This is one existential question I had not anticipated on answering when arriving to Bada Bing’s pizza with friend Jenn Ryan on a rainy afternoon. What I had in mind was a semi-quiet affair discussing classes and exams as I munched slowly on veggie pizza.
Instead, I was greeted with this question, the great “Who am I” of philosophical debates. Sure, there are myriad answers out there that I could give, such as daughter, sister, cousin, student, writer (I pause to claim this title), or sorority girl. However, as I sat there and pondered, I realized there was so much more depth to this question than just who I am. Who am I to be so egocentric that I don’t think of the countless identities we have read in this class? As a white, 20 something female, I am not one to question my background. Unlike the character’s in Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing, I know from whence I came. My ancestors were not forcibly taken from their homes to serve others through murderous labor. Unlike the people in Art Spiegelman's Maus 1 & 2, my ancestors were not butchered in the Holocaust. I never had to experience the burdens of my parents suffering through the greatest of traumas. At this point, I had to take a moment to pick up a garlic knot and shove it in my face and realize this question on a countertop probably didn’t intend on sending someone into an existential epiphany-- but I’m so thankful that it did. Who am I to not think of the thousands of lives we have read in this class over this past semester? Who am I to think that I’m not carrying these lives with me at all times? Often we joke #NeverAgain or something like it, but in truth this is dangerous practice. By vowing to never again have tragedy of racial profiling, or any form of disaster, catastrophe, or havoc enacted on humans by other humans, we acknowledge that not only does such a thing exist, but that our society perpetrates it every day by just existing. This is what these books mean to teach us, and who are we to forget this?
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Dr. PolakWrangler of the attendant ne'er-do-wells. Archives
May 2018
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