Saturday, April 18, 2020

Captain's Log, Day 12: I Put the "I" in "Identity"


Date: April 18 (technically 19), 2020
Time of post:  12:39 AM
Quarantine Day: 34
Last Song I Listened To: “Woman's World” by Little Mix
Last Person I Communicated With: Savannah Winkler via Instagram DMs
Last Thing I Ate: 3 halo mandarin oranges
Last Thing I Read: A Snapchat message
Current Mood: proud
One Thing I’ve Accomplished Today: grocery shopping and finished graduation presents
One Thing I Want To Accomplish Today: I mean, I actually did all the things on my list today
One Reason I’m Stressed Today: I have a big History of the Book “quiz” to take this weeked
One Reason I’m Happy Today: the ChALC Conference today was wonderful, and Zetta Elliott is an amazing human being and incredible speaker!

Dear Apocalypsers,

I’ve been thinking a lot about identity today. It started this morning with the biannual ChALC Conference. Months ago, we picked a theme: “Fantastic Identities.” The M.A. Class of 2020 has a pretty big Children’s Lit cohort—I think there are 6 of us (me, Lexi, Dustin, Mikayla, Molly, Noelle)—and we’re all involved with ChALC, and we’re all very into diversity and representation in Children’s Literature. (And it probably helps that, to quote the best compliment Nick Cady has ever given, “We’ve got to be one of the gayer cohorts.”) So we knew that if we were going to have a hand in planning this conference, we wanted it to be about identity. And, because K-State has some of the coolest connections, we were able to get Zetta Elliott as the keynote speaker.

Cue COVID-19 mess.
Thankfully, Karin Westman is the ChALC sponsor, and we were able to move the conference online via Zoom. In some ways, that was great, because people from across the country were able to join in. On the other hand, we lost the opportunity to meet Zetta and potentially have lunch with her and ger her to sign our books and all the geeky things that a Children’s Lit graduate student would desperately want to do. But, I’m trying not to get bogged down in that. I’m just going to make Phil Nel introduce us in person someday.

A line from Elliott's most recent book, a collection of poetry inspired about the
lives of her mother and grandmother.

Zetta’s keynote address was called “Magic, Mystery, and History: Forging Radical Black Girl Identities in Fantasy Fiction,” and she talked a lot about her own family history and her relationship with her racial identity. It was really beautiful and powerful and brought up a lot of concerning points about what kinds of books are “allowed” to feature Black or Indigenous protagonists, and, because of all this drama, award-winning authors like Zetta Elliott have to self-publish their work to get it to readers at all. Apparently, most children’s books published with a Black protagonist are in the “nonfiction,” “biography,” or “historical fiction” category, because those are the genres that most often win the Coretta Scott King Award. If a book wins the Coretta Scott King, it’s basically guaranteed to stay in print, and every public and school library will end up with a copy of it—which is great news for publishers. So that creates a cycle of only publishing those genres, and then those genres are the only ones that win, so on and so on—and nobody wants to “risk” publishing other genres like science fiction and fantasy, because they might not make a profit immediately. What they don’t see—or don’t care about—is that introducing books with Black protagonists from different genres could start trend and that, in the future, there could be a really diverse array of books up for (and winning) the Coretta Scott King Award.

But that’s not what capitalism’s about, is it?



When I think about identity, YA novels immediately come to mind. Teenagerdom is such a hard time, partly because everyone’s self-conscious and trying to figure out who they are. I mean, the plot of every teen movie is the "outcast" or "weirdo" suffering for not fitting the status quo and slowly "finding their place," usually with people who accept them "just the way they are."  Fantasy and dystopia YA take the bildungsroman to the next level and throw in a casual “save the world” mandate or “the world is ending” proclamation on top of the already dystopic reality of puberty. Katniss and Peeta, at 16/17/18-years-old have to come to terms with their constantly shifting identities. Peeta even keeps a list of words that he uses to “try to figure [Katniss] out”: friend, lover, victor, enemy, fiancée, target, mutt, neighbor, hunter, Tribute, and ally (Collins 270).
It should be known that the whole Children's Lit
cohort is obsessed with Ebony Elizabeth Thomas' book,
The Dark Fantastic. We read it for Phil's class last spring
and actually got to Zoom with her. And she and Zetta
Elliott are friends! Basically, this photo is hella important
to us now. 

 In Dread Nation (2018), both Jane and Katherine must come to terms with what it means to be a Black girl in Justina Ireland’s zombie-infested post-Civil War world. Jane seems to have an understanding of what being Black means to White society, but she also knows what it means to her, and she’s learned how to work around the system as much as she can. I’m thinking specifically of the moments where she makes herself sound uneducated to get White characters to leave her alone, saying, “My momma says the best wat to get what you want from people is to give them what they think they want. They expected me to be stupid, so I used that to our advantage” and “Sometimes you have to live down to people’s expectations, Kate. If you can do that, you’ll get much further in life” (Ireland 62, 63). Katherine, who is white-presenting, has a harder time with her identity, because on one hand, she can live as a privilege white woman, but at what cost? She tells Jane, “[Passing as white is] exactly what I don’t want. I don’t want to live the rest of my life as a liar. To turn my back on my own people” (362).

But identity isn't limited to teenagers and YA, as Daniel Heath Justice shows us in The Way of Thorn and Thunder (2011), where many of his characters find themselves straddling more than one identity. For Tarsa, the main protagonist (maybe?), she struggles with suddenly having her identity as a Redthorn Warrior taken away as her Wielder identity is Awakened. Being a Wielder is uncommon, and she is shunned by her community; she feels out of place herself until Chapter 11 "Becoming" when she accepts her identity. Other characters, like the gender neutral zhe-Kyn , Averyn, embody characteristics of both genders, and they are a valued healer in this world. Even Tobhi, who is portrayed as personable, honest, and well-liked, is "different," as he is a Leafspeaker. His skills are rare among Tetawi, so he isn't "normal," either, and the same can be said of Quill the Dolltender. But, for Tobhi and Quill, their differences (or anomalies) make them highly respected members of their communities, and there is yet no indication that they ever faced the kind of discrimination that Tarsa has. Overall, Justice's world is reflective of Indigenous culture which is more accepting of “anomalous” gender identity than our society is, in that The Way of Thorn and Thunder views identity as more of a spectrum than a binary and that "anomalous" people are not "wrong" but special and important.
This is a post from an astrology account that I follow on
Instagram. It "prescribed" me (a Pisces) 5-10 times a day. I listen
to so much music every day, so this was a pretty (and strangely
accurate) "pill to swallow.."


With all of this bouncing around in my head, I started thinking about my own identity. (Don’t worry—no Earth-shattering revelations are about to be revealed.) So, I do what I always do when I need some feel-good energy: I turn on Little Mix. They’re probably my favorite girl group, and I’ve actually come to appreciate them more as I’ve gotten older because 1) they’re best friends, and that comes across in every song they record and every interview they do and 2) they are unapologetically proud of the things that society tells women they shouldn’t be proud of, from their weight to their sex lives to “four letter words” to how big their boobs are (these are the things that definitely made me uncomfortable at first, coming from a small Southern town, but now it’s what I love about them). They have a song called “Strip” on their most recent album, LM5 (2018), and I literally cried came on Spotify today. I was in my kitchen, microwaving some chicken nuggets, and I just cried. (It’s not even a dramatic ballad! That’s “Cannonball,” which of course came on immediately after, and I was such a wreck after those 2 songs, omg.) I think it was this part that got me: “Take off all my make-up 'cause I love what's under it / Rub off all your words, don't give a, "uh", I'm over it / Jiggle all this weight, yeah, you know I love all of this / Finally love me naked, sexiest when I'm confident / You say I ain't pretty / Well, I say, "I'm beautiful", it's my committee” (Little Mix).




I don’t have a great history with my body. There are things about myself that I’m not comfortable with—my weight, my skin, my teeth—and I generally just feel a little bit like I’m trying to hide myself. Growing up, I was always told that I was “so smart.” I was “writing my own ticket,” and “my parents must be so proud.” What I don’t remember being told was that I was pretty or that I had a nice smile or that someone had a crush on me. I do remember not fitting into my 7th grade Spring formal dress because I had gained weight. I remember being told by my neighbor that we could work out (at 12 and 13) and get me “from a Large to a Medium.” I remember getting cast as the comic relief character but never the beautiful leading lady and being told that boys were “intimidated by me.” I remember not getting asked to Prom. I knew I was smart, and that quickly became my identity—but I wanted to be pretty.

And, weirdly, it took moving halfway across the country to find peace with myself. That’s what I realized today. For years, I thought something was wrong with me. Maybe I wasn’t particularly pretty; I didn’t hear that much (except from my parents, but they’re obligated to say that, right?) Maybe I was a little too chubby or my one wonky tooth was too wonky; I had never been asked out, never kissed anyone. Maybe I was too loud or weird or naïve or focused on my career. But when I got here, I found people who loved every part of me—and told me. And that gave me some much-needed confidence to love myself. Like the girls of Little Mix say, “If you got little boobs, love it / If you got a big ass, grab it / If you got nothing big, rock it / It's your life, go get it, if you want it” (Little Mix).
And, wow, do I want it.

So, if you’ve read the last 1600 words, thank you. Go jam to some Little Mix. They’re sure to make you feel good about yourself. (I highly recommend “Joan of Arc,” “Wasabi,” “TheNational Manthem,” “Woman Like Me,” “Shout Out to My Ex,” “Power,” “Salute,” and “Little Me” in addition to “Strip" and “Cannonball.” "Woman's World" (My "last song listened to" is so powerful, too. Definitely worth a shout out here.).

And, if you’re still figuring out who you are, may the odds be ever in your favor. You’ll get there.

Katie






Works Cited:

Collins, Suzanne. Mockingjay. Scholastic, 2012.

Ireland, Justina. Dread Nation, HarperCollins, 2018.

Justice, Daniel Heath. The Way of Thorn and Thunder: The Kynship Chronicles. University of New Mexico Press, 2013.

Little Mix. “Strip.” LM5, Syco, 2018.

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