the very next day.

That’s why we came to the United States. We were seeking refuge.

I asked, “You came to the United States directly from El Salvador?

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How about my sister?”

Your sister, we left her with your Tia Ana and Abuelita when I went with your dad, because at that point your dad was already in the United States. I didn’t see your sister until she was older. I’ve suffered so much because of it.

“How did you decide to go to the United States? What’s the story?”

That is a horrible story which I regret. Well, I don’t regret it because you were born and that was a gift, but I don’t think I’d ever do it again. We left, illegally, about twenty years ago. I remember we were crossing the river, but we were being chased by the Border Patrol and they were shooting. We had to cross on pneumatic tires, two at a time, but we were desperate and scared. We all tried to cross at the same time and the pneumatic tire flipped over and I fell into the water. We all fell, but we were able to cross, covered in dirt. It was a disaster.

Today, my sister is a young mother, living with her husband and son in San Pedro Sula, seeking to complete her college education. The harsh reality for me is that my relationship with my sister is underdeveloped. At times, I hardly know what to say. I realize that I have lived with an undeniable amount of privilege, living in the United States. In her eyes, I was the child that had it all—an American education, the Lego set, the ability to speak English, and, most important, I had my parents beside me. Although I’ve wanted to open a dialogue between us, communicating our hopes, I feel far too uncomfortable addressing these topics. The search for economic stability and refuge are two of the main reasons people from around the world immigrate to the United States, but it sometimes comes at a very high price. It is a common story in immigrant communities: families are forced to live apart.

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My mother expressed her frustration in this way:

The American Dream is a big mistake, which is why I tell people, “If you have a home and family, don’t do it. Don’t leave for the United States. Don’t do it. Don’t suffer.” When I came to the United States, I cried for the daughter I left behind… There [in the United States] people live with too much stress, with too much sorrow, anguish. Here, you might have your ranchito. The American Dream is a lie. It’s not real. After twenty years of being here, the American Dream isn’t real.

During my mom’s visit, I had the impression that she was looking to rebuild her life in Honduras alongside her sister Ana, her daughter, and the rest of the family. The more I thought about this possibility, the more unsettled I felt. My mom has lived in the United States for an extended amount of time. Even though for her, the American Dream is a lie, like many other immigrants she has adjusted to American culture and an American standard of living. My mom returned to Honduras with the hope of resettling, but she went back with the realization that she is not ready to leave Los Angeles and the American lifestyle.

El Sueño Americano / The American Dream

The American Dream, for many, is a romanticized concept based on ideas of success and self- determination. This concept is often rooted within mainstream America’s idea of what defines a happy life, a suitable job, and a steady income. For those living outside the United States, the American Dream may serve as the bridge between poverty and economic stability or between danger and safety. In hopes of obtaining the American Dream, people from all over the world, particularly Latin America, make the dangerous effort of

78 El Viaje Que Cambio Mi Vida crossing the Mexican-American border. For Salvadoran immigrants like my dad, there were struggles to overcome in the United States— finding housing and job opportunities, and facing racist, xenophobic situations. For these reasons, leaving El Salvador did not become an option until the harsh reality of war forced them to migrate.

On my way back from Central America to Olympia, I stopped over in Los Angeles and spoke with my dad once again. He filled in more gaps in my understanding.

During that time [the seventies], it was never, never on my mind to leave my family, to travel out of my country to look for a different life in another country. My dream was to be a doctor, to help people, to help the poor people have medical attention and to work in the hospitals. I was focused on my education. I came from a poor family that for generations had worked as farmers and had lived very poor lives.

My dad sought to make his dream a reality, but studying at the university level became impossible. He could not afford tuition, and the education system became a target for governmental repression,

During the seventies, we lived the worst part of the war because everyone was a suspect. If you were a student in college or in the university, you were targeted because they knew that, by education, you knew the system. They knew that you knew the facts of the country, the negative and the positive, who was right and who was wrong. They knew that you were more to the side of the big masses. That’s when they started hunting people just by the way you look. If you disliked them, that was enough towards being killed.

In order to financially assist his family in San Jose, Chalatenango, my dad acquired a few loans and opened a small business in air

79 Auricia Guardado conditioning and refrigeration repair.

Coming to the United States was, sadly, a very fast decision. It was not something I planned. The thing is, I started having problems. The military wanted me to work with them [as an informant]. Then, I saw I was in danger because I had a lot of influence, met a lot of people. I thought something bad could happen. They wanted me to work with them and I refused. When they get a “No,” it’s like, “If this guy doesn’t accept, he is against us.” It was a very serious war situation in Chalatenango. When I decided to come to the United States, I was doing fine economically, but I felt that my life was in danger. I think they had my name on the list because I didn’t want to cooperate.

In 1989 my dad made his first attempt to immigrate to the United States, but during this emotionally and physically demanding journey he was imprisoned in a Mexican jail. Tia Ana travelled through El Salvador and Guatemala to Mexico to try to help him. She had shared fragmented parts of this experience with me: “I spent a month in Tecun and Tapachula, Mexico until I was reunited with your dad. Look, I went to the jail cell. There were so many Salvadoran immigrants, but I was interested in helping Pedro. When I first saw him, you can’t imagine, I felt so bad. They treat immigrants horribly in those Mexican jails. But they finally released him.”

My dad returned to El Salvador, and a year later was able to successfully cross the Mexican-American border into California. When my mom joined him in the early 1990s, she didn’t find the life she expected. In order to make the trip, my mom left Aury with my Tia Ana and Abuelita Margarita in Honduras. It was far too risky to cross over with a young child. Being away from Aury became a painful experience. She spent days and nights crying, demanding a return to Central America. The determining factor in my mom’s decision to stay was

80 El Viaje Que Cambio Mi Vida my birth. Like my parents, many families face a difficult decision—to stay in the United States and try to provide the American Dream to their American-born children, or to return to their place of origin. For my mother it was a traumatic experience. It has taken nineteen years for her to return to her homeland. To this day, my dad has not gone back to Honduras or El Salvador. He works for a meat packaging company, taking multiple jobs when necessary. He seems to be set on retiring and staying in the United States.

If you can do something, doesn’t matter, you get the job. They don’t ask you, “Are you Democrat? Are you Republican?” They ask you about your abilities. In El Salvador: “Are you Democrat? Are you Republican? Are you Christian? Are you Catholic? Are you gay? Are you straight?” I don’t like that shit.

I was curious: “How have your expectations of the United Stated changed over time?”

Here you feel more safe. Even though there are many situations that aren’t good, with a job you can get anything. When you came to this world, your mom had more stability. She started to think more about you and started forgetting your sister. It was bad, but you know, that’s the way it worked. I told her, “Someone’s got to work. We have a daughter together, and I’m not going to leave my daughter without any help. And if I can help her best by staying here, then I’m staying here. If I go back I have to start again. I don’t want to start again.”

The first year when you were born, I think it was difficult for your mom between you and your sister. With time, she started to fill that empty space. She decided to stay here. I don’t think we’re going to move. I’m not planning to move.

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Because I have more than twenty years working here, I have Social Security benefits, union benefits. What are we going to do over there? Nothing. There is nothing to do over there.

That’s why I feel so bad when people that are born here, you kids, waste your time, waste all the benefits. I see historically, going back generations, people from my family. I see the difference. Who was my mom? Who was my dad? Who were my grandparents? They didn’t have education. They barely knew how to write and read. My mom, for example, doesn’t know how to write or read. She didn’t have the chance to go to school. If I compare myself to my parents and grandparents, I see the difference. I have gone far from them, right? Now, the simple fact that you were born here in the United States, I want you to go many steps forward from where I got. I think you’re going to graduate from the university. You’ve got to get it because, if you don’t do it, there hasn’t been any change.

I got a high school diploma here in the United States. Many people come here and don’t know the language. I have tried to learn the language and it’s not easy, but it’s a big step for me as a person. Because with some English, you can understand the system, claim your rights, fight for your rights.

Okay, now I have a question for you. My question to you is this: Imagine yourself living over there, living over there in El Salvador or Honduras compared to the United States. Do you think you would have the same opportunities, the same chances to success? You know how it is in El Salvador because you have been there. You know how it is in Honduras because you have been there. Maybe you don’t know the system, how it works, but you have an idea, and

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this system, you know how it works. How would you manage living there?’

I hesitated. “I really don’t know if I have an answer for that”

“Why not?” he asked, skeptically.

“I don’t know how I would be living. I never asked myself that question before, and I really don’t know”

My dad responded:

That’s why people don’t appreciate what they have, right? And that’s why immigrants that come to the United States, they appreciate what they have. Because they know how it’s like over there. You’re going to see on the streets a lot of young people that don’t understand anything. They don’t want to work. They don’t want to study. They don’t want to do anything because they never have been in the worst situations. That’s why you’ve got to appreciate every moment. Every chance towards success, don’t waste it. That’s going to make the difference. There are millions of young people wasting their brain, their mind, their intelligence. The good things in life have some kind of cost. You have to overcome the situations. So, what do you think? So far, you’ve done well?

I am not entirely sure how I’m doing, but having my dad check my privilege reminds me that I have many things to be appreciative for. The truth is, I wasn’t prepared to answer my dad’s questions. I was left speechless when I heard them. Although I’ve tried thinking about what my life would be like in El Salvador, I don’t think I could fully imagine myself in my dad’s place. This dialogue with my father reinforced a crucial idea. It is essential that we live our lives, recognize

83 Auricia Guardado our privilege, and learn from those who have experienced what we can barely begin to imagine. Hopefully, this will be one of many steps in an honest attempt to celebrate both my differences and similarities with my dad.

Conclusion

Gloria Anzaldua once wrote:

To live in the Borderlands means you are neither hispana india negra espanola ni gabacha, eres mestiza, mulata, half-breed caught in crossfire between camps while carrying all five races on your back not knowing which side to turn to, run from;

In the Borderlands you are the battleground where enemies are kin to each other; you are at home, a stranger, the border disputes have been settled the volley of shots have shattered the truce you are wounded, lost in action dead, fighting back;

To survive the Borderlands you must live sin fronteras be the crossroads

Like Anzaldua, I grew up between very distinct worlds which, despite their differences, inevitably intersect. It wasn’t until my trip to Central America that I understood the effects that my hybridity has had upon my life—the insecurities it has shaped, the traditions it has influenced, and the beauty of diversity I was experiencing. Many of us who live

84 El Viaje Que Cambio Mi Vida with multicultural identities are no longer defined by either/or. I’m not solely defined by a Salvadoran or Honduran identity, nor am I solely defined by an “American” identity. Just as importantly, I have learned to value the importance of preserving the valid, powerful experiences of those who have lived through unfathomable events.

Now, I am sitting at my desk in Olympia, Washington trying to recollect all the beautiful memories—the day trips, the afternoon naps on the hammock, and time spent with Tia Ana. Sprinklings of rain fall from the sky the same way they did two-and-a-half months ago, except then I was still trying to figure out how I should approach my trip to Honduras and El Salvador. I was still overwhelmed with the nervousness I would feel in seeing my family. Once I was there, I quickly learned that the best thing I could do was simply to experience it, respectfully and openheartedly. What’s next? How do my experiences today influence my actions tomorrow? I’m not sure, but what I can say is that what I’ve experienced there has undoubtedly influenced a life of consciousness. Now, the rain has stopped and the sun has begun to emerge from behind the dark, gray clouds. Suddenly, I feel a burst of energy, and as I write these words I can’t wait to continue this learning, this reconstruction of my identity.

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Sources

Anderson, Thomas P. The War on the Dispossessed: Honduras and El Salvador. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1981. Print

Alvarado, Elvia. Don’t Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart. New York: Harper, 1987. Print

Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 2007. Print

Armstrong, Robert. El Salvador: The Face of Revolution. Boston: South End, 1982. Print

New American Press. A Dream Compels Us: Voices of Salvadoran Women. Boston: South End, 1989. Print.

Jack Sukimoto JA/LA: Shifting Meanings of Japanese American Identity, Culture, and Community Jack Sukimoto JA/LA

Before moving to New York with my parents at the age of eleven, I was a typical Venice/Culver City Japanese American kid. When I went to the Obon festivals, I was too shy to participate in the Obon Odori dance circle. Instead, I went to eat dango and occasionally took a shot at making mochi, fearful that I would have my hands crushed under the wooden mallets if I got my rhythm thrown off. I had a classic Japanese American New Year, where the whole family gathered on New Year’s Eve to prepare food for the next day. On New Year’s Day absolutely no cooking was done, only eating and celebration. During the summers, my family drove up to Mammoth Mountain in the Sierra Nevada, which I am told is extremely Japanese American. Through all of elementary school I went to Japanese language immersion school, where almost everything except for...English…was spoken in Japanese. I grew up thinking that this was life. Then, I moved to New York, and my sense of being part of the community and culture fell by the wayside.

I often went back for brief visits with my relatives. Last summer, when I was there for two weeks, I tried to revisit everything I remembered from my childhood. A lot has changed. On Sawtelle Boulevard, a popular spot for Japanese Americans in the area, I was surprised to

91 Jack Sukimoto see many of the old shops and businesses gone. While the JA theme still exists, places like Safe & Save, a Japanese American general market operated and owned by a single family since the fifties, has been closed down and replaced with a sushi restaurant. A local mini- mall a block away which once had a large bookstore and appliance store is now a frozen yogurt shop and beauty salon. It felt to me like a core part of what once made this street central to the community had been lost. A very large number of my childhood classmates have left to pursue their futures in separate communities or outside of LA. We’ve all spread out. When I was a kid my cousins and I would sometimes meet up every day; now I’m lucky to see them twice a year. It’s not surprising that many of the traditions we once held are rarely practiced as a family anymore, if at all.

Now, with time for some extended study, I find myself wondering what my cousins, former classmates, and others have to say about the current state and direction of LA’s Japanese American community. How have things changed or remained the same in their eyes? And what do I, a young adult reorienting myself to the community, see?

Little Tokyo

The last time I went to Little Tokyo was in the nineties. Anyone who goes here notices the Japanese influence, including an abundance of Japanese restaurants, stores and aesthetics. As a kid I had never noticed the paper fan designs in the crosswalks, or that they complemented the traditional style roofs in the market, and the various flags and banners on display on the streets. Little Tokyo lives up to its name: it is tiny, spanning about four square blocks. In relation to Chinatown and Koreatown, which can take up to twenty minutes to drive through, Little Tokyo does not exist as a community center, but rather as a central hub to which communities outside of downtown come and go.

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Sitting on a bench, I took in the surroundings and observed the people and activities. There are mainly two types of people who pass through this area: businessmen and tourists. The condos above the restaurants and trendy shops are expensive; some cost millions, and of course ordinary people can’t afford to live here. Little Tokyo is a commuter spot where people come to work, shop and eat.

Around noon I was getting hungry. I had heard about the mythical authentic ramen shops from my father. When I asked where the good spots were, family and friends recommended Shin-Sen-Gumi. Walking there, I guesstimated that a third to half of those out and about were Asian American. I wondered how to distinguish Japanese American from Asian American. My plan was to sit at the counter and try to speak to anyone sitting near me. Upon entering, I realized there was no way I could, in this noisy environment. Any time someone made an order, the waiter shouted it out in Japanese at the top of his lungs, and every employee responded equally loudly in return. They did this when I asked for water, too. I sat at the counter and had an awkward, hard-to-understand exchange with the noodle chef in front of me. Shortly after, while eating the most amazing ramen I’ve had in my entire life, it struck me that several waiters and chefs had very strong accents when not speaking Japanese, making it likely that they were born in Japan. All the employees had Japanese name tags, yet American first names are definitely the norm among JAs. I was worried that my awkward conversation looked like a stereotypical white guy trying to talk English in Japan until an Asian couple sat down next to me. Like most JAs, they spoke English without any trace of a foreign accent, and like me they had the same awkward dialogue I’d had minutes before. Could I assume they were also JA? But then, why would I assume that? It’s not like Little Tokyo or this ramen shop was an exclusive hangout for Japanese Americans.

Leaving the shop confused on the subject, I headed over to the outdoor market known as the Japanese Village Plaza, but not before

93 Jack Sukimoto the entire restaurant staff bowed and, in their loud and exuberant way, bid farewell. As I approached the giant Japanese tower that marked the entrance and followed a winding strip of markets, stores and restaurants that make up the plaza, I remembered going to this place like a kid to Disneyland. Back then I felt like I was in an outdoor market with roofs made of wood, carts and stands in the middle of the walkways, and the smell of grilled food, maybe teriyaki or takoyaki. Back then I could have sworn the walkway was a mix of cement and dirt from the shoes of whoever walked by. It now looks like an outdoor mall. It still feels Japanese, but some of that authenticity I remember is gone. I realize how touristy it is, clean and straight, neat and rigid. And where were those mobile knick- knack and food stands in the middle of the wide walkways? Were they even there in the first place, or was that just my imagination? I see restaurants, Japanese markets, a pastry shop, souvenir store, coffee joint, Japanese clothing store, five or more sushi restaurants, mocha ice cream, Hello Kitty store, a Japanese pizza shop. The busiest store is the souvenir spot, with a constant flow of people in and out. Most of the Japanese restaurants look to be pretty busy, and I wonder how authentic they are. My cousin said, “Seems like a lot of white people like salt and non-subtle foods.” He was talking about how Sawtelle Boulevard has gotten increasingly expensive and the food increasingly less authentic.

What’s happening? Gentrification. The cost of living in the area is bringing more non-Japanese Americans in and pushing JAs out, and if places want to stay in business they have to cater to everyone. Since Little Tokyo has become a place tourists frequent, I can’t help assuming that things may be less authentic. But then again, that ramen sure was good. That brings up the question of what is authentic to a culture. At what point do we decide—or have the right to decide—what isn’t authentic anymore? And does it even matter whether something is Japanese or Japanese American? I think there should be a distinction, though I’m not quite sure why.

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The Japanese American National Museum is at the corner of Little Tokyo. Across the plaza walkway from its entrance stands the giant stone gate and entrance to a Buddhist temple. The construction of the museum grew out of the Remembrance Project, which seeks to gather and hold onto the memories of life in the internment camps during World War II. The stories and memories associated with the camps are a part of Japanese American history and culture and, many believe, should be retold to educate the world and coming generations.

A quote by David Mas Masumoto greets visitors at the entrance to the museum: “Culture binds us, gives us meaning, and provides us with foundation… It surrounds, entangles, and supports our daily life, a matter of learning ‘what it is we have to know’ to belong within a family and community.” Directly in front of me stands a wall of antique suitcases, survivors of the internment camps. To the left is a barracks that sheltered a family or two of Japanese Americans at Heart Mountain, Wyoming, the remains that originally began the Remembrance Project. Walking inside, I see how miserable it must have been. The gaps between the boards that made up a wall are half an inch to an inch wide. One of the guides mentions his parents waking up covered in sand every morning. After the war, the barracks was used as a shed by some local farmers. Then it became a symbol of remembrance that brought Japanese Americans back to Heart Mountain, and it became a community cause to bring this relic to Little Tokyo.

The entire museum is built upon the memories and stories behind the material objects and photos. Initially, cameras were banned in the camps, but after a while officials and guards were willing to look the other way, allowing interned individuals to take photos. In the photos I see the faces of outrage, disgust, betrayal, the faces of those who have had everything taken away from them, but I also see the

95 Jack Sukimoto faces of many who try to make the best of what they have left. There is a picture of three best friends, arms over each others’ shoulders, smiling for a cameraman on the outside of the wire fence. There is a picture of a beautiful woman named Margie Shimizu, crowned “Queen of Manzanar” in what I can only guess is a beauty pageant. There’s a photo of a Christmas celebration and the tradition of Mochi Tsuki, still being practiced. And I see many photos of young kids in classrooms, playing sports, or at their parents’ sides. Many still have the innocent, carefree smiles that children so commonly wear. I wonder what they perceived of everything happening around them. Perhaps they were too young to understand it, or how their future had been so irreversibly altered. It makes me think of my grandparents, whose first language was English, and what they must have gone through. My uncle, my grandfather, my grandmother, who all had to experience life in the camps, probably had similar activities to pass the time, to take their minds off the reality of their situation, and to make the best of life where they were.

Nearing the end of the war in photos, I come across a shelf with large binders, each titled after one of the camps. On a large pin-board next to them a sign says: “Looking for a long lost friend? Post their name and your address; you never know what might happen.” The binders are an index of camp veterans who have filled out a short questionnaire about life in the camps, including where they resided before and after, good or bad memories, and final thoughts. I pull out Tule Lake, where my grandparents were interned, and browse through. Some of the sheets only have names written down, with their current residence; others have listed where they were before the camps. For the question “Any good memories?” many simply said “none,” although one makes a strong impression on me: “the smell of moss along the lake beaches.” I now realize how little I know about my grandparents’ time in the camps. Were any of these people friends of theirs? They must have had some friends. But with both my grandparents and my uncle passed away, how will I find them?

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As I walk through the rest of the museum, I pass by many more pieces of memorabilia, more photos and stories, and a scale replica of the Manzanar camp where a guide is talking to a class of young students. I wonder what they think of the museum and the stories. Approaching the end, I come across two moving quotes:

Children become adults, the old ones leave us Community persists in the stories we tell each other, in the stories we tell others We learn what it is we have to know from our families and our communities

Stories retold in other voices as we reinvent America from monolithic to multicultural to include all of us in all our magnificent diversity, we forever revision the American Experience

Being Connected

“How connected are you to JA culture?” Maybe that’s the question I should have asked right from the start. Being connected to the culture seems like an important criterion when searching for good people to interview, right? Maybe…and also maybe not. When I first arrived, I worried about what seemed like lack of interest in JA culture within the JA community. Many I spoke with seemed to have next to no personal connection to JA culture. For some reason, I’d had it in my mind that younger individuals, my age, would be less active and less connected. As it turned out (in my conversations, at least), it’s older folks in their forties through fifties that are less involved, often feeling almost zero connection to being Japanese American. Is it just luck that my selection ended up this way? Or maybe it’s normal, and I just don’t know why yet.

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I asked about culture fading out, or traditions dying out, and diluting of culture. I asked how people feel about it, and the responses I got were rather blunt. “It’s a shame, I suppose.” “I’ve been removed for so long; I just don’t feel anything towards it, really.” “You can’t stop the wheels of time.”

Surely people didn’t just wake up one day, and decide “I’m done with it.” Maybe some did, but not everyone. What it comes down to is that we live in America, and with the multitude of diverse cultures present in LA, cultural identification can turn out to be like flipping a coin. Everyone is different, and everyone grows up differently.

Mark Morikawa, a third generation JA who has little feeling about being JA, told me his perspective. His wife, Hope Weiss, is Russian Jewish. ”Many JAs here, we’ve embraced other cultures,” he said, “and in doing so, you sacrifice a bit of your own in order to make room for incoming cultures, especially when you marry outside your own culture.” He added: “You also move away from wherever your home is. I’m from Fresno. I knew I didn’t want to take over a family farming business for the rest of my life and stay there. And when you move away you leave a lot behind, and you build new futures and identities for yourself. Maybe you’ll choose to search for a JA community, or maybe you’ll try something new.”

Another perspective came from Derrick Isono, my father’s best friend, who, despite being in his later fifties, is a Yosei, a fourth generation Japanese American who has lived in LA his entire life. Like Mark, he is not connected to the JA culture and community. I asked him if he had any JA stories. He simply replied “Not really, none that I can think of.” Being one of the first people I interviewed, I wasn’t ready for this response. “But you’re JA right? Surely you have some stories; you’re even living in LA.” He thought a bit more. “You’d think I do, but not really, I don’t do that many JA things. Weird, I guess, huh?” But it makes sense that Derrick wasn’t involved with a Japanese

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American community growing up. He went to a school with loads of cultural diversity, didn’t play basketball, and didn’t attend Buddhist church. His mother was not involved in any community groups. It really comes down to interests. Derrick found his interests elsewhere, and his identity is not defined by his cultural heritage.

Derrick put me in touch with his sister, Melissa White. I found it funny that of all the names in the world that could become hers after marrying, it was “White.” She explained that it causes a bit of confusion for people who have never met her. “When I was growing up,” she said, “I wanted to be white, not Japanese. I mostly only had white friends, so that’s how I identified.” But she doesn’t reject her JA background; quite the opposite. She pointed out that for a lot of JAs who aren’t involved, much of the symbolism and meaning behind the cultural activities has been lost. An example is the Obon festivals: “It’s this fun thing to do, and our kids think it’s fun, but they don’t know the meaning behind it, and we don’t really, either. But at least the exposure is still there.” Despite being removed from the culture when young, after Melissa got married she began to have a desire to provide her children with a foundation for who they are, a context for their own personal life history that they could be aware of. She felt a responsibility to make more of an effort than her parents had to provide a feeling of cultural identity. Her interest was spurred when her daughter’s class studied Japan, and her own mother, who was a camp veteran, came to speak to the class about her experiences during the war. Melissa’s mother had an impact on the class and an even larger impact on her granddaughter. Now, Melissa’s older daughter is very proud to be half Japanese. “I remember talking to my mom afterwards, saying, ‘Hey, you never talked about that stuff with me when I was growing up!’ I had heard hardly anything about the camps when I was young, and now I wanted to know.”

As we talked, it became apparent to us both that some elements of JA culture seem almost permanently ingrained, not just in activities,

99 Jack Sukimoto but in personal lifestyle. Certain habits and behavior are important elements of culture that are rooted in tradition. These quirks are essentially JA, but because we see and do them every day of our lives, we often forget that they are. Things like taking off your shoes when entering a household, and bringing gifts to friends’ houses (omiyage): these customs aren’t exclusively Japanese, and a lot of people outside the culture don’t perceive them as JA, but for JAs they are so JA. “Another thing that my dad does: you know it’s a JA thing to never take the last piece of food, even if you really want it. I’ll be like, ‘It’s okay, Dad, go for it,’ and he’s like, ‘Oh no no.’ ‘Really, Dad, it’s okay.’ And he’ll just go and cut the last piece in half, and take half of it. This is a really classic ‘tradition’ in the older generations.” Never take the last piece. If you must, cut it in half.”

If not for Melissa’s daughter, I wonder what Melissa’s life would be like now. Her daughter, Melissa says, is “much more aware and strongly identifies with being half-and-half, especially her Japanese half.” And now Melissa herself and her husband, too, have a new cultural outlook. Being personally connected to one’s culture works in mysterious ways. One way or another, no matter how far removed we get, it may all come back, eventually.

The Basketball Game

“Basketball is a cultural icon in the JA community.” That’s what everyone seems to be saying, and at this point it’s hard think otherwise. Literally every person I’ve talked to has played in the Japanese American leagues or has a family member who has played in the leagues. When I was a kid playing in the leagues, it had never occurred to me that almost every person at every game was part Japanese.

My cousin Justin’s game was out in Bell, at the high school, about thirty minutes away from Culver City, where he lives. The JA leagues

100 JA/LA are spread out geographically, like JA communities are. At twenty- nine, Justin is the youngest player on his team. There are two or three players in their thirties and the rest are in their forties, except one, who may be in his fifties. In the previous game I’d seen, the team they played against had four or five college-aged kids and a handful more in their twenties and thirties. Justin’s team still won by forty points. On the ride to Bell he explained:

The older you get, you get slower. You can’t push people out of the way as well as you used to, and sometimes they just can’t afford to play as aggressively anymore. So the older players start playing smart, and they get pretty crafty. The older guys know how to push the buttons. You just start playing more aggressively in your own way. Maybe you need to start fouling. You saw for yourself: the younger kids just got frustrated and it all fell apart for them. Then there’s those people like that one guy who could get a three pointer almost every shot he took. They just have experience. But for me, since I’m the younger one, I have to play super- aggressively in order to make up for what others can’t.

Numerous people have mentioned the issue of increasing competitiveness in the league. That’s what sports are supposed to be about, right? Being competitive, being “the best you can be,” winning the game? Not so much in the J-leagues. The J-leagues were originally formed in response to discrimination, when members of the JA community after the war were not allowed to play on teams. Over time this faded, and now the J-leagues exist as a community activity, a way to be introduced to other JAs and J-league teams and to form a network. At the same time, the league takes advantage of a JA characteristic: being shorter. When I asked Justin about the subject, he said:

You can join the park leagues, and the sole purpose is to

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win. Call it a stereotypical thing or not, but especially in JA community the kids never had the agility or the size to compete with other kids at the park leagues. What fun is it if you’re the smallest guy playing on a park team that’s so dominant that you’re sitting on a bench and never get to play or learn anything? What’s the purpose of playing on the team?

Craig, who is Justin’s housemate, told a story of how JA basketball sometimes gets a little too competitive in the community:

There’s this one girl who’s playing on this OCBC [Orange County Buddhist Church] team, and she’s probably twelve, and she’s the best one on the team. Everyone else on that team sucked. So that team consistently got last place for like two years. So her parents, who happened to also be my parents, started to get pissed off, like, ‘’Oh man, we’re never going to win a game!’’ Then there’s this other team where they had eight girls who were pretty decent, but then they had about five who weren’t that good. So what happened was these parents of the good players and my parents split from their teams and formed this elite team and moved off OCBC to another church. They played there, and they’re pretty good. But this team, the original one, they folded, they stopped playing basketball. It’s sad, right? If I was my dad, I might have done the exact same thing, because you get frustrated. And sometimes you lose yourself when it gets too competitive. The leagues give an opportunity, and they’re really good at it. But even JAs get too competitive. That’s when cheap stuff happens. That’s when there’s, like, this one big Samoan guy on the team, and he definitely didn’t come from Gardena Buddhist church. That guy came from off some street basketball team and was recruited so they could win games.

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This is a point that many brought up, especially in my generation: bringing in non-JAs for the sole purpose of winning. While it’s a general rule that you have to be at least half Japanese or (in some instances) Asian to participate in the leagues, sometimes the rule is disregarded. In my experience of seeing JA games, many who are half Japanese and half non-Asian have a clear height advantage over most of the players, which in basketball is a big deal.

When we arrived at Bell High School another team was finishing up their game. We sat down on the bleachers and watched. As Justin’s team stepped on the court to warm up, I took note of the people attending the game. Some of the players had brought their kids. One, a girl about four years old, had come to the last three games. She quietly sat in the stands watching until timeouts were called. Then she got up, ran out to the side baskets and practiced shooting. At this exact moment, when she went onto the court, it hit me how much of a cultural tradition the Japanese American leagues are. She was trying her hardest to shoot the ball into a basket for high school kids. It’s not as high as the main court backboards, but it’s still pretty high. She didn’t give up, and she got it really close sometimes. I’d seen other kids her age at the games, but now I realized how into it they are and the amount of skill they have for their age. It’s as if the sport has already been ingrained into their brains. I thought, “These four year olds actually know how to dribble and can shoot with the correct form and everything!” Then I looked at the others in the stands, the family members and friends, and I knew that they have all likely played in the leagues as well. I realized what everyone has been telling me: that it is a core community activity and tradition. The JA leagues are, as Justin and Craig have said, a rite of passage in the JA community:

Justin: For others, it’s more about winning. And with these JA leagues it’s NOT supposed to be about that, it’s NOT.

Craig: Right, it’s not about that. If you’re a parent, you know

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that in order for me and my family to truly be a part of this community I have to have my kids play basketball, whether they’re good or they’re bad, they suck or they’re Michael Jordan-status. I think that expectation, or that requirement, almost, it’s like a rite of passage. Here’s a good example. This guy Chris, he works at the JANM [Japanese American National Museum], he used to say: “If I was gonna compare it, what happened is that all these Nisei were coming out of the camps, and they would talk to each other and be like, ‘Hey, what camp are you from?’ That was their way of really connecting with each other. For this generation, people do the same thing, but they ask what basketball team you were a part of.” That’s actually true. You ask that, and that’s an immediate connection, you know, of all the teams. It’s an immediate way of how you associate yourself with these people, because it’s like a ritual. Everyone does it. Actually, everybody doesn’t do it... but a lot of people do. It’s part of the culture.

Many of the guys on Justin’s team may have been playing basketball since they were the same age as the little girl. She’s being raised in a culture that idolizes basketball, and she will grow up knowing in her mind that basketball is “an icon in the community,” and her friends and family and maybe eventually her kids and grandkids will grow up with that same notion. For the guys on the court, for her, and the people in the stands, JA basketball is the thing to do, an activity that isn’t tied to a specific day of the year, like the Obon festivals. Whenever she stops playing basketball, whether it be in middle school, or college, or when she has a family, she will always have something in common with the majority of JAs that she grows up with. She will have a guaranteed way of connecting within her own JA community and others throughout Southern California.

In the end Justin’s team lost. The players gathered up and the girl ran

104 JA/LA out to the side court to shoot. One of the other player’s daughters walked over to shoot hoops with her. They’re probably friends. The second girl’s father watched her shoot a few times before kneeling down to give her some pointers on how to correct her shooting. By the time I looked back up from my notebook I noticed she was getting some shots in, her father and friend clapping.

Hapa-Vision

Hapa is a Hawaiian term that refers to someone who is of mixed Asian or Pacific Islander ancestry. Originally, Hapa was used in context of being mixed Hawaiian; it has expanded to include being half Asian and half white. Increasingly it’s being used by mixed individuals and communities with no ties to Hawaiian culture or heritage. Those who are part black, Native American, and Hispanic may all call themselves Hapa.

Alexa Giffen is Hapa, as am I. I first met Alexa at El Marino Language School in LA, when we were five years old. El Marino is known for its language immersion programs in Spanish and Japanese. Mike Murase, a noted community leader and the father of a classmate of mine at El Marino, recommended I get in touch with Alexa. He said that she is very knowledgeable about the JA community, particularly in the Venice/Culver area, that she has worked on a historical book about the subject and currently studies at UCLA. “I think even she would tell you that this is quite a surprise, because she was not that interested in JA things as she was growing up.”

Alexa has started a radio show on the web-only UCLA radio station. I asked her what the show was about and how it came to be. “I was sitting the night before application, and trying to come up with a show idea, and name, and ‘What’s Hapa-ning?,’ right? I’m Hapa, and it can be ’What’s Hapa-ning.’” Alexa laughed. “I’ve been trying to figure out a way to give it a Hapa theme, but I haven’t figured it all

105 Jack Sukimoto out yet.” Her goal for the show is to showcase Hapa identity. Because she doesn’t have to conform to regulations that radio stations on FM and AM do, she has a lot of freedom to brainstorm and try out new things. At the moment she plays various Hapa musicians, such as Toro Y Moi. She wants to bring in important Hapa individuals as well as “fellow everyday Hapas to discuss topics about the culture.”

I was curious if there was a particular moment that she became interested in JA culture. “I’m not sure if there was ever really a turning point. I think I disassociated from a lot of Asian American stuff in middle school. I kind of found a Hapa identity as I was going into high school, and that probably has something to do with it.” She talked about making friends who weren’t Asian and how she didn’t relate to a mentality that she identified as stricter and more achievement-oriented and less about self-expression. “I was really more into creative stuff.” It was later in high school that things changed. “Once I came to figure myself out a little bit more, I could go back to my ethnic background. I was on the internet a lot and I found Hapa communities online, and I could talk to people from there, and it felt less weird.”

I asked what she thought about specific JA things like Girl Scouts and basketball that many of the other people I interviewed talked about.

I didn’t play basketball, and didn’t go to any of the community churches. I took language elective in high school. You were required to take a language, so I took Japanese ‘cause it was easiest for me, ‘cause I studied it, you know, in El Marino language school and a little bit in middle school and a little bit in high school. But it wasn’t my passion or my greatest interest.

Alexa’s childhood was a lot like mine in terms of the JA community. Our experiences with tradition were about participating in the events

106 JA/LA like the Obon festival and making mochi. Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, basketball: these were important to a lot of our friends, and though we both gave them a try we didn’t embrace these activities in the same way.

I think those JA things like Girl Scouts and basketball is a way for the community to connect. As community grows apart, or as people get jobs and move to Orange County or the valley or Santa Monica, they’re not really here. But the Girl Scout troop is kind of a way for everyone to come back. Same with the Boy Scouts. There was one family that was coming out from Palmdale, at the eastern edge of LA County; when you factor in traffic it’s far away, but they would come out for that. I think it’s a safe space. Because when you’re with other JAs, you don’t have to deal with backhanded racism, discrimination. Those basketball leagues were founded because those JA kids weren’t allowed to play in the other leagues. That’s the reason why they were created. It’s just a way for everyone to be together without having to worry about being teased that they were Asian, or short, or whatever.

Having a white parent made a difference to both of us. Being Hapa is being in the middle, straddling two cultures and never being entirely in one or the other. When you reach an age that you start trying to figure out your identity and start to see yourself as being different, you might have ambivalence towards one side or the other at different times. It’s a sorting-out process.

I think it was definitely a gradual process for me, having to deal with a lot of my feelings that I still deal with today. It’s not towards my parents and my family so much as the JA community. Like sometimes I feel like I never fit in physically. I’m on the taller side, I’m five-seven, five-eight, and I don’t

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look that Asian. I look Hapa, but I don’t look straight-up Asian. To me, you look Hapa. I have great Hapa-vision. I can pick out Hapa like no other. But I think physically not fitting in was part of it.

Being Hapa, then, becomes an identity in itself. It’s all about perception. If people don’t perceive you to be completely like them, they may not fully accept you into their community. Alexa seems to have found a lot of Hapa friends, and though they aren’t all half Japanese—like her boyfriend, who is half Chinese—she seems to have found a community that she embraces and, in turn, embraces her.

At least, when I meet other Hapas, there’s this Hapa connection, like they know I’m Hapa, and I know they’re Hapa. And when we talk to each other about it, it’s very comfortable, it’s not weird. You know that experience when you’re talking to someone, and they’re trying to figure out... “I know you’re not white, and I know you’re not Asian, and I can tell in your face.” With the Hapa crowd that awkward guessing game isn’t there, and you don’t have to deal with weird questions, or weird comments. I think being female and being Asian, there’s a lot of unwanted attention and comments that come along with that, unfortunately. But issues of not being accepted by your community, or not being able to pick a side: that I can definitely relate to, because that is something I live with every day of my life. I don’t mean for it to sound that heavy, but it’s identity issues that I’ve dealt with in the past that other Hapa have also dealt with. I think so many strong people who are one hundred percent JA sometimes have relating issues, but it’s not the same.

Every person in my generation of my family is part Japanese. I’m half white; my cousins are half black, Chinese, and Hispanic. My cousins Jamie and Justin are half Chinese. Justin told me that it’s different

108 JA/LA for him than for me, because although he’s half-and-half, he’s one hundred percent Asian American. It’s different for me and Kenji and Stephanie, who have more radical divisions in our identity. For Alexa, the perception of personal identity plays out similarly:

I did a similar paper last summer. I interviewed a lot of half Japanese people. At first it was just looking for people who were strictly half Japanese, half something that wasn’t Asian. And I have some cousins who are also half Chinese like your cousins, and they said basically the same thing: it’s not as hard, because they’re just perceived as Asian.

I asked Alexa whether the book she has co-authored about the Venice Community Center, which was and still is the hub of the JA community in the neighborhood we were both part of, was a turning point for her. She explained that at the end of high school she became more interested in history, ethnic studies, and “underrepresented communities.” She responded to an internship advertisement. “I sent in an application, and it turned out I was the only person who applied, so I got it by default. They called me one day and were like, ‘Congratulations, you got the internship.’” Working on that book with JAs in the community gave her an opportunity to look at that part of her identity in a more neutral way, partly from the inside and partly from the outside.

For a lot of people it’s empowering to call themselves Hapa. It’s a way of being proud of being biracial. It is also a way to associate yourself with others. I believe that for Alexa, being Hapa enables her to be proud of her mixed background on a level beyond saying “half Japanese.” I sense that Alexa’s boyfriend being half Chinese isn’t as relevant, for her, as the fact that he is Hapa, because that is an immediate common ground that they both share. He may have his own experiences in being half Chinese that she does not relate to, and the same for him with her Japanese American background. This is not to say that

109 Jack Sukimoto being Hapa always overrides the importance of being half Chinese or half Japanese, or half whatever; rather, it creates another unique cultural identity to go along with the two halves of their backgrounds.

Now You Have to Run the Damn Thing

After a while I stopped asking people what they thought about JA culture diluting, traditions becoming less practiced or potentially dying out. I found that asking these sorts of questions has an effect on the person you’re talking to. It can come off as aggressive: “It’s your fault the JA culture is dying if you’re not doing anything about it!” Or it can come off as irresponsible: “It’s not MY responsibility since I’ve been away for so long.” Or it can pressure the person about their role in JA culture, which ultimately raises the question of whether they care or not. I definitely didn’t want to make others feel responsible for the way things have turned out. It’s no one’s fault that things are changing, that the younger generation isn’t as involved, that older traditions are shrinking or changing. I tried my best to be optimistic, to think, “Hey, maybe I’m wrong, maybe things aren’t changing!” But everyone I talked to told me, “No, it is changing, and it’s too bad.” And then I talked to Craig.

Craig Ishii is twenty-seven years old and shares a house with my cousin Justin and his girlfriend Dawn. A fourth generation Japanese American originally from Orange County and graduate of UCLA, he has been the regional director of JACL (Japanese American Citizens League). He left to form his own non-profit organization, Kizuna, to facilitate youth leadership development programs in the JA community. During my time in LA I was staying in my cousin’s guest room, with Craig living directly across the hallway. Initially, I was completely unaware of his importance to the JA community.

Craig talked about growing up doing typical JA activities such as going to the OCBC (Orange County Buddhist Church). Because of

110 JA/LA his continued participation in the church, I asked if certain traditions varied in different communities. According to Craig, the churches across Southern California all practice the same Obon dances. They all pick the same songs and use the same CDs. In this way, JAs from all over the region have the ability to learn and participate no matter where they are. “Whatever Obon you go to, if you learn the songs at one temple, you know them at any temple you go to.” When I was young the Obons were a huge deal, every kid loved it.” I asked Craig if he thought it was still as exciting as it was back then. He talked about how traditions have a great impact on you when you’re a kid, how there’s a period in young adulthood when you lose interest, and then: “The interest returns again when you’re a parent, because of your kids. You really become involved because, if it’s your Obon, you are there to work.” Between the food preparation, the games and the performances, “Now you have to run the damn thing.” But as generations go on, I wondered, will the traditions continue?

I think a lot of people are worried about that. I’m not so worried. A lot of the work I do is to try to revitalize what’s happening in the JA community right now. You have people who just don’t consider being involved a priority, and so you need organizations and people to instill that priority, and I think that some of the projects that we’re working on right now bring that sense of importance and priority back to young people.

Craig grasped what I was experiencing: how people seem a little indifferent, or haven’t considered the dying traditions or the future of the cultural experience of being Japanese American. “I think that a lot of times the reason why that is, is because most people can’t answer the question and so would choose not to talk about it.” Or, he said, they blame it on young people not getting involved. Craig is frustrated with those who complain but don’t want to do anything about it, and he is passionate about the need to develop leadership

111 Jack Sukimoto and to create space and activities for young people.

I was taught by Dawn to be involved. Part of her personal mission is to work with people. For me she thankfully saw some potential, I guess. I was a total schmuck back then. Seriously, I was a history major, I was at UCLA, but I had no desire to be involved in community stuff. She really pushed me to learn. If not for her and probably three other people, I wouldn’t be here today. The whole point is that you have to try. I think that most people are unwilling to try, and that’s what’s most unfortunate about the community right now. That’s why you need organizations and programs that are working with young people to change their mind, to change the way they operate.

It’s interesting for me to think that Craig’s work is the result of him joining the Nikkei Student Union, where he met Dawn, who was the head of the group, and other college students who had commitment to the community. If he had chosen not to, who knows if the programs created through Kizuna would have ever started? When I asked why he joined the NSU, he replied simply, “To meet girls.” We talked about the work he does at Kizuna and its importance to the next generation within the JA community.

We’re trying to create activities for K-6, which we don’t have right now. Trying to create activities for middle school students: that’s Camp Musubi. Trying to create activities for high school students so we have this Youth Can program. We have an internship program for college students, and we’re in the process of creating a mentorship program for young adults. The idea is to create a continuum of different activities. No matter what age you are, there’s a place for you to be involved.

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For Craig, it’s about “staying part of the community the whole time. Each program is designed to help people as they grow up and learn different topics that build on each other.”

For example, Camp Musubi is all about culture, learning about taiko and foods and holidays and all that kind of stuff; it’s specifically a culture camp. Youth Camp, we talk about culture as part of your identity. And then we talk about community service, and we meet community leaders. By the time you’re in college you’re actually working for these organizations, four days a week full time, and you have a supervisor, so you really get a good idea, on the staff side, of what it takes to run a non-profit organization. You are responsible for getting your work done. You are being paid. One thing we’re thinking about is creating a new internship program for high school students. Unpaid, during the summer, full time. It’s based on the input we’ve received from high school students and counselors.

I wondered what results Craig has seen from the programs he is involved with.

The community had no young adults involved as of ten years ago, and now there’s a load of them involved because of a single internship program. It has funneled a lot of young adults to work for these non-profits. Kizuna is actually a result of that internship program, because the people who formed the organization were all NCI [Nikkei Community Internship] interns. So that’s an example of a program that really made a difference in the community. Magnify that program and that effect times four, times five. It’s definitely working.

One specific tradition I wanted Craig’s thoughts about was the New

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Year’s celebration, which brings back fond memories of family and food for me. What was happening to that tradition?

I don’t do the New Year’s thing the night before. I get rip- roaring drunk on New Year’s Eve. I wake up usually at eight wherever I am, with a hangover usually. Haul ass down to Orange County to get to my aunt’s by nine, and we do ozoni. My parents don’t really prepare anything; I think my aunt does most of the work. And then usually we come back to the house during the midday and then make food there to take to my other aunt’s on my dad’s side.

It sounded like his family has their own personal interpretation of the holiday. In this case, a tradition is changing. Craig said, “It’s supposed to change.” For me, remembering staying up till midnight, watching my parents cook and do the tradition, it’s definitely changed.

One day, if and when you have a family, if it’s that important to you, you’re going to make sure it happens in your own family, and that’s how tradition gets passed down. You may not be cooking the same stuff; you may be cooking taco salad instead. That’s how tradition changes. We just don’t want the tradition to be lost. It can change all it wants; it can morph if it wants to. If the essence of the family is still coming together over New Years but you now have tamales, enchiladas, rather than JA foods and whatever, that’s fine. As long as the essence of what it used to be is still there with the family coming together, the traditions of cooking the night before. And I guarantee you: there will be some things that don’t change. Like some of the words that we still use, like these archaic Japanese words to describe sandals and things, zoris and bento and all that: we held onto it, and there’s going to be some things like that that don’t necessarily change over the next fifty years.

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I asked Craig what he thought would happen when he had a family. Would he still do the New Years thing? Would he practice other JA activities? And did he agree with me that Japanese American culture draws from Japanese culture, but is not reliant on it?

I think the JA culture is extremely unique. It just is. It’s not Japanese. It’s not American, either. There are elements of both. I definitely am not going to use the language. That’s for sure. But I hope my kids will play basketball; I hope my kids will be Buddhist. And I will bring my family together around New Years and many other occasions. And also, you have all these new JAs coming in, and my theory is that they’re going to merge into the community eventually. They’re going to see all these activities, and one by one they’re going to get involved, and the leagues are going to expand. Post-war immigrants from Japan, they’re not going to create their own things, they’re going to start trickling into these organizations and bring in their friends. And then they’re going to get bigger. So the core of it will still be there.

There will always be individuals with strong passion for their culture, community and identity, but I think it is those like Craig, who actively devote themselves to cultural work, who will continue tradition and spur change. I find comfort in Craig’s words. Maybe the real question isn’t about the loss of culture. Maybe the right question is: How might the culture change, and how can we embrace this change to find our own Japanese American experience?

More than anything, this experience has been inspiring. Before I flew down to LA, I was worried that the culture I have such fond memories

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of was in danger of fading out. Speaking to people about the subject, I got a fair share of responses that confirmed some worries. At the same time, many looked at the question instead as a matter of change. I was very happy to discover positive outlooks on the culture, and ways we can work to preserve the core of traditions.

What does the project tell me about Japanese American identity? Everyone has a different take, a different experience. That’s the way people are. Granted, we have certain activities and events like Obon and basketball, and certain behavioral quirks that have been around, largely unchanged, for generations. But are these defining points of who people are? Sometimes yes, and sometimes no. Throughout life as a JA, you may choose to quit basketball if you don’t like it, you may choose to get involved with various non-profit organizations in the community, you may choose to explore the Hapa side of yourself, or maybe you will not feel any connection towards the JA identity as a whole. But if you eventually have children, maybe they will become interested. Japanese American culture will always be there for you and the next generation to explore.

It’s hard to draw any conclusions about the culture as a whole when the experiences and stories are so varied. I doubt that anyone defines themselves as purely JA in the context of identity. And there are, of course, a great many more perspectives than just the small pool of those I interviewed in LA. And of course the scope of being JA goes far beyond Southern California. While I can’t make any conclusions about JA identity, I think what’s important is to show people, especially outside of the Japanese American community, that such a culture does exist, and that it is, in its own way, a unique experience.

116 JA/LA

Sukiyaki served by my LA relatives to celebrate the visit by me and my cousins’ Chinese grandparents. In our family, sukiyaki is prepared for special events, rather than, as in older tradition, for New Years.

117 Jack Sukimoto

Sources

Chalfen, Richard M. Turning Leaves: The Photograph Collections of Two Japanese American Families. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 1991. Print.

Fujimoto, Jack. Sawtelle: West Los Angeles’s Japantown. Charleston: Arcadia, 2007. Print.

Inada, Lawson Fusao. Only What We Could Carry: The Japanese American Internment Experience. Berkeley: Heyday, 2000. Print.

Little Tokyo Historical Society. Los Angeles’s Little Tokyo. Charleston: Arcadia, 2010. Print.

Masumoto, David Mas. Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995. Print.

Miyake, Perry, Tiffany Yoshikawa. Sato, and Alexa Giffen. Venice Japanese Community Center and the 100+ Year History of the Japanese American Community of Venice, California. Los Angeles: Venice Japanese Community Center, 2010. Print.

O’Hearn, Claudine C. Half and Half: Writers on Growing up Biracial and Bicultural. New York: Pantheon, 1998. Print.

Okada, John. No-No Boy. Seattle: U of Washington P, 1981. Print.

Sone, Monica Itoi. Nisei Daughter. Seattle: U of Washington P, 1979. Print.

118

Olivier Matthon Under the Radar: Notes from the Wild Mushroom Trade Olivier Matthon Under the Radar

On April 23, 2012, Alvin sat in the sun in front of his room at the Edgewood Motel in Willits, California. He wore the same clothes he had been wearing every day for the last month: white sneakers, baggy blue jeans, plaid jacket, and a U.S. Forest Service hat—except the badge on his hat said “Forest Circus, Department of Aggravation.” Behind him stood a folding table, a commercial electronic scale, and several plastic baskets. Alvin (whose name, like those of most persons in this narrative, is a pseudonym) was waiting for Mark and Sarah to bring him the last load of black trumpets of the season. He had been buying wild winter mushrooms—black trumpets, hedgehogs, and yellow feet—since January. He would have preferred to be picking mushrooms himself, but, with his arthritis, buying was a better way to make it through the winter. This was his last day, and he had not heard from Mark and Sarah. He wasn’t sure they would even show up. He was itching to call it good for the year, to pack his things up and drive north to his summer turf at Crescent Lake in Oregon. But they were his best pickers. He had to wait. Like all mushroom buyers, Alvin is paid a commission on each pound of mushrooms he buys, so it is in his interest to help established pickers and to keep training new ones. But it had been a long winter, and he was anxious to start picking morels and boletes and to catch big lake trout.

123 Olivier Matthon

A car pulled up in front of his room. A tall man in his sixties got out, wearing cowboy boots, tight jeans, tucked-in western shirt, sunglasses, and a cowboy hat. It was Bob, the ranch caretaker. Bob had come once before with some bad mushrooms. He was taking care of a large property and had access to some untouched picking ground.

“You’re back,” Alvin said.

“Yeah, I’m still alive. I got some more mushrooms,” said Bob.

“You never called me. I told you last time I would come and show you how to pick.”

“I know, I know, I got sick for a few days. And now, with this heat, I thought they were going to be bad. I didn’t want to waste your time.”

Bob opened the trunk of his beaten Toyota Corolla and pulled out a paper bag. Alvin looked at the hedgehogs and yellow feet in the bag and said, “Yep, they’re bad. This time of year it’s hard to come across good ones, especially if you don’t know what you’re looking for. It’s too late for this year, but call me up next year and I’ll show you. Are you going to be around?”

“Oh yeah,” Bob replied, smiling a few missing teeth. “I’m not going anywhere until the revolution starts. I got my gun ready. It’s gonna be a one-man revolution: me against the ninety-nine percent.” Bob laughed. Then he became serious again. “One thing you said last time that impressed me, is you asked me if I needed gas money.”

“Oh, you know,” Alvin said, humbly.

“That impressed me. I appreciated that. That was very kind of you.” Bob opened the door of his car, prepared to get in, but instead got a stack of papers out. “This is what I have to do now. I got to make

124 Under the Radar photocopies of these lyric sheets. I’m a singer and guitar player. I tried to play with a band last week; I left after an hour. They didn’t know how to play. Younger guys, you know, they just hang out and drink. I don’t drink. I lost my wife to alcohol. She was seventeen years younger than me. That’s why I don’t drink. A little joint once in a while, that’s all. I drink a lot of coffee and milk, though.” He shuffled his papers, pensive. “You’re from Crescent Lake, right?” he asked.

“Well, that’s where I spend my summers,” Alvin said. “I have friends who let me park my motor home on their property.”

“Oh, I’m from Roseburg originally. I’ve fished in every lake and river in Oregon. My brother still lives up there. He’s the leader of his local Tea Party. The Tea Party has such a bad rap. They just want to reform the Republican Party. Get the Bushes out of there.” Bob looked at his lyric sheets again. “Hey, did you know J.J. Cale has a new album out with Eric Clapton?” Alvin shook his head no. “Clapton discovered Cale on the street when he was already in his fifties,” Bob continued.

“I did not know that,” Alvin said.

“Yeah, Cale wrote this great song: This Town.” Bob started singing in his deep country voice:

This town I live in ain’t fit for man or beast I’m going to the store, boy And get myself a dog I’m going to chain, chain, chain him Up to my fence Make him bark, bark, bark If I had a hundred dollars I’d buy myself a gun I’d stick it out the door And wait for an attack I’ll need somebody just to cover my back.

125 Olivier Matthon

“Well, I better go now.” Bob got into his car. He did not shut the door. He had one foot on the ground. He stared ahead for several minutes. Alvin stood in front of the car with his hands in his pockets. Finally, Bob said, “Excuse me if I talk too much. I don’t talk to nobody, except when I come to town. Even the cat up there won’t approach me.” He smiled again. “I better get going, now.” He cranked the starter several times and the car started. “I bought this car for my mom in 1996,” he said through the window. “See you next year.”

Six years earlier, I had come across a copy of Voices From the Woods, a collection of stories from forest workers we don’t usually hear about: people who harvest mushrooms, berries and floral greens on public land and who plant and thin trees. I had just moved to the Olympic Peninsula and was employed as a tree planter. In the winter of 2012, after talking with Bill Knight, a longtime advocate for these workers who is featured in Voices, I set out to investigate the mushroom circuit. I contacted Rebecca McLain, author of several studies on mushroom pickers, as well as many Forest Service employees. Each time, to show my knowledge of the circuit, I added that I wanted to follow the spring morel harvest. Nobody knew where or when the harvest would start. Eventually I contacted Sue Bartling at Alpine Foragers Exchange, a broker of wild edibles in Portland. When I asked where she thought the first morel harvest would be, she told me to check back in two weeks. I did, but there were still no signs of morels. This time she added, “But you know, we’re buying mushrooms right now.”

“What!?” I said.

“Yeah, black trumpets, hedgehogs and yellow feet. They grow all winter. Most of the ones we buy come from Willits. Depending on the weather, they might last a few more weeks.”

126 Under the Radar

After wasting weeks asking about the wrong type of mushroom, I left for Northern California hoping to catch the tail end of the harvest. I arrived in Willits just before dark on March 23. Casey Jonquil, the owner of Alpine Foragers Exchange, told me the buyers were staying on the motel strip near the Safeway store. I parked across the street from the Pepperwood Motel for a while. Nothing was happening. I circled around town until I spotted signs of a buyer at the Edgewood Motel: stacks of baskets, a table with a scale, and a trash can stood in front of one of the rooms. Two guys pulled up in a Ford Ranger. The buyer, Alvin, came out of his room, weighed their mushrooms and paid them. Two other guys came out of another room to chat and look at the bounty. I had just witnessed a mushroom deal.

I came back the next day and introduced myself to Alvin. I told him I’d come to Willits to learn how to pick mushrooms and to write about the lives of mushroom pickers. He welcomed me into his room and told me his story.

127 Olivier Matthon

In his younger days, Alvin tried college and tried to hold steady jobs, but he found that he had to keep moving. “My last try at the real world was in the late eighties,” he said. He started a printing company but quickly got rid of it. He decided to hitchhike to Alaska to get a fishing job. In Montana a man picked him up and showed him how to pick mushrooms. He never made it to Alaska. He spent the summer picking morels and boletes in Montana, where he heard about Crescent Lake from other pickers. Crescent Lake is now the location of the most concentrated harvest of matsutakes on the West Coast. Thousands of Southeast Asians live there in makeshift camps during the fall. But at that time it was just starting to become popular. After spending the fall of 1989 harvesting matsutakes—“matsies,” as they call them—at Crescent Lake, Alvin went to Coos Bay, where he heard you could pick chanterelles—“channies” for short. “It was exciting back then,” he said. “Everything was new. People were just figuring out the whole circuit. You could discover new prime picking grounds at any moment. I remember discovering the Black Mountain matsy patch, in Orleans. We ran out of containers and just filled up the whole car with matsies. Today it’s a well-known patch.”

That winter, after Coos Bay, Alvin went south to Brookings, where the chanterelle season lasts longer. He heard you could also pick winter mushrooms, but he didn’t know what to look for. “In those years, it wasn’t like today. Nobody would tell you what to pick or where to go. Today you go see a buyer and he’ll tell you to go up that one mountain to find that one mushroom.” He figured out how to pick hedgehogs and black trumpets on his own. Only a couple of buyers were in town that year. Most pickers were locals. When he went back to Brookings in 1990, more migrant pickers were already showing up.

He came to Willits for the first time in 1991 for the late matsutake season. When it petered out at the beginning of January, he started picking black trumpets. A lot of Canadian pickers, like Jimmy Two

128 Under the Radar and Fast Freddy, were spending that winter in Willits. Alvin said the Canadians were some of the first pioneers of mushroom harvesting in the United States. They discovered a lot of productive areas where they brought buyers and pickers. There was only one buyer in Willits the first year he was there, and maybe one or two in Fort Bragg, thirty- five miles west on the coast.

Alvin and about two dozens other pickers made Willits and Mendocino County their exclusive winter ground on a circuit that ranges across Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Colorado and California. They started staying at the Edgewood Motel in 1993. For almost twenty years now, they have kept the no vacancy sign up from November to April, when they disperse to their respective summer grounds. The number of pickers has increased steadily over the last ten years, and other motels now house both buyers and pickers. Brookings, Willits and Fort Bragg are at present the three main hubs for winter mushroom harvesting, with single buyers randomly scattered in towns like Eureka, Golden Beach, Coos Bay, Saginaw and Springfield. According to Alvin, there were seven or eight buyers in Willits at the peak of the season in 2012, and four or five in Fort Bragg. Several hundred pickers were local, and one to two hundred were migrant.

Because wild mushrooms do not grow in a controlled environment, it is extremely difficult to say when they will start growing. The harvesting season is normally shorter than the growing season; it starts when there are enough mushrooms to be worth picking, and ends when there no longer are. In Mendocino County it is possible to harvest mushrooms commercially from November to April. Pickers harvest fall mushrooms—chanterelles, matsutakes, and queen boletes—between November and January, and winter mushrooms— black trumpets, hedgehogs and yellow feet—from December to April. Towards the end of the season in March and April, winter mushrooms need a succession of a few days of rain followed by a week of sunshine

129 Olivier Matthon with temperatures below eighty degrees to keep growing. After two dry weeks with temperatures in the eighties, the mushrooms start either to dry or to mold in the field. Then the buyers leave town.

Winter mushrooms first grow on the coast, around Fort Bragg, and then spread inland towards Willits as the season goes on. Only three percent of Mendocino County’s land is public, most of it located in the Jackson State Forest, where mushroom picking is allowed with the purchase of a permit, which costs a hundred dollars for the year. Most of the harvest is therefore done on private land and private timberland, often without permission of the owners. “There is a lot of sneaking in,” Alvin said.

When I left for Willits I had planned to sleep in my car or in a tent. But once I arrived I saw that to be part of the pickers’ world I needed to live at the Edgewood. So I checked in the second night. Andy, the owner, gave me the mushroom picker deal—$200 a week—a cheap rate by motel standards, but expensive by low-income standards. I wondered how the pickers could afford it, or why they didn’t rent an apartment instead.

“Smoking room okay?” Andy asked, in his Indian accent.

“Do they smell like cigarettes?” I asked.

“Oh no, all clean, very clean.”

“Smoking is okay,” I finally said. When I moved into room 110, it was like moving into a giant ashtray.

The Edgewood sits on the south side of Willits between commercial franchises that flank Highway 101. Les Schwab mechanics fix tires

130 Under the Radar on one side and Taco Bell patrons wait in line across the street. The motel is faded yellow with white trim. The owners’ house sits in the parking lot, in front of the rooms. Tenants hang out on the roofed sidewalk in front of their rooms. A lot of the old circuit pickers have “retired,” and Andy, the owner, now rents a few rooms to year-round tenants to make up for the business lost.

Only four longtime circuit pickers were still in Willits when I got there, including Alvin, who was in room 107. Jerry was in room 115. In his fifties, he wore a baseball cap and thick glasses. He had lost a few of his front teeth. After five months in Willits, Jerry was ready to go back to Idaho, where he lives in a town of 140 people. Willits was as big a town as he could stand. He used to be a carpenter, but picking and buying mushrooms has been his main income since 1987.

Jay Ballew shared room 115 with Jerry. At seventy years old, this was the last year he intended to come here. “I’m going to give all this up this summer after huckleberry season,” he said. “And then I’m moving back to Tennessee. I got my fishing boat with a couple motors on sitting on a trailer, waiting on us. Also I got a two-bedroom house on an acre of ground right by the river where I learned how to swim. I’m going to go back there, and every day possible all I’m going to be is after them river fish.” Jay weighed about 120 pounds, and you had to wake up early to catch him without a beer in his hand or a cigarette in his mouth. He and his wife have earned their living by picking and buying mushrooms and berries for more than twenty-five years.

Jay’s nephew, Karl, a quiet man probably in his forties, was in room 116. This was his third year of picking.

Bernie was at the end of the strip, in room 117. He had a thick beard and a ponytail and wore a baseball cap. He had been on the circuit for twelve years. Bernie was considered the morel expert. “The army taught me how to read maps, and how to move on the ground,” he

131 Olivier Matthon said with pride.

On Sunday, the day after I checked in, Alvin took me out hunting for black trumpets. We stopped on the side of Highway 20 and walked toward a gated forest road, but when Alvin saw the no trespassing sign, he turned around.

“Let’s climb across the highway,” he said.

We ran and climbed the steep muddy slope before anyone could see which way we went. We hiked through a mixed forest of second growth Doug firs, tanoaks, madrones, and redwoods with an understory of huckleberry brush and manzanitas.

“This is the perfect habitat,” he said, panting. “You have a good canopy cover with thick brush underneath. The blacks need some protection right now from the rain, the wind, and the sun.”

We kept walking up and down steep ridges and saw only a few single blacks. Alvin was surprised. We should have found at least a pound or two out here. But, he said, there was too much competition nowadays. Somebody must have picked this already. There was a white plastic bag buried halfway under dead leaves, next to a little black trumpet. He thought a picker might have marked a patch.

The black trumpet (Craterellus cornucopioides), also known as Horn of Plenty or Trumpet of Death, is a member of the chanterelle family. It’s basically a hollow cone with a curled lip, normally black inside and a shiny grey outside, which makes it look like rubber. It can occasionally be brown, beige, or yellowish, and it often grows in clusters.

“See these here?” Alvin said, pointing to what looked like little

132 Under the Radar burned-up matches coming out of the moss on the ground. “These are Earth Tongues, a kind of mushroom. When you find these, you normally find blacks.”

“Do you normally look for a northern slope?” I asked.

“It depends on the weather. If it’s been sunny, with a wind from the north, you want to look down a ravine, or by a stream. Anywhere it’s the most humid.”

After a few hours wandering around in the lush forest, we drove back to town. We had not found many mushrooms, but I already had a better idea of the kind of habitat to look for.

“The price of gas will ruin this business,” Alvin said on the ride back.

“It would be impossible to pick mushrooms without a car, I guess, huh?”

“It’s possible,” he replied. “If you know someone else with a car. The only ones who will survive are the ones who are willing to carpool, like the Mexicans.”

We drove past ranches, farms, pastures, open fields interspersed with wooded lots.

“All these ridges behind,” Alvin said, “are all good picking grounds. But it’s all private development now. You need to know someone who owns property out there. We used to have access to all of it.”

Back at the Edgewood, Alvin set up his scale on a table in front of his room and waited for pickers to show up with the day’s catch. Connie Green, for whom Alvin was buying the mushrooms, had just arrived at the motel, and the guys were getting the barbecue ready for a little

133 Olivier Matthon get-together. Earlier in the season, Alvin had bought for his friend Joe, a distributor from Oregon, and Jerry had bought for Connie. But recently Joe had stopped purchasing and Jerry had expressed the desire to return to Idaho, so Alvin was now buying for Connie. Connie is the owner and founder of Wine Forest, a distributor of wild edibles based in Napa, California. She started picking and selling mushrooms to restaurants in the 1970s. At first she had to educate the chefs about the quality of American mushrooms to convince them that they were as good, if not better—because fresher—than European ones. Connie advanced money to Alvin to buy the mushrooms. She provided the scale, the table and the baskets. She came once in a while to pick up the mushrooms herself. The guys treated her with reverence.

While the ribs were cooking, a lady wearing high heels and long black gloves walked up carrying a paper bag with some mushrooms. A friend had told her that buyers were in town and showed her what the black trumpets look like. The ones she’d picked looked kind of crappy, but Alvin bought them anyway and tried to explain to her how to pick and clean them. “Always cut the dirty base right away,” he said, “and cut off the rubber lips, the part on the edge that gets mushy.” He even suggested where to look for them. “Brooktrails is a good place to pick right now. Look for tanoaks and madrones.”

Very soon after she left, five “Mexicans” (as other pickers refer to all Latinos) stopped by in a cargo van. They had about 200 pounds of black trumpets, but Alvin couldn’t buy them; they were too gnarly. He knew they would be able to sell them, for a lower price, to one of the buyers at the Lark or Western Village. “I wish I could teach them how to pick quality,” Alvin said with a flare of excitement. “They could make more money selling to me. But as long as there is someone to buy that shit, it’s easier for them to just pick everything.”

A few rooms down Jerry kept an eye on the ribs while Jay passed

134 Under the Radar around the beers that Connie had brought. Connie told me that one reason she believes Mexicans pick such poor quality is because that is how they were used to doing it in Mexico. “I’ve seen them in the markets down there,” she said. “They just lay a tarp on the ground and mix all the different kinds together. And they don’t cut the dirt off. It’s just how they do it. The customers just pick the ones they want.”

Alvin continued to buy all evening and Connie went to look at the mushrooms once in a while. Seeing a few overripe blacks she commented, “This never happened before, when pickers could farm their patches. They harvested them before they got too old, and they let the little ones grow bigger.”

I was intrigued by Connie, a lady who travels around the world and drives a brand new SUV, but also smokes cigars and drinks liquor while sharing bear stories or remembering a cold summer spent camping with the old circuit pickers. I came to understand that she is the essential link between opposite worlds: the migrant pickers on one side, and the chefs of some of the fanciest restaurants in the United States on the other. She takes chefs out on picking forays to make them appreciate the work of the pickers, and she makes sure pickers receive decent wages by paying them the highest price she can.

I spent the following week picking by myself during the day and hanging out by Alvin’s buying station in the evening. One of his best pickers, Mark, showed up one night in his F-150. In his early thirties, he wore black jeans with his wallet chain dangling from the back pocket, hiking boots, a Carhartt vest over a hoodie, and a baseball cap. He kept his hair in a ponytail and had a wispy beard. He spoke softly. Mark and his partner Sarah brought in quantity and quality on a steady basis. They were reliable and determined. This particular

135 Olivier Matthon night Mark brought their harvest of the previous two days: seventy- one pounds of big clean and crisp blacks. Alvin paid him $5.50 a pound, the highest price he paid at the time.

The price paid to pickers for a pound of black trumpets was as high as fourteen dollars at the beginning of the winter of 2011-2012, and as low as one dollar during the peak, in February. During the month I spent in Willits, from March 23 to April 23, the price Alvin paid went from $4.50 to $6.50 per pound.

Mark and Sarah and her teenage son were living with Mark’s dad at the time, a situation less than ideal, according to Mark, but one that gave them a chance to save some money. The winter before they had lived at the Edgewood with thirteen other pickers. Sarah made a few extra bucks by cooking nightly for everybody. She would put up a menu and those who were interested signed up for dinner. But in the summer they’d had a hard time finding work. They could not afford the motel anymore and could not find anybody that would rent them a place. “It’s already hard to find a place to rent with two dogs,” Mark said. “But when you don’t have a real job with references, it’s almost impossible.” They camped in Jackson State Park until they were kicked out, after which they moved their tent to a secluded logging road. They built a little log cabin by hand, with a handsaw, but when it was done the sheriff kicked them out again. Mark said they had proved to themselves that they can live on very little.

“You should take my phone number,” Alvin told him. “In case things get rough again. There’s always money to be made up in Oregon in the summer, picking berries or mushrooms.”

“Well, with Sarah’s son it’s hard to move around,” Mark pointed out. Alvin responded by telling him about a really good patch he used to pick years ago. He gave Mark detailed directions and, since it was on private property, even offered to drop him off one day and pick him

136 Under the Radar up later, so he wouldn’t have to leave his truck on the road.

On my second day out in the forest I found a substantial patch of hedgehogs on private timberlands that Jerry had told me about. It kept me busy for the rest of the week and I made $260 out of it. Jay also told me a couple of places to check out. Since I had heard that mushroom pickers were extremely protective of their patches and their knowledge, I was a little surprised that Alvin, Jerry and Jay gave me and other pickers all this information. They didn’t divulge the exact location of their best patches, but they did share the general knowledge necessary to find the mushrooms. I realized that it was not only in their interest as buyers (Jay and Jerry also buy mushrooms at times), but also out of their desire to pass along the skills they have acquired over the years to a new generation of pickers. When the Laytonville boys—a local son and dad team, along with a friend— came one evening in their big white pickup truck with several tubs of huge fresh black trumpets, Jerry and Jay immediately introduced them with great pride. “We trained these guys. They can finally pick clean mushrooms.”

“We’ve always picked blacks for ourselves,” the dad said in a raspy smoker voice. “This is the first year we’ve found enough to sell.”

“It’s better than sitting in front of the TV all day long,” the son added.

Jerry, Jay and Karl left at the end of that week to go back north. I was sad to see them leave. Three new pickers took their rooms a few days later: Fred, Connor and Paul. Fred was forty-three and had been picking mushrooms for twelve years, mostly in southwestern Oregon. This was the first winter he picked in Willits. He had a strong build, radiated intensity, and never stopped talking. He didn’t have a bank account or driver’s license; everything he owned fitted in his duffle

137 Olivier Matthon bag. Earlier in the winter he had offered a man named Larry, who was living in his Geo Metro, to share a motel room with him at the Lark, in exchange for dropping him off in the woods. It turned out that Larry was often too sick or lazy to go out, but Fred continued to pay for his room and food for two months. Then he met Larry’s nephew, Connor, and they started picking together. Larry went back to live in his car, and Fred moved into a motel room in Fort Bragg with Connor and Paul, who was Connor’s father. Fred and Connor paid for the room and Paul was their driver. Then Alvin convinced them to come back to Willits.

The morning after they arrived at the Edgewood, Fred offered to partner up with me to go picking. Connor and Paul were sick— Connor coughing blood, Paul dying from cancer—and unmotivated to work. Fred needed wheels and I needed someone with experience. He insisted on paying for gas, explaining that I was paying for the wear and tear on my car. While I filled up the tank, Fred went inside to buy his two daily energy drinks. On the way out of the store he gave some money to a young couple playing music on the sidewalk.

We drove thirty miles to Laytonville and parked on the side of a road that went through industrial timberlands. Fred put on his pack frame loaded with four baskets and a bucket, I took a backpack, and we waded across the creek. We hiked up skid roads covered by fir saplings and manzanitas into a forest of second growth firs and redwoods, keeping our eyes open for oaks, tanoaks and madrones. We hiked up a ridge, then down, then up again, picking a few mushrooms here and there. We were hoping to get to a big patch, a mycelium bed. This scatter picking added up nonetheless, and my backpack got heavy with black trumpets.

We finally found a good number of hedgehogs and yellow feet growing in thick huckleberry bushes. We put our packs down and crawled into the brush with our buckets. The rain started and before

138 Under the Radar long we were soaked to the bones.

Hedgehogs (Hydnum repandum and H. umbilicatum) are typical stalk-and-cap mushrooms with downward projecting spines, called teeth, instead of gills. Their white to pale orange color makes them relatively easy to spot against the dark brown of dead leaves. They can grow in large numbers, often next to dense patches of yellow feet (Cantharellus tubaeformis), also called Winter Chanterelle or Funnel Chanterelle.

As we slowly filled up our buckets, Fred told me his story. Twelve years ago he was married and working for a pharmaceutical company. He and his wife had two kids. Things got sour and they separated. He wanted to have a friendly divorce, but his wife started dating a sheriff’s deputy and she chose to go to court. Fred said they conspired against him and convinced the judge to charge him a substantial amount of child support, which the state took directly out of his paychecks, leaving him with very little. So he quit his job and went on the bum; he stayed in shelters for a while and finally decided to pick mushrooms full-time.

“When is the last time you saw your kids?” I asked.

“A year and a half ago,” he said as we kept picking. “The sheriff told me I had to pay him seventeen hundred dollars to see them. I didn’t want my kids to live all this drama, so I decided not to see them for a while. I pick mushrooms to stay out of the capitalist scheme. I hate capitalism. It doesn’t do anything good for the people. It makes people poor and it fucks with them. I don’t want nobody to profit from my work. For me, mushroom picking is not about the money.”

“What is it about, then?”

“Serenity. Being in the woods. I have PTSD from abuse when I was a

139 Olivier Matthon kid, and the woods are a sanctuary for me. I’m a compulsive gambler and I went to therapy. When I pick, I don’t think about all that.”

Although Fred said that mushroom picking was not about the money, I believe that in addition to the therapeutic effect of nature it was also about the way he made his money. Mushroom picking is one of the last cash economies where pickers can choose, let’s say, to pay income taxes or not, or, as in Fred’s case, to pay child support or not. When Fred decided to make his living by picking mushrooms, he regained control of his own income in a situation where he believed the government had no right to interfere. At first, Fred told me not to use his real name, but later he said that he didn’t care, that he wasn’t hiding from anybody.

Fred and I came back to the motel with thirty-seven pounds of blacks, twelve pounds of feet, and fifteen pounds of hogs, and made $160 each. Fred insisted on sharing the money equally between us, even though he picked faster than I did. Alvin was impressed and asked us if he could show our mushrooms to Bernie, who had been sequestering himself in his room for two weeks. Alvin wanted to motivate him to go out and make a little money. When Bernie emerged, Fred, who had not met him before, told him exactly where we had picked the mushrooms and invited him to come with us. But Bernie was a loner, and it would be another week before he tried to pick again.

While Fred and I got out of our soaked clothes, Charles, a redhead driving a Suburban, showed up with twenty-eight pounds of decent black trumpets. Charles and his girlfriend were locals who picked sporadically, just enough to get by. Alvin had tried to train them, but they didn’t seem to want to learn. They could only pick good quality if they were in a good quality patch, which apparently was the case that night. After I changed into dry clothes, I asked Charles what kind of trees he looked for to find black trumpets. “Huh, mostly tanoak, madrone, and fir mix,” he answered. “But up on Pine Mountain they

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grow in the bunchgrass and the black oaks.” Alvin paid him $140, and Charles mentioned that it was six dollars short of what he needed to fix his truck. So Alvin let him borrow another twenty dollars.

Connor and Paul were still sick the next day, so Fred and I again went out together. Fred again paid for gas. “A reliable car is the most important tool for pickers,” he said. “They don’t realize that every time they make money picking, they should put some aside for the wear and tear. The Asians know that. They always have new rigs. So do the Mexicans.”

We drove twenty miles south to Ukiah, then veered west towards the coast. We had to drive over a pass to reach the canyon where Fred wanted to pick. On the way up the steep windy road my car heated up, so I had to keep the heater on full blast. At the top of the pass we realized that a lot of smoke was coming out from under the hood. Fred grew worried.

“I have a leaky valve cover,” I explained. “When I go uphill, the oil drips on the exhaust pipe, it burns and makes a lot of smoke. It’s no big deal, really.” Fred didn’t seem convinced.

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On the long drive down to the bottom of the canyon I was mostly riding the breaks. We smelled something burning. I pulled over and we saw smoke coming out of the front wheels. “Oh my god,” Fred said. “I didn’t know your car had so many problems. Just use your parking brake.”

At the bottom of the hill we parked and quickly sneaked onto a private vacation property. As we walked through a dense mix of redwoods and oaks next to a stream, Fred suddenly stopped in his tracks like a hound dog. We had entered an open grove of scattered black oaks with young fir saplings, a good carpet of dead leaves, and some bunchgrass. The light was brighter.

“Keep your eyes open,” he said, serious and excited. “This is a good transition. If you don’t know anything about picking mushrooms, look for transitions: light transitions, tree species transitions, a road, or a clearcut’s edges. Anything. That’s where they like to grow.”

We took a few steps and, sure enough, a bunch of blue chanterelles were growing in the dead leaves. Blue chanterelles (Polyozellus multiplex) grow sparsely in the same habitats as the black trumpets. Unlike the blacks their core is full, so they weigh more. They taste roughly the same and are sold mixed in with the blacks.

We left the property and kept driving down the canyon. We came to a dirt road that Fred thought headed back towards Ukiah. We were driving along, looking for good picking grounds, when my car suddenly stalled right in front of a charming farmhouse. I cranked the starter several times but it wouldn’t start again. About two hours left before dark. No cell phone reception. Fred pointed out that we were in pot growing country. He stayed in the car; I went to knock on the door. No answer. As I walked back to the car, a Mexican kid came out on a four-wheeler. I told him we needed either a jump or a ride

142 Under the Radar to town. “Huh, it’s private property,” he said nervously. “You can’t go in there, there’s people, huh. Shit, you need a jump, huh? Look, I got work to do before it gets dark, but someone should come down and help you. Just don’t go in there.” He told me we were thirteen miles from Ukiah.

It got dark and cold as we waited in the car. Finally, a truck and three four-wheelers came down the road and parked in front of the house. People were milling around, moving gas cans, getting supplies in the house, but nobody approached us. “It’s probably the Mexican cartel,” Fred said. “They’re going to kill us. We should just run away right now.” We had no choice but to spy on these pot growers in the middle of nowhere, like a pair of dumb cops pretending to be stranded.

Pot growing operations are a major obstacle for mushroom pickers in Mendocino County. Despite the legal medical marijuana permits, an aura of criminality and paranoia still floats above this kind of farm. Growers also plant guerilla gardens on public and private timberland, making it dangerous for pickers. One picker told me he had stumbled upon such a garden, guarded by three guys with guns. “I showed them my mushrooms and got the hell out.” Not once when I went out picking did I fail to run into some old growing equipment.

After the others left, the Mexican kid and his friends finally came to see us. We told them we were mushroom pickers and showed them our baskets, something I should have done in the first place. That released the tension. One of them used to pick mushrooms. Fred talked mushroom picking and pot growing with them, and they invited us to spend the night in the house.

The next morning we figured out that the alternator on my car had died. An old man we hadn’t seen before offered to let us use his truck to go to town. A couple miles down the road, we heard a grinding noise from the front wheels. I stopped and Fred crawled under the truck.

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“The CV boots are ripped open,” he said. “The CV joints are grinding metal on metal.”

We turned around and a minute later another truck came our way. It was a neighbor of the Mexican cartel, as we were now calling them. I got a ride to town with him, found a new alternator, and called Alvin at the motel to let him know we were fine. I declined Alvin’s offer to let me use his Triple-A, and he told me, “Well, welcome to mushroom picking.”

On the way back to the farm, the neighbor guy was hauling a trailer overloaded with building materials. We hit a deep hole and got a flat tire on the trailer. It crossed my mind at that moment that maybe I was on a stretch of bad luck, but I reminded myself of Alvin’s reassuring words. These were normal operating procedures in the wild mushroom trade.

It was ten p.m. when I got dropped off at the pot farm. I found Fred in a small wooden planked cabin heated by a potbelly stove. When I opened the door, he was sitting on a chair in the middle of the room with no shirt on, trimming buds on a huge platter balanced on his knees, telling weed stories over loud music. There were bags of pot everywhere. The old man was lying down on the couch, smoking a cigarette. His son and the Mexican kid were preparing to smoke weed through a black trumpet mushroom.

“When I used to pick mushrooms,” the son explained, “we had a tradition where you had to smoke a bowl out of the first black trumpet you picked.”

Being tired, I politely declined their invitation and went to work on my car. We didn’t get back at the motel until one in the morning.

The next day Fred got up early and Alvin dropped him off five miles

144 Under the Radar out on Highway 20. Fred was planning to walk back by himself, but I knew that he wouldn’t eat anything all day except for his two energy drinks. After it got dark I went to look for him. I found him walking on the side of the highway with a cigarette in his mouth and fifty pounds of black trumpets on his back. He made $240. Coughing badly he asked, “You want to pick tomorrow? We’ll go out and get six baskets and make five hundred bucks.”

By the second week of April, Alvin was one of two buyers remaining in Willits. Most of the Mexican pickers had gone to Fresno to pick orchard morels in the sunshine. The end of the season was near. On Easter Sunday, an old lady stopped by in the afternoon with five pounds of black trumpets. She needed the money to buy a special dinner for her family. Her mushrooms were brittle and falling apart, but Alvin bought them anyway. As other regular pickers brought nice mushrooms in, he scattered hers among their baskets before sending them on to Connie.

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That evening, Alvin, Fred and I hung out in front of Alvin’s room. The last days had been hot, and dusk smelled of summer. As the neon lights lining the sidewalk in front of the rooms flickered on, a man staggered up to us from the street. A week ago he had tried to sell some blacks to Alvin, but they were bad. Alvin, as always, had tried to teach him how to harvest properly and ended up letting him borrow twenty dollars. On his second visit he did not bring any mushrooms. His hat’s visor hung low over his eyes. I could smell the alcohol on his breath as he said, “Good evening guys, I need a couple dollars to eat tonight.” Alvin looked at him for a moment, went in his room without saying a word, and came back with a five-dollar bill.

“This is the last time, though,” he told him.

Then Charles, the redhead with the Suburban, came with two cardboard boxes full of black trumpets. The mushrooms had gotten hot in the closed boxes, and there were a lot of broken pieces and dirt. Alvin had been trying to train him and his girlfriend for weeks, hoping they could become regular pickers. He sorted through Charles’ mushrooms for half an hour as a last attempt to teach him, but he could only buy a quarter of what he brought. Charles was pissed. He waved a box of mushrooms in Alvin’s face and yelled, “This is all I got. You can’t buy that, really?” Alvin told him it was over. He was not going to buy any more from him for the rest of this season. Charles left in a fury, burning his tires on the pavement.

“It’s too bad,” Alvin told me. “I know they need the money, but they can’t do it right. You can’t teach stupid. I wish they wouldn’t take it personal. Everybody has to learn at first, but some just don’t want to.”

Alvin lent money to people in need, taught new skills, shared knowledge with less experienced pickers, and listened to lonely people’s stories. He even kept the money that Fred, who didn’t have a bank account, wanted to save for later. I asked him if being a kind of

146 Under the Radar social support for down-and-out people was common for mushroom buyers.

“That’s why it’s so hard to buy,” he replied immediately. “It’s hard to refuse people’s mushrooms when I know they need the money so bad.” Alvin said that most buyers inevitably end up lending money, although most only lend significant sums to pickers they know well, so they will keep picking for them. According to Alvin, if you lend ten bucks to a new guy, chances are that he won’t come back to you. He’ll go sell his mushrooms to another buyer. If the guy needed to borrow ten bucks in the first place, it’s normally because he does not make much money, maybe thirty or forty bucks a day, so having to pay ten back would hurt him too much.

The extent of Alvin’s dedication goes beyond his role as a buyer. His compassion for his fellow pickers makes him a moral compass and an invaluable resource for this seasonal work community. And such an elusive community, where people constantly drift in and out, depends on stable and devoted members like Alvin, Fred, Connie Green, as well as Jerry and Jay (who, like them, take responsibility for helping others succeed) to sustain itself.

On April 14, after ruminating for three weeks in his room, Bernie found the motivation to go picking. I saw him drive away with a big smile. He went to one of his old patches in Jackson State Forest. He was back before noon. I saw him talk to Alvin for a minute before he returned to his room, frustrated. I looked at Alvin quizzically. “The Mexicans were there before him,” he said.

Pickers used to respect each other’s patches, which made it possible to farm them. They could afford to harvest only the bigger mushrooms and left the young ones to grow. They came back regularly to their

147 Olivier Matthon patches, letting the mushrooms mature enough to produce their spores and harvesting them before they started to decay. Now the old circuit pickers consider farming almost impossible because of increased competition from the Mexicans.

According to Alvin, from 1992 to 2002 Anglos were the only pickers in Willits, with the exception of Tony and his crew of four or five Mexicans. In 2002, Fast Freddy, who had been collecting pickers’ phone numbers for years as he traveled on the circuit, wanted to buy winter mushrooms; so he called all the numbers he had, mostly from Mexicans, and convinced them to come pick in Willits. Between fifty and a hundred showed up that year, and the circuit pickers started to feel overcrowded by the Mexicans.

Some mushroom buyers take advantage of the vulnerable position of the Mexican pickers who are undocumented by paying them lower prices. These pickers have to harvest more mushrooms to make a living, which in turn puts pressure on all the other pickers to do the same. The overpicking that results could eventually jeopardize the ecological sustainability of the harvest. “We know that if we don’t harvest all the little ones, someone else will,” Alvin told me the first day I met him. He said that it bothered him to see people who should not be here in the first place harvest his patches.

“Well, maybe if they were given legal status,” I suggested, “they wouldn’t have to accept such low prices, and they wouldn’t need to harvest so many mushrooms. They could actually look for other jobs.”

“I think they would pick everything anyway; at least some of them would. They’re just younger, you know, they can cover more ground.”

I don’t know why I had ventured into such a slippery slope during our first encounter, but after a while I noticed that every time Alvin talked about the Mexicans, he mentioned how much younger and in

148 Under the Radar better shape they were. Jerry told me once that the Mexicans didn’t mind sharing a room among four or five people. Like carpooling, it reduced expenses considerably. I don’t think the circuit pickers resent the Mexicans because of their ethnicity, but because the way that they’ve adapted to the political and economic situation in which they find themselves puts pressure on the older circuit pickers’ livelihood.

A few days later, I witnessed how this pressure increases as access to land diminishes. Bernie was not ready to give up. Determined to go further out in the woods, he loaded his dirt bike in the back of his little truck. His plan was to use it to access gated logging roads. Unfortunately, these patches didn’t produce much this year, and he came back empty handed again. Private timberland used to be more accessible, but timber companies now tend to gate the entries to logging roads. “I used to have this awesome patch up north,” Alvin said. “But a few years ago they put a gate on it. The patch is twelve miles back. It’s gone forever now. The only way would be to sneak in with a dirt bike, but if they catch you, you’re in trouble.”

The economic value of the winter pick in Willits is negligible for the logging companies. But the pick has a social value: destitute people living on the fringe of society—people that nobody wants to hire because of mental health issues, alcohol and drug addiction, or unreliable working history—use it as a last resort income. Compared to other types of self-employment, picking requires very little investment.

Once when Fred and I went picking together, he bought a scratch-off lottery ticket and won $25. Looking at the other prizes he could have won, he said, “Wouldn’t it be awesome to win a hundred thousand dollars a year, for the rest of your life?”

“Would you still pick mushrooms?” I asked.

“Yeah I would. I would start a mushroom company. Sell to restaurants.

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And you know who I would hire?”

“Who?”

“Addicts. People with PTSD. People that are down and out and need some help.”

The other most important picking grounds for winter mushrooms are individual private properties, which are also difficult to access. Jerry told me about a guy name Rick who knew this really good patch of black trumpets on a ranch. Rick knocked on the door and asked the owner permission to pick. The owner said, “Sure, as long as you show me what and how to pick.” They spent the rest of the season picking there together. The next year, when Rick showed up, the ranch owner invited him in for a drink. After Rick downed his first whiskey, the owner told him, “It’s good to see you again, Rick. Now, if I see you on my property ever again, I’ll shoot you. You want another shot of whiskey?”

In Jackson State Forest, pickers lose harvesting grounds each time a portion of the forest is logged. Black trumpets, hedgehogs and yellow feet are mycorrhizal fungi: they form symbiotic relationships with plants and trees. They depend on their hosts to receive the moisture and carbohydrates that they need and, in return, they help the trees absorb mineral nutrients from the soil. The mushrooms won’t grow in quantity for many years following a clear-cut. Every time I went picking with Fred, he looked for portions of forest that were at least twenty years old. There were six different active timber harvest areas in Jackson State Forest in 2012.

While commercial mushroom picking in America is an income of last resort for some people who have been pushed to the margin of society, it is a way of life that other people choose. One night, as Fred cooked steaks for Alvin, Bernie and me, he talked about all the

150 Under the Radar college credits he earned without ever getting a degree. “I’ve never done good in the real world,” he said. “They don’t like me.”

“They don’t like me either,” Bernie said.

“Why is that?” asked Fred.

“Because we don’t want to conform,” Bernie answered. “That’s why we pick mushrooms. We’re the freest people in the world, here. We are our own bosses. This country is going to hell. We live in corporate totalitarianism.”

“The Constitution was founded on the principle of private property against the bankers who owned England,” Fred said. “This country is not a democracy, it’s the illusion of democracy.”

“A constitutional republic,” Bernie added.

“Our votes don’t count,” Fred concluded.

Another night Alvin and Bernie talked about people who abuse the system. They complained about a couple that came to Willits to pick mushrooms from a different state. As soon as they checked in at the Edgewood, they went directly to apply for food stamps before going to the food bank. Alvin and Bernie saw them as freeloaders, taking advantage of a system designed to help people who are not able to work.

Like other migrant pickers, Alvin and Bernie see their lifestyle as highly moral. They have always found a way to work around the obstacles they encounter. Ultimately, they keep playing the game on their own terms: they spend time in the woods, fishing, or hanging out with friends, not in courts, or in front of a computer writing letters of complaints, or in meetings with bureaucrats from the Forest

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Service. They are not torn each morning between the desire to change the world and the desire to enjoy it. Like the Canadian sojourner that Thoreau often encountered in the woods near Walden Pond, they enjoy their day-to-day life as it unfurls. “I pick mushrooms as a part-time job,” Bernie said once. “My full time job is kicking back and enjoying life.”

At four p.m. on Saturday April 21, Alvin brought his scale out of his room and set it on the folding table. He was officially open. He then went back in his room, sat on his bed, and watched Ultimate Fighting on television. He had decided that Monday would be his last buying day. He was now the last buyer left in Willits, and a lot of pickers he had never seen before were coming by with ugly mushrooms. He saw what kind of quality the other buyers had accepted. It was too late to train new people. Alvin just wanted to be in Crescent Lake. Fred and Bernie had left the day before for Gold Hill, Fred’s regular picking grounds. Fred needed wheels again, and Bernie needed someone who knew good early patches of morels and boletes. “It’s a symbiosis,” Fred had said before they left.

Soon two couples in their fifties showed up in a decrepit Oldsmobile. The men wore leather jackets and worn-out jeans. The ladies had makeup and hairdos from the 1980s. The driver got out of the car and brought a paper bag filled with black trumpets. Alvin looked in the bag and frowned at the big pile of mush. These were some of the worst mushrooms he had seen so far. He told the guy, “They have to be edible for me to buy them, you know.”

“They’re good,” the guy replied.

Alvin pulled a slimy rotten mushroom out of the bag. “Would you eat this?” he asked.

152 Under the Radar

“Yeah.”

“Well, you might have to.”

At 7:30 p.m., two guys stopped by with four baskets full of borderline blacks. Alvin tried to do what he could to help them out but bought only a few pounds. The older man, the one with the beer belly and Pink Floyd t-shirt, seemed disappointed and sick of trying to get by on breadcrumbs. “I’d rather do construction than this,” he said to no one in particular.

As they left, Jack arrived on his bicycle holding a bucket on each handle. Jack was a short man in his late forties with a thick black beard. He wore tight blue jeans and a baseball hat. He had come almost every day in the last week, always carrying two buckets on his mountain bike. It was the only transportation he currently had. Jack was waiting for the toilet manufacturing company to re-hire him.

At eight p.m. a man in his sixties came all the way from Ukiah with a basket of blacks. This was the third time he’d sold mushrooms this year. “This is my last time, though” he declared. “I’m starving to death, but this is my last time.”

Then at 8:45 p.m., the wino who had already borrowed money twice from Alvin came back to try to sell some mushrooms. He was still drunk. Alvin was losing patience.

“Am I gonna get my twenty-five dollars back?” Alvin asked.

“Well, not now. I need this money tonight.”

“Well, you don’t seem to have any intention to ever pay me back, so I won’t buy your mushrooms. And I’m the only buyer left in town.”

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The wino had no choice but to sell; Alvin got his money back, and the wino made fifteen dollars.

Sunday, Alvin was growing restless. Summer was around the corner, which meant trout fishing, morel and bolete picking, living in the woods, and kicking back. He thought about leaving early and dreamt of never coming back to Willits. “I wish I could make enough money in the summer and not have to buy in the winter,” he said. “I wish I could survive on picking alone, but with my arthritis buying is a good way to get by in the winter.” Like most people, Alvin would prefer to make his living by doing only what he likes most. But for now, he had to plan for next year.

He waited until ten p.m. for Pat, who was coming from Eureka, two hours north of Willits. Pat normally sold his mushrooms to a buyer in Eureka, but he heard that Alvin paid more and he wanted to see if it would be worth the drive. Alvin heard that Pat could pick large quantities, so if the quality was good he would buy from him the next time around. When Pat finally showed up with a dozen neatly packed baskets, Alvin took the time to go through each one to show Pat his quality standards. Before Pat left, they made plans to get hold of each other next year.

On Monday, Alvin’s last buying day, Bob, the ranch caretaker, showed up in his beaten Toyota Corolla with a paper bag full of gnarly mushrooms. After listening to Bob’s life story—his dead wife, his passion for singing, his loneliness—Alvin made him promise to call him next year so he could show him how to pick and make some money.

154 Under the Radar

Then Mark and Sarah finally brought the very last load of black trumpets. They had had a hell of a week: they’d lost their cell phone, Mark had gotten sick, and fifty pounds of mushrooms had turned moldy before they’d been able to bring them to Alvin.

“What are you guys gonna do this summer?” I asked Sarah.

“I hope I can find a job to make it through till matsy season in November. It didn’t happen last summer, though.”

“Give me a call if you need help,” Alvin told them.

I left Willits the next morning, telling Alvin I was considering picking mushrooms in the summer. “Just give me a call,” he said. “And you should definitely check out Crescent Lake in the fall, it’s really something else.” Then Alvin set off to deliver the last load of winter mushrooms to Connie Green in Napa. At last, with enough savings to last until the summer’s morel and bolete harvest, he returned to Willits, loaded his camper on the back of his little pickup, and drove towards one of the quietest fishing lakes in Oregon.

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157

Meredith Hobrla ABCs of Dirtbag Climbers: The Scene in Joshua Tree National Park Meredith Hobrla ABCs of Dirtbag Climbers

ARRIVAL This is MY Joshua Tree, and within it exists an eerie beauty of alien landscape, distorted figures and foreboding shadows. Even the trees stand twisted and gnarled, locked in some ethereal dance with the intoxicating waves of heat rising from the desert floor. Woven into this brilliant tapestry are giant fortresses of granite; fantastic castles of golden stone rising hundreds of feet into the air, temples of light set against a deep blue sky. -Robert Miramontes (v)

This description of Joshua Tree gives me hope on my 1300 mile drive. It is February 2012, and I am visiting the park for the third time in four years. The first time I came, I came to climb. The second time, to climb. This time I edge nearer to this alien landscape with a new purpose: to learn more about others who came as I did—the “dirtbags” of Joshua Tree. They live without jobs and homes, at least what most Americans would consider a home, and they are here to climb. Now, my climbing harness takes the backseat. My passion to live the dirtbag life is displaced by my longing to understand why that

161 Meredith Hobrla passion grew so strong in me and why it flows through the dirtbags in Joshua Tree. Why do we climb? What is the appeal of living on the road? What does Joshua Tree offer these wanderers? Driving through the barren Mojave Desert, the questions multiply and my heart races. Then it stops. I am here. Miramontes’ description does not fit the conditions of Joshua Tree at this moment. Adrienne Knute describes the East Mojave as “a land of contrasts—undulating sand dunes, jagged volcanic cinder cones, scorching heat, deep snows, raging flash floods, gale-force winds, supreme solitude, full campgrounds, tiny ephemeral annual wildflowers and 300-year-old spine-tipped trees” (1). I arrive at my destination at the mercy of one end of these extremes: deep snows and gale-force winds. There are no “intoxicating waves of heat rising from the desert floor.” No, I remember, the desert gets cold and the winds can knock a rock climber down and this isn’t always a dirtbag climber’s paradise. The west entrance, providing access to the majority of popular climbing spots, is closed for two days due to snow. The winds reach forty mph and several residents of Joshua Tree lose power.

Nestled between scorching heat and deep snow is a pleasant spring and fall climate in which most climbers revel. But spring is one month away. For now the climbers flock to Indian Cove, on a dead end road into the park, protected from deep snows and gale-force winds by rock formations on three sides. Anyone camping at one of the Cove’s 101 campsites can literally crawl out of their tent, walk ten feet, and start climbing up a rock.

EGINNING B Indian Cove is where I begin. There is a short wall here that gets plenty of afternoon sun and is speckled with climbers during the colder days. I watch a woman struggling up an easy-rated crack climb. She is swearing a lot. Her name is Betsey and she lives in New York City. Her partner, Daniel, a guide that Betsey has paid $350 for a day of showing her the ropes (literally), is shouting out

162 ABCs of Dirtbag Climbers encouraging words and beta. “Beta” is the term for the advice given by those standing at the bottom of a climb to the climber en route. As a general rule, unless climbers ask for help, it’s best not to tell them what they should be doing because they will respond with either “I tried that already” or “I can’t!” Since Betsey has paid Daniel for his services, she seems eager for the beta. Some climbers hate it. Some climbers need it.

Betsey is only here for the weekend. A car alarm erupts while she is on the wall. “Your rental’s goin’ off,” Daniel calls up to her. It is a 2012 orange and black Mustang. “That’s a rental?” I inquire. “It’s my birthday,” she replies. Some climbers in Joshua Tree are like Betsey, willing to spend a thousand dollars for a weekend climbing getaway. Then there are the dirtbags. Just as the snow-packed slopes have ski bums, rocks host dirtbag climbers: the nomads of each sport warrant their own name. After Betsey finishes her final climb, Daniel and I solo up (climb without ropes) to the top of the rock and chat while the sun vanishes behind the mountains and the air quickly cools. I tell him I have come to find the dirtbags. He gives me one name: Wayne, self-proclaimed “duke of dirtbaggers.” He assures me I can’t miss him, with the “mop-over” on top of his shaved head.

Soon we meet Wayne with his puppy Obsidian (a.k.a. Colonel Mustard) in tow. He has the reddened face that comes with living outdoors. He wears a weathered shirt completely frayed at the wrists and a red puffy vest. The mop of hair Daniel referred to is covered by a dirty cap. He cracks open a PBR. A joint is passed around. Later, when I give him a ride to the market to stock up on necessities—more beer, bacon, and pretzel M &Ms—he tells me he doesn’t smoke weed, only hash. He only puffed on the joint with Daniel to be polite.

This is Wayne’s first time in Joshua Tree. He’s lived at campsite #1 in Indian Cove for three weeks with Rosie Stinger, his broken down RV. He grew up in Kentucky but has been living on the road for almost

163 Meredith Hobrla seven years. Rock climbing is a recent passion for him, beginning six months ago back east. I am instantly drawn to Wayne’s “fuck it” attitude towards his crippled RV in a campsite with a fourteen-day limit. Other climbers drift in and out of his campsite, worrying about Rosie Stinger’s immobility. But Wayne could care less. He discovered rock climbing and now he’s discovered Joshua Tree.

RACKS C The reason that Betsey, Wayne, and thousands of climbers like them come to climb at Joshua Tree National Park is cracks. Thin cracks that only a finger will fit in. Wide cracks big enough for hands, arms, entire bodies. Cracks that split apart halfway up a rock, offering a climber two ways up. Cracks are the birth and life of rock climbing here. On outdoor rock, there are only two ways to climb up a rock: using holds on the face of a climb or using a crack to jam hands and feet into. Climbing up the face is called sport climbing. Climbing up a crack is called traditional (“trad”) climbing. Most rock climbers are sport climbers. Most dirtbag climbers are trad climbers.

An initial investment of about $1000 is needed to make it up a crack. Pretty steep for a dirtbag. At some point before dirtbag status is achieved, the dirtbag must have made enough money to buy all the gear to get himself up all the cracks he could imagine: thin, wide, shallow or deep cracks. Entire companies bank on the fact that climbers will climb up cracks. Climbing with a rope is a partner sport. As the first climber heads up a crack with the rope tied to himself, he places protection—“usually nuts that wedge or spring-loaded devices that cam in the crack”—which will catch him in case of a fall (Luebben 12). I once spent $109 plus tax on one spring-loaded camming device. Depending on how far I am willing to fall on a climb, I might place up to ten of these devices on a hundred foot climb. This is getting expensive.

Cracks require a hefty investment, and those willing to take the plunge

164 ABCs of Dirtbag Climbers are graciously rewarded in Joshua Tree. A visitor to the park once told me that the rocks look like giant deer-turd piles. The Joshua Tree National Park brochure more conservatively describes them as “heaps of monzogranite scattered across the land like careless piles of toy blocks.” To me the dome-like boulders appear to have plopped out on top of each other, each with several crack systems running between, supplying thousands upon thousands of climbing opportunities. Redstone, a weathered-looking dirtbag climber, possibly in his thirties, possibly in his sixties, is set on hiking out to the far reaches of the park to climb routes that have never been climbed before. The cracks in these deer-turd boulders lure thousands of climbers every year.

White Lightning, one of the park’s most popular climbs, lies dead center on Hemingway Buttress.

IRTBAGS DAndrew Bisharat, who writes for Rock and Ice magazine, has some ill-received opinions on the present-day American dirtbag:

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You’ve seen these scenesters and know their “dirtbag” look. The token Joeled hair from always wearing inappropriately warm beanies (but no shirt). The Ricky Martin face stubble carefully trimmed to suggest airs of indifference to personal hygiene. Last season’s plaid shirts and gusseted jeans that everyone swears they got on pro deal (everyone’s so pro). Eating directly out of tuna cans. Frumpy down coats with duct-tape patches. Ubiquitous headlamps worn 24/7… Today’s dirtbags are essentially the hipsters of the climbing world, reveling in their ironic frugality and making climbing a vapid, image-obsessed culture devoid of meaning…What started out as counterculture is now fully mainstream” (28).

You don’t have to speak “climber” to understand the references here. Bisharat makes two important claims: what a typical dirtbag will look/ act like now, and the fact that this wasn’t how it used to be. But many of today’s popular sports were considered obscure between the 1950s and the 1970s. Adventure seekers were a rare breed. Bisharat does not acknowledge that rock climbing’s recent popularity has made it impossible to fit his description of a true “dirtbag.” He defines the “original dirtbags” as possessing “the iron will to climb as much and work as little as possible” (28). Well, the dirtbags I’ve met in Joshua Tree so far, whether they be regarded as “originals” or the “hipsters of the climbing world,” pretty much fit this description. Most of them work only because they need enough money to climb. And yes, they also eat directly out of tuna cans and wear down coats with duct tape patches. (Hmmm…I fit this description too!)

Eve, a dirtbag climber I met through Wayne, takes offense at this article. She says that she and other dirtbags agree that Bisharat accurately describes their lifestyle but that he fails to take into account that this is 2012, not 1960. What Bisharat seems to be getting at is that being a dirtbag today means you are part of a mass culture, not

166 ABCs of Dirtbag Climbers part of a crazy group of friends living on the edge, defying human existence. In May of 2011, the cover of National Geographic featured a climber halfway up El Capitan. “Rock climbing is no longer a fringe sport,” wrote Mark Jenkins. “It’s mainstream” (110).

I’ve seen it and lived it again and again: cars and vans converted to make space for a bed, a small library consisting of climbing guide books and a few classics, ropes and gear contributing to a significant portion of volume and weight, and, of course, plenty of cans of tuna. Do these growing commonalities make dirtbags “mainstream”? The sport itself and the dirtbag lifestyle attract more participants every year, but the dirtbags I meet still feel they are on the fringe of society. Instead of comparing today’s dirtbags to today’s average American, Bisharat defines mainstream only in relation to a distant past. Dirtbags aren’t what they used to be, but until a mass of Americans move out of houses and into vehicles to rock climb across the country, they cannot be considered mainstream.

VE E She’s a five-foot-ten blonde bombshell, one of the only solo women I have met in Joshua Tree. At twenty-six she is a seasoned dirtbag, a classy version of the shower-scorning, crack-obsessed vagrants common in this park. Unlike most dirtbags, her job—she is a botanist for the Park Service—seems to hold her passion nearly as much a climbing. She will work in Wyoming this summer and eagerly awaits a response from two schools she has applied at to earn her Masters and Ph.D.

Each summer she works for a national park and each winter she climbs: in Thailand, Mexico, and all over the United States. This is the first year she has stayed in one place, and she has chosen Joshua Tree with a full heart. She loves it here and wants to stay, but job openings will send her in other directions. Her home for now is a GMC Safari van. She spends hours cooking breakfast and dinner,

167 Meredith Hobrla using a WhisperLite stove, camp fire, and dutch oven. Last night’s feast was jalapeno cornbread (a little burnt on the bottom) and a thick butternut squash soup with peanuts and kefir. Eve didn’t actually do the cooking. She was busy climbing and left the injured Wayne in charge, giving him instructions before heading out to the rocks.

REEDOM F Many of the dirtbag climbers cite freedom as their foundation, the reason they live the way they do and/or the ultimate goal in their travels. When I interview Emily and Jordan, a young couple on the road from Alaska, I ask: What is the appeal of leaving homes and jobs behind to live out of a vehicle and climb all the time? Jordan replies “Just…feeling free, like the feeling that you can do whatever you want.”

In The Labour of Leisure, Chris Rojek dissects the meaning of “free time.” He introduces his topic with the claim that “the analysis of free time practice always poses the subsidiary questions, freedom from what? And freedom from who?” He argues that freedom is “what distinguishes life in the West from conditions in every comparative social system.” He notes that this is especially true in American culture (1).

Rojek points out that the “Western idea of freedom is partly rhetorical,” reminding us that pure freedom is like pure chaos. If Jordan, for example, was free in the truest sense of the word, then his actions would be unrelated to any restrictions binding him, such as age, gender, family history, and social class. Rojek explains:

Freedom carries with it constraint and that constraint implies social and economic forces which position individual and group behavior. I can pursue leisure activities that fulfill the dictate of my private conscience. But my private conscience is a thing that is closely tied-up with the values of my family,

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community, education and work-group. It reflects the power divisions and interests thereof. My private conscience may reinforce the values of the community, in which case my leisure practice is that of a model citizen. Conversely, I may dissent from the values of my community and adhere to the values of some subculture or counterculture located as an anti-structure of dissent and resistance (67-68).

The fact that Jordan’s parents spend money frivolously would not influence his decision to live frugally if Jordan were truly free. But this is where rhetoric ends and reality sets in. His decisions are influenced by numerous factors, whether or not he is aware of them.

Lifestyle choices are responses to the constraints that mainstream society presents. Living on the road offers the freedom to live outside of certain cultural norms. Restrictions are still in place, however. This is why Andrew Bisharat can so easily define the characteristics of dirtbag climbers. They have formed their own culture. Common dress, common eating habits, and common values—such as the importance of “feeling free”—all suggest that, though dirtbags may decide to do whatever they want, their decisions are conditioned by decades of refinement.

Though I do not press the subject with Jordan, his contempt for his parents is obvious. In asserting his own freedom, he reinforces his belief that his parents are not free. What he may not realize is that they are simply subjecting themselves to a different set of cultural norms. Their values differ from his. And as Rojek observes, the freedom his dirtbag culture values can never fully be achieved.

EM 2009 G It’s March 2009. One of those gale-force wind days in Joshua Tree, making me absolutely miserable for the twentieth day in a row. My relationship with Joel feels shaky. All he wants to do is climb.

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I want to quit climbing and get the hell out of the desert. Go to a place where it makes sense to experience frigid temperatures all day. I thought we had come to the desert to bask in the sunshine. I thought we had taken this trip to experience the freedom of life on the road. Turns out, Joel wants his hands jammed into cracks at every waking moment. And now he’s led me on a half-hour scramble up and down boulders and into a canyon where the wind traces the creases in my frown while I belay him up a moderate fist-sized crack. It’s called Gem: his new favorite.

We’ve been living out of Betsey, his 1977 yellow Volvo station wagon, for the past five months. I had only climbed four times when we set out on this trip in October. My itchin’ to travel spirit induced visions of crazy characters, drives through wild country, sunshine, and love. I was ready for adventure. I was so in love. Joel spoke of Joshua Tree with reverence. He tried to explain the cracks and the mess of giant boulder piles that populated the national park. He was taking off with or without me. I invited myself. We had only known each other for a few months and the infatuation phase hadn’t worn off. He said yes.

Damn. I wish I had known climbing would be our life. I wish I knew what a dirtbag climber was. Wish I had known we were dirtbag climbers: he by choice and me because I’d asked to come along for the ride.

We stopped at several climbing spots on our drive down from Port Townsend, Washington, spots I now know are migratory layovers for dirtbag nomads following rocks and sun. Joel’s tireless love of climbing was admirable. His fearlessness took us to unknown places. We had been on the road a few weeks when we finally made it to Joshua Tree. I could feel Joel’s heart racing. It takes about seven miles more to reach the pronounced boulder piles with perfectly-sized fist cracks. Joel slowed down to point at the vertical fissures we would call

170 ABCs of Dirtbag Climbers home for the next several months. I yawned. Yeah, it was pretty. But I wasn’t experiencing the orgasmic state that Joel was working towards.

Working my way up Gem, I think about all the reasons I don’t want to be here. I jam my taped-up hand sideways into the crack, slotting it so it supports my weight. Too cold to be called a “desert.” I lift a foot and wedge it in until I can stand on it, crushing the side of my pinky

The author, stuck in a crack.

171 Meredith Hobrla toe. Sick of being poor and eating oatmeal every morning. I remove my right hand from the crack and reach up desperately, sliding it up and down the crack, feeling for the space that will fit my wrist snuggly. Want to find other ways to entertain ourselves besides climbing. “Keep me tight!” I call up to Joel as I feel my grip slipping. He sits at the top feeding the rope down to me and pulling slack as I ascend. A fall would drop me no more than two feet but my pride would plummet to the ground. My hands hurt and my toes are freezing! I find a good hold for my right hand and struggle up the rest of the climb. The wind at the bottom seems to have swirled up with me and leaves me utterly exposed to Hurricane Gem at the top. But I make it. Joel smiles and his pride soars over us like the red-tailed hawks that frequent the park. Birds leave when it gets too cold. What are we still doing here?

YGIENE H Unlike every other dirtbag I’ve met, Henry “showers” every day. He’s a late bloomer on the climbing scene. I meet him at sixty-seven years old and he started at forty-eight. He lives in his blue Volkswagen van. Every morning, he fills up two large thermoses with hot water from the gas station. After a day of climbing, he finds a private space in the desert to perform his ritual. He transfers the hot gas station water to two small plastic water bottles with holes poked in the caps. Get naked, turn the bottles upside down, and it’s a free shower! Henry smiles as he demonstrates the process. The act of showering really makes him happy.

How to stay clean when you’re a dirtbag? Since there are no showers in the campgrounds, most suffer through the coin-operated showers at Coyote Corner, a market in town that caters to dirtbags. The showers themselves are clean, private, and usually available. But showering is a chore akin to buying gas: it costs money and is time-consuming. Better to put it off until the tank is on empty and the dirt is getting in the way of climbing.

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But Henry expects a shower every day, just like Eve expects to cook every night. Perhaps his cleanliness is a stabilizing factor in his transitory life. Removing the luxury of a roof, carpet, toilets, and showers, Henry naturally simulates the experience of living in a home, stretching it beyond the enclosed space of his van onto the dirt and rocks. His shower reminds me of a recurring daydream I have where I stand outside, naked and alone, on a hot summer’s day, and, without a cloud above, the sky rips open and warm rain pours over me.

NJURED I List of injuries around the campfire on Tuesday, February 28:

Spider—shoulder out for past seven weeks Eve—ankle injury from climbing, wrist cut up from breaking up palettes for tonight’s campfire Me—tailbone injury from climbing, hip sore from hiking Wayne—shoulder out for unexplained reason Chris—tennis elbow from climbing (I don’t think climbing has been popular long enough to warrant injuries named after it. But give it a couple more decades and some wicked falls and we can change that.) Then there’s José—the one climber who is pain free tonight! Sit around a campfire with climbers and you find out that most of us are injured. Andrew Bisharat, quoting his massage therapist Kami: “All climbers think they’re injured. You’re not injured. You just climb too much.”

OHN LONG J John Long, a climber and a writer, qualifies as one of Bisharat’s “original dirtbags,” having arrived at Camp 4 in Yosemite in 1972, pinching pennies and fists just to climb (Bisharat 28). Along with

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Jim Bridwell (John’s hero) and Billy Westbay, he completed the first single-day ascent of El Capitan in 1975. To achieve a breakthrough of that magnitude today is a pipe dream for most climbers. But this isn’t why I adore John. It’s his writing.

In Rock Jocks, Wall Rats, and Hang Dogs, John Long recounts his life as a climber beginning in the 1960s. I read a guidebook written by him when I first came to Joshua Tree, and though I could barely understand all the climbing jargon I found myself laughing out loud to the brief stories he threw in. Rock Jocks is one continuous narrative, lasting decades. Here’s his account of his first climbing trip to Suicide Rock in the late 1960s:

The blunderings and methods we used that first day were exactly the same as those used by any other gung ho team on their initial climb. Naturally, Frustration was far too hard a route for us. Ricky led off with alacrity, but he slowed and wobbled and turned cadaverous at the first difficulties. As he clawed to a roof about 30 feet up, Richard and I started the standard ritual that always ensures a team of experiencing two climbs at once—the one you see and the one you hear. Ricky was shaking like he had dengue fever, but safe on the deck, we were yelling, “Looking solid, Ricky.” “Almost got that jug.” “Another foot.” “Yeah. Go for it.” “You’re making it look easy.” All of these were shameless lies, screamed in the hope of rallying Ricky straight to the summit so we wouldn’t have to take the frightening lead.

I appreciate this writing much more now after climbing for years, relating completely to “shaking like dengue fever” and “sweating the big drop” when I had to actually climb up the route instead of talking about how I could climb up the route. I remember thinking I was going to die on one of my first routes at Yosemite, one I professed would be no problem. At the crux (the most difficult move in a given

174 ABCs of Dirtbag Climbers route), Joel had scrambled up to a nearby ledge and was gleefully taking my picture. Almost in tears, I told him “Don’t take my fucking picture right now!” Oh, the memories…

These ritualized adventures are not exclusively dirtbag experiences, but weekend climbers will have far fewer of them than those who have no time constraints on their climbing.

UNDALINI-LINGUINI-WEENIE K Eve cooks leftover enchiladas with eggs and cheese at campsite #1 this morning, served with coffee, beer, and hits from the bong. Slow, sauntering mornings are common between this castle’s crags. She cooks delicious meals morning and night at Indian Cove, having joined Wayne for a free place to park her van. I drive to meet them early, and the morning sun is a promise of those in-between contrasts of the Mojave Desert. “It’s either hot or cold,” a local resident said of the weather. And this enchilada morning is a respite from that reality, the sun lightly toasting our skin. To the rocks! Lead up a 5.6 crack. Lead up a supposed 5.8 slab climb named Kundalini-Linguini-Weenie that sees about twenty falls among three people. “I don’t think that’s a 5.8,” says Eve. Rotating climbs, we shout out beta, swear at the long run-outs between bolts, and remove the initial three layers of clothing the morning wrapped us in. Wayne drinks three PBRs and takes several hits from his one-hitter. Eve tapes her ankle, says she should rest it after the sprain she re-injured this morning. Wayne says, “You sure you don’t want to try this one?” and she says, “Well…OKAY!” It’s not hard to convince an injured climber to climb.

Eventually reason trumps passion and Eve finishes the day early. Wayne and I carry on. Wayne begins a very slanted 5.9 crack and says, “This isn’t any fun at all.” Why stay in the crack, he figures, when you can step outside of it? He could be stoned for such a comment in this mecca of cracks. Sweat drips. The sun peaks and starts its descent. As do we. Down the rock we bounce on the rope to defy our own gravity.

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The ground catches up to us and it’s time to clean the mess that we (actually Wayne) have created. Gear is scattered, PBR cans have a little juice left, and little Colonel Mustard needs to be woken from her eternal nap. The sun is still high enough to light our walk back. Then it falls behind the first mountain and cold abruptly takes over. Redstone, Spider, and Floyd are sitting around campsite #1. These dirtbags have sniffed out our return. They, too, have climbed all day and are seeking free tobacco, beer, and weed before they go to the night places that dirtbags go.

OCKED AND LOADED L Rosie Stinger was bound for glory. Wayne bought her for $450 in Tahoe, and she made it all the way to campsite #1 in Indian Cove. The glory has ended and Wayne’s RV is about to get junked.

Lately, rangers keep leaving notes on his windshield to “register” or “pay” or “vacate.” And Wayne smiles. “They love me here,” he confirms, which I wholeheartedly believe because they never actually physically confront him about overstaying his welcome. He uses their notes as fire starter and watches the flames dance against the rock while contemplating his next move.

Billy, a tow truck driver from the nearby town of 29 Palms, is the next move. He’s hot and thirsty. Wayne cracks a beer as Billy drives up and steps out of his rig. “Want a beer?” “Hell yeah!” Instant friendship.

Beer is gulped, hash is smoked, difficult decisions about what to keep and what to give away are made. Billy lazily loads the RV and tells us his uncle will get suspicious if he’s gone for too long. But that doesn’t bear much weight on his decision to drink more beer and chat with Wayne about tripping on mushrooms and going to school in Indiana. The duke of dirtbaggers is like Cinderella. His fairy godmother is watching as the conversation leads to the question of how Wayne is going to store his stuff. Eve has offered him space in her storage unit

176 ABCs of Dirtbag Climbers for a nominal fee. But Billy the tow truck driver says, “Why don’t you just store it in my garage? It’s totally empty.” My jaw drops. Billy has just met Wayne and is now offering a free place to store all of his belongings. I’ve met a few kind tow truck drivers in my travels, but none as trusting as this.

Later, as we follow Billy, with Rosie locked and loaded, to his garage, Wayne says he could tell instantly that Billy was just a “good ‘ol boy.” Had I been the damsel in distress in need of a tow, I don’t think the day would have played out so well. We unload Wayne’s belongings into the garage. He takes me out to lunch to celebrate because it’s my birthday and life keeps dropping the right people in front of him. Goodbye campsite #1. Time for Wayne to find a new palace.

IGRATION M The more I interact with dirtbag climbers in Joshua Tree, the more I think of birds. Migrating birds. Birds like the White-crowned sparrow, Yellow-rumped warbler, and American robin that spend their winters in Southern California, traveling north as summer penetrates cooler climes. I think of the climbers who travel regularly to Joshua Tree each winter, making weather-dependent stops at familiar rocks along the way. Like the major flyways that migrating birds travel in North America—Atlantic, Mississippi, Central, and Pacific—dirtbag climbers carve out their own flyways. Joshua Tree is one stop along the route.

Morgan spent last month climbing in El Potrero Chico, Mexico. Emily and Jordan spent the fall in Bend, Oregon at Smith Rock. Floyd’s adventure began last year in Moab, Utah, where famous sandstone splitter-cracks speckle the landscape in the climbing area known as Indian Creek. Suquamish in British Columbia, Red Rocks in Nevada, Yosemite National Park in California, and Devil’s Tower in Wyoming are a few of the layovers climbers make on their destination to nowhere. Many “end up” in Joshua Tree, spending longer than a

177 Meredith Hobrla week or two because poor weather elsewhere offers no other climbing options. I asked Floyd Jennings, a fifty-six year old man living out of a Geo Metro, how long he usually stays at each location. After giving it some thought, he replied “Uh, well…it depends on the weather.” Like the White-crowned sparrow and Yellow-rumped warbler, the migrant dirtbags journey northward as the thaws open up new rocks, new nesting grounds.

“During migration, the arctic tern ignores temptations that other non- migrating birds indulge in. They dive voraciously for such handouts, while the tern flies on,” writes David Quammen. “Why?” he asks. Because, “These critters are hell-for-leather, flat-out just gonna get there. Another way, less scientific, would be to say that the arctic tern resists distraction because it is driven at that moment by an instinctive sense of something we humans find admirable: larger purpose” (37). I think back to my first trip to Joshua Tree with Joel. He was an arctic tern and I a local gull. He could think only of climbing, while I constantly took the bait offered to engage in other activities. Perhaps I never really was a dirtbag, after all.

EW PALACE N The same day Billy the tow truck driver takes the RV, Wayne finds a new palace. Camp 34 is located in Hidden Valley Campground. Eve left Indian Cove a few days earlier to secure a prime spot in this coveted paradise. Hidden Valley has always been the climbers’ campground. Unlike Indian Cove, no reservations are offered. It’s a first-come, first-serve fight for the best spots in the park. There are thirty-nine campsites. Tourists and dirtbags alike circle the loop like turkey vultures, with their keen sense of sight and smell, waiting for the chance to feast on the remnants of an empty site. I drop off the duke of dirtbaggers at camp 34. He will remain there for the next three weeks.

The climbing trend at Joshua Tree National Park began at Hidden

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Valley Campground. Author Rjose Vogel notes that “Today, it is hard to imagine Hidden Valley Campground as anything but congested. However, during the late 1960s what [climber Woody] Stark remembers is the solitude. The campground was never full and most campers were retirees” (36).

As more technical climbers visited the park, first ascents got harder and riskier. Joshua Tree climbing is unique because the routes are so short. The giant deer-turd piles rarely top 100 feet. Granite domes in Yosemite and Tahquitz commonly thrust thousands of feet into the air. Climbers could test their technique and strength in Joshua Tree, like runners focusing on speed instead of endurance. The super- climbers of today are pushing the limits past what was once thought possible. But for the rest of us, Joshua Tree provides climbs at every level. Hidden Valley contains a vast array of moderate climbs, most within a five minute walk from the car.

Climbers during the 1970s and 1980s were the ones who started to push those limits. Certain names, like John Long, are mentioned in the climbing world with air of reverence. He came to Joshua Tree in the early 1970s. After months on a “concentrated diet of climbing,” he had climbed nearly all of the hardest established routes and began ascending new lines, harder lines. Within eight years, Long “freed or established approximately ninety routes in the monument. The quest for first ascents was often ruthless” (Vogel 40). Long is celebrated for his charisma, endless energy, and fearless pursuits.

Fast forward to 2012 in Hidden Valley Campground. Wayne, Eve, and random passing-through dirtbags end up at camp 34, a practice that has occurred for the past four decades. There are hundreds of cracks in every direction. Dozens of climbers talk excitedly about their latest gear purchases, terrifying climbing experiences, and all the routes they have and have yet to climb at Joshua Tree.

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Wayne takes part in this conversation but, being injured, does not revel in boasting of bagged climbs. His unexplained shoulder injury prevents full rotation of his arm. I ask him what motions aggravate it and he says, “Oh, basically pulling up.” Well, that might hinder his ability to ascend a vertical rock using his arms. Just a bit. No worries, though. Each day I find him in good spirits, playing house-husband to Eve and the other climbers who drift in and out of camp 34. He cooks fabulous meals, takes care of Colonel Mustard the puppy, and lives as a king in his new palace. ODE TO THE MOJAVE Wake up in the morning To sunshine and heat This desert dries me out I cannot sleep I climb higher and higher And I fall so low When I get to the top All I have to do, is let go

AYING FOR FREEDOM PWhat do all dirtbags have in common? An acquired distaste for spending money. Camping fees in particular just don’t factor into dirtbag finances. My own experience involved several nights of waking up in a campground at seven a.m. and bolting before the rangers made the rounds to make sure all sites had been paid for. Eve won’t pay for camping. Even Phyllis, a dirtbag climber turned park ranger, reluctantly confessed her membership in this group: Meredith: When you were living the dirtbag lifestyle, did you feel like you broke some of the rules that now you enforce? Phyllis: Yes.

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Meredith: Like what? Phyllis: [long pause] This is just for your paper? Meredith: [laughter] I’m not gonna go tell your boss… Phyllis: [another long pause] I hardly ever paid for camping.

Avoiding a ten dollar campsite expense means sixty more miles of gas to get to and from the good climbing spots. Whole Foods Market provides sample cups that, when used discreetly, can provide entire meals for free. If climbers don’t want to pay for toilet paper, they can easily find a Joshua Tree National Park bathroom with rolls ready for the taking. The equation is simple: don’t pay for what is available for free.

UEENS OF STONE Q Three women reflect on their dirtbag lifestyle: Eve: “It gets easier the longer I do it. Now, I know where to get the free showers. I know where the free camping is. I know the good dumpsters and where to get palettes and all that stuff. It gets a lot easier.” Phyllis: “I went to college. I graduated. I worked my ass off for five years doing, like, three jobs all the time. And then decided that’s not how I wanted my life to be. So that’s when I quit everything and moved into my truck.” Jess: “I very quickly fell into an addictive pattern of climbing. I was working as a dentist at the time. I had my own practice so I could pretty much determine when I wanted to work. And in the ensuing months and years, I whittled down working to one day a week and climbing six days a week. It was crazy.”

ASTA CAR R For a soft-spoken man, Floyd’s choice of vehicle is not discreet. Most dirtbags end up living out of the vehicle they already own,

181 Meredith Hobrla whether or not it was designed for this purpose. I’m pretty sure that’s what Floyd did. He’s managed to make a Geo Metro his home for almost a year now. Luckily he is small; Metros are the smallest car I can imagine cramming my life into for any extended period. The joy of his baby is that she’s painted bright red, yellow, and green. Floyd is the kind of man I could stare right at and still not see. But no one can help being drawn to his bright chariot in this faded brown desert. And he actually sleeps in it! He’s gutted the front seat, built a small platform, and laid a piece of plywood on top. I went through much the same process while preparing for my second trip to Joshua Tree in 2010.

Floyd’s Geo Metro doesn’t exactly blend in.

By my definition, to earn “dirtbag” status you must live out of a vehicle or tent, exceptions allowed on a case-to-case basis. Some go for economy, like Floyd, and some for comfort. All go for cheap. His Rasta car is like home in a can: everything one needs, compact and portable.

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AIL AWAY 2010 S Jenna hated crack climbing when she first arrived. I make my second trip to Joshua Tree in April 2010 with her as my partner. A couple weeks in, she’s already cozying up to the cracks. It doesn’t take long for her to recognize the beauty in each crevice, the miracle of a perfect, fist-sized line going straight up the monzogranite. She is learning the dance as I did, between strength and technique, balance and grip, finger tips and pinky toes. The cracks offer their deep secrets, an element that rock faces expose too easily. Hands learn to act without eyes to guide them. Feet act as wedges between the body and the ground seventy feet below.

As a beginner, it’s a free-for-all once the hand seeks stability. The hand shoves itself deep into the crack, wiggling around for something, anything to grab onto. Jenna’s instinct from training on face climbs is to use her fingers to grip a hold, as if she is doing a pull-up. But her efforts are exhausted as she realizes there are only two vertical walls with space in between. She must use her whole hand, her arm, elbow, whatever fits. She must let the rock hold her instead of trying to hold the rock.

We’ve climbed together for almost a month as I lead up Sail Away. The line begins straight up, traverses slightly to the right, and continues up to top out around sixty feet. My arms don’t flail inside of the crack, gripping with desperation as they once did. I am calm and feel safe, an emotion I take for granted while still on the ground looking up. My gear is attached to my harness. Several sizes of wedges and cams dangle, offering options to protect myself throughout the widening and narrowing of this crack. I find secure grips for my hands and step one foot off the ground. Then the other. My whole body is embedded in this crack now. Breathe. I have done this before. I contort my limbs to fit its shape. My right ankle twists itself sideways to support my weight as I pull my left foot out of the crack. Holy shit, this hurts! Every bone in my ankle is crushing against this unforgiving beast! I quickly jam

183 Meredith Hobrla my left foot back in the crack, frantic and ungracefully. It’s easy to feel safe at the bottom of a crack. Once inside of it, the rough edges and deceiving depth alternate between swallowing me up and spitting me back out. I must keep my weight pushed into the rock while all of gravity fights to pull me out of it. Okay. Place a piece of gear. If I fall, it will catch me. If I fall it will catch me. I’ve never fallen on gear that I’ve placed, so I’ve never had the chance to prove it will catch me. Until now.

Forty feet up the wall, my feet are both wedged in the crack, one stacked on top of the other. My right hand extends into its darkness to hold me flush against the rock’s surface. Jenna peacefully watches me from the bottom, feeding me rope as I climb higher. She is my cheerleader when I get stuck and need inspiration or when I pull off a super-sweet move. With my right hand feeling solid, I remove a foot to step up and find a home for my left hand. Maybe the rock was slippery. Maybe that solid right-hand hold wasn’t so solid. Maybe my ego took over and I forgot I wasn’t invincible. OH MY GOD! I’M FALLING! QUICK, GRAB SOMETHING! Grabbing the rope does not help me whatsoever, but I feel the need to hang on to something. As I fall past the piece of gear I have placed eight feet below, my left hand reaches out for the static rope, the rope leading directly to Jenna, hoping it will slow down my imminent death. Motion, motion, motion… stillness. I am hanging in mid-air. I am hanging in mid-air! I’m not dead! I’m alive, so alive! The small piece of metal protection I have wedged into the crack to save my life in case of a situation like this has held my entire body weight. The physics of this situation are breathtaking. I recognize this and, accordingly, cannot breathe.

URKEY VULTURES T The local bird watchers call them TVs. Spring is opening itself up discreetly in this barren desert: tiny green buds color the otherwise brown landscape of desert willows and creosote, the sun’s warmth is carrying over into the cool evenings, and turkey vultures stop by for

184 ABCs of Dirtbag Climbers a visit on their way north. At seven in the morning, I drive down to the local preserve and am frozen in place as I look up into a giant cottonwood tree spotted with the massive TVs. Dozens of them perch on flexible branches, preening, showing off their great wingspans, resting, and waiting for the winds to whisper “Let’s go.”

There is a wall jutting up against Hidden Valley Campground called the Old Woman. Some of the most popular climbs in the park are found on this wall, and dozens of climbers populate its base, mid-section, and peak. Drivers-by likely slow down as they say to themselves, “Is that…no! It can’t be! Wait…it is! Oh my gosh! Look Honey! There’s people up there!” The climbers don’t mean to put on a show for star-struck tourists. They just need a place to rest, to test their great strength. They need a place to perch before the winds send them northward.

NDECIDED U Wayne’s got that itch to start moving again. I mention that I would like to see some of the Southeast before I start my journey back to the Pacific Northwest. “Want to drive me to Kentucky?” he begs. He lists off all the climbing stops we could make along the way: Red Rocks, Moab, all the layovers where the migrants gather for a taste of that sweet rock. He’s got nowhere to go and nowhere to be. “Oh, what about Mexico?” he offers. This is his seventh year in a row living on the road and a chance meeting with an Evergreen student writing about dirtbag rock climbers could be just his ticket out of the Southwest. Now that Rosie Stinger is gone, Wayne’s burdens are light. The anticipation of summer offers an entire country for him and Colonel Mustard to explore his new love of climbing. I graciously decline the chance to spend days in a car with him. Hitchhiking, I say, has always worked for me.

ERTICAL V Why did I climb? Why do the dirtbags keep trekking up? John

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Long reasons that “most climbers enter the sport for the same reasons people go hiking or mountain biking or river running—to break the rote of everyday living, to get outdoors where you can crack a sweat and grab a manageable thrill amongst company similarly disposed” (Rock 41). And why might a climber keep facing his vertical limits, bloody- knuckled and scarred month after month by the rock? “The reasons he is climbing are deeper than words can go. He only knows that it is not desire or even skill that keeps him moving, but obligation. He has to climb…The reasons, whenever stated, never sound quite right, and only matter to nonclimbers anyway” (9).

HITE LIGHTNING 2012 W Now at Joshua Tree for the third time, I stand at the base of White Lightning. It is a perfectly-split, 100 foot, hand-sized crack on the Hemingway Buttress, a looming monolith located centrally in the park. Every other party wanting to climb this route will tell me I am crazy. In fact, a man tells me I should be more considerate and not climb this route in front of his girlfriend and him. He says this because I have decided to go up solo—no partner, no gear, no rope. I laugh as I think of what my good pal John Long writes about our kind: “There are two types of individuals who climb without a rope: the world-class climber whose experience is extensive and who knows her capabilities and limits perfectly, and the sorry fool who doesn’t know any better and is courting disaster” (How 9). Sadly, I fit into the latter group.

The first twenty feet are the hardest. I know this. I fear this. I stem my legs out in opposite directions to gain the first ten feet. My right foot presses against complete vertical rock, no solid hold to keep it in place. It almost slips and my heart skips a beat, then pounds hard for a minute straight. If I fall, I die. Simple as that. Once I make this next move, I cannot turn back.

Yes, I have to risk it. I have started a battle with climbing, a battle with

186 ABCs of Dirtbag Climbers the dirtbag lifestyle and the allure of supposed freedom. If climbing offers any kind of freedom, then soloing must be the apex of all dirtbag aspirations. The next five moves will be the hardest and I know I am about to freak out. I have stemmed my feet up about ten feet and the crack begins here. It is deep and too big for my hand to wedge itself in but too small to snuggly fit an arm. My right arm thrusts itself in searching for anything to hold my weight. I can’t trust anything about my body when I feel one inch from falling to my death. My hand has nothing to hold, my feet are about to slip and the most intense fear I have felt in my life is beginning to paralyze me. SNAP OUT OF IT! DO SOMETHING! I take the biggest leap of faith I can imagine (which only amounts to about six inches) and try to step up onto a foot that is shaky and unbalanced. My hand has nothing to hold but I can’t turn back now. I have to believe that fear alone will keep me flush against this rock. With my right foot in the crack, I shift all of my weight onto it and reach up desperately for something to prevent me from falling backwards. My right hand finds the deep hold I knew was hiding in the darkness. I can’t tell if my heartbeat has stopped or if it is beating so fast it just produces a steady hum. Home. I am home. And only twenty feet off the ground. Eighty more to go, but the risk is over. I made it through hell and heaven is just above, waiting for me to climb up free of any ropes, chains, expectations, or fears.

I cruise up eighty feet of vertical utopia. When I need a hold, it is there. When fear washes over me again, I think not of death but of life. Do I love my life enough to keep living it? I know I am crazy for climbing without a rope and as the man at the bottom reminds me, yes, people die from soloing. I also know that I have to do it. Because I can. And because I might not have the guts to do it again. At the very top of the rock I pause to look out at the tourists who snapped my picture in awe and fear as I wrestled up the route. The sun is intense and the salty sweat dripping down my forehead stings my eyes. It’s a rush, and a risky one. Perhaps it’s the only way I can feel like one of the “original dirtbags,” living a life that society today can never truly

187 Meredith Hobrla achieve. Or perhaps it’s time for me to offer an extreme farewell to my fading climbing obsession.

I climb down the back side of the wall and head back to the base of White Lightning. If I’m going to leave, I’ve got to leave right. I look up, again filled with fear, and head back up the route, determined to climb it again and again until all trace of fear is gone.

-RATED X If the GMC Safari van’s a-rockin’, don’t come-a-knockin’. Well, it’s rockin’ and Wayne is inside. In a strange twist of events, romance has bloomed between the duke of dirtbaggers and the five- ten bombshell. It’s springtime, mating season. Wayne’s eyes sparkle as he whispers to me the recent developments in the GMC Safari van. Kentucky was last week’s proposed destination and now his mind is set on Wyoming. Eve has landed a job at a national park there for the summer. Now that Wayne has sweet-talked his way into her van, he might just want to try this “plan” thing out after all.

OUTH Y Henry is sixty-seven. Floyd is fifty-six. They are a rare breed, stragglers left over from generations of nomads, wanderers, and dirtbags. Most of us young folk won’t make it that long. We’ll feel the strain of poverty, hear the voices of parents wondering how long it’s going to take to “figure things out.” Maybe, we decide, we do want kids after all. Or perhaps we even want to get (gasp!) a “real job.”

Most dirtbags are in their twenties. Though most choose not to see much past next month, this isn’t a forever kind of lifestyle. Eve describes her current life of working summer jobs and climbing the rest of the year: “That’s kind of what I’m trying to get away from. I spend half the year exploring other pursuits and then I just take off and focus on work and making money. And it’s like this disconnect and inability to really put down roots anywhere.”

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Roots. That word carries depth, layers beneath the fragile desert soil. Our youth is a time to branch off in funky new directions, like Joshua trees whose branches twist and spawn new growth seemingly at random. We nest in portable homes and cut our ties with limitations. We are fueled by the American sense of individualism, yearning to separate from the masses and explore the crevices of the world. We climb up to the thinnest, highest branches of our mother tree. We find purpose in the journey it takes to get so high.

And then the growth slows. The shaky branches start to feel solid. We start thinking in terms of years rather than months. We find real people with real jobs living extraordinary lives. Our roots start showing. Youth may have tricked us into forever but we start to see the end. Henry and Floyd have traced these branches up and down, watched their children travel the same paths. They roam the desert, far away from the water source. But we, the children, are thirsty for home.

ION Z Jews refer to Zion as their promised land, a utopia for a wandering people. I have wandered long enough and prepare to journey northward to Zion—National Park, that is. After traipsing about Joshua Tree for many weeks with the dirtbags, I long for a homeland, a place to feel rooted. My best friend works and lives in Zion National Park and offers her oasis: a roof, carpet, a toilet and a shower. More than these, I need friends. I need family. I need a deeper purpose because climbing is carrying me too far up and away. Standing on the ground in the deep canyon of Zion National Park leaves many visitors wishing they could climb up and out. But I know better. The rocks are too steep and the cool, satisfying water only flows at the bottom. The East Mojave has begun its transition from deep snows to scorching heat. I arrived in February to snows and leave Joshua Tree in April on a ninety degree day. Maybe I’ll be back. Or maybe I’ll leave my dirtbag youth behind.

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Works Cited

Bisharat, Andrew. “American Dirtbag.” Rock & Ice. 192 (2011): 28-31. Print.

Jenkins, Mark. “Daring. Defiant. Free.” National Geographic. 219.5 (2011): 98- 117. Print.

Knute, Adrienne and Carl Faber. Plants of the East Mojave. Cima: Wide Horizons, 1991. Print.

Long, John. How to Rock Climb! 4th ed. Guilford: FalconGuide, 2004. Print.

Long, John. Rock Jocks, Wall Rats, and Hang Dogs: Rock Climbing on the Edge of Reality. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. Print.

Luebben, Craig. Rock Climbing: Mastering Basic Skills. Seattle: Mountaineers, 2004. Print.

Miramontes, Robert. A Complete Bouldering Guide to Joshua Tree National Park. Huntington Beach: K. Daniels, 2003. Print.

National Park Service. Joshua Tree. National Park Service. Print.

Quammen, David. “Great Migrations.” National Geographic. 218.5 (2010): 31- 51. Print.

Rojek, Chris. The Labour of Leisure: The Culture of Free Time. Los Angeles: Sage, 2010. Print.

Vogel, Rjose. Rock Climbing Joshua Tree West. Guilford: FalconGuide, 2006. Print.

190

Kyle Sullivan-Jones Joey’s Voice: Family and Community Support for Students Diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder Kyle Sullivan-Jones Joey’s Voice

The traditional doorframe logging of a child’s height, marked in pencil lines and dated, does not exist in “Joey’s House.” Cindy tracks her son’s height in the forehead-shaped dents climbing up the stainless steel refrigerator. The sheetrock can be replaced, the drywall patched; but steel doesn’t forget.

Cindy is Joey’s voice. Joey is Cindy’s twenty year-old son. Joey is five- foot-eight, 260 pounds. He has a diagnosis of severe autism, bipolar disorder, and seizure disorder.

Joey has no concept of time, yet his days are scheduled, and he understands his schedule. In Joey’s mind there is no time, only task. Cindy, on the other hand, has an astute sense of time, a skill essential to minimizing stress in her life, and in Joey’s. Joey has transition anxiety. If he’s expecting a new task to begin and there is a delay, he may act out. It’s a gamble; Joey’s bipolar disorder is rapid cycling and on occasion he shifts moods up to fifty times within an hour. A failed transition may be greeted with manic laughter, self-inflicted bodily harm, or not greeted at all if Joey is in the midst of one of his many mild seizures.

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Joey lives with his mother in a modest-sized house in residential Walla Walla, Washington. About seventeen years ago, Cindy, in response to her son’s inability to comprehend pronouns, began referring to their home as “Joey’s house.” The house is clean and well organized. At first glance, it is impossible to notice all the ways in which the common areas of the house have been specially outfitted. The absence of glass, the locked cabinets, the caged light bulbs: these modifications are the tangible evidence of lessons learned in Joey’s continuing education of the people around him. Since his first viewing of the slipper shattering in Disney’s Cinderella, Joey has developed a penchant for recreating that sensory experience, and is adept at finding real-life alternatives to the fictitious slipper. When Joey is able to sneak in a little destruction, the sensory satisfaction is such that no punishment will deter him. Therefore, “Joey’s house” contains no glass that could be thrown, leaving only the windows and television.

The portion of the house in which Joey can most often be found begins with a hallway at the back of the living room. There is a heavy metal screen door that, when shut, prevents Joey from leaving this area, enabling Cindy to shower without worry. The wall outside Joey’s room is fitted with a large whiteboard upon which the day’s activities are listed. Below the whiteboard a Velcro strip holds laminated photos of each task, activity, and meal: a visual outline of the day. Task, not time. To the right of the whiteboard a large monthly desktop calendar lets Joey see what days he must attend school. “Summer” doesn’t exist; for Joey, summer is “no school.” Task, not time.

The doorframe of Joey’s room is reinforced to support a swing that, because of his weight, he can no longer use. The ever-shifting meds and their dosages, while removing great distress from Joey’s life, cause him to steadily gain weight. During the year and a half that Joey was on Abilify, an antipsychotic and antidepressant, he gained ninety pounds. Once off Abilify, the weight remained.

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One of the most prominent features of Joey’s room is the large collection of children’s movies. Mounds of small, mutilated toys litter the floor, recently dumped from one of the many large pale blue storage containers that hold them. To deal with stress Joey always has two toys in one hand. Often the toys are Beanie Baby-like Disney characters that Joey has torn open and whose stuffing he has removed. One of the storage containers houses these pelts of Disney. In another rest the dismembered torsos of many famous wrestlers. It started with the hands and feet. Eventually, Joey amputated and disposed of the arms to the elbow, the legs to the knee, the head. Despite their physical trauma, the wrestlers ride first-class in Joey’s Playmobil stagecoach.

Diagonal from the bed is the computer where Joey repetitively watches clips that Cindy has bookmarked for him: images and sounds that Joey enjoys, such as the sound of a baby crying. The floor underneath his computer was recently replaced because Joey routinely urinated from his chair rather than take his eyes off the computer. His parents hadn’t realized what was happening because the urine rolled toward the wall over the plastic floor cover that allowed his swivel chair to move. The smell led them to the rot.

All over the walls in Joey’s room are the marks of recent frustrations. Often overwhelmed by his inability to communicate his desires, needs, and disagreements, Joey slams his forehead through the sheetrock.

I was twenty-one when I began working one-on-one with Joey at Walla Walla High School in January 2008. Every day, I pedaled there on my Montgomery Ward cruiser, met Joey at his bus, and walked with him to the classroom. In the back corner of the room an area was set up specifically for Joey, with supplies provided by his mother. After hanging up his coat and putting his snack in the fridge, Joey

197 Kyle Sullivan-Jones would sit at his desk, point to the previous day on the calendar and exclaim, “Yes!” My hand over his, we would draw an “X,” indicating that yesterday—task, not time—was completed, and we could begin the task of today.

I worked with Joey on rudimentary math with calculators and fake money. I helped him with worksheets designed to reinforce differences and similarities between objects, and I prompted him to stay on task during simulated data entry activities. During his free time Joey engaged in fantasy play with whatever toy characters were available. Occasionally, Joey would hand three balls to me and then point and say: “Yes.” I learned to ask: “Juggle?” To which Joey would repeat: “Juggle.” While I tossed the objects into the air in a rhythmic pattern, Joey inevitably cycled between a belly laugh and a manic giggle. Often, I’d catch the balls to see if Joey was paying attention. His laughter would cease but his smile would remain, as he pointed to me: “Yes.” Juggling and laughter would resume.

On Joey’s calendar a laminated photo of a gymnasium denoted the task of physical education. During the winter months, Joey and I joined the rest of the special education students in the gym, but when weather permitted we would avoid the overstimulation of that environment and walk across the street to the baseball field, where we’d make slow laps around the paved walkway. Joey didn’t always like walking, and many times I was just able to slip my hand between his forehead and the fence as he tried to demonstrate his disagreement with our activities. Then, through Cindy’s advocacy, the school purchased an adult tricycle for Joey. It brought him so much joy that he would often close his eyes and giggle with delight.

As time went on, Joey and I fell into a rhythm. I became attached to Joey and I like to think that he became attached to me, though he rarely demonstrated any attachment. Outside of his immediate family, Joey rarely initiates physical affection, so I assumed that his

198 Joey’s Voice continued willingness to work with me every day meant that I was at least a tolerable part of his life.

I had been working with Joey for about eighteen months when, while at home, he hit his head in anger so forcefully that the swelling it produced obscured his vision. It was several days before the swelling reduced and two black eyes appeared. When Joey entered the classroom his first day back, I noticed that the calloused lump on his forehead had grown in its resemblance to the horn of a baby rhinoceros and that the swelling had gone down just enough to allow sight from eyes encircled in black. Cindy had a hand of motherly comfort placed on his back, and Joey had an air of vulnerability. Joey walked straight to me, turned his ear to my chest, and hugged. Thankfully, Joey’s mother was in the room, because despite my fear of physical contact with students as a male in the public school system and my rehearsed methods for diverting such contact, I was too busy suppressing tears to stop this hug. In the years I’ve known Joey that is the only time he has initiated an obvious display of affection and comfort with me. It was a reward of satisfaction and self-worth that no glowing employee review could match.

During the two-and-a-half years I was employed as a paraprofessional in the special education program, I worked with Joey for the first half of the day and with students of all disabilities and levels of severity for the second half. I helped them with daily living skills, reading, math, and social skills, and assisted in toileting and feeding.

Last August I left Walla Walla for college in Olympia. In a class that provided the opportunity to do ethnographic fieldwork, I decided to look more closely at the lives of students diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). I wanted to learn more about the circumstances of students and their families, about the adequacy

199 Kyle Sullivan-Jones of the services they receive in school, about whether and how their voices are being heard. I chose Walla Walla as the main focus of my study because I was already familiar with the workings of the school district and had good rapport with several students and their parents. I began with Cindy and Joey because their story has always intrigued me. And I just missed Joey. I soon realized that I wasn’t collecting evidence so much as I was witnessing lives. My inquiry inflicted on me a sense of ever-growing complexity. There were no answers, only lives, and the commonalities that connected them.

My first day back in Walla Walla, I drive to “Joey’s house.” Cindy is glad to see me but not effusive; she learned long ago that her energy is not to be wasted on emoting. Joey is out with his father getting his weekly reward of McDonald’s, and will soon return. Now, sitting in the living room, Cindy hands me a plastic cup full of water and we begin our first interview.

“Between the ages of one and two he didn’t learn anything. I had his hearing tested three times, because I thought maybe he couldn’t hear, and each time he could hear. This was eighteen years ago, they didn’t like to come right out and say autism at that point. The ear, nose, and throat doctor had suspected autism and didn’t say it. I had asked his pediatrician if he had autism, and he said: ‘He comes to you for comfort, so no, that’s not what it is.’

“It took six months to get the group evaluation, and they did a series of tests that lasted a day and a half. It was rough. What they did tell us was that he was autistic and was on the severe end of the spectrum, which was hard to hear. That was really hard to hear. I actually went back to the hotel, and we were going to do all this stuff in Seattle for fun—my mom and my brother had come up—and I said: ‘I just want to go home.’ But before I went home I talked to the psychologist at length on the phone, ‘cause I thought: How did you get that from what I answered? And she was very kind, I’m sure that happens a lot,

200 Joey’s Voice and we went over it, but I still thought: How can you, at age two, you know, tell me how he’s going to function? But [here, Cindy sighed]… anyway, that started that road.”

Diagnosis of a child often marks a dramatic change in the life of a family. Whether it is met with denial, depression, or the cathartic relief provided by closure, the child has been assigned an identifier other than his or her name. It is common for the parents of a recently diagnosed child to go through a period of time during which the way they think of their child shifts from “my child” to “my autistic child” and then back to “my child.”

At two years of age, Joey had been diagnosed relatively quickly, especially for the time period. Two decades ago, autism was not very well-known or well-understood, even among pediatricians. Since then, awareness—and diagnosis—have skyrocketed. Still, autism can manifest itself quite differently among individuals and, for that reason, misinformation and oversimplification remain common. Misconceptions tend to delay diagnosis, as Cindy experienced when her pediatrician rejected the possibility of autism based on Joey’s emotional connection to his mother. Early intervention is extremely beneficial to children diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. Had Cindy not pursued an evaluation of her son, services and therapies would not have been implemented as quickly.

One might imagine that Joey goes through life like a bull in a china shop: aggressive, destructive, and nearly impossible to supervise. This is not the case. Yes, Joey is difficult. But Joey has never been physically aggressive toward another person. He never bangs his head without a reason, although there are many reasons. For Joey’s life to run smoothly, he needs people around him who are understanding and patient. Early on in Joey’s education, Cindy experienced firsthand that not everyone was able—or willing—to put forth the effort required.

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“The resource room teacher didn’t have any kids that functioned at his level, and didn’t want any. She thought he should go into the contained classroom. I didn’t want him in the contained classroom, and I didn’t want him to disrupt the class. So I wanted him to go in part of the time and then go in the resource room, but I wanted him to go to his community school, ‘cause the kids that lived in the neighborhood were there, and he’d been there since kindergarten. We had many, many meetings, really, really uncomfortable meetings with about twelve people, and that’s when the director came to me, and she actually said to me: ‘I love my staff, and I support my staff, but I’ve never seen [staff] work so hard to have a child removed from their school. And what you need to do is think: is it that important that he goes to his neighborhood school? Or is it more important that he is in a setting where he is liked, nurtured and encouraged?’ And that’s what hit home, then I had to give up that fight for the school.”

The unwillingness of certain people to work with her on her son’s difficulties caused his dislocation from their immediate community. Moved to another school, Joey had fewer people around him that were familiar and understanding, and the continuity of his education was disrupted.

Students such as Joey, who do not often initiate interaction with those outside of their immediate family, are the ones most vulnerable to alienation. Joey is unable to inform new peers of his diagnosis, of his individual quirks. He will not consciously attempt a positive first impression. The ability to establish membership in a community is not a part of Joey’s awareness. It is for this reason that Cindy advocates for her son so strongly. She considers it her obligation not only as a mother, but also as a human: “I am Joey’s voice, and that is a bigger responsibility than being my own voice. And so if I don’t give him these opportunities, or insist he has these opportunities, then I’m letting him down.”

202 Joey’s Voice

Joey was not helped by the fact that his attempts to communicate were labeled as “behaviors,” or unfavorable recurring actions. “He was really set up to fail by them taking his picture book [his visual schedule] away, because they didn’t want him to ask to go home, and I was trying to teach him: ‘Yeah you can ask.’ Kids always say ‘When is it time to go home?’ You just tell him ‘no.’ People needed to tell him ‘no.’ Part of his biggest problem was nobody would tell him ‘no.’” Instead of responding to Joey’s question in the way one would to a “regular ed” child, the teachers removed his only means of communication. Similarly, the school attempted to remove Joey from physical education because he was throwing things. Joey was not throwing objects outside of PE, so why was he shown the door instead of handed a ball? With Joey, as with other challenging children I’ve seen, teachers and paraprofessionals try to eliminate behavior not because it is inappropriate, but because it is repetitive or because their concept of “appropriate” is informed by their personal beliefs and, all too often, a misunderstanding of the situation at hand.

Many behaviors have the potential to be normalized or made appropriate. For example, one student I know had a tendency to report on his surroundings, including people’s physical features. This was often a positive form of communication, but occasionally resulted in comments on a person’s weight. The student’s mother redirected this behavior from commenting to complimenting. Instead of reporting on people’s physical features, he was explicitly taught to select a positive attribute to highlight. Despite the family’s hard work to achieve appropriate and positive social interaction, the student’s teachers labeled this form of communication a “behavior” because they felt it inappropriate for one eighth-grade boy to compliment another eighth-grade boy. When a behavior is in itself acceptable but also repetitive and perhaps quirky, it is often discouraged rather than refined or redirected.

The challenges that Joey’s behaviors present require commitment from

203 Kyle Sullivan-Jones others if they are to be overcome. Unfortunately, this is not always achieved in the school system. When challenges present themselves, it is common for people to avoid or condemn rather than to dedicate themselves to the slow work of redirection. “At that point in time Joey was really throwing a lot of tantrums. The teachers didn’t know what to do with him; they didn’t want to set him off so they basically let him do what he wanted.” While appeasing Joey might seem like the easy way out, it only makes him more difficult to deal with in the future, as it reinforces his stubbornness. It also acts to undo any work Cindy is doing at home to improve her child’s behaviors.

Cindy herself is a paraprofessional at Walla Walla High School. The same people with whom she must have a positive working relationship are the ones providing care and services to her son. She walks a fine line. Often, she must clarify with which voice she is speaking: the voice of a coworker or the voice of a mother. During Joey’s Individualized Education Program (IEP) meetings, Cindy voices her criticisms of the care being provided to her son, only to spend the next day’s lunch break eating with the people at whom her criticisms were directed. Her constant advocacy and presence at the school have combined to form what Cindy believes is the reputation of a difficult and overly involved parent. Cindy struggles with the problems inherent in criticizing the institution for which she works. I, for one, found her daily presence to be hugely beneficial to our communication and to her son’s education. Others may have considered her over-involved. I considered her invested.

“Joey’s house” is an impressive testament to the ways Cindy has molded her life to create a healthy and positive living situation for her son. At twenty years old, Joey still requires assistance with basic hygiene needs: Cindy flosses his teeth, washes him and shampoos him in the shower, and has to help him wipe. I have always wondered if

204 Joey’s Voice

Cindy has dwelled on what will happen when she becomes physically unable to care for her son. She tells me that she has prepared a book of instructions describing Joey and his routines for use in the case of her untimely death. Cindy does not want to place Joey into a group home, as she believes his behaviors—such as flushing jewelry down the toilet—put him at risk for abuse. Cindy’s fear of the potential for abuse in a group home is informed by reality. Instances of abuse and neglect in group homes are well documented throughout the nation. “My goal is… to care for Joey. Nothing would make me happier, as horrible as this sounds, than to be able to outlive him.”

Outside of the school system, Cindy has experienced alienation in public when strangers feel they have the right to critique her parenting. In one instance, Joey was throwing a tantrum because he wanted a bag of chips that Cindy refused to purchase for him. The woman behind them in line instructed Cindy to simply buy Joey the chips. By standing her ground and refusing to buy him the chips, Cindy is preparing Joey for the rest of his life. She is teaching him that he cannot have everything he wants, and that throwing a tantrum is not an acceptable way to communicate. If Cindy was to buy Joey everything he wanted she would be doing him a great disservice.

In telling Cindy to simply buy her son the chips, the woman behind them in line undermines any sense of community. Instead of offering help, or simply understanding through silence, the woman is actually requesting that Cindy’s life stop affecting her own. “They don’t know why he’s doing that, and I can’t explain it to everybody. I wish people wouldn’t be so judgmental, but there’s nothing you can do about it. So you really have to toughen up; that’s hard, you get tired of being the center of attention everywhere you go.” In interactions like these, Cindy’s life takes on a very public form of alienation: the differences between her family and others’ are constantly on display and subjected to negative judgment.

205 Kyle Sullivan-Jones

The tension of this particular incident in Walmart was relieved when the parent of another child with autism walked over to Cindy and normalized the situation by engaging her in polite conversation and ignoring Joey. The subtle commiseration of another parent was all that was needed to reaffirm Cindy’s sense of community.

One of the few ways in which Cindy has been able to achieve a sense of community since her son’s diagnosis is through a group known as Parent-to-Parent. Parent-to-Parent is a national organization established to connect parents of children with developmental disabilities, with the goal of building community and providing emotional and social support. Parent-to-Parent proved important to her understanding of autism and to her quality of life.

“When he was first diagnosed I was reading everything I could. Other parents, in the Parent-to-Parent group, we’d switch books, we would be on the Internet, you know the Internet was just getting popular, and we’d be researching and copying things to each other. That’s probably the best support you can get, to find out what other parents are doing. Every chance we could be together we were together, because we just needed that support. Because regular parents didn’t have a clue what we were doing. So that was helpful, I didn’t feel isolated.”

The group was beneficial to Cindy early in Joey’s childhood. As he got older, though, their life settled into a rhythm and she had less energy to spend with the group. “You don’t believe maybe at the time, but you have to go through enough cycles of good and bad to realize: it’s going to get better. And when it’s good, really, really enjoy it, and go do the things you want to do, ‘cause it’s gonna get worse. And once you’ve adapted to living that way, it’s just normal.” When Joey was young, Cindy and the other parents didn’t understand why there were no parents of adolescents in the group. “I remember when we were young parents and we said, ‘Where are these teenage kids?’ What happens is you don’t think about it as being autism, it’s just

206 Joey’s Voice your kid. You’re used to it, you know, you’re just living your life.”

At the moment there is a new group of parents with young children diagnosed with an ASD, and the Parent-to-Parent group has invited the parents of teenagers diagnosed with an ASD to come speak with the younger parents. It will be the first time Cindy has been to a meeting in years, and she has invited me to attend.

As a result of a mistakenly forwarded e-mail, I attend a different meeting a night prior to the ASD group’s. This meeting is for the parents of children and adults who are not necessarily on the spectrum but have a wide range of other disabilities. The meeting is well attended, and there is a jovial air in the room. Participants share valuable knowledge, such as which stores offer family bathrooms. As it turns out, if your twenty-year-old son needs to use the bathroom and he will need your assistance, Walmart is the store for you. The parents, who know one another well, launch into stories that feature rotating casts of all their children.

“I don’t think we could’ve laughed about this twenty years ago,” one parent says. This prompts nods and reflective silence. There is much laughter. Parent-to-Parent has been a valuable part of these families’ lives. The organization connects parents of children with similar diagnoses. Through funding from Washington state’s Department of Health, “helping parents” participate in eighteen hours of training that educates them on ways to advocate for their children and informs them of what services are available to them in the community. Two of the women leading the meeting have sons who now live in a duplex together.

Out of the sixteen in attendance, there are four men; I am the only one without a female companion. (In working with the disabled population, I have dealt almost exclusively with mothers.) I am familiar with the majority of these parents’ children, as are many

207 Kyle Sullivan-Jones in the greater Walla Walla community. Their children speak. Not always willingly, but their children can communicate. Their children can joke, ask for food, work for money and understand that kind of causality. For these parents, life has gotten better. This is not to say that there is no regression, no struggle, no heartbreak or hopelessness, but rather that, after the difficulties of assessment, diagnosis, and development, these families have become increasingly integrated into the community. They’ve achieved this through play dates, job training, and other means, all of which have been made possible by their children’s ability to socialize.

The next night’s Parent-to-Parent meeting—the one I’d originally intended to attend—is autism specific, and it is noticeably different than the previous night. There is a feeling of shared fatigue. Of the five people present, I am the only male. The benefit of this gathering is not the comfort of shared experience. Each diagnosis of ASD is highly individual. While those diagnosed with an ASD might exhibit similar traits or behaviors, their experience cannot be typified. The attraction of this autism-specific gathering, rather, appears to be the absence of a need to explain one’s child, or oneself.

The reason for this particular meeting is to unite Cindy and the other mothers of children who are Joey’s age with the new group of younger families. Yet, for various reasons, none of the families with recently diagnosed children are able to attend. A hospital visit. A lack of childcare. Exhaustion. Although the situation is familiar to Cindy and the other mothers, I sense disappointment: they want to help. They want to offer these parents a community that wasn’t present when their own children were young.

Although Cindy’s child is by far the lowest functioning in this group of families, she is the only mother who does not mention any difficulties caused by her child’s behavior. The trials Cindy shares with the other mothers in attendance exist outside the home, outside of Joey. The

208 Joey’s Voice segregation of her nonaggressive son from other students, the lowered expectations and goals within his Individualized Education Program, the confused and skeptical looks in public: these are Cindy’s problems. Joey is not a problem; Joey is a reality.

The difficulties posed by low-functioning students with severe forms of autism often result in their segregation within school. Walla Walla High School, or WA-HI, is an open campus. The classrooms are not contained in one building, and students pass between classes underneath awnings. Nestled between the student, staff, and school bus parking lots, the students diagnosed with an ASD are now secluded in a “portable”—a building intended for temporary use during periods of construction. Here, students with varying levels of cognition and functioning attend school from ages thirteen to twenty-one, at which point they “time out.” No longer eligible to receive services from the schools, some are able to secure job training through the Department of Developmental Disabilities (DDD) and the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation (DVR). Others become largely absent from the community, either placed in group homes or in front of the television at their parents’ house.

I decided to return to my old classroom to get a clearer picture of the education received by students diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. When I was working at the school, the ASD program was left in limbo at the end of each year. In June we were told to pack up our room because it would be moved to a new location that had yet to be determined. We began each new school year by unpacking the materials that survived storage and relocation. The students always began the year with a sense of chaos and disarray. I wasn’t sure how the current program was being run.

While I wasn’t surprised by what I observed, the chaos of the room

209 Kyle Sullivan-Jones made me anxious. I had, perhaps masochistically, arrived on the outskirts of lunchtime. The lunch period is a particularly hectic time; some students require closer supervision while eating, and adults must focus on them while the higher functioning students are allowed to use the computer or play video games. The two students playing Wii near the door glanced at me as I entered. One of them, Francisco, acknowledged my presence with his usual restrained delight through a sheepish smile. Jonathan, in full Chicago Bulls regalia, excitedly abandoned his walker to give me a hug.

The room, roughly twenty-five by twenty feet, felt cramped due to the sheer number of people and objects present. There were six large personal workstation desks in the middle of the room, two rectangular tables, the teacher’s desk, a refrigerator, a rocking chair, a small trampoline, three computers and corresponding desks, and Joey’s station in the corner. In addition to the twelve students, the two paraprofessionals, the teacher and myself, there were two regular ed student helpers and two specialists, bringing the number of people in the room to twenty.

The radio was loud enough that those around it had to raise their voices to be heard. The sounds of the Wii game, the refrigerator, people moving around, the hum of the fluorescent lights overhead all contributed to the din. Students with autism sometimes have extreme sensitivity to sensory stimulation. If this room overstimulated me, I can only imagine what students suffering from such sensitivities experience.

As Casey wandered the room messing up other students’ hair, Sharon, the teacher, and her two paraprofessionals treated me as a distraction from their unmanageable caseload. The physical therapist and the speech pathologist had raised eyebrows that seemed to suggest their disapproval of the chaos, while simultaneously acknowledging the futility of being upset over it. Beating a retreat, I told them I’d return

210 Joey’s Voice in the morning, when things were more relaxed.

At 8:30 a.m. the next day, the room is yawning awake. There are four students present, all of whom I have worked with in the past. Joey is supposedly on his way. Sharon is the only one working with a student, Jonathan, who is filling out a daily questionnaire that reinforces personal information, such as his phone number and address. Joan, a paraprofessional, is at the rectangular table cutting apart recently laminated index cards for another teacher’s French class. It is common for paraprofessionals in this room to complete tasks for other teachers. The tasks are intended as skill-building exercises for the students, but are often beyond many students’ capabilities. Still, they need to be completed, so the tasks instead of the students receive the paraprofessionals’ attention.

The room feels more like daycare than a classroom. With many students requiring one-on-one time—whether or not it is specified in their IEP—it can be difficult to give individual students the amount of attention that their parents, the teachers, and they themselves desire. I ask Sharon how many students she has in her caseload.

“Too damn many,” she responds. Perhaps a better way to explain the weight of Sharon’s caseload is not through the number of students, but through the number of paraprofessionals she has available to work with those students.

When I worked in this room two-and-a-half years ago, there were five adults and seven students. Every one of those students benefited from one-on-one assistance, and I thought that the assistance was necessary to those students’ academic progress. I felt at the time that some of the students were regressing and more paraprofessionals were needed to remedy the situation. Out of those seven students, the five most time-consuming remain in the class, but only one of them still receives constant one-on-one attention. During 5th, 6th, and 7th period, there

211 Kyle Sullivan-Jones are twelve students in the class. There are only three adults that work in this classroom: one teacher, two paraprofessionals.

“It’s asinine,” Sharon says. “’Cause things aren’t getting done, kids aren’t getting served.” The futility of Sharon’s workload lies not only in the unmanageable student-adult ratio but also in the wide range of functioning levels she is responsible for serving. When students benefit most from one-on-one instruction, how do you choose who gets your attention? Some students are able to run errands for Sharon unsupervised and can communicate with little difficulty. Others wear diapers. Some are in wheelchairs. Aside from making the allocation of teacher-to-student attention more complicated, a wide range of functioning levels can have negative psychological and behavioral effects on the students. For instance, high functioning ASD students who have decent academic or social skills might be confused or even angered by their placement in the same classroom as a nonverbal student in a helmet. Alternately, that nonverbal student might have extreme sensory issues, and find the talkative, higher functioning students to be a source of stress.

Difficulties encountered in general education classrooms also present themselves. One student, José, comes from a Spanish-speaking household, but none of the adults in the classroom speak Spanish. José does speak some English, but Spanish is the language to which he responds most readily. Requesting José’s return to the classroom in Spanish produces a quicker response than the same request in English. How many times has he been punished for not following directions when it is merely a delay in linguistic comprehension that is at fault? José had the same one-on-one paraprofessional, Dena, for two years at WA-HI. The relationship she developed with José transformed him from a high-energy Tigger-like character into a high-energy Tigger-like character who got his work done. Despite the language barrier, Dena’s consistent, caring and patient presence fostered José’s growth. Dena had planned to continue her work with him, but a week before school

212 Joey’s Voice began this year she received notice that she was being reassigned to a general education classroom.

This is an example both of the kind of relationships that need to be developed between student and educator and of the difficulty in maintaining these relationships within bureaucratic institutions. It is bad enough that continuity of care was disrupted; no replacement was assigned to work with José. He spends his days listlessly bouncing around the classroom, just as before.

“Dena used to be able to be right with him, and walk with him, and we don’t have the staff for that,” Sharon says. “I mean, nobody can be with him. Staffing-wise, I started begging from the third week of school.” The reassignment of Dena is not only detrimental to José, but also affects the stress level of everyone in the room. During my time at WA-HI, many paraprofessionals were not informed of their placement until the first day of school. Often, another month would pass before any set schedule or routine was established. This can throw paraprofessionals off balance, and it can wreak havoc on a classroom of ASD students who depend on set routines and smooth transitions. What’s more, when students act out as a result of this anxiety, there is the potential for them to quickly become viewed as difficult. This reputation may inform the way in which everyone deals with them for the rest of their high school career.

The school has attempted, unsuccessfully, to set the schedule for paraprofessionals in advance. Joan tells me, “They have guaranteed us, supposedly—and they still made changes last year—that by the last week or last day of school you would know where you were going to be.” The school’s unfulfilled promise to provide structure seems to have resulted in a further erosion of trust between administrators and staff. Sharon adds, “Last year everybody, every para, left with, apparently, a good idea of where they would be. But of course, Dena, we thought she’d be here.” Sharon, who is legally responsible for providing the

213 Kyle Sullivan-Jones services to disabled students outlined in their IEPs, planned the school year with the expectation of three paraprofessionals in her classroom, and then had to face the mess of inadequate staffing with the loss of Dena, whose role had been to provide general assistance, working with any students in need of instruction.

The way the policies work in practice is this: Two paraprofessionals are assigned to the room because two of the twelve students’ IEPs require that they receive constant one-on-one assistance and supervision. Officially, these paraprofessionals are present solely to provide one-on-one instruction to these specific students. The students who require this one-on-one supervision are never left alone. However, since the bureaucratic demands of Sharon’s position as the teacher limit the time that she herself can spend with the students, the paraprofessionals cannot always give their undivided attention to their assigned student. The legal requirements of the IEPs are being met, but often not in a way that allows for the type of individual improvement those requirements are meant to achieve.

When I was employed as a paraprofessional at WA-HI, I sensed that the school district was underfunded and poorly managed. In speaking with the district’s current director of special education, Dr. Karen Lehman, who is entering her second year in the position, I got a different view. While agreeing that special education nationwide is not adequately funded, she believes that students in Walla Walla are better served than many students elsewhere.

“I think the kids in Walla Walla are luckier than most,” Dr. Lehman told me. “There are two distinct schools of thought, both of them having to do with money. One of them is: ‘Let’s do what we can, but we are limited by what the state and the federal government gives us, and there will be no subsidy from general ed coffers.’ And the other

214 Joey’s Voice school of thought says: ‘Let’s give the kids everything we possibly can, and if we need to subsidize that by dipping into the general education pot of money, we will.’ Walla Walla falls into that latter category.”

Lehman explained that special education funding is being cut at both federal and state levels every year. If her program were not subsidized with money from the general education coffers, the deficits would force reductions in staff and an increase in class sizes and caseloads. Increased workloads would make employees feel that they are being held accountable for unrealistic demands.

I asked Lehman how, in the face of budget constraints, districts could work to foster school environments that value educationally beneficial relationships. First, she said, programs must be set up in a way that ensures that the required needs of a student, as established in the IEP, can be met. But in the end, the quality of the education provided and the depth of the relationships that can be developed depend on the individual educator. “Hopefully,” she said, “everybody is here because they want to work with students with disabilities and everybody has the same priority, which is educating them to the maximum extent possible. And so you use your limited resources to see how you can best accomplish that. But it’s not easy.”

This view relies, essentially, on the hope that education will attract and retain selfless workers able to withstand poor compensation and extremely challenging work environments. During the period I was working at WA-HI, constant turnover in both the district and the school was adversely affecting students. With Dr. Lehman’s leadership, maybe this will change: from our talk, I felt that she is passionately dedicated to building a program that operates in the interest of the students it serves.

“All too often teachers have a thought process of, ‘I’ll get assigned a para,’” she said. “Well, this year we are not going to do that. We are

215 Kyle Sullivan-Jones going to look at the student’s needs, and the caseloads, and see where the paras are needed. And they may be with you, and they may not be with you. It all depends on what the student needs. The kid is going to drive the assignment this year.”

What stands in the way of Dr. Lehman achieving her goals? Despite her brave talk, I see no substitute for more adequate staffing.

In my experience at WA-HI, employees, especially paraprofessionals, often feel as though they are treated as “resources.” When reassigned or redirected without warning, they can develop a sense that they are being allocated as things instead of respected. Departments, particularly special education, end up fighting internally for use of these resources. All too often, the result is that teachers resent each other and paraprofessionals feel devalued.

The teachers of special education rooms deal closely with the bureaucratic side of education: they help to form IEPs, attend meetings, manage all paperwork, interact with administrators and parents, and are the ones held legally accountable for the progress of students in their classroom. Due to these time-consuming obligations, it is common for them to lack the familiarity with specific students that is essential to formulating a strong IEP. Here, the relationship between a paraprofessional and student could provide a critical link between the student and the teacher. Yet, a paraprofessional who is moved often and whose attention is divided among too many students may also lack the necessary familiarity with a student. Furthermore, even if the paraprofessional knows a student well, the communication of this information to the teacher often comes down to the strength of their working relationship.

Paraprofessionals are commonly placed in situations in which they

216 Joey’s Voice are the predominant educator/instructor/supervisor of challenging, low-functioning students. The stresses of understaffing, low wages, and consistent reassignments not infrequently lead to detachment and lack of commitment. When paraprofessionals feel rootless and when teachers are restrained by bureaucratic obligations, they find limited opportunity to get to know specific students intimately. Given these obstacles, the ability to serve individual students well, to work through difficult behaviors and situations, depends on exceptional capability, dedication and character of the individual educator. To compensate for the prevailing working conditions requires the good fortune of having teams of extraordinarily skilled and selfless staff to fulfill the duties of their jobs—an unrealistic model for institutional and personal successes.

It would be misguided to blame Walla Walla High School, or even the public school system at large, for this state of affairs. It has its roots in the allocation of dwindling state and federal funds, which reflects a larger societal trend of devaluing education and educators. It takes adequate resources and dedicated, competent staff for schools to become environments where involved human relationships are cultivated.

In such an environment the capacity of educators to work through challenges will increase, and students like Joey will be more likely to prosper socially and academically. The progression of a child with autism depends above all on the presence of caring, patient, compassionate, consistent people.

217 Kyle Sullivan-Jones

A Note on Sources

In the course of my research, I found myself drawing on such seemingly disparate sources as medical journals, guides for parents and professionals, school district websites, and blog posts. I also utilized texts such as B.T. Doyle and E. D. Iland, Autism Spectrum Disorders from A to Z, Assessment, Diagnosis…& More (Arlington: Future Horizons, 2004). Instrumental in helping me structure my ethnographic approach was the methodology of Sara Lawrence- Lightfoot and Jessica Hoffmann Davis, The Art and Science of Portraiture (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997). Through this book I learned the importance of documenting function and dysfunction with the same energy. In thinking about school systems and dehumanizing work environments, I turned to the social theory of Philip Selznick, The Moral Commonwealth: Social Theory and the Promise of Community (Berkeley: U of California P, 1992). The contributions of the parents, professionals, and advocates who were generous with their time and candor were invaluable to my work. Except for Joey, Cindy, and Dr. Karen Lehman, names in this study have been changed.

218 219

Melanie Curran Lived-In Experiences of Architecture in New Orleans

221 Melanie Curran Lived-In Experiences of Architecture in New Orleans

The trauma of Katrina saturated September as my freshman year of high school began. In classroom debates I always sided with the few students who said, “Rebuild It!,” referring to what we in the Pacific Northwest imagined to be the doomed blank slate of The Crescent City. It was as if the whole of New Orleans, culture and houses, needed to be reconstructed from scratch.

A classmate joked about my passion to save the unraveling city. “Ray Charles is dead, Melanie,” she said in the windowless social studies room. I was spurred by a desire to prove her wrong, convinced that the far-away city was worth rebuilding. Somehow, through the reconstruction of houses, opportunities would spring up for more “Ray Charleses” to emerge. Although she didn’t realize that Ray Charles was not one of New Orleans’s musicians, my classmate had intuited the connection between a place’s buildings and the culture of that place.

Many in my community felt the urge to aid. They acted on this urge by traveling to New Orleans, not to participate in the culture by playing trumpet or deep-frying oysters, but to rebuild houses. It was unspoken in the volunteer efforts that, by rebuilding structures, they

223 Melanie Curran were helping to give back to the city the very structure of its culture.

I never got to save New Orleans. I didn’t volunteer with a church group in high school. I didn’t run away with my best friend and his older sister one night, in the little white stick shift, crossing the country like a martyr. My first visitations to New Orleans came later: brief jaunts shrouded in the mystique of Southern Gothic literature and the freedom of teenage femininity. I wanted to find myself there through writing.

I learned that the current architectural scholarship about New Orleans is weak with respect to cultural narrative. As anthropologist Jay D. Edwards put it in his explorative history of the origins of the Shotgun House: “The established architectural histories of the shotgun house have been both right and wrong, but mostly they have been unimaginative and incomplete.” I realized that I want not so much to rebuild houses, but to build the stories of houses through the lens of architectural ethnography. Here I offer a personal and cultural narrative about bits of New Orleans architectural history that is both wrong and right, complete through its glimpses of sensuality.

In recording what people said, I relied on pieces of paper and vivid memories. I seldom had a recording device beyond pen and paper when the most important conversations emerged. My memories congregated around buildings I loved and feared. If the buildings I knew could speak, this could be what they would sing. My quotation marks are used with caution. If the people I met could be used to build houses, this is how the blueprints would look. Conversations melted into walls and doors, and architectural forms became speaking settlements.

224 Lived-In Experiences of Architecture in New Orleans

A Mathematical Approach to Determining Lived-in Character of Architectural Experience

For every building, there is an equal and opposite abundance of life being lived. Washers, dryers, ceiling fans, and air conditioning units are all whirling at speeds relative to the pace of personalities. Cracks, creaks, leaks and bends are all dismantling at ratios determined by a factor of X. The value of X derives from usage of material amenities by tenant, multiplied by intensity of light bursting through south facing windows, supplemented by forces of nature encroaching on said building, divided by occupancy and sanded down to the wood grain and number of children brought up under the roof before it was patched in 1997.

Using such calculations, it is understandable that the amount of passion, dreaming, sexual desire and routine dwelling within the physical walls of buildings leads to “lived-in” characteristics that take effect in the architectural context. I will be exploring such characteristics of vernacular forms of architecture in New Orleans unearthed during my fieldwork from February to May 2012.

225 Melanie Curran

226 Lived-In Experiences of Architecture in New Orleans

Shotgun House

My shotgun was the color of milk and Listerine combined. It sat on Royal Street in the Holy Cross Neighborhood of the Lower 9th Ward. The front room was a parlor, followed directly by our bedroom, leading linearly to the kitchen and then straight out into the backyard. A shotgun house runs in a line. A shotgun house shifts privacy into a fluid game of intrusion. If I stand at the front door of my shotgun house and all the doors are open, a few things become possible. I can fire my shotgun, my firearm, through the entire house and out the backdoor without grazing walls. I can invite a sweep of fresh air through the structure. I can be assured that no spirits are getting stuck in hidden corners of my house ready to spook me, thanks to an aged structural system of proper ventilation.

The Milk and Listerine shotgun, on Royal Street near the Catfish Banks, stayed my home until the last days of March. Nature encroached more as the spring settled in. I watched the lizards return, and I heard about a snake living inside of the breaker box. I watched the grass grow high above my ankles and I watched the rains turn the yard into a pond. The air and wet crept in on bug wings. The back door swung at the mercy of wind. My love and I slept with just a sheet on some nights. On others we layered quilts and put the heat function on low. The days and nights always found their way inside. Not long after moving in, I had to move out. My landlady and her sister needed a home. The Milk and Listerine Shotgun was never quite sealed. In the shotgun, I grew permeable to the feeling of living in living buildings.

227 Melanie Curran

228 Lived-In Experiences of Architecture in New Orleans

The Malleable Shotgun

A shotgun in the French Quarter recently received three potted plants that unfurl gracefully beneath its Italianate cornice. A shotgun in the Garden District splays its fluted columns silently. A shotgun on St. Claude is crowded with bicycles and young people climbing in trees illuminated by colored light. A shotgun in mid-city has a cracking cement backyard and is being rented by a man whose daughter is also named Melanie. A shotgun in Marigny was torn down to make a garage for an orange El Camino. A shotgun in Holy Cross gets its front door locked by a little boy who nervously accepts cookies from his new neighbors.

The Saturday before Easter, Susan invites all of her friends to her front steps, where they proceed to paint eggs. She has developed egg- decorating techniques in front of her home over many years. Her shotgun’s exterior is of dark wood, stained black with time. She and her man, Phillip, are home when I peak my head into their doorway. From the front door of the shotgun, passersby on the sidewalk are feet away from the kitchen of the home. A white gas range sits next to a sink under a little shelf stocked sparsely with bowls and cups from the seventies.

A little “For Rent” sign signals the outside in. Perhaps, you could live here! The little kitchen entryway is wood-paneled and furnished with a metal futon on which Phillip sits. He wears big wire glasses and little running shorts. Red white and blue fabrics coat his aging frame. Susan is wearing a long pink sundress with yellow daisies growing all over it. One strap keeps falling off her wrinkling tanned shoulder while she introduces her house.

Warm wood seeps a subtle scent into the shadowy dwelling. The kitchen is also a bedroom, as a loft has been constructed in the rafters above the small bathroom. Decades of dust have been transformed

229 Melanie Curran into cozy charm by the caress of vintage radio waves churning from an apparatus above the armoire.

“Oh yes, we have a lot of radios,” says Phillip, who did all of the renovations himself during the three decades that he has lived in New Orleans. They live on the other side of the double shotgun, in a bedroom they have created in the attic of the house. The shotgun was built in the late 1800s, before indoor plumbing. “They used to have their bathrooms and their cisterns out in the backyard behind the house. Then they built kitchens and bathrooms onto the back of houses when the plumbing came in,” Phillip says.

The next room, behind the converted kitchen/parlor, is a large bedroom. The dark and quilted room is decorated with hip 1980s posters, acrylic paintings of flowers, and sleepy mirrors. Phillip never built an additional kitchen and bathroom in the back, as is often found in shotguns. The back bedroom instead leads out onto a screened-in wooden-porch. It is a haven for dozens of cats, Susan’s beloved pets, and dozens more art projects in progress. Beyond the back porch is the sub-tropical explosion of Susan’s landscaping skills. The garden flourishes around an empty pool and creates shady spots for even more kitties, breathing the light taste of afternoon pollination.

The colorful couple were street cleaners of the French Quarter. They were paid to start work in the wee hours of the morning to clean up the filth left by Bourbon Street revelers. Happy here, they settled into their half of the shotgun. Susan and Phillip bring me through, eager to point out their favorite rooms and additions to the vibrant wooden house. Their unconventional bedroom looms at the top of a ladder in the attic that in shotguns is seldom occupied. Their parlor room is painted pink, with costumes hung on racks and a thick stereo sitting on a table.

Back on the front steps, Susan begins to talk rapidly about Easter

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Eggs and other artistic pursuits of living in New Orleans. She tells of her friend’s new album and rifles through her living room trying to find a copy. She tells about another friend’s new novel, a story about their street cleaning days in the French Quarter told under a layer of magical realism. When Susan read the novel, she was excited to find herself a part of it, herself made a character in a dreamy fictionalization of a real place.

Existing in the warm wooden thicket off the deep downriver end of Dauphine Street, the couple can stand the heat. In making surprising adjustments to a rigid building form, they write their own architectural novel. They adjust a linear structure by inhabiting the front, back, top and bottom of their temple in a successful new incarnation of use. By doing so, Susan, Phillip, and many people like them are reconstructing the malleable history of the Shotgun House.

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Dilapidated Victorian

This building surfaced in 1897 on Dauphine Street in the old French Quarter, The Vieux Carré. It is the haunting hub of elegance where I moved after the Milk Listerine Shotgun. One warm and sultry evening, between the exquisite Corinthian columns of the entryway, my lover and I sat here in a cloud of incense. We drank wine above the piles of pigeon poop and spoke with sidewalk passersby.

A man with eight-foot long dreadlocks stopped and told us that he’d love to buy the whole building. He had always been fascinated by it, romanced by its vintage opulence. He was unaware of the legends that are built into The Dilapidated Victorian, which can be outlined as follows:

A.The JFK Assassination was plotted upstairs near the balcony whose posts wiggle when I kick them whilst on the phone with my best friend. B.Ruthie the Duck Girl lived in our apartment. Her ducks are gone, but pigeons have re-bolstered the avian population, living above claw-foot bathtubs and wooden wardrobes strewn throughout the vacant rooms. C.The building was once a brothel that housed world renowned Bourbon Street stripper Blaze Starr. One afternoon, taking a knife to the ground, I find the wood floor is painted purple underneath layers of brown.

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Open Air Warehouse

The Open Air Warehouse is an example of architecture employing methods of structural ventilation by the inclusion of large open windows near the roofline and an open entryway where two people can sit and have a conversation. Responsible ventilation practices create a breezy environment in the Open Air Warehouse, where a constant air of tobacco and sawdust is not only bearable, but somehow romantic and life-giving.

Omar’s warehouse, a place where wooden windows and ancient doors come to vacation. They lean on each other in massive shelves awaiting his caresses. Someday Omar will take them out of the Open Air Warehouse and put them back into the vacant orifices of historic homes. Air flows fluidly through the neat stacks of material on sabbatical. The passionate Moroccan carpenter moves past the shelves admiring his favorite guests. I follow behind, mesmerized by ornate slabs of functional cypress wood.

While the breezes circulate the air within Omar’s warehouse, his memories become active and colorful. “It was the gay community in here,” he says, recalling the height of his historic restoration career in the late 1980s and early 1990s. “They come and they buy a lot of houses in the French Quarter, and the Marigny.” These people possessed the imagination and the money to invest in the restoration of the Creole cottages, double gallery townhouses and antique shotguns that populated the fatigued historic neighborhoods of New Orleans. “It was like ninety-seven percent were gay people. There wasn’t no straight. Straight people, they don’t pay.”

It comes down to a lavish purple story. There was a man named Art who entrusted Omar with the complete artistic restoration of a decayed historic building. It was a massive long open room. “I would say at least eighty to a hundred feet long, maybe more. It was the whole

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length of the building. He wanted me to paint it purple.” In Art’s community, competition to create beautiful interior environments in the exhausted antique buildings was fierce. Life was being pumped into the old buildings of the Vieux Carré and Marigny neighborhoods with a sensuous vigor not seen since the original construction of the houses. “You see, when you go over to your friend’s house, and he have this beautiful house, your house have to be nicer!” Omar remembers. “It was all show-and-tell, but in the meantime, it’s working for the economy, it’s working for the city of New Orleans.”

Omar painted the room the deep shade of purple requested by his customer. Satisfied, Art began to hang silky drapes over the delicious walls. “That room start lookin’ beautiful, like you are in Heaven. Gorgeous.”

The memory of total sensual transformation colors Omar’s story, recalled from the central bunker of his sheet metal and aluminum warehouse. Purple paint drips through the air, and I can almost hear the old windows and doors laughing with pleasure. Maybe they will take part in such a revitalization of space, opening and closing at the hands of ornate artists, who call out from some deep well of fashionable bounty to mystify walls of old.

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Modern Optimistic

“People are coming from all over with ideas of what success is,” Kyle, the native New Orleanian, says. “I came back here because it’s real. It’s not trying to be anything else than what it is.” He looks at me deeply, recounting the loss of his accent and his corner stores. In his New Orleans, an authenticity is at risk of being compromised. He fears for the “optimistic future” being presented by outsiders in the form of new buildings. This is the other side of post-Katrina volunteer efforts. This is where modernity collides with tradition, at three in the afternoon in the Marigny café.

Kyle wears thick glasses that complement the stylish grey hair atop his mature skull. “Oh, I’m very modern,” he says, over the vinyl couch and laptop. The café we sit in together is in the Modern Optimistic form. White walls and crisp angles create the streamline atmosphere in what was once the old neighborhood grocery. The man does not want to see old buildings of the city destroyed to make way for alien architectural forms in the Modern Optimistic style. Efforts like Brad Pitt’s “Make It Right” campaign to create eco-efficient homes for the modern, post-disaster family. Architects of the present are focusing on creative updates of classic structures, resulting in controversial mutant styles.

When I met Kyle, he was in a heated debate with a young Californian shop owner about the validity of an alien house in Uptown New Orleans. “The J-House” looks like a twisting industrial trial run of the linear shotgun. It has a massive glass window that beckons in sunshine like a solar panel flat-screen television. The fact that it was built in an old Greek Revival neighborhood has Kyle in a frenzy.

“You keep doin’ that, New Orleans is not gonna be New Orleans anymore!”

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At his post-production office, Kyle has maintained the structure of an 1850s mansion on Esplanade Avenue by implementing modernity through furnishings alone. “The skeleton is still there,” he says. It is the basis of architectural congruity that resists the acceptance of the Modern Optimistic style into broad building culture. The new comes primarily from outsiders. People with visions and money arrive to implement positive-feeling places without recognizing the potential harm to nostalgic hearts.

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Late 1980s Apartment Complex

“You think I want to live there?” asked Lisa the blackjack dealer. She called into question her one-bedroom apartment, the very walls that surround her and keep her secure. Though the structure is not fancy or historic, she is comforted by a good neighborhood and a series of locking gates and deadbolts.

After I got hit by a car while biking with Lisa’s nephew, what was once stable turned into a mess of bruises and blood. My period came when I was released from the hospital. The drywall, brick and iron were nothing against the rush of feminine fluid that came with my days of recovery. Once I fell onto her futon with my painkillers and menstruation, Lisa’s birth control pills faltered. She bled, too, defying the reliable structure of her hormone intake. Unable to understand why this was happening, she reacted by becoming self-conscious about her home.

“I only live here because there’s a double lock!” When structures are sealed from burglars, weather and murderers by lock, gate and key, the unforeseen will enter through any available opening.

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Old Brick Orphanage

The Old Brick Orphanage represents an architectural form that first surfaced in a vivid dream I had prior to my fieldwork in New Orleans. In my dream, I lived inside such a building with many tired and foreign women sleeping on cots. Old Brick Orphanage stands out from the rest of the buildings in the city for me because of its connection to my dream-life. It is three stories tall and hundreds of rooms thick

The hundred-year-old orphanage became the St. Vincent Guest House after being a home for unwed mothers during the 1980s. I believe it was these unwed mothers that accompanied me in my dream of the building. I sensed them here still, as I roamed the halls in real life. I felt their moods as I explored the long empty passageways. Some were happy hallways, and some were secret and hidden. Some staircases provoked fear and gave me sudden chills. Before door 72, the air was thin and broken. The cheap drop ceilings lowered the dimensions of the halls by a few feet and insulated the experience of being in a mysterious place.

Bruce, wearing orange pinstripes and glassy blue eyes, listened to me as I leaned on his reception desk in the lobby. He was as sensitive to the building as I was, often encountering the ghosts of orphans playing harmless tricks.

“It’s just kids’ stuff. We go into a room and everything is knocked over or off the shelves and we say, ‘Oh, it’s the kids again!’” The rust of the ironwork, the cracks in the floor and the living ferns growing on decaying galleries are areas where ghosts and dreams permeate this building. Areas of damage accumulated from decades of decay create structural weakness. It is in these imperfections of transformative space that the world of the dead and dreaming is housed and living.

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Spanish Governmental Building

On Mardi Gras, my love and I drink tequila in front of this building. The man behind us is explaining to a drunken woman whose mask is falling off her face that he has three alligators as pets. He is a sturdy man, with an orange and brown beard. His words are slurred, but he regains a shade of coherence as he begins to talk to me about the Cabildo, the Spanish Governmental Building of New Orleans’s colonial past.

“I built that roof in 1992 with sixteen other timber framers. It’s got forty-eight foot long trusses in there, and mortise and tenon bringing it together.” Brad Lawson, aside from owning alligators on the West Bank, is also a skilled timber framer who worked on the restoration of the Cabildo’s mansard roof after the most recent fire.

“It burnt down in 1988. There was a kid up there smoking, and he dropped an ember in the flashing, where the two roofs come together.” When the work was being done to replace the damaged roof from 1988 to1992, Brad Lawson had an all-access pass to closed- off parts of the Cabildo.

He insists that I go to the third floor of the Cabildo Museum during the day to look at the huge wooden trestles that he and his crew constructed. A few weeks later I am there, accompanied by Napoleon’s death mask and period furniture. The timber frames on the third floor are indeed impressive, creating strong wooden lines on the ceiling above the Civil War exhibit. My mind traces the trestles back to their creation, back to Brad Lawson’s artful passion for wood. Like the domestic alligators in the backyard, he guarded his chunk of territory when he said, pointing to the roof, “As a matter of fact, we had sex there, Mardi Gras of 1992.”

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Train Station

A huge mural documenting the history of New Orleans hangs, in four parts, in the Amtrak train and Greyhound bus station. It was painted by Conrad Albrizio, a socialist trained in fresco, the art of painting color on wet plaster. He finished it in 1956. Burt, the baggage man at the station, gives me a piece of paper explaining the meaning of the mural. Burt has piercing blue eyes and will be overseeing the storage of our boxes for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Sal, the police officer who greeted me when I stepped off the train, has already explained that the station has never been kept up. At the time of Conrad Albrizio’s art installation, an art-deco theme dominated the entire building. While the walls are coated in black marble and layered angles of the period, the building has been overcome by new details that attempt at modernity but just make the interior inconsistent.

“They’re restoring it back to its original art-deco style,” Sal explains. “All the tiles in the bathroom floors are exactly how they were in 1956. They’re gonna put a fountain over there and they’re gonna make all these chairs yellow again, like they were then, and have ‘em facing the other direction. They always were making improvements, but not all the way throughout the building. They never really did it right.” He walks to his patrol car and returns with a Martin Guitar from the same year as the mural was completed: a 1956 in the dark wood stain.

“The only other option was cream back then,” he says. Relics. Sal plays “Dueling Banjos” and “Stairway to Heaven,” proclaiming his title as the Best Cover Musician in New Orleans.

I look at the paper Burt gave me describing the mural. Each section illustrates an “Age” in the history of Louisiana, as told by Conrad Albrizio. The Age of Exploration comes first: of Spanish sailors

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and Indian Spirits, of the search for the Fountain of Youth. The Age of Colonization follows, featuring Catholics and deforestation, Acadians and Slaves. The third mural displays the Age of Conflict, when the Civil War and the economic flourishing of the Mississippi transformed the culture through technological innovation and proliferating social roles.

The fourth mural is where Albrizio leaves us, in The Modern Age, with the arrival of our beloved train station and economic opportunity for all races. The fourth mural is what sticks with me, is what holds this building together, and is what Sal the police officer envisions when he imagines the Station’s renovation completed. Restored back to the promise of The Modern Age, when cylindrical chandeliers and slanted theatrical mirrors foretold national completion.

The sound of Sal’s ’56 Martin guitar is perfect. It’s the dream guitar. Its woody levee melancholy aches as our fingers press the fret board. He owns both models, Cream and Dark, the only colors available that year. The skin tones of The Modern Age, cream and dark, bound in musical instruments, bound in the dried scenes on plaster, mended by the cathedral of transportation in New Orleans’ Central Business District, and set free in the promise to restore this place to its original splendor.

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Sources

Breunlin, Rachel, and Helen A. Regis. “Can There Be a Critical Collaborative Ethnography?: Creativity and Activism in the Seventh Ward, New Orleans.” Collaborative Anthropologies. 2 (2009): 115-146. Print.

Chase, John. “The Role of Consumerism in American Architecture.” Journal of Architectural Education. 44.9 (1991): 211-224. Print.

Edwards, Jay D. “The Origins of Creole Architecture.” Winterthur Portfolio. 29.2/29.3 (1994): 155-189. Print

Edwards, Jay D. “Shotgun: The Most Contested House in America.” Buildings & Landscapes. 16.1 (2009): 62-96. Print.

Garvey, Joan, and Mary Lou Widmer. Beautiful Crescent: A History of New Orleans. New Orleans: Garmer P, 1983. Print.

Greenberg, Mike. The Poetics of Cities: Designing Neighborhoods that Work. Columbus: Ohio UP, 1995. Print

Mosher, Anne E., Barry D. Keim, and Susan A. Franques. “Downtown Dynamics.” Geographical Review. 85.4 (1995): 497-517. Print

Robbins, Tom. Jitterbug Perfume. New York: Bantam, 1984. Print.

Toledano, Roulhac. A Pattern Book of New Orleans Architecture. Gretna: Pelican, 2010.

Toledano, Roulhac, Sally Evans, Mary Louise Christovich, and Betsey Swanson. New Orleans Architecture, Volume VI: The Creole Faubourgs. Gretna: Pelican, 1996. Print.

Toole, John Kennedy. A Confederacy of Dunces. New Orleans: LSU P, 1980. Print.

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