Darkroom

If I had to describe this memoir in three words it would be the following: familiar, angering and empowering.

Familiar:

It was funny how the scene played out on page 86 of Darkroom is almost the exact same scene I described during the “personal revolution” portion of our Persepolis I activity. I could relate so much to these panels. People were always asking me what I was, trying to “figure me out”. Confused by my almond eyes, broken Spanish and “neutral features”, never having a “box” to fill out. Living in California, our black and white lies between, black, white and Mexican. I am none of those. The part I had to laugh at but was all too familiar to me was when the girl in the panel responds, “That’s in southern Alabama right?” When I was younger I was always so pissed off at the fact that when I told people my family was from Costa Rica their response was, “That’s in Mexico right?” Fuck! I would always walk away saying, “You ignorant ass”. Today my sense of anger has subsided. I understand that not everyone is familiar with the geography of Central America, unless of course they are going there to visit to “catch the waves”, visit the “jungles” or Tortuga beach (this still kind of pisses me off, ugh).

Her quote on page 224 rung so true for me and stung a little as I read it: “The migratory life brings sweeping vistas, but it’s hard to nail down where home is or find people you can call your own.” She basically just summed up how I’ve felt my whole life, never quite belonging. The scene that follows, “you are not one of us!” hurt to my core for very familiar and personal reasons. She captures this sense of never quite belonging very well in this scene, along with many others. Although she and her family were never the focal “others” their alien-ness was nonetheless a point that distanced them from the “white crowd”.  A feeling I am again all too familiar with.

Angering:

As I am sure others encountered, I felt a mitigating sense of anger throughout the telling of this story. Anger at the hate and ignorance that was and in many ways still is so prevalent in our country. I was mad at the hypocrisy that Lila experienced when learning about “Alabama” and even more pissed off at the fact that that same discourse thrives in our schools today. I was angry when she was asked to “restrict [her]self to bona fide academic activities”. I was angry that she had to give up her “white friends” in order to gain friendships with her “black friends”. I was pissed at the textbook, “Know Alabama”. I was angry about the parishioners at the “white church”… very Christian of them! I was utterly enraged by the actions that took place on February 18^th and about the loss of an innocent man’s life, Jimmie Lee Jackson.

I understood all of this, though I was angry. I understood why all of this existed and why it occurred but that doesn’t subside the anger. I’ve heard stories of similar things before and in no way have been blinded to the facts of our “great American history” *sarcasm*. Yet I suppose I felt so angry reading Lila’s memoir because I know that many of these things still happen today. Many of the residual effects of this time period is STILL happening. I suppose this is what angered me so much. It’s still happening in our schools, in our prisons, in our media, all around us.

Lila’s decision to use black and white, as in Persepolis, truly captures the “black and white” polarization of the society that surrounds them. It was literally black and white.  Only in those shades of gray were Lila and her family able to exist, though sometimes going unnoticed.

Empowering:

Though I have stated much of what is included in Darkroom has in one way or another angered me, I would however like to turn that anger into something a bit more positive and throw that into our universe, as opposed to anger. I felt empowered by all of this. Lila’s story is one all too familiar to many of our immigrant families, children and students. In fact, stories like these are ones I have heard before. Lila’s life was riddled with an embarrassment of her families mother tongue, she felt torn between family life and school life, she kept them separated, she saw hypocrisy between what was taught in school and what was lived, she also noticed that much of what was surrounding her out-of-school life was never mentioned in school.

As a student-teacher here at Mills, stories like these truly stress the importance of school as well as the roll of the teacher in our increasingly diverse schools. I know that Lila lived in a “different time”, though not much different than our own, but can we imagine how her life would have been if she was made to feel that both her languages were vital and important? Can we imagine if her teachers made her feel apart of a community rather than a subject to be studied and made fun of? What if the school and her teachers made more of an effort to reach out to her parents and to include them? What if her textbooks were different or at least her teachers presented her with various perspectives surrounding Alabama history? I mean lets be real, Lila know those textbooks were B.S. And what if her teachers gave her students a space and time to talk about what was going on in the world around them? What if she gave them a time and space to share their opinions about it all in a respectful yet engaging manner? Like I said, I know she lived in a “different time” where perhaps none of this was possible. But this memoir was empowering to me because, though we would like to think much has changed and that many of the “what-ifs” I just mentioned are actually happening in classrooms, the reality is they are not. It’s empowering to me because I want to make that change and I will in my own classrooms.