Out in the Center

Public Controversies and Private Struggles

Harry C. Denny, Robert Mundy, Liliana M. Naydan, Richard Sévère, Anna Sicari, Harry C. Denny, Robert Mundy, Liliana M. Naydan, Richard Sévère, Anna Sicari

• Publisher: Utah State University Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781607327820
• eBook ISBN: 9781607327837
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Creative Writing
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Out in the Center explores the personal struggles of tutors, faculty, and administrators in writing center communities as they negotiate the interplay between public controversies and features of their own intersectional identities. These essays address how race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, faith, multilingualism, and learning differences, along with their intersections, challenge those who inhabit writing centers and engage in their conversations.
 
A diverse group of contributors interweaves personal experience with writing center theory and critical race theory, as well as theories on the politics and performance of identity. In doing so, Out in the Center extends upon the writing center corpus to disrupt and reimagine conventional approaches to writing center theory and practice. Out in the Center proposes that practitioners benefit from engaging in dialogue about identity to better navigate writing center work—work that informs the local and carries forth a social and cultural impact that stretches well beyond academic institutions.
 
Contributors:
Allia Abdullah-Matta, Nancy Alvarez, Hadi Banat, Tammy S. Conard-Salvo, Michele Eodice, Rochell Isaac, Sami Korgan, Ella Leviyeva, Alexandria Lockett, Talisha Haltiwanger Morrison, Anna Rita Napoleone, Beth A. Towle, Elizabeth Weaver, Tim Zmudka

Part I

Race

1

Being Seen and Not Seen

A Black Female Body in the Writing Center

Talisha Haltiwanger Morrison

DOI: 10.7330/9781607327837.c001

Growing up in a small town in Oklahoma, I was very often, and very noticeably, a Black body in White spaces. When I was very young, I was curious about what made Black people different from White people. My grandma used to say White people smelled funny, but I could never tell any difference. We all smelled the same to me: White, Black, and the other races too. There was one White kid who smelled funny, but I think he was an exception. In elementary school, I wondered whether the White kids were smarter than I was, if maybe that’s why some of them got to go off to that special class. But I made straight pluses (+) in elementary school and then straight As, so that wasn’t it. I think they just got to go because their parents were doctors and stuff, so it was a race and a class thing, but not an intelligence thing. I don’t know why, but when I was around six years old, I also wondered if White girls’ pee made a sound when it hit the toilet water like mine did. Personally conducted bathroom studies confirmed that it did, so this, also, was not the difference between White people and Black people.

Eventually I realized that physically, the difference was mostly just skin and hair. But there was also something else, which I would later identify as cultural differences. One of these differences was that Black people talked about race, at least with other Black people. Black people talked about being Black. White people did not talk about being White, did not talk about White and Black, did not talk about Latino or Native or Asian Americans. Over time I heard them say they did not “see” race. Did that mean they did not see me?

Of course, they did see me, how could they not? I was a Black body in White spaces. They just didn’t want to talk about it. And being a Black kid in White spaces, I learned I was not supposed to talk about it either (at least not until one of my White teachers called upon me to explain how all Black people feel about the use of word nigger in Huckleberry Finn). Other Black kids in White spaces also learn not to talk about it.

To the Center

I am working as an undergraduate tutor at the University of Oklahoma when a Black female student walks in with a paper. She is assigned to me and we sit down and begin working. The student is a friend, a coworker from one of my other jobs on campus. I can’t remember now what her paper was about exactly, just that in it, she describes a racist incident, but she’s circling around the word racist, leading up to it but never getting there. I don’t at the time, and still do not now, assume all Black people and other people of color are comfortable talking about race, especially in White spaces, and especially since at this point in my life, I’m still finding ways to do so myself. But this student knows me. Our outside relationship lessens the hierarchy and blurs the line between “peer” and “consultant” (Zhang et al. 2013), and I can speak as a friend and as one Black woman to another. I ask her to explain what happened, just in her own words, and when she does, I can push her further. “Racism,” I say, “you’re talking about racism.”

“I know,” she says, giving an embarrassed giggle. “I was just trying to . . . I just didn’t know if I could say . . . ,” leaving her sentence unfinished.

Earlier I noted as an aside that teachers wanted me to speak on behalf of all Black people to determine whether or not the novel Huckleberry Finn is racist (Twain 1884). That was and wasn’t an aside because that happens, all the time, and many people have talked about it—people of color expected to be representatives or spokespersons for their entire race. But it happens despite our acknowledgment of its wrongfulness and harmfulness to people of color.

Example: my first year in graduate school I took a required class in composition theory. One week into the class, we had a discussion about racial privilege, and a White student brought up how White people have the privilege of never having to speak for their entire race. The entire class, all White except me, agreed people of color shouldn’t have to do this either. Two weeks later, the teacher shared a story about her first semester teaching when a White student wrote a racist paper arguing for the resegregation of schools. She told us how she responded, and the class had a discussion in which I did not participate at first, not for any particular reason other than that I was listening to others. Then, it happened. My teacher turned to me, the single Black student not only in the class or program but also in the entire English department: “Well, I think we’re ignoring the obvious perspective in the room.” I had been called OUT. Again. I was uncomfortable with the way I had been called to enter the conversation, but as a first-semester graduate student, I was a bit unsure of myself in the new setting. I offered my opinion that yes, the paper was horrible, the student’s viewpoint offensive, but given his background and lack of exposure to Black people, I could see why he might hold such a bigoted viewpoint, and I thought the teacher had responded as appropriately and effectively as she could have. Several of the White students in the class roared back with an odd kind of righteousness. I was wrong! How could I not be outraged by such ignorance from this eighteen-year-old kid (who had never actually met a Black person before attending college)? Later we would read Jacqueline Jones Royster’s “When the First Voice You Hear Is Not Your Own.” I came to understand that from my classmates’ perspective, I had not spoken “authentically” as a Black person nor shared an appropriate Black response (Royster 1996). At the time, I sat shocked, falling silent while my teacher engaged my classmates in further discussion without me.

Back to the Center

Spending so much time as the only or one of few people of color in White spaces, I should be very familiar with how isolating it is. But it’s a strange thing, you almost forget you’re alone. A Black student at Purdue, however, reminds me when he walks into the writing lab to work on a paper for his English composition course. The assignment asks him to write about an organization he participates in and why it is important. He’s chosen an organization providing academic and social support for minorities in business. The student writes about how helpful the organization is, about how without the organization, Black men like himself might not make it in a place like Purdue. I ask him what he means by that. He hesitates before going on to state the obvious: there are few Black people at Purdue. He says the organization helps him feel connected because he did not when he first arrived on campus. He felt invisible and alone. “So why didn’t you write that?” I ask.

“Well, I just, I didn’t know if I could just say that,” he tells me. Like the student at Oklahoma, he is wary of speaking openly, of calling attention to the Whiteness of this space. The student sees me, the lone Black face in the writing lab, but I still bring myself further out. I tell him about my first experience walking onto my undergraduate campus. College was a whole new world from high school, and I had been fortunate enough to find friends and resources to help me, but when I came to Purdue, I realized it had not been intended for me, or people like me; despite decades of access, some things about the place still resisted me. I tell him I know about the isolation, about reaching out and trying to grasp something familiar, which I had experienced even more while earning my master’s degree. Unlike this student, I am not new here or to this experience. I am in my third year at my third large predominantly White research institution. I also don’t know this student the way I knew the young Black woman at Oklahoma, but elements of his experience still speak to me. I tell him I do understand some of what he is trying to convey and that it’s okay to put those feelings into words if they are his truth. As far as I know, he has not come back to the writing lab. I did see him a few more times that semester in the building for his class and elsewhere on campus. Each time, we both smiled and said hello to one another, a small bond that might not still exist were we to see each other now, but it accomplished what we each needed to keep going at that time.

During the same semester I worked with the Black student discussed above, I had a Nigerian international student in my English composition course. I ended up developing a more lasting bond with this student, who sometimes shared her struggles and confusion about being Black in the United States. She visited the writing lab several times that semester and had trouble filling out the demographic information: she identified as Black, but not African American, and these things were lumped together, Black/African American. In class, we frequently discussed racism. The student shared an experience in which someone had told her she was “smart, for a Black girl.” I remember smiling, knowingly, wearily, and telling her I had had several similar experiences: White people who were shocked that I could be Black AND intelligent, Black AND articulate, and who commonly extended this line of thought to my appearance, Black AND pretty. My student and I chatted when she came in for tutorials at the lab, and she often visited my office hours. She shared more of her experiences about being a Nigerian international student, which seemed to be much different from the experiences of Chinese and Indian students, perhaps due to the much smaller community as well as the different way Black and Asian bodies are racialized the in United States. We talked about our hair, and she shared her frustration with trying to find products while confined to campus. I gave her the name of the website where I order my hair supplies because I know the struggle for sufficient Black hair-care products gets better but does not end with access to the Greater Lafayette community.

To the Center Again

Later that semester I end up working with an Asian international graduate student. He is working on a business proposal for a mobile app for Black women with natural hair. The app would allow women to take photos of their hair, which could then be sent in and analyzed for texture, consistency, curl pattern, and so forth, and the app would recommend products for specific hair types. Women could even cut off a piece and mail in a sample of their hair for more specific analysis. I sit there, a Black woman with a head full of dark, curly, natural hair, slowly coming to the realization that this man’s text is about, but not for, me.

Reading this man’s work I find myself having a response I’ve never truly experienced in the writing center: anger. I am growing more and more upset at how Black women’s hair, which is a very touchy topic for Black women, is being described. I am upset that this man is looking to make money from exploiting Black women’s struggles to care for our hair—to make money. I am upset he can sit here beside me and discuss it so objectively, analytically. I am having a physical reaction to this student’s project. My back goes rigid; my chest feels tight; I am hyperaware of my dark-brown curls, held back by an elastic band at the crown of my head. This tutorial is the most vivid experience of feeling my body, including my curly hair, in a session. And, the most bizarre part is that the student remains completely oblivious to my discomfort. I am, at times, literally squirming in my seat as he discusses Black women, and he takes no note of me or of my hair.

During the session I look around the lab, almost for an escape route. There are no other free tutors, and no one seems to be aware of my distress. I consider excusing myself from the session anyway because I am so upset. But I do not. The student has come for help, and despite my discomfort, is it not my obligation to help him? This is a legitimate question. Am I obligated to help him when I feel so physically uncomfortable? At the time, I decide yes, so I keep going, helping to increase his sentence clarity, which is his primary concern as a multilingual writer speaking to an audience he is hoping will give him money. I sit through the session, concerned about my emotional safety but also about my obligation. I am feeling angry for the first time in a session, but as Audre Lorde acknowledges in one of my favorite essays, “The Uses of Anger,” even she, Black, woman, and a lesbian, has privilege based on her class and education that allows her to feed her children without worry (Lorde 1997, 284). I am called to think about my positionality. I am a Black woman whose identity is being commodified, but I am also a tutor at the Purdue Writing Lab. Before me is a male researcher seeking funds for a project, but he is also an international student who may be penalized because he possesses less command over standardized, academic American English than I do. Also, being an international student and growing up outside the United States, the student is less likely to be accustomed to paying attention to race and racial difference in the particular ways Americans do. Knowing this, still I feel I must speak. I cannot be what J Quaynor calls a “bystander” for the sake of professionalism (Zhang et al. 2013)

I begin by asking the student for more information. The proposal had grown out of the student’s dissertation project. I ask if the faculty sponsor is a Black woman. She is, which gives me some hope that some of my concerns may be addressed by her when she looks at his proposal (I have looked at the first draft). I ask if he has considered whether or not Black women will be resistant to the technology, where it came from, and how it deals with Black hair. During our conversation I even, cautiously, express my concern that this product is a way to capitalize on Black women’s constant struggle to find the right products. The student’s app may meet a need, but I am worried about how he is suggesting it be met and worried that the affective component of finding Black hair blogs/vlogs/tutorials, which is where many Black women turn to for advice, will be lost. The writer is very open to my questions, and by the end of our conversation many of my concerns have faded away—though not completely.

He says the conversation has been useful for identifying some changes he needs to make because he wants to be careful about how he talks about Black women and their hair and about how to include Black women as part of the process of helping other Black women find the right products. The conversation is beneficial to him, as I’ve ultimately drawn not just on my knowledge of the English language but also on my knowledge and experience as a Black woman to help the student make rhetorical decisions, an effective use and balance of power and authority (Carino 2003). An important difference between the successful session Peter Carino describes in “Power and Authority in Peer Tutoring” and my tutorial, however, is that in my tutorial, my very personal self is part of the session, and not really on my terms. And despite the good that resulted from our conversation, I question, even now, whether or not I should have remained in the session in the first place. Carino (2003) says that “students who enter writing centers should be made to feel as comfortable as possible, if for no other reason than basic human decency” (98). But what of tutors? Where was the line between my obligation to the student and my own personal safety?

Fast forward to the following summer. I am doing an online tutorial chat session, also with an international student writing about Black women’s hair. The student has watched Chris Rock’s documentary Good Hair as part of a sociology class and must write a response paper (Stilson 2009). Most of the paper is a summary, or putting the film in conversation with what the student has read about domination and how Black people, in this case Black women, have had to change their appearance to try to assimilate with dominant culture. Toward the end of the paper, the student writes that Black people should resist this domination, and that if Black women took more pride in their hair, then maybe natural hair would become the dominant mainstream style. I find myself in a new situation, one that has never happened before: as I respond to this student, I must choose to come out, to disclose my Blackness. Or, I could choose not to. I know this student likely does not mean what her sentence suggests: that Black women’s lack of pride is the reason for their subordination. I know this is an issue of phrasing, most likely arising from her being a second language writer. At the end of our session, I raise this thought. She quickly confirms my belief that the sentence conveys something she did not intend. But unlike the former student, she cannot see me. I wonder, if I tell her—that I am a Black woman, that I have natural hair—will I do her harm? Will she be concerned she has offended me? Should this be my primary concern? I tell her I know she did not intend a negative inference and that was why I brought it to her attention. And then I continue: I tell her that as a Black woman with natural hair, I can say we are very proud of our hair, but she is correct that there is still discrimination and that sometimes, even now, this discrimination comes from other Black women. I also tell her things have gotten a little better since Rock’s film was released seven years prior. She thanks me for my honesty and perspective. The appointment time has ended. I give a couple of last-minute suggestions, wish her luck, and sign off to begin the next appointment.

2

A Touching Place

Womanist Approaches to the Center

Alexandria Lockett

DOI: 10.7330/9781607327837.c002

Every day I worked in the undergraduate or graduate writing center, someone hugged me. This should not be a remarkable observation, but I consciously avoided any physical contact with students as a writing teacher in the same institutional space. Student interactions in my classes were detached, even steely. Bodies sat across from one another with firm distance as we maintained a procedural boundary. Occasionally, a student embraced me after the term was over, usually when seeing me to request a recommendation and follow-up after the course. Such rare instances of touch caused me to remember the first time I realized how often I was touched in writing center spaces.

In my personal tutoring experience with both undergraduate and graduate student writers, touch operated in ways that opened up the possibility of confronting how dynamics of race, nationality, religion, gender, sexuality, age, social class, and body size affect student learning. This chapter critically examines some of the ways in which touch, as a literal and figurative act, contributed to intersectional writing tutoring practice. When interpreted through a black feminist ideology, touch can be used as a way of doing, seeing, reading, or coming to know power. Moreover, I discuss how touch can be strategically incorporated into the reporting practices of tutors through the structured use of personal narrative and autoethnography.

In particular, this chapter presents ten reflections on my tutoring practices in both an undergraduate writing center (UWC) and a graduate writing center (GWC) for the purposes of articulating an antiracist, decolonial black feminist tu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Public Controversies and Identity Politics in Writing Center Theory and Practice
• Part I: Race
• Part II: Multilingualism
• Part III: Gender and Sexuality
• Part IV: Religion
• Part V: Class
• Part VI: (Dis)Ability
• References
• About the Contributors
• Index