LIBRARY
Michigan State
University

 

 

 

This is to certify that the

dissertation entitled

SALVATION AND ALIENATION: TENSIONS IN THE
RELATION OF LEARNING AND IDENTITY

presented by

Mark Robert Cover

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Ph. D . degree in CEPSE

 

”Ly/gig

/ V Major professor

King D. Beach

Datefius \>V‘, 200‘

MS U it an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution 0-12771

 

PLACE IN RETURN BOX to remove this checkout from your record.
To AVOID FINES return on or before date due.
MAY BE RECALLED with earlier due date if requested.

DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE
OCT 2 6-2002

 

JAN 1 2 2009

 

 

6/01 chlRC/DateprGS—pJS I

SALVATION AND ALIENATION: TENSIONS IN THE
RELATION OF LEARNING AND IDENTITY

By

Mark Robert Gover

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology and Special Education

2001

 

'u'u
i 5

iv a x K.”

'L“vv\
a q .,
I \
' A
l'lv'r .
. ,"
n-r
1“. I
“he
.

 

"WI-5

 

; »-
..
dip

 

 

ABSTRACT

SALVATION AND ALIENATION: TENSIONS IN THE
RELATION OF LEARNING AND IDENTITY

By

Mark Robert Gover

There is an obvious relationship between learning and identity, between how and
what we come to know and who we are becoming as persons. Particularly within the
family, it is thought that early learning lays the foundations for personal identity.
However, in the transition to formal education, the definition and structure of learning
change in such a way as to obscure the relationship between learning and identity-
making. Although our perception of it may be obscured, the relationship remains. The
only difference is that we no longer acknowledge it as quickly or as readily.

This study explores the published autobiographies of three public intellectuals:
Mike Rose, Jill Ker Conway, and Richard Rodriguez. Using a hermeneutic approach,
these texts are interpreted in terms of the relationship between the authors’ learning, on
one hand, and their efforts to construct an integrated identity within mainstream academic
culture, on the other. In various ways, in their journey toward becoming highly educated
persons, all three authors struggled to learn within academia’s accustomed ways of
thinking, acting, and talking without, at the same time, disowning vital aspects of
themselves and their past.

Three themes emerged fi'om these narratives. Each of them seeks to address a

fundamental tension between learning and identity-making that seemed to carry across

 

_ 0'. ‘t”?
t '4‘
Rut-e

, . In
.Mr‘m‘

3‘} R“ Li.

..A

i 1 fl ‘
4"!» 9|
,4

36““? t
“uni-bu.
.

..._ . ‘
”1,... m.

the autobiographies of Rose, Rodriguez, and Ker-Conway. Stability and change refers to
the tension in these stories between a sense of personal continuity and becoming
something new or different. Afliliation and separateness represents the tension between
the authors’ need to feel that their learning and their identity were connected in important
ways to people, things, events, and ideas outside themselves while also retaining their
own sense of individuality. Finally, immediacy and reflection refers to the movement in
these authors’ ston'es between two ways of knowing or experiencing the world. It is
argued that none of these tensions seem to have been a product of formal learning per se.
Instead, they seemed to emerge most strongly in the authors’ on-going transition between
academia and other life contexts. Further, though at times difficult or painful, there were
ways in which the tensions themselves were productive, providing fuel for the authors’

movement through significant periods of educational and life change.

 

 

For Diana
Her Love, Patience, and Forgiveness

 

 

 

iv ,‘\_“‘
{NU-4.

I
rust; "‘

1 4
”Mt, ...L.
.

 

It

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my gratitude to King Beach, my advisor, for his continued
guidance and support over the past five years. Also, to Steve Weiland, whose enthusiasm
was invaluable when I’d lost my own. Thanks to Susan Florio-Ruane for reminding me
that it was impossible not to write something that was uniquely mine. I’m gratefiil to
David Pearson for his considered insights and encouragement in this work. Finally, my

heartfelt thanks to Jim Gavelek for opening a door and to David Cooper for keeping it

open.

 

'JEER '.

o“: I

v' ‘1
“pt f
_i,.uJJlb I

.. .T“ A
~13L1R.
.C‘W'W

I .. . LA“

EETER 3

ETh

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION ................................................................................ 1
CHAPTER 2

THE LITERATURE ............................................................................. 27
CHAPTER 3

IDENTITY, AUTOBIOGRAPHY, AND QUESTIONS OF METHOD ................. 49
CHAPTER 4

MIKE ROSE .................................................................................... 110
CHAPTER 5

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ ..................................................................... 165
CHAPTER 6

TILL KER CONWAY .......................................................................... 225
CHAPTER 7

COMPARISONS AND CONTRASTS ...................................................... 302
CHAPTER 8

SYNTHESIS ..................................................................................... 345
POSTSCRIPT .................................................................................... 368
BIBILOGRAPHY ............................................................................... 369

vi

 

LIST OF TABLES

TABLE 1 Uses of the Term 'Narrative' ...................................................... 52

vii

 

LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURE 1 Essential Tensions Between Learning and Identity .................................. 93
FIGURE 2 Mike Rose - Time Line of Major Transitional Events ............................. 1 1 1
FIGURE 3 Richard Rodriguez - Time Line of Major Transitional Events .................... 167
FIGURE 3 Jill Ker Conway — Time Line of Major Transitional Events ....................... 226

viii

 

 

(1"! 5'3." i"
v I‘. to!»

I 4- »_
fi':1"givq

 

1", . if.
on .. r‘
‘ i
V‘ ‘ 9

54...}

“"911! ..
V I
."\- 5: ‘t R

5:! f.‘ a;
‘. y““'
'te- . ..
I. I
'u,_‘ u

v

‘I‘;‘ I
k,“ .

I‘-

a

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

The main thing about schools is that they are one of a very few
remaining public international spaces in which people are still engaged
with each other in the reciprocal, though organizationally patterned.
labor of produa‘ng meaning - indeed, the core meaning of self identity.

- Philip Wexler (I 992, p. 10)
It seems intuitively plausible to expect that education, however
objective the domains it may negotiate or the criteria to which it may
be subject. should engage and in significant respects transform the
selves of pupils (p. 171).

- John Dunne (1995. p. 171)
Learning is the transformation that continuously takes place in an
individual ’s identity and ways ofpartia’pating through his or her
engagement... with others

- Gordon Wells (1999, p. 2.?)

Education is not a preparation for life; education is life itself

- John Dewey

A century and a-half ago (a period coincidentally encompassing the advent of
mass education), the university where I work began as a small agricultural college. A
clearing had to be made in the Michigan forest. Tribes of Ottawa and Chippewa still
camped along the banks of the Red Cedar river. Now this river winds through a sprawling.
college campus, one containing the largest student housing system in the world. On this
cold February morning, a steady stream of students walk past my office window. A few
press cell phones to their car. Some are in groups, others in couples. Most of them walk
alone, hatless, heads hunkered down into their parkas.

Beyond their identities as students, who are these people? If you were to ask

them, I imagine they would likely define themselves in terms of their future, in terms of

 

{3 3‘» 336 n
$325312

1t «3t It $6:

..1 qrp‘“
FLEE- .43»

‘5‘ o
" Jinn

h“-o- hurl ‘

 

V
I- :"K‘ .
“ hf». .5

\‘A.

53.4

1'.

what they are here to eventually become (What ’3 you major?) Some would be certain
about where they are headed. Others might express some anxiety or confusion. Still, for
most of the year, the majority of them live here making the transition to a working life,
one they presume will be different than what their high school diploma alone might offer
them. A prolonged adolescence some have called it. A reprieve before assuming their full
identity as adults.

But I also must acknowledge an important sense in which most of these persons
have left home long ago. It began the first day of elementary, the day marking their
official entry into the institution that would occupy them for the next decade or two:
education.‘ Further, I must acknowledge that this intertwining of their efforts to learn and
their efforts toward identity-making is also nothing new for them.2 They have lived in the
confluence of these two fimdamental aspects of life for a long time. In the transition to
college it has only become more explicit. (They are here for the expressed purpose of
becoming something after all: a teacher, engineer, business person, nurse, et cetera.)

On a fall day maybe fifteen years prior, each found him or herself nervously sitting in the
first public institution of their lives. Perhaps they had an'ived by bus, the building located
in a neighborhood far from home. Or, like myself, maybe they had only to cross the

street. They may not have known another person in the room and had only the vaguest

Education or 122mm! education and are used broadly to denote the formal institution of education as it
exists from grade school up through higher education

Identity-niala'ng rather than identity' rs sometimes used m order to stress the dynamic aspects of identity
Won.

 

Johan
u L]; nib”

r1: 4

' .

not
I

as -. u IQth
{LIV-Vs why - nl

v~-~- . ..I
h I
"445. W

h"
M

' 1.... :‘I'
‘ "I i a};

‘:-..., ;‘
s4: .5

LEV-4. ‘

.421 '

H
:4

I
.1-4

I
l

r r"-

.’

'5 I?

‘y ’- In

idea of what would happen there. But they at least knew that it would be about ‘learning’
(parents asked What did you learn today?)

Previously, the ideas these people had about themselves had been a function
largely of their membership in a particular family as well as in the larger groups to which
their family belonged. They were sons or daughters, part of a specific ethnic group,
socioeconomic class, church, and so on. These connections structured their lives. They
were who they were and did what they did by virtue of them. Now, in school on that first
day, these relationships could suddenly no longer provide an explanation for why they
were there. The only commonality was that everyone had come ‘to learn’ and everyone,
no matter who they were, had that right.

At the same time, it is obvious that the onset of learning is not marked by the start
of one’s formal education. Although schools are that one social institution whose specific
mandate is to teach and educate, there is clearly much one learns in the years prior to

beginning any kind of formal schooling. As Donaldo Macedo points out in his forward to

 

James Gee’s book, The Social Mind (1992, p. x), “the reading of the world must precede
the reading of the word.”3 Learning prior to formal education represents a means to end.“
It occurs so that we can accomplish some immediate task or so that we can participate

more fully in some valued activity. For example, we learn a tremendous amount about

¥

3Hel'eisthequote initsfulleroontext. Mawdowrites, “We mustfirstreadtheworld thecultural, social.
and political practices that constitute it- before we can make sense of the word-level description of
reality” 'l‘lntisto say, toaccecs the trueandtotal meaning ofanentity, we must resortto thecultural
PlaCtices that mediate our access to the world’s semantic field and its interaction with the word’s semantic
features” (inGee, 1992, p. x). Prestunenblythistypeof reading’ beginslongbeforetheonsetofformal
edlmtion

In the social sciences, growth tn the period prior to formal education rs probably more likely to be viewed
in terms of development or socialization.

13,13 SEN
33.74316 ;

..u ‘rg'fi u

I; W4 5"“

"I? ‘1’“!
‘ ,1 w 'iL

--¢_- 1 ~-
‘ I
“At when”:

n 1'.

tries h

r
r ’7

A,"
.‘l :0“.
«in...
l
”Th
uh“
52‘; 3|"
‘6‘ ‘I‘
h. -.
““51
a...
I 1'“
4..
'F-o.
Nu
A‘
1! q ‘

" 5f
) 5‘

s
i?
:1:

if?

language prior to formal literacy instruction. We ‘acquire’ language so that we can
communicate and interact with those closest to us, learning not merely how to speak but
what certain words can do for us and, when spoken by another, to us. Prior to school,
learning is the means by which we figure out a way to meet our needs for nourishment,
for affiliation, for experiencing feelings of competence. And we learn whether the world
can or cannot meet these needs dependably. Finally, prior to formal education we pick up
a vast number of ideas regarding the basic order of the world. Who is in charge? What are
the rules? Who are the good guys? The bad guys? What is the degree of our own personal
power?

A great deal of what is learned in these years is quite obviously and explicitly tied
to who and what we are becoming as persons. Within a matrix of human connection we
learn to be a son, daughter, nephew, sibling, friend, or stranger. We learn whether or not
we are loved, competent, ‘smart’, the same as others or different. In a sense, at home who
we are is what we’ve learned. Most of us would have no trouble acknowledging that
most of what is learned at home in the early years lays the foundations for personal
identity. Learning in the family is very explicitly a “personalizing process” (Morrish,

1976, p. 169), a process of identity-making (Gover, 1997; Gover, 1999).s

‘ Martin Packer (r995) observes that identity has typically been treated as though it is a property: a
pmpcrty both in the sense of being a characteristic of something (a person) and in sense of something
owned by the individual. Packer argues that identity, instead, is a form of “cultural work” He writes,
Viewed this way, identity is relational (not personal property) and it is contextual, not a matter of fixed
characteristics.” Borrowing from Mach (1993), Packer argues that identity is formed in “interaction, in the
process of exchange of messages which we send, receivet and W until a general, relatively coherem
111191;? is achieved” (Mach, 1993, p. 5), to build up a “conceptual, symbolic model of the world” (Mach,

, p. 6).

 

\o’t. ll

. .? .~ «an
£21171 W

Lust" "'"
,1. its} in)"

.
,npar “
2:44;.) am

nt ”‘9 It
Fa llU\:

.2125. M

‘ l
M ,J..’

‘QJ’ val a.

"L'11 N an

m l;

h

JQT. ...;

.._).‘~‘

H- .: r‘-

-I'

Now, in school on that first day, learning is suddenly redefined. It is presented as
something new and different, not merely a continuation of something we have been doing
for years anyway. Indeed, the very firnction of learning has changed. As mentioned, in
the family and home community, 6 leaming tended to be a means to an end. We learned
how to ride a bike so that we could in fact become a bike rider. If our families were
Catholic, we learned to recite “Our Father” and “Hail Mary” so that we could eventually
become Catholic. We learned how to play baseball so we could become a baseball
player, so that we could participate in the game. I watch my son outside in the yard,

practicing his swing. I listen to his play-by-play. “It’s the bottom of the ninth. . .bases
loaded.” He takes a cut. “It’s outa ' here!” He isn’t practicing for the sake of practice. He
is motivated by an image of something he would become: a baseball player, a hero in
horn of 40,000 cheering fans. He continues to practice.

In contrast, the transition to school suddenly confronts us with a situation where
learning itself has become the entire point. Learning is both what we do and why we do
it. Only secondarily, many years after we have begun, do we begin to deal with the
problem of how what we have learned may eventually connect to some kind of outcome,
a job or career, beyond learning itself. Especially in the younger years, this remains
vague and distant.

Where much of one’s learning at home was not a consciously directed attempt to

learn, at school learning is conscious, intentional, and deliberate. Correct answers are the

 

 

6 B.y"community,’ I imply the community in which one’s family life is immediately rooted: ethnic.
tensions, racial, socioeconomic, etc. The school itself may or may not overlap with that community.

5

 

 

"It? '9’)
ll {s d- "“
”..-

ll}. ltc-ple .1

min T2

.. ..' 'f "t-

. r “

bc‘ Lu int--
.. - u ~
‘ S Li:
“..bl‘ I \

ta; "juggle
a'|.L,...\lis

no. ("a ..

R‘- Lu \.t

...o Q

hum

Ens-..."
‘
«shall

' l
"‘a. '
p .
. _. \ a
\. ,),
l I
.ru,‘
J. fir
I‘~"~
{‘7' . ,
‘W.,_‘ L
'i
b
I
.53“
n“
{fur
. H‘
§
\.

coin of the realm. New activities are presented and old ones are ordered in a different

way. People listen, wait, raise their hands to speak or to sharpen a pencil or to use the
bathroom. They stand in line at specified times. They may be put in particular groups
based on ability (a particular reading group, for example). For the first time, learning
ofiicially takes place amid of crowd of same-aged peers. This creates a context so
developmentally homogeneous that one’s clothing, speech, or skin color might suddenly
stand out in ways not experienced at home. With the expectation that learning should
occur in a calm and orderly fashion, conditions that might interfere with learning, such as
the inability to focus or sit still, might be identified for the frrst time.

With the entry to school, the way one goes about learning also changes. One
moves from learning among intimates to learning among a crowd, from learning that is
assumed to learning that is assessed, from a degree of power over the structure and shape
of one’s learning to a clear division of power in which a teacher takes responsibility
(Jackson, 1983). An important consequence of redefining of learning in this way is that
something inevitably begins to happen to our acknowledgement of the relationship
between learning and identity, that is, between learning and who or what we are
becoming as persons. We no longer see these two processes as being linked together in
the same way.

With the assumption that learning is primarily about the acquisition of skills and

knowledge, those embodied in a particular curriculum, its ties to identity-making start to

 

' l
.- .0. ‘ 'Y'H‘
Lu he} i‘ J»,

...01

.-
-s‘t '

"(‘3
r4-

.'
’rt.

sitar; le

w“ I‘ t \- e

. .I .
git. aubu-
‘

.... no
.‘ r '-
rhni ‘ct tr,

1.
.3...
“It-uh

m,‘ ’.
LH‘ 3,.

become hazy.7 One could argue that a perceived separateness between issues of learning
and identity-making in schools is actually ‘built into’ the structure, social and physical, of
schools themselves. For example, learning in schools is physically isolated from one‘s
activities at home as well as from various communities outside of school. Officially,
activities whose primary focus is identity development are most often extracurricular, a
benefit of one’s participation in sports, various clubs, informal cliques, home life, church,
and so on. Learning to be a person of a certain kind, a person of particular ethnicity,
class, religious persuasion, or gender for example, is a type of learning presumed to occur
outside of those spaces dedicated to the teaching of the formal curriculum. In addition,
although much learning in schools is ostensibly done in groups (through assignments
based almost exclusively on age and ability), learning within these groups is typically
approached as if it were a largely individual cognitive process.

Some may think it trivial to argue this point. “But of course our education affects
who and what we become!” Although we may say we believe this, as a culture we do not

act as if we do. In the various ways I have described, the definition and structure of

-__

7Ideas about how minds come to learn emerge from a background of cultural beliefs regarding the nature
of mind The pedagogical practices that follow from these beliefs constitute what Olson and Bruner refer to
as a folk pedagogy (1996, p. 13). By far the most common of these beliefs has traditionally been that to
know anything means to have ”acquired" a standardbody of information. Therefore, the job of one who
tachesisto'transmit' whatisknowninsuchawaythatitcanbe ”received'bythemindofthelmer,

7

 

D I. .17; ‘

5.4 ...5:

fat! ~r ~-\
A)... t) 5‘...

Zitfflli
”a? n l) ‘

‘5‘

‘9‘ ice .. vi
...nm‘ "I:

W!
*‘t‘n

its \1

"fr...
‘VI “:5

learning within academia obscure the relationship between learning and identity-making.8
Although our perception of it may be obscured, the relationship remains. The only
difference is that we no longer acknowledge it as quickly or as readily. This is not a cry
for school-bashing. I am not even sure that this is where the problem lies. The situation is
much more complex . Somehow, in mandating that an institution take responsibility for
learning, we have compartmentalized the relation between learning and identity. Learning
skills and knowledge is assigned to one institution (education) while learning to be a
person is considered the primary responsibility of another (the family). We therefore fail
to see that something very significant may in fact be happening in the learning-identity
relation as we transition between contexts. We cannot demagnetize the relationship
between what we come to know and who we come to be. It does not cease or go away
simply because we have redefined it. We can only fail to acknowledge it.

There are costs to our lack of attention to the relationship between learning and
identity-making. As a society, for example, we tend to construe public education as
Horace Mann’s (1984) “great equalizer.” To the extent that an education is seen as the
right of each and every citizen, identity is irrelevant. The irony of this ideology is that it

separates issues of identity, especially matters of ethnicity and class, from the larger

 

8 Hofl‘man wrote over a decade ago, "in many ways identity has become the bread and butter of our
educational diet - an 'everybody help yourself construct. served up on nearly every scholarly table" (p.
324). Identity is inmd a construct fit for ”public consumption:" everybody has one. And, as the m
Since Hoffman (1988) attests, it continues to be something an awful lot of writers and researchers have an
interest in Yet 1 don’t believe the outpour of writing on identity is merely a bandwagon effect. Perhaps the
Muted exploration of identity, while confusing in the variety of perspectives it produces, simply
Indicates what an enormously complicated construct identity really is. While it may vary as an exmrience’
from simple to complex, it is always a concoction of ingredients (social, cultural, historieal, mental,
biological. experiential). Something so complicated would seem to demand all the intellectual errort we can
muster (for a similar argument see Weigert, 1983).

 

rt“ ‘ ‘11! ':

.... ... ,
":0; ;.‘£: i
.w- W ‘

I

a el

.“‘;-

l...L
iti‘

‘C‘. \rzl.

...A...‘..‘, ,..~.

‘.' ff,- -.
‘20 Ib‘. ..l p

'1’);

“~Q b

3.1

.‘2‘"‘.$~l
"+ ..l

problem of who gets educated, where, and how. We qualify for studenthood by nothing
that is unique to us as an individual. This situation has lead us in the direction of some
romantic but unrealistic assumptions like "separate but equal is equal," or "equal access
means equal opportunity, " or "the sharing of information through technology can lessen
inequities, evaporate walls, and create a global classroom. "

It is harder to maintain our grasp on the more inevitable and difficult fact that
institutionalized education is forever embedded within level upon level of cultural
realities, none of which can be neatly separated from the others. As an institution,
American education is an amalgam of history, science, philosophy, culture, politics, race,
and economics. It. reflects and sustains these realities, recreating the dynamics of power
between identities of, for example, blacks, whites, rich, middle class, poor, literate,
illiterate, male, and female.

By denying the relationship between learning and identity, we as a society
become more confirsed regarding the goals of institutionalized education. We become
more isolated from one another as a collection of subcultures. And, ultimately, students
become more isolated from one another as individuals. The past several years has seen a
spate of school shootings in America. In their aftermath, there has been a great deal of
attention paid by the media. Although obviously complex, much of the analysis of has
focused on two issues: the identities of the perpetrators and their victims and the social

conditions of American schools generally? The perpetrators have primarily been White

—__

9 In response to the shootings, editorialist Anna Quindlen (2001) takes on the issue of school size. for
example.

 

 

NC. ill :35

.T' ‘L .
mm.

If 13 $07.55.
x? x)"-
. at t.
[115573.134

w

a

l
. ' ‘gnh

13M“)

I -,
‘.-e,o- ,
-9 «JeCl

n ., ..
"ax Ti!

' H
|

middle class students [see Wise (2001) and his commentary regarding school shootings
and White denial] who typically experienced themselves as alienated within the school
and who, in cases where the killing was not random, resented their victims for their social
status. The implicit and often explicit assumption of the media is that since the identities
of both were partially developed and sustained within the context of the school itself,
there is something going on in schools that we fail to understand.

Another area that has brought attention to the critical relation between learning
and identity-making is Michael Chandler’s work on the role of self-continuity in
adolescents. Chandler looked at adolescent suicide among members of indigenous groups
in British Columbia (Chandler and Lalonde, 1998; Chandler, in press). Some of these
groups possess a suicide rate 800% that of the population average. Quite the contrary,
however, it is also a characteristic of BC’s 196 aboriginal bands that the adolescent
suicide rate for some groups is close to zero. Chandler and Lalonde (1998) ask the
question “Why do adolescents in some bands choose to commit suicide and others choose
to preserve their own life?” (pp. 14-15).

The authors suggest that part of the answer may lie in the fact that some
aboriginal communities, but not others, are successful in providing their members with a
sense of “cultural continuity.” This sense comes from adolescents’ perception that their

lives are nested within a larger narrative: the story of their people. It is this larger story
that ultimately informs their identity and provides them with a degree of personal
continuity. Obviously, an awareness of one’s self as being continuous in time and space

is a necessary precondition for personal identity. Chandler and Lalonde ( 1998) argue that

10

 

 

l o
l. , «I;
P 3 . fie: “lu-
ll" “

~ N’ V
1.12 the 5‘

ll. ,. :
at .3 D.

~Lv.- r

5.4:. Cl

I
'3“‘~‘]‘
r 1 D
'4 mm

V

1“?”‘9-1'
6., ‘- \it.

.21“ . ‘ '
‘9‘ .
v

r
in’\'

with when that awareness is diminished, the future for Native adolescents becomes less

relevant and so therefore does their future self.

The short answer, we have suggested, is that because it is
constitutive of what it means to have or be a selfto somehow
count oneself as continuous in time, we end up showing
appropriate care and concern for our own well-being precisely
because we feel a commitment to the firture self that we are in
route to becoming. (Chandler & Lalonde, 1998, pp. 14-15).10

Chandler and Lalonde (1998) found that those communities that had the highest
markers of ‘cultural continuity,’ also had “dramatically lower” teen suicide rates (p. 21).
Markers of cultural continuity, in order of importance, were (a) self-government; (b) land
claims; (c) education; ((1) health; (e) cultural factors; and, (t) police/fire. The assumption
being made is that markers of cultural continuity provide an index for the degree to which
adolescents can borrow meaning from their culture in their personal efforts at identity-
making. In short, through a sense of cultural continuity, teens were presumably able to
experience an important sense of personal continuity in their lives, one that may have
militated against a perceived irrelevance of their own identity. Chandler and Lalonde
(1998) suggest that it was this latter perception that started some down the path toward
eventual suicide.

Education was one of the important routes through which these communities
sought to preserve a degree of cultural continuity and, by extension, a sense of personal

continuity in its members. Specifically, Chandler and Lalonde (1998) imply that there is

'0 Chandler writes that “the cultural life of the First nations of BC [British Columbia] has been so
underminw by government policies and practices explicitly conceived as ways of systematically rooting
outalltracesofaboriginal culturethatmuch ofwhat remains is notso much continuous cultural life, asan
attempt to monstruct it” (p. 15).

ll

 

llll

l
‘r-o, a}.
Ural. a..\

.
”‘2‘! n

in ”In”...

st.

‘I

. .

\‘L are
n

V?“ .

‘ 9’51

something about learning within the context of institutions controlled by the native
communities themselves that makes possible this tandem between the nature of their
learning and the nature of their identity as members of an aboriginal community.

While just 21.8% of the youth population live in communities in

which a majority of children are known to attend band controlled

schools, only 11.3% of all youth suicides occur in such

communities. The difference in suicide rates between

communities that do and do not have such educational systems in
place is substantial: 71.1 vs. 116.2 [deaths per 100,000].

In addition to societal costs, neglecting the relationship between learning and
identity also has costs at the level of the person. This is the level at which I will be
approaching the problem. One of these is an experience of alienation for students whose
background makes it difficult for them to identify with mainstream ways of thinking,
acting, and talking in school. Such students are at higher risk for academic failure. The
lower success rates of some minorities and those from the lower socioeconomic levels as
compared with mainstream students (i.e., middle-class Whites), at both high school and
college level, needs no reiteration here.

Nonetheless, there are students from less than ideal socioeconomic conditions or a
cultural climate drastically different from mainstream academia that do manage to cany
on and occasionally excel academically. For such individuals, there may come a point
where they must somehow reconcile a higher degree of personal literacy with their past.
This can be difficult, particularly when the values of academia and of one's cultural

origins represent two vastly different, even mutually exclusive, frames of reference.

12

(In

“3‘: or;

““5“
.

f
I

f..

Changing views of learning. The past two decades have witnessed major shifts
in our views of learning. In a review of the literature, Leinhardt (1992, p. 23) concludes
that perhaps the most "radical" of these shifts has been the move away from an exclusive
focus on individual behavior or cognition toward an understanding of learning in which
social and cultural contexts are viewed as fundamental (e.g., Bateson, 1972; Cole, 1996;
Cook-Gumperz, 1996; Greeno, 1997; John-Steiner, Panofsky, & Smith, 1994; Lave,

1996;Rogoff, 1994; Rose, 1989; Street, 1988). In this view, learning is, above all, a
discursive process, something that happens only by virtue of our ongoing relatedness to
others.

Views of identity have also shifted considerably in the past two or three decades.

Where previous theories tended to foreground the psychological, intrapsychic and social
psychological aspects of identity (Chickering, 1969; Erikson, 1959; McAdams 1992,
1993, 1995, 1996), there has recently been a much stronger emphasis on illuminating
identity’s cultural constituents. These include those perspectives that explore identity as a
social and cultural construction both within formal learning contexts (Apple, 1999;
Erickson, 1996; Gill, 1993; Giroux, 1992; Gover, 1996; Ogbu, 1990) as well as without
(Chandler, 1987, 1997; Gergen, 1990; Gergen, 1991; Gergen, 1994; Giroux, 1992;
Gover, 1996; Greenwood, 1994; Harre', 1989; Holland, 1998; Sampson, 1993; Shaw,
1994; Shweder, 1985; Shatter, 1993; Shotter, 1989).

One's success in school is, of course, related to one's success in learning how to

sustain relationships with others in the educational environment (e.g., teachers, peers), In

doing so, one learns (or fails or refirses to learn) how to talk and behave like a ‘good

13

 

can "1. '
2-35.0“

‘ .
..na-l‘t '

w:\ )u

..L Bi

9.
“’31:"
-‘~k~|~.ta‘

ll

.4.
r u
-3“, \l.

we».

2".» '4‘
”Liars

to“

. . .
.g 4-:
' b
I
‘~“’ pt
"cent .:
.
4 .
“at“!
‘Is.
‘0‘ ‘
'. t .
‘6
"'4.

 

 

student.’ This is an important aspect of what goes on inside schools although, as a form
of tacit knowledge,” it is more amorphous than curricular knowledge. Nonetheless,
learning how to change and adapt oneself to educational culture is no less critical to
academic success or failure. A growing body of literature increasingly substantiates the
premise that learning in schools and identity construction are very much integral to one
another (Bell, 1997; Bruner, 1996; Davidson, 1996; Eckert, 1989; Erickson, 1996; Gill,
I995;Gover, 1997 #382; Giroux, 1997; Green & Lee, 1994; Lave, 1996; Ogbu, 1990;
Rothstein, 1991).

By and large, however, what this literature does not address is the fact that in
modern society we must continually move back and forth between contexts that
acknowledge, construe, and facilitate the relationship between learning and identity-
making in different ways and to differing degrees. That is, current literature does not
embrace the idea I had begun to begun to develop earlier, that although the learning-
identity relation is not always and everywhere the same, our approach to formal
education blinds us to that fact. Our rigid construal of this relationship bifirrcates learning
and identity-making and, in the movement to education, we quickly loose track of how
intimately they are married. The latter is particularly troublesome given that, for most of
us from age five until high school graduation, we spend an average of 15,000 hours in
some kind of formal educational contexts (Rutter, Maughan, Mortimore, & Ouston,

M

1? Tacit knowledge is a type of known 3 developed and inteth' ed by the “W" W" a “"3 W“ °f
tune. Itincorporatessomuchaccruedandembeddedlsarningthatits rulesmaybe impossible tosepamtc
fromhowanindividnal acts.

l4

 

| .

I. ‘ .... 0‘

U; ....1. .l
U

I -.
“2'3" 1.:
mink-h U\

‘4‘": 1n
“4—“. hi
5

”.1; a
J H .II

.
""‘yhsu

\

a
I ‘-
w '

'5 n
I In
—-1

o

N, H

...... lo‘Ci

.)
rt...
w, ..
'r "A
.1' , F
i

 

1979). This is almost as much of our waking life as is spent at home during that period.
During that time, thousands of events accumulate, all of which have the potential to work
their way into how we think about ourselves not simply as learners but as persons.

Part of the struggle, therefore, in making sense out of and creating one's identity,
and part of the struggle in terms of one‘s own learning, may well have to do with the
complexities of moving between institutions, particularly home/community and school,
that have different takes on the learning-identity relation.12 With each perspective come
different degrees of acknowledgement and support of this relationship. Given that
learning and identity-making are so inextricably connected, what are the implications of
participating across institutions that differ in their recognition of this? How do we
manage or fail to manage our transitions between them? How is it that pe0ple "get on"
under such circumstances? How do they construct an identity and progress? While
identity remains a popular topic within the educational community (Hoffman, 1998), it is
difficult to find anything in the literature that specifically concerns itself with such
questions.

As a society, our thoughts about the relationship between learning in school and
identity-making tend to be at best, confused, and at worst, contradictory. In America,
every person has the right to attend school, a presumed foundation of democracy. This is

the irony of school as the great equalizer: part of insuring equality essentially involves

__

‘2 In reality, of course. learning and identity-making are not restricted to either home/community or school.
Mmpctentiallypartofwhatwedoinanycontext, contextsthatarenotdisconnectedbutofienshare
certain features or values. Although we ourselves remain a common denominator, unlike mathematical
common denominators, who we “are” in one context is not identical with who we “”are in another. In
practice, contexts may either discourage or afford implementing what we have learned in other contexts
and, hence, the clunges this potentially brings about.

15

 

..
.7- 'M' 1
"at 4“- “V
t"

l . NJ
fianfitkll
m.- Nth-1'
14m), ‘

-~ tea" 1“

0_ mi. on!

I
... . "n-

1
a, sum...

, .
'u‘ -r~n I
’4 k
...aiuia-J-
m

V‘I‘v nu
' .h

a
....i .1...

r ”-
-... 5.
A

Q :3

 

I
r

“ fink
“chunk"

 

’“Y

 

policy that alleges to strip issues of identity (especially those matters involving race,

class, ethnicity, and gender) from issues of learning. In the meantime, educational

rhetoric typically appeals to the need to equip students with the skills and knowledge they
will need once they join the labor force, that is, once they have ceased to be students.

This contrasts with other institutions in which learning is seen as expressly in the service
of preparing one for firller membership, so that one may eventually enjoy one’s status as
part of what are typically quite exclusive organizations. The ultimate purpose of
catechism, for example, is not edification but to qualify one for membership in a church.

One's identification as a student is unique in that it is temporary, age-dependent,
and episodic. Thisis compared to roles that might be more permanent (e. g., son, spouse,
Catholic) or require more effort in their development (e. g., doctor, lawyer, mechanic).
Studenthood is commonly seen as function of one's age in the United States, beginning at
age five and ceasing somewhere around young adulthood. In contrast, other institutions
are more variable regarding age-appropriateness. While gang members may only vary a
year or two in age, other organizations incorporate the lifespan. A 65 year old man or
woman may not return to grade school but he or she may convert from one religion to
another, as may an adolescent or young adult.

Finally, in most social environments where learning is an aspect, there is typically
some formal course of training through which the person must prove him or herself
eligible for a particular identity. One must train for a vocation, or to become a soldier. Or
identity may stem from intrinsic traits such as blood or race (family or ethnic group), in

which case one’s eligibility is determined at birth. Still, in other institutions,

16

“T“"Ukw
.1 ’ '

'-.-.'. "'Tli‘f

t-J! ‘ £‘ \'
igl' oil.

'II

that

an” .41
.« 1, l
..Qn um. I

u

'f‘i'v hr t
l .

Jab—ut‘ .

1‘s.

VJ .‘ét
'4‘.“
§

‘In

0's,“
‘r‘ I K -

"Vi ‘

'w
'\
.

 

appropriateness is the main criteria for membership. Gender automatically excludes boys
from membership in the Girl Scouts. In contrast, unlike any of these other institutions, the
identity of “student” is such that one takes it on more-or-less by virtue of walking in the
school door. ‘3

Ifthe process of becoming a formally educated person and the process of
constructing oneself as a person are in fact so fundamentally joined, why don’t we pay
more attention to this? Why don’t we talk more about education in terms of identity, or
identity in terms of education and learning? Although there are a few who have devoted
themselves to understanding this relationship (e. g., Cole, 1996; Dyson, 1997; Wenger,
1998), it may be that - in the brief century since its inception - mass public education has
simply become ‘the way things are.’ "The givenness of the classroom is still taken for
granted," writes Bazerman (1994, p. 58). It is part of the status quo, the accepted norm
that most of our attempts to understand or improve education start from. But, as
Rodriguez observes, “education is not an inevitable or natural step in growing up” (p.
48). We easily forget that it is not human development that drives education but tradition.

In contrast, in this work I hope to provide a more varied, focused, and explicit
picture of the relationship between learning and identity-making, between what and how
one comes to know, on the one hand, and who and what one is becoming as a person, on
the other. I will look at the stories that three individuals tell regarding the differences,

while growing up, between their lives at home and in their community, on the one hand,

13 Compared to one’s personal identity as represented by one’s proper name, the identity of ”student,” (like
Other terms of vocational identity such as professor, writer. teacher) defines not what a person is but what
he or she does: a student studies.

17

_ l
. ‘A ‘
E‘jeif itcc

ink" Jl'LD'
LJ‘l-~ glgiibl

.‘alt
vhf? lus-

I .
to: '3"
m5, bub. itli

 

’As
A... v‘

in. clhr lk".

v)-

and their academic lives, on the other. In particular, I wish to focus on the ways that
various transitions within and between each of these contexts, home/community and
school, either affirmed or denied for them an experience of firndamental connectedness
between learning and identity, that is, between becoming educated and the creation of a
coherent, integrated sense of who and what they were becoming.

This work takes a hermeneutic approach to the autobiographies of three popular
public intellectuals, exploring the identity-related tensions for persons whose
backgrounds, in spite of their aspirations for a working life as an intellectual, made it
difficult for them to establish an integrated identity within academic culture.

Conway, J. K. (1989). The road from Coorain. New York:
Knopf.

Rodriguez, R. (1982). Hunger of memory: The education of
Richard Rodriguez. Boston: David R. Godine.

Rose, M. (1989). Lives on the Boundary. New York: Penguin.

The challenge for these three authors was to define themselves within academia’s
accustomed ways of thinking, acting, and talking without, at the same time, amputating
vital aspects of their past (related particularly to ethnicity and class). In fact, one of the
authors (Richard Rodriguez) ultimately opted out of academia entirely, finishing his
dissertation but never defending it, rather than going through what he felt would have
been the intolerable hypocrisy of a defense. He now works as an essayist for the PBS

McNeill News Hour. Conway, a historian, graduated fi'om Harvard and went on to

18

 

Q
,__.»s:90 q'

5;... (st-8.. a)
.

.w-fi K?
Y . H

‘..

nau‘g-TO > d:
“hm-u mks.

 

it .1532;

1'; "\§“l
in hull

"Ht-w.
. . t ‘
‘~~‘~uu

u

tT-‘r «'-

'- At.

Z‘r’ ‘0"

In

 

r-r

become the first female president of Smith College. Finally, Mike Rose received his
PhD. from UCLA and is director of the writing center there.

As they struggled to adapt, I found these authors’ lives exemplified the idea that
significant acts of learning are inseparable from significant acts of self-definition. Their
education brought change, redefined their roles and relationships, and transformed their
experience of themselves and their lives. Through their narratives, each author
reconstructs their journey in ways that give meaning to the person they have become and
the role education has played in that process. Based on my analyses, there seemed to be
three specific tensions in the relationship between learning and identity-making in these
autobiographies.

First, there were degrees of pull between stability and change, between a sense of
self-continuity, on the one hand, and progressing toward an identity that was anticipated
to be somehow ‘better’ or ‘improved,’ on the other. Second, at various times and in
various ways, the authors each confi'ont the tension between their afiiliation to others and
their need for personal separateness. The tension arose from the pull between feeling that
their learning and identity were connected in important ways to people and ideas outside
themselves (teachers, family members, peers, texts, authors, poets, for example) and the
feeling of existing separately or apart fi'om such affiliations. Achieving affiliative
CXperiences required access to the various means by which the authors could gain access
to a particular culture, which included significant learning relationships (teachers,
mentors, or peers) as well as their own skills, knowledge, and familiarity with regard to

various cultural artifacts. While at its extreme, affiliation could lead to a state where an

19

iii a: :

“t W

In A 9“
l
...
.....q 9.
ii“ \
dhmts.

”"2"” . _.

. .4
”Manage

I“
‘-.'l
W...

....X(

author over-identified with a person or system of beliefs, to the extent that they perceived
themselves to be loosing their own identity, affiliations essentially mediated the process
of becoming formally educated.

Separateness, on the other hand, was essentially the feeling that resulted from an
absence of means, an experience of themselves as, to some degree, an individual set apart
from the particular web of relationships, things, events, and ideas surrounding them.
While at its extreme, separateness induced in them an experience of being cut off, of
loneliness and alienation, in balance with affiliation it was important for a feeling of
individuality, uniqueness, and personal efficacy.

Third, as their education reached more advanced levels, each author eventually
confi'onted the private or personal tension between two fundamental modes of awareness,
or ways of knowing, a tension perhaps best summarized as immediacy (living "in" the
moment, experiencing oneself firlly as a social presence) and reflection (giving way to the
intellectual impulse to detach, analyze, and abstract in order to understand, or put their
experience into some kind of conceptual order). None of these tensions appear to have
been inherently bad or good in terms of its contribution to learning and identity-making.
Instead, its implications depended on the nature of the particular transition an author was
going through.

From the start I must make clear several important points. First, these tensions are
not merely analytical devices but emerge from the reported experience of the authors.
Second, I have used the conjunction “an ” and not ‘yersus” to link the two sides of each

tension for a reason (Stability and Change rather than Stability versus Change, Afiiliation

20

 

1 "W3"

: _ “ll-Av .-

, t .9". r
. , , 9
I} u.» sub-

l‘
‘ilt.

 

2.1"..5' ll

‘3' "‘a
7, .

' v
"dawn“

“free;

'4- Yul},

 

r:.:-_" I
A l-
..t, n,“ ‘

a“. ' N_\.
“I" I“

and Separateness rather than Affiliation versus Separateness, Immediacy and reflection
rather than Immediacy versus Reflection). The reason is simply that, for the three authors,
these tensions are not simply contrasts, the result of two things experienced in contrast to
one another. Instead, they represent the stress inherent in three essential dialectics:

Stability and Change, Affiliation and Separateness, Immediacy and Reflection. They are
dialectical in the sense that the outcome for the authors was ultimately not going to be the
obliteration of one side or the other. Change does not stand in opposition to stability in
their stories, it dances with it. Similarly for the other two tensions.”

A third point is that these authors’ stories are not home movies, they are
autobiographies. It is thus important to bear in mind that the unit of analysis is not the
historical events being recounted. The unit of analysis is the author’s reconstruction of
certain occurrences and episodes within a particular literary genre. The reader must take
on faith that the historical events themselves did actually occur and are not a complete
fabrication. We assume that the authors’ reconstructions, including the patterns of
feeling, thought, and images that accompany their recollections, are not entirely
spontaneous, that the tensions they write about, although interpreted in the present, do
have roots in their original lived experience. But again, to some extent, whether or not the
author’s fidelity to historical truth is absolute is not the point. The ‘point’ is the sense that
the author makes of these events as he or she engages in the creative process of fitting

them into his or her larger life narrative.

k

” Gill (1995) writes eloquently on the similarities between learning and dancing.

21

losr

 

v
AH l,
guiuv "

NET. 15

'31 “TCiCt’SS

1,4. .,
.L-WA \"

'f" 3,,
...!“ m
“'1 :m
-.g.‘ “n
i I

. .
i, jun
" «.5

I
c' l.-

h .1.
.s".,
- .2

is
1‘
5‘-

To summarize, a fundamental assumption is that learning and identity are
inextricably connected; you cannot have one without the other. What interests me,
however, is the tension that ofien seemed to exist for these authors between what these
two processes were trying to achieve in their learning and in their lives: both change and
stability, both connectedness and self-definition, both a personal presence in the moment
(immediacy) and an intellectual understanding of it (reflection). It is the particular
instances of these tensions in the autobiographies of Mike Rose, Richard Rodriguez, and
Jill Ker Conway that provide more concrete examples of, that expose and illustrate, the
essential relationship between learning and identity. Indeed, some writers have sought to
depict education as essentially a people-making enterprise, documenting the ways that
formal education contributes to the construction of gender (Gallas, 1997', Luttrell, 1996),
racial and ethnic identity (Davidson, 1996), the identities of the handicapped (Erickson,
1996; McDermott, 1993), and even those considered ‘uneducable’ (see Levinson, Foley,
& Holland, 1996, p. 24 for a list of references),15 What has not been addressed, however,
is how such aspects of oneself ultimately do or do not co-exist with a sense of oneself as
‘educated.’

For beyond any knowledge, skill, or opportunities that learning may bestow, those
who are formally educated acquire something that the uneducated do not. The educated

have a perception of themselves as literate, as people who generally speak, write, and

behave in ways representative of educated people. After all, one does not simply become

 

 

is “Just as school discourses and practices specify the properly ‘educated person,’ they may also reproduce
Inequalities by defining and producing the ‘unedumble person' (Levinson, Foley, & Holland, 1996. p. 24).

22

I
.l." ‘ ‘1
Evil-e“- "

”rig in

”sun. 5 u
s

'0; 3» .

' I
‘W Ufildh

ier-

|\.. '
‘u-
" A

i...

 

educated, one becomes an educated person. This is particularly the case for the highly
educated, for whom an advanced degree of learning constitutes an important aspect of
who and what they believe themselves to be. For an intellectual or academic, one’s
identity emerges and is sustained, in large part, through the perception by self and others
that one is learned. How does one reconcile an intellectual way of being in the world with
other fimdamental aspects of cultural life such as ethnicity, gender, or socioeconomic
origins, conditions one is born into but that may in fact be incongruous with the
intellectual culture into which one has been educated. What are the difficulties for those
who aspire to a working life as an intellectual but whose backgrounds make it difficult
for them to identify with academia’s accustomed ways of thinking, acting, and talking?
What can this tell us about the relationship between formal learning and identity-making?
Ultimately, regardless of level, schooling in America does require that one move
back and forth, that one negotiate the ongoing transition between the culture of the home
and that of formal education. In that process, people do give meaning to what they learn
and to the changes it provokes in who and what they are becoming, they make sense of
their learning and themselves, they construct an identity and progress. How they do so,
how they adapt to this ‘between-ness,’ is a question that has yet to be fully understood.
Susan Florio-Ruane writes that “stories of transformation” at the contact between
persons, between generations, or between groups “remain few and far between in
American education” (1997). Understanding such experiences may shed important light
on the struggle that some individuals encounter in their transition to becoming formally

educated. Only to the extent that we are able to address the questions such struggles raise

23

 

”A N '3

l
;‘._s n. 5‘
.

-. ,L .
13:33.. He:

35:. I; Iflt'

.-

lf. £3716

.
1‘ :1- in-

‘ "c..s”
r

1.5,}. _‘ ‘
I A
k N“.

349;.

mt: ..

a.
t.\p-“
\.§‘\

 

will our thinking about education and learning head us in new, more conscious directions.
The following paragraphs provide a brief overview of what lies ahead.

Looking ahead. Chapter two will begin with a more detailed review of my
argument regarding the separation of learning and identity-making in the transition
between home and school. I will suggest that one potential explanation for this can be
found in the conceptual frameworks utilized by the various disciplines seeking to
elucidate issues of learning as well as those seeking to understand issues of identity.
Psychology will provide a case in point with special attention to how this tradition has
been carried over into the subdiscipline of educational psychology itself. This will be
followed by a review of those studies that have made the relation of learning and identity
an explicit focus. I look at three studies that have approached the problem from a
theoretical angle and, in contrast, three that have tried a data-based approach. Finally, I
will lay out certain criticisms of this literature and how my study attempts to specifically
address these criticisms.

Chapter three will offer a rationale for my choice of an hermeneutical approach to
the relation of learning and identity. This includes a history of the autobiographical genre
and the relevance of this genre to the historical development of various cultural
perspectives on self and identity. Related to autobiography are issues regarding narrative
and language in the construction of self, which I briefly discuss. After this, I turn to the
hermeneutic approach by which the three texts were analyzed. This is followed by a
focus on the texts themselves, how they were selected and how I went about my analyses.

Finally, chapter three concludes with a section that provides a more detailed explanation

24

r
. f" l

.
..

v.34 ‘
5.1:. in-
.

0.1“

':;' all 1":
“‘1“; in-

P’fl a; - I
.u‘kll.) S]

l
1‘ NWT?
We «‘-
1.1

E3987. .6

"‘“ '5”

of the three tensions that ultimately constitute my units of analysis (i.e., stability and
change, affiliation and separateness, immediacy and reflection).

Chapters four through six represent the ‘core’ of the study. Each presents a
detailed analysis of a particular autobiography through the lens of one of the three
tensions. Specifically, after presenting a time-line, a biographical description of the
educational life of Mike Rose (1989) as described in Lives of the Boundary, chapter four
will analyze the major transitions in Rose’s educational career in terms of the relationship
between learning and identity, a relation that can be more clearly articulated and
understood as it is expressed in the tension between, first, stability and change (between
the desire for a stable self and the desire to become someone or something new).

Following this, I will analyze Rose’s major life transitions but this time in terms
of the tensions in his experience between affiliation and separateness (between the need
to experience a sense of similarity between himself and important others and the need to
define himself apart from them). I point out how, through specific instances of this
tension, one can better appreciate the intertwining of learning and identity in Rose’s life.
Finally, I explore the transitions for Rose but this time through the lens of immediacy and
reflection, that is, the tension that certain transitions that seemed to create for Rose
between living two different ‘modes’ of consciousness, two ways of knowing or taking in
his experience (one conceptual, analytical, and abstract and the other was represented by
moments in which authors experienced themselves as very much ‘in’ the present
moment, unselfconsciously engaged, alive to their senses and surroundings). Following

the analysis of Mike Rose in chapter four, chapter five will apply this same approach to

25

1: 1.32:1:

r-l
:J

94:" "t
KER-x- n

t .
out an 0..
2.!

l‘.‘ A'.‘ in

 

 

'2“ Mr .
S31D'

.- .
H'fi'w ' I

.‘Wfill

‘M.

5-1“

an analysis of Richard Rodriguez’s 1982 autobiography, W. Finally,
chapter six carries this approach over into a detailed analysis of the experiences of Jill
Ker Conway (Ker Conway, 1989) as documented in her autobiography, mm
M

Chapter seven will then step back in order to summarize the three tensions as
understood thus far, providing a brief explanation for each including how it makes
manifest the relation between learning and identity-making. Next, I will move to a
somewhat broader comparison and contrast of each tension across the three authors. This
section will explore the more obvious similarities and differences between the authors
regarding their experience of the tensions, shedding fithher light on the nature of the
tensions in the context of each of their lives. This will be followed by a discussion of the
relationship between the three tensions themselves. Finally, some observations will be
made regarding gender, the three tensions, and the autobiographical construction of self
particularly as this relates to Conway.

In the last chapter, chapter eight, I will begin with a restatement of my basic
premise. I will also include an overview of the picture that my interpretation presents
regarding the relationship between learning and identity and the value of the three
tensions for understanding the sophisticated nature of this relationship. The final chapter
concludes with a brief discussion of the implications that this work may have for how we

approach teaching and learning.

26

CHAPTER TWO

The Literature

The previous chapter concentrated on the idea that no matter what we are learning
(or failing to learn), there is an essential relationship between the experience of becoming
formally educated and the construction of oneself as a person. Not a relationship in the
sense of two things systematically related to one another, which is the way we typically
construe relationships in the social sciences. Typically, in terms of a statistical correlation
for example, we think of two things that somehow affect one another but whose
relationship leaves the nature of each essentially unchanged (i.e., afl’ecting each other in
degree but not in kind).' Instead, for purposes of this work, I am conceptualizing the
relationship between learning and identity—making as one in which each process is an
essential constituent of the other. In other words, learning is not simply a process outside
or apart from identity that somehow causes, affects, or shapes it. Nor does who and what
we are as persons (i.e. identity) merely exert an influence on some independent cognitive
system through which we learn. Instead, I would like to view learning and identity as
mutually constitutive processes, in dialectical relation to one another. Identity—making is
therefore not reducible to a process of individual learning. Were identity simply a form of
knowledge, you could attain mine and I could attain yours, including its unique aspects.

Instead, an identity is a living event, an emergent in the irreducible tension between one's

*—

' Of course, presumm‘ g some degree of ontological separateness between two objects or constructs must
logically M tests of their statistical relation.

27

,, . a,
1:3. 9.) L\

7. “ “I.
“by ”C

«to ,0. 4...

LL.» w
alumna

m”)!

lhfli

_ l
1‘- ‘-‘\.
ks £th

2‘,‘ in...
. [a
”"an

FL.

"ml-..E.‘

[.‘i'

...
’I

position in space and time (by virtue of which I can say that I am a unique person) and
one's shared position in cultural space (by virtue of which I can also say that I am a White
American Male). In a sense, the qualities of a particular identity belong as much to a
context as to a self which appropriates them.

Given this understanding, the previous chapter argued that by focusing our
analytic energies on the contradictions and fiictions between the experience of
institutional learning, on the one hand, and the making of identity, on the other, we might
come to a more complex, sophisticated understanding of their relationship. This section
will review literature relevant to that argument. In general, it asks what are some of the
available ways for thinking about the relationship between formal learning and the
making of an identity, and what might each of these ways preclude or aflord?

Achieving a broader understanding of how learning and identity-making implicate
one becomes complicated in a hurry. Each of the disciplines tends to construe learning
and identity within its own conceptual framework. For example, sociology has tended to
emphasize the broad cultural categories which inform how one learns and develops an
identity, categories such as ethnicity, nationality, occupation, class, age, and gender.2
Social or cultural anthropology, on the other hand, has leaned toward comparisons across
time and culture regarding how individuals in particular societies are taught to constitute

an intelligible self or identity. Whether one is talking about learning or identity,

*—

’ An exception would be early 20‘h sociologists such as George Herbert Mead, who focused on the
develOpment of self in interaction with social others. For example. Mead writes. “I know of no way in
Well intelligence or mind could arise or could have arisen, other than through the internalization by the
Individual of social processes of experience and behavior...there neither can be nor could have been any
mind or thought without language” (1934, pp 191-192).

28

‘ .
Q .. 1‘ (\hfi.
[bu-Ark!”
P} v>

st! " “f
{Effie r"

1:1“: ‘2.

u

‘1'? m1
de. ll:

15 .l til
..., _'
.. .

...:1' L1

«to; ...

C.“

V‘HI- .-
‘V .0
' "“u.

3?“?

~§

’7

r

{1’ ' f9?

Pi

o‘a.

f:

at!
,.7

s” ,

if

’.:'f
’ r
, .

go
I
I

{if}:

psychology has for the most part focused on their properties as generalizeable mental or
cognitive process.

To complicate matters still further, as each discipline has its characteristic point of
view, so does each subdiscipline. Take psychology as a case in point. Historically,
learning has tended to be studied by those with a predominately cognitive orientation. To
be fair, most cognitive theories have not pretended to offer an explanation of self or
identity; their purpose is to illustrate how the mind per se works.3 Issues of self and
identity are left to those more concerned with matters of social interaction; social
psychologists, for example, who have typically searched for the psychological principles
underlying the processing of social information and the impact this has on learning (e.g.,
Bandura, 1986) and identity formation (e.g., Markus, 1977; 1986). 4 On still other turf,
personality psychologists have attempted to excavate the deep structure of identity by
exploring how individual’s personalities differ fi'om one another in certain basic and

systematic ways. The effect of dividing the spoils in this way has essentially been to slice

 

3 From this perspective, who and what one is as a person, or Self (Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1991), is
extraneous to the functioning of the cognitive system (Gover, 1996). One needn’t invoke the Self, identity.
or even consciousness for that matter, to explain cognitive functioning. Even the construct of
metacognition, which looks at the role of self-regulation in learning (see Paris & Winograd 1990 for
review), includes only the executive functions of self or consciousness (see also Snyder’s (1987) theory of
self-monitoring).
’ From a cognitive perspective, presumably cranium-bound structures and events are of most interest
Learning is primarily understood through the internal mechanisms underlying behaviors such as reasoning,
understanding, remembering perceiving, categorizing, analyzing synthesizing, and so on. For example,
from an information processing approach, learning is construed as an essentially computational process
(Anderson, Reder, & Simon, 1995; Anderson, 1997; Howard, 1983). The mind functions to represent the
external world symbolically. These symbols or images are then ‘operated’ on, that is. they undergo a series
of transformations through which, based on observed changes in the individual’s behavior, learning is
assumed to have owned [although in this view learning can also occur without a change in behavior
(Bandura, 1986)]. While the focus here tends to be the nature of the operations. that is, the structure of the
mental ‘program,’ other cognitive models of learning focus more on the qualities of mental representations
themselves, particularly the way in which concepts or symbols are acquired and changed (cg, Lakofi'&
Johnson, 1980; Iakofl’, 1987; see Dole & Sinatra, 1998, for review).

29

 

.rwd

Faust;

:11 tit 58

‘1
u-L-w 1 '
«lehbslfiw‘

. 133116

.
«er-r1.

Voting-Lt- r.

l .
‘ {4’0 a

in..." t

"' Isa \B’.
E 5w.”

“'5' 'I
”In.“

 

.i:
.d

the human subject or, more precisely, the mind itself, into incommensurate portions
(Herrnans & Kempen, 1994). Those who study matters of how we come to learn and
know are separated from those who study issues of self and identity with little motive for
conceptually bridging the two.

This split in psychology between those who look at learning fiom a cognitive
perspective and those who look at learning as related to issues of self and identity has
continued to reverberate within the sub-discipline of educational psychology itself.
Anderson argues that “ample evidence suggests that the educational research community
has become increasingly diverse and divisive over the recent decades" (p. 262). For
Greeno (1997), that division takes the form of what he terms situative versus cognitive
views of learning. Each of these offers a unique perspective on the nature of mind,
particularly regarding epistemological issues, or how we come to learn or know. From a
cognitive perspective, learning is primarily understood through the mental mechanisms
underlying such behaviors as reasoning, understanding, remembering, perceiving,
categorizing, analyzing, and synthesizing. It is unnecessary, in this view, to invoke issues
of identity in order to explain learning.

On the other hand, a situative perspective claims that learning is a firndamentally
discursive act inseparable fi'om its particular cultural and historical setting. From a
situative view, the central focus is on “the contributions of learning activities to the
leamers' ability to participate in valued social practices and to the development of their
identities as capable and responsible learners" (Greeno, 1997, p. 9, italics mine). In this

view, issues of identity are central. Each perspective, cognitive and situative, represents

30

l 3,“.
{Sl‘t‘lt'g}.

. L F"
vitamin
d..-

.,,
Etta-q;

bud-“I‘

., . ‘
on i r, ’
xii Abel

A; far. .
s

1.: i
"thug

it?“ o
.‘ .
., ‘

‘ ‘ "\i

t
1“...”
‘

an ideology, a set of values and beliefs about the world that necessarily precede one's
explorations of it. Greeno neatly summarizes a debate that has unfortunately become

quite polarized:

Should we consider the major goals and outcomes of learning
primarily as collections of subskills or as successful participation
in socially organized activity and the development of students'
identities as learners? (1997, p. 9).

At the same time, there are a few who have attempted to deliberately trod upon
the middle ground between learning and identity-making, who have made the relation
itself the focus. Where cognitivists, even those of a more social stripe, make the tacit
assumption that the phenomena of interest, that which the social world ‘affects’, are
essentially individual and cranium-bound, others have tried to lay this out as an initial
‘unit of analysis’ problem. What are the boundaries of our subject after all? What
constitutes our subject as a ‘unit’? In particular, how might we be limiting ourselves by
automatically granting center stage to individuals and their qualities as opposed to

viewing them against larger issues of culture, identity, and history (Lightfoot & Lyra,

2000)? For Lave,

to the extent that being human is a relational matter, generated in
social living, historically, in social formations whose participants
engage with each other as a condition and precondition for their
existence, theories that conceive of learning as a special
universal mental process impoverish and misrecognize it (Lave,
1996, p. 149).

31

I
'h'
In...

' A .flo: at "
fl‘l 5AibiV‘V‘

r

 

' ll
Eu: «1 -
on “at.

 

2"" "i ‘
gnaw 0

'i'n.
.\ 17.
“s

s

 

In the next section, I will take a look at the work of some of those who have taken
such criticism seriously and attempted to explicitly focus on and elaborate the
relationship between learning and identity-making as social processes. I have divided
these studies (of which there are not a large number) into two groups. The first three
consist of writers who have tried to cross the breach between learning and identity
theoretically. The second group, in contrast, is comprised of those that have used

empirical data in an explicit effort to elaborate the nature of this relation.

Theoretical Studies.

Penuel and Wertsch (1995) assert that neither an individual nor a cultural focus
alone is sufficient for understanding identity formation. For Penuel and Wertsch, a more
complete understanding of identity formation must take into account the "dynamic
tension" that exists between social and individual (mental) processes, between the public
and private moments of learning and of identity-making. To create a fuller account of this
tension, Penuel and Wertsch (1995) attempt to bring together two theorists from very
different traditions: the Russian psychologist, Lev Vygotsky (e. g., 1986), who had a deep
interest in matters of learning, and identity theorist, Erik Erikson (1959).

Erik Erikson was a maverick who, by foregrounding the role of social forces in
identity development, cut his ties with the Freudian dominated postwar psychoanalytic
establishment. And yet, argue Penuel and Wertsch, although his way of taking culture
into account was innovative, in his attention to ego development and related issues of

Personal fidelity, ideology, and work, Erikson devoted his greatest focus to the

32

. I I'
.‘Igrla a
pg“ .3..

we we 4
“.1“ we

I.
t‘1-u

.5“.

individual, specifically the dynamics of individual choice. In contrast, Vygotsky
foregrounded the cultural constituents of thought and the role of various cultural ‘tools’
or artifacts in mediating human thought and action. He was interested in understanding
what he called higher mental functioning, particularly as this concerned language and
language development. In fact, Shotter (1993) argues that, unlike Erikson, Vygotsky
”fails to explicate what it means to do things 'personally,’ that is, what it is to be and to
act as a person within a particular culture" (Shotter, 1993, p. 68). In contrast, these are
matters Erikson is more explicit about.

Since Vygotsky did not specifically address issues of identity (the primary focus
for Erikson) and Erikson did not address the social mediation of human thought, Penuel
and Wertsch suggest that these two theories could very well complement one another.
Aspects of Eriksonian theory could be borrowed to fill in the gaps for Vygotsky and vice
versa. They offer that such an integration might be achieved through a focus on "the
language and other signs that people use to describe themselves in the course of action"
(p. 91). They further propose that "mediated action" (that is, human behavior as

constituted through the use of cultural artifacts such as words, symbols, gestures,

33

Ms 1:
in‘. H e
o

I
‘i.l‘1

EECOC ltu-

lllCl

“A

“7.1.“ 2 .
.éu‘olpbA-V

«.v .

rt. $0211

.1,

.5 ‘5. Cl

51

v
2.11am 2,.
..

'bhhu r.”

traditions, and so on), and not strictly the individual, may provide the unit of analysis for
a sociocultural approach to identity research.5
In contrast, in his book, Communities of Practice, Etienne Wenger (1998)
presents an integrated theory of learning that is based on “learning as social
participation,” participation being defined as active involvement “in the practices of
social communities and constructing identities in relation to these communities” (p. 4,
italics in original). Wenger offers definitions of identity and learning that make an

explicit link between the two.

[Identity is] a way of talking about how learning changes who
we are and creates personal histories of becoming in the context
of our communities (p. 5). .. [Learning] is the vehicle for the
evolution of practices and the inclusion of newcomers while also
(and through the same process) the vehicle for the development
and transformation of identities (p. 13).

 

"the argmnent that Eriksonian theory plays to the weaknesses in Vygotsky’s theory and visa versa implies
tint these two theories may be viably combined Indeed, there is overlap. Although they are likely to have
construed its nature quite differently. both Erikson and Vygotsky sought to portray the social origins of
mind, for instance. It is at a higher level that they become theoretically incommensurate. The metaphor for
Erikson's theory of identity development was borrowed from embryology, specifically the theory of
epigenesis or prenatal development (Weiland, 1992). The origins of Vygotskian theory, on the other lurnd,
are submerged in Marxist philosophy and dialectical materialism In Pepper's (1942) philosophical
framework, we might consider Erikson’s theory as depending on a ”root metaphor" (or metatheory) of
organia'sm. In this view, events in the world are more or less concealed organic process. In contrast,
Vygotsky relies on the metaphor of contextualism, essentially a systemic view in which events in the world
are seen as intrinsically complex and interconnected, sometimes arbitrary, and always changing Regarding
these two metaphors, Pepper (1942) writes that they "contradict each other on nearly every categorical
point” (p. 280). In sum, Penuel and Wertsch attempt to wed two world views that are ontologically
Incompatible with one another.

34

Q
t
'-

it.
‘0

.\.

Qyfiqf .
k1,:

...,e ,-

A":
4 .
18h!

u-

‘.‘ Qut P” \

Mmm

h 2...

an.

hum

Jul

 

In this view, one can regard “learning as becoming.” Wenger makes the
assumption that “engagement in social practice is the firndamental process by which we
learn and so become who we are” (p. 1). In his view, learning’s “central aspect” is its
social nature. Knowledge can therefore be defined in very broad terms as that
competence which allows us to participate in society in various ways “such as
discovering scientific facts, fixing machines, writing poetry, being convivial, growing up
as a boy or a girl” (p. 4). By depicting learning in social terms, Wenger places an

especially important emphasis on the role of meaning.

Our ability to experience the world and our engagement with it
as meaningful is ultimately what learning is to produce (p. 4).

In Wenger’s theory, it is neither the person nor the social institution that provides
the unit of analysis, but instead the informal and ubiquitous “communities of practice that
people form as they pursue shared enterprises over time” (p. 1). He writes that within
such communities (of which a family, a classroom, a workplace, a garage band or a 12-
step group are but a few examples), members “develop their own practices, routines,
rituals, artifacts, symbols, conventions, stories, and histories” (p. 6). The nature of the
boundaries connecting different communities are integral to the movement of persons and
knowledge between them.

Wenger offers an alternative to how learning in our institutions, to the degree it is

addressed, has typically been viewed. Learning has traditionally been approached as an

35

.;": fl.
“‘rb¢ ,rr
.

"In-ac.
I h

‘,-(

‘3 "a.
rm,”

individual process, one set apart from all of our other activities, and involving an
acquisition period with a definite beginning and end. Further, in formal contexts, learning

is typically presumed to be a result of teaching. Instead, writes Wenger,

[Learning] is not something we do when we do nothing else or
stop doing when we do something else. . . situations that bring
learning into focus are not necessarily those in which we learn
most, or most deeply. . . Learning is something we can assume -
whether we see it or not, whether we like the way it goes or not,
whether what we are Ieaming is to repeat the past or to shake it
off. Even failing to learn what is expected in a given situation
usually involves learning something else instead (p. 8).

The problem, according to Wenger, is that although learning is a familiar and
integral part of our everyday lives, we have no systematic, well-developed way of talking
about it in such terms. He argues that it is our conception of learning that urgently needs
to change, “particularly when we choose to meddle with [learning] on the large scale that
we do today,” he writes (p. 9).

Another equally comprehensive perspective on learning and education with a
special emphasis on their relation to identity is offered by the psychologist, Jerome
Bruner, in his book The Culture of Education (1996). Bruner observes that two
“strikingly divergent conceptions” of the human mind are currently prevalent. According
to what he calls the computational view, the mind can be metaphorically compared to a
computer. Like a computer, the mind is systematic and logical. It is individual: like a

computer is bounded by a case, the mind is bounded by the cranium. Also like a

36

.lL’IZOIl f

4.1"! a
fi‘V“ l \.

. I
e-ihtog 9"?“
.; 2‘

.1...

“1.7"... ‘5
.‘Jbrhlt '

.' M ;-
5k :5...

“J. ‘
r [" r- t

'V-luu‘
a

7‘3": r.
“Viv: ll
.

u .
.IIA .

'-..__‘h‘

..V'\{‘

"NH

u‘.‘

computer, the mind works from the “inside-out,” thinking is internal with thoughts as
output. In contrast, the cultural view of mind has it that human minds are a cultural
production shaped by language, customs, traditions, cultural beliefs, et cetera.‘5 From this
perspective, mind is an “outside-in” proposition that functions via the internalization of
culture rather than by virtue of internal mechanisms.

Of course, because each of these perspectives (computational and cultural) has a
difl‘erent view of how the mind operates, they each have a different set of approaches for
exploring the process by which learning occurs. From a computational view, researchers
might do such things as develop the flowcharts and formulas that map the logic of how
real persons behave when learning. Or perhaps they might study how persons go about
abstracting general rules about the world from their experience of it. On the other hand,
according to Brunet, the cultural view seeks to explore four interrelated questions in its
attempt to explain the nature of human Ieaming. These questions focus not on the nature
of mind but on the nature of education as a cultural institution. First, what is the societal
function of the educational institution? Second, how does it distribute its various forms of
social capital (i.e., those things such as the ability to read and write or to attain
Professional degrees that lend us power and status as individuals). How does institutional
education socialize and prepare us for firller participation in society? Finally, how might
the organization of institutional education itself function to create inequities between

individuals in terms of what is learned?

 

 

6 A mlationship that Brunet says is recursive: although culture shapes minds, ii is also peoples’ minds that
““mely create language, customs, traditions, beliefs and thus shape nature.

37

3:152? 'Jlli

‘1

E»:
m
(L.

‘1 ""\’ “4
'- Q;C\t.
r,"

‘m‘ “3‘

gate

“:4.
'u
u ..Lr

Bruner’s position is that these two views of mind, one psychological and one
cultural, are not necessarily mutually exclusive. He therefore attempts to bring them
together under the umbrella of his own psycho-cultural view of education and learning?
There are a number of tenets to this approach, but two are especially key to the
relationship between Ieaming and identity. The first of these is “the tenet of identity and
self-esteem,” according to which all humans experience a sense of self. Brunet proposes
two aspects of self that he claims are universal. First, all humans experience a sense of
agency (a sense of volition or will) and, second, all humans are inclined to evaluate or
judge the self (i.e., themselves). Bruner argues that education connects these two aspects

in a vital way.

Since agency implies not only the capacity for initiating, but also
for completing our acts, it also implies skill or know-how.
Success and failure are principal nutrients in the development of
selflrood. Yet we may not be the final arbiters of success and
failure, which are often defined from the “outside” according to
culturally specified criteria. And school is where the child first
encounters such criteria - often as if applied arbitrarily. School
judges the child’s performance, and the child responds by
evaluating himself or herself in turn.

The second tenet to a psycho-cultural approach with special import for the
learning-identity relation is what Bruner calls “the narrative tenet.” According to this

tenet, there are two broad approaches to knowing the world, one involves logical-

 

 

7
The same criticism might be made of Bruner’s psycho-cultural annuach as was made of Penuel and
Wm“ 5 mm to wed Ericksonian and Vygotsldan perspectives (see prevmus footnote). That 15, it
"Bulpts ‘0 illlfigl'atc world-views that are, at root, ontologically incompatible With one another.

38

 

 

 

wiser
.‘l. ' s

A l
A QVR‘

$1.01 Li

.‘Y
in

kg".

5 r
A}.
“I.

scientific or theoretical thinking which is largely abstract and conceptual and the other
involves a narrative or “storied” type of thinking. It is narrative knowing, Bruner asserts,
that represents “the mode of thinking and feeling that helps children (indeed, people
generally) create a version of the world in which, psychologically, they can envisage a
place for themselves - a personal world” (p. 39). Bruner believes that education should be
considered central to the development of narrative thought and, therefore, to the

development of self and identity. He writes in summary,

A system of education must help those growing up in a culture
find an identity within that culture. Without it, they stumble in
their efi'ort afier meaning. It is only in the narrative mode that
one can construct an identity and find a place in one’s culture.
Schools must cultivate it, nurture it, cease taking it for granted

(p. 42).

Empirical Studies.

In a 1999 study, Packer and Brooks undertook an analysis of classroom discourse
with the intention of understanding “the way schools change children.” They observed an
elementary classroom on the initial day of first grade, subsequently analyzing transcript
material from a segment in which the teacher attempted to explain the rule of no running.
Packer and Brooks were interested in the discursive process by which students (‘1111

newcomers on this first day) assumed their new identity, that is, the subject position of

student.

39

 

 

 

from

,0 t ‘
“5's 5 F‘“
figueu mile

£35215 TIC

mimic

u.- - ”y ,
...‘rub\|it i

)1]? :n 4
ln-bz [J

TI.-
k i“ r
.V" L

,‘ps

'.'~|

From the very first day, they write, the teacher began the task of “legitimating the
codified rules of disciplinary order...by positing the children as a kind of subject -
‘student’ - who speaks a particular kind of discourse, positioned in a characteristic
relationship with the teacher" (p. 20). For the children, assuming their identities as
students meant bringing themselves into alignment with these “rules of disciplinary
order,” rules regarding what could and could not be said or done. Taking on the identity
of student involved conforming to the teacher’s expectations regarding the places and
times in which saying and doing certain things was either appropriate or inappropriate.

Packer and Brooks write,

It is in relationship to [the teacher] that the child becomes
student. Her task is to draw children into the classroom order and
their new way of being, appealing to, but not simply by meeting
those needs. In school the children’s needs and desires must be
transformed. Schools regulate not just to organize and maintain
order among children in the classroom, but in order to transform
them (1999, p. 22).

Packer and Brooks argue that children enter school having known only one
subject position, that of “child-in-family.” The new student must now learn to juggle two
subject positions, child-in-family and “student-in—classroom,” each having its own set of
expectations, obligations, sanctions, and relationships. The new identity does not merely
replace or supplement the old. Instead, Packer and Brooks suggest that as the child learns

to manage the transition between the two “incommensurate” contexts, a “split” is

introduced.

40

 

U. .

p
'a b. ul\'|
'W'fl ‘0

fi....‘ (,3

an...‘

(‘1

LUNA

 

.._

 

‘.

l
.."w-
.

v. “3‘

3’." m1

u]
w m“
" "h.

 

Now, in school, the child begins to adopt a new position from
which events and situations, including the family, can be viewed
at a distance. The new subject position changes the way the child
lives the old - he or she can never go home again in quite the
same way (1999, p. 22).

In contrast to Packer and Brook’s focus on the more general identity of student,
McDermott (1993) looked at the role of institutional schooling in constructing the
identity of a particular student labeled as ‘learning disabled’ (LD). In the early 1960's,
chronic difficulties in reading, writing, or math were beginning to be understood as
possible symptoms of an underlying pathology. Within the discourse of the medical and
educational communities, this way of talking about learning disorders quickly
transformed them from a diagnostic construct into an objective entity, a cause by which
the academic problems of not one child but of many children could be explained and
dealt with. The LD label was attached to students as often the most significant aspect of
their identity (Valencia, 1997). For example, a student might be identified as “an LD" in
much the same way that one might identify a psychiatric patient as "a schizophrenic" or
"a manic-depressive." Moreoever, locating learning disabilities themselves within
individual students freed educators from having to ask self-incriminating questions about
how the larger system might in part sustain the LD identity. It distracted from the fact
that such terms point not to an entity so much as to a stereotype, a cultural category that
students inhabit. Learning disorders as a presumably natural fact were confused with

‘LD’ as social fact (Mehan, 1993).

41

 

 

1 .
u- .1 I “
‘Im’u ii

:‘Lhon

“ a ‘QD
75:..1. I.

a
be“ ‘0 in

‘ . J
.‘QHJA ..:\

tr '1 v.
‘2'“ A \M

“H“ v- -

saw

v ...

' I
"A; s
51.“ ms

fi-g; o 1‘

”M. .‘t

VT”; -
"'"-\ it

v . a
‘61 a
“75s.“:

1"“!

As a case in point, McDermott presents Adam, a third-grader formally diagnosed
as ‘LD.’ After 18 months of observing Adam's interactions in situations both in and out
of school, a continuum appeared to emerge in which Adam's visibility as "a problem"
increased with an increase in the school-like nature of the cognitive demands placed on
him.8 On one hand, there were everyday life situations (a trip to the 200, for example).
Here, McDermott writes that Adam "appeared in every way competent, and, more than
most of the children, he could be wonderfully charming, particularly if there was a good
story to tell" (p. 278). On the other end of the continuum, there were academic testing
situations in which "Adam stood out from his peers not just by his dismal performance
but by the wild guesswork he tried to do" (p. 279). For McDermott, each shift in context
seemed to present a different Adam, a virtually different identity. It was only as situations
became more school-like in their demands, in which "the quality of Adam's mind was
increasingly at stake," that Adam assumed classic LD behavior.

Of course, one might say that the ‘LD’ aspects of Adam became more apparent in
school simply because school made more rigorous demands on Adam's mind than did the
everyday world. In other words, school put into stark relief something that was there all
along, we just couldn't see it. McDermott challenges this by demonstrating how the
notion of Ieaming disorder fails to provide a meaningful explanation for Adam's behavior

in situations outside a school-like context. Because Adam and LD can in fact be

3 Most ofus are mbably familiar with instances in which a diagnoses of learning disorder,
attention-deficit. or hyperactivity has been made only after a child has entered the primary grads (e.g.,
MCCarthey, 1999). Parents of such children are typime surprised and embarrassed by their apparent
failure to have noticed something that, upon diagnosis, they must presume had been present all along

42

 

ll
u-wul l .
”the: ac"

‘. m: f ‘4
a: .4555 k.

"I.”‘ U
ro-liv b it

'E \1‘ Mai

“4 Vv.l“
\

unhinged, the school itself is therefore implicated as a necessary constituent of Adam’s
disorder. McDermott does not claim that there are no children who learn slower and with
more difficulty than others, only that "without social arrangements for making something
of differential rates of learning, there is no such thing as LD" (p. 272).

In looking at the relationship between learning and identity-making on a larger
societal level, it is important to consider those ‘mini-societies’ that have emerged from
the onset of mass education itself. James Coleman, on the very brink of the 1960’s youth
counterculture, wrote the following in his sociological classic, The Adolescent Society:

The 8;ch Life of the Teenage and Its Impact on Education:

In sum, then, the general point is this: our adolescents today are
cut off, probably more than ever before, fiom the adult society.
They are still oriented toward fulfilling their parents’ desires, but
they look very much to their peers for approval as well.
Consequently, our society has within its midst a set of small
teen-age societies, which focus teen-age interests and attitudes
on things far removed from adult responsibilities, and which may
develop standards that lead away from those goals established by
the larger society (1961, p. 9).

Coleman claims that by bringing adolescents together in large numbers, mass
education has created an “adolescent society” that stands separate from adult society. In
general, within the school, “small teen-age societies” rather than the family provide the
resources for identity construction. More recently, Shaw (1994) reviewed five studies that
together took a cross-cultural look at the formation of ‘cliques’ in junior high and high

school. He argues that cliques are an important aspect of identity-making in schools.

43

 

T15 Utill'lfll

3.... 1

ll
‘<st..i

Ir.” ‘Q
at...” w
' V
“J. ‘- '
Iii! get“

.‘;*-u
k.‘w"‘

\‘; 1“
\g‘ ‘ \

it?

1 v

1
a...
l" t

They provide resources for identity-making via the social practices (certain types of
dress, talk, and behavior) through which, as individuals and as groups, they learn to
signify themselves as being persons of a certain type or kind. This is a phenomenon Shaw
calls the “semiotic mediation of identity."
As an example, one of the five studies reviewed by Shaw is the work of Penelope
Eckert. In her 1989 book, Jocks and Bumouts: Social Categories and Identity in the High
S_cl_t_ogl, Eckert explored the relation between learning and identity-making by looking at
how groups of high school adolescents created and reproduced their identities as either
”jocks" (a high-status group of student athletes, active in school affairs, accepting of adult
authority) or "burnouts" (a low-status subculture of students resistant to adult authority).
Identity is truly a paradox, a sense of being both the same and different. Eckert's (1989)
work demonstrates how aspects of a particular student's dress and behavior (e.g.,
unkempt clothing, smoking, low grades and truancy for burnouts, a collegiate dress style,
student council membership and participation in athletics for the jocks) declare a
student's individual uniqueness relative to the members of other groups. At the same
time, however, the same dress and behaviors which declare their difference from others
also served to mark their membership in, and conformity to, a particular sub-group or
clique (for further studies of identity-making within school-based adolescent peer groups
see Schwartz, 1968; Shaw, 1988; Willis, 1977).
Summary and Conclusions.
As the literature seems to reveal, we appear to have moved from a time when Erik

Erikson (1959) could talk confidently about highly predictable age-related, ego-centered,

44

 

mite SI
.* idenii
limited
ram .3
sing it

fifth-ii}

t-WblUl

.. n
.‘z ,~;q9.
I \I'

*‘Jbb ll s

are .C.

y.
it)”

normative stages of identity development over the life course to more recent views in
which identity and self are regarded as quintessentially sociocultural phenomena,
constructed almost out of the flotsam and jetsam of society (e.g., Gergen, 1991). At the
same time, in a similar way the past two decades have witnessed a shift in our theories of
learning away from an exclusive focus on individual behavior or cognition and toward an
understanding of learning and knowledge that includes persons‘ social context as a
fundamental constituent (Bateson, 1972; Cole, 1996; Cook-Gumperz, 1986; Gill, 1995;
Greeno, 1997; John-Steiner, Panofsky, & Smith, 1994; Lave, 1996; Rogofi‘, I994; Rose,
1989; Street, 1988). These concurrent shifts in the fields of identity and learning may
reflect movement in the human sciences generally toward a broader, more integrative,

less dualistic view of human mind and action (see Lemmen, 1997). Eisenhart writes,

building or claiming an identity for self in a given context is
what motivates an individual to become more expert; that by
developing a sense of oneself as an actor in a context is what
compels a person to desire and pursue increasing mastery of the
skills, knowledge, and emotions associated with a particular
social practice (Eisenhart, 1995, p. 4).

As the literature suggests, learning and "developing a sense of oneself as an actor
in a context" are not ontologically distinct endeavors. Learning constantly puts one’s
identity at risk through its on-going consequences for how one is socially positioned. In
school, identity cannot be inoculated from the effects of demonstrating (or failing to

demonstrate) that we have learned what we are expected to learn.

45

r

anti be}
:it her i

1. 39*" I
”jokinih -

to. one

.. T

r ‘ t '

Arab ”I.
»

i‘e‘-_ng_ .
"-V\ \r

1...
t

.e.
\‘ \

At the same time, Packer and Brooks (1999) recently cited a series of limitations
that they believe apply to the current literature regarding issues of learning and identity.
First, even in more recent constructivist accounts of learning, the child remains an
“epistemic subject” with no acknowledgment that learning actually changes the kind of
person one becomes (p. 134). Second, and in line with the prior assumption, knowledge
(including even certain norms and values) are generally seen as “internalized by a
subject unchanging in character.” Third, students are typically seen as passive and viewed
as active only when engaged in acts of resistance (e. g., McLaren, 1993). Fourth, in
theories of cultural reproduction, teachers and students are seen merely as carriers of
cultural tradition. The details of how this is accomplished are not spelled out. Fifth,
Packer and Brooks write about the problem of ignoring the role that the acquisition of

concepts of “text and number” plays in identity-making.

"There is general agreement that schools provide children with a
transition between the family and the larger institutions of work
and public life, and that it introduces the important cultural
mediators of text and number, though again these changes are
generally viewed in terms of skills, knowledge, norms and
values that are internalized or constructed. But the world of the
classroom is a ‘disciplinary matrix’ (Foucault, 1973), a
‘symbolic order’ (Lacan, 1968), involvement in which doesn’t
just generate knowledge and skill, it leads to what we call
ontological work: transformation of the human person” (p. 5).

To these criticisms of the literature on Ieaming and identity I would add a couple

others. Within the literature generally, there is a lack of personal perspective. That is to

46

F.-

say, there is no detailed understanding of how the individual himself or herself construes
issues of personal identity in his or her movement between different contexts, particularly
home and school. This would seem to be an inevitable outcome of viewing students
primarily as epistemic subjects (see criticism number one above). In addition, there is an
absence of a broader time-perspective in studies of learning and identity-making. Identity
and learning in their broadest sense can be viewed as processes that occur over long
periods of persons’ lives.

There are of course very real practical difficulties in overcoming these issues.

However, it is critical that we make the effort. Packer and Brooks (1997) write that in

sum,

[although] recent examination of “the cultural production of the
educated person” has paid more attention to “how people
creatively occupy the space of education and schooling”
(Leninson & Holland, 1996, p. 14), the details remain far from
spelled out. A greater understanding is important because current
calls for school reform amount to a demand that schools change

the kinds of persons their students become (p. 137).

Through the use of autobiographical material, I am hopeful that the current study can
address many of these criticisms. A motive behind the writing of the books by Mike

Rose, Richard Rodriguez, and Jill Ker-Conway, after all, was the authors’ attempt to
acknowledge the personal impact of formal education on their identities, on who and

what they have become over the course of their educational careers.

47

n»:
uh

trace in

.. n An
.: “tibh ‘1'
KW
Ai~li~ubl
l“; "‘3’“

fib- nib.“-

;::;I.ie u

' i
i‘.‘ '3' r1
8‘1 «new

The next chapter begins with a history of the autobiographical genre and the
relevance this genre has for the historical development of various cultural perspectives on
self and identity. Related to autobiography are issues regarding narrative and language in
the construction of self, which I will briefly discuss. After this, I will describe the
hermeneutic approach by which the three texts were analyzed followed by a focus on the
texts themselves, how they were selected and analyzed. Finally, chapter three will
conclude with a more detailed explanation of the three tensions that ultimately constitute
my units of analysis (i.e., stability and change, affiliation and separateness, immediacy

and reflection).

48

T36
It; i0:
lit. mp.

“his ii

K.)

“ «Lil,

_l
1‘

.-"'/

 

CHAPTER THREE

Identity, Autobiography, and Questions of Method

The question motivating this study has to do with how the between becoming
process of becoming formally educated, on the one hand, and becoming a person, on the
other, implicate one another. I’ve chosen autobiography as my source material for certain
reasons. First, a “central insight” of the work of Harre' and Langenhove is the idea that
“personal identity and selflrood are manifested in discursive practices, amongst which are
the writing and telling of lives” (1998b, p. 60). Simply put, to the extent that writing or
telling one’s story is a discursive act (i.e., an act ultimately done in dialogue with an
‘other’ of some kind), to write an autobiography is an act of identity-making. By writing
an autobiography, one positions oneself socially (as well as engendering a sense of
personal continuity for oneself over time).1 Consider the act of writing an autobiography

in light of this quote from Holland et al.,

Identities are improvised - in the flow of activity within specific
social situations - from the cultural resources at hand. Thus
persons and, to a lesser extmt, groups are caught in the tensions
between past histories that have settled in them and the present
discourses and images that attract them or somehow impinge
upon them. . .identities are hard-won standpoints [that] make at

‘_

' Harte and Langenhove (1998) distinguish between social identity, who one is relative to social others, and
Personal identity, one’s private awareness of being one and the same individual over time. This is a bit
confusing due to the different meanings of the term, identity, in each ease. While the former refers to the
social or psychological aspects of identity, the other is more concerned with the philosophical issues
Slurormdim sameness. I will thus refer to these simply as issues of identity and self; respectively.

49

Ts gene
since I
a for
Thai

' l
A
j'Jguh ~
“ennui
.

Tc

least a modicum of self-direction possible” (Holland, Lachicotte,
Skinner, & Cain, 1998, p. 4).

The genre of autobiography is certainly one of those “cultural resources at hand,” a
resource that can be borrowed from in seeking to define ourselves as persons (Casey,
1996; Coupland & Nussbaum, 1992; Goodwin, 1993; Harre' & Van Langenhove, 1998a;
Mascuch, 1996; McAdams, 1992; Rosenwald & Ochberg, 1992; Shotter, 1993; Van-
Langenhove & Harte, 1993).

To the extent that one does not live one’s life in preparation for one day writing
about it, an autobiography is an improvisational act, constructed from those materials that
present themselves at the actual moment of writing (one’s memories, current life
circumstances, skill as a writer, potential audience, and so forth). In addition, like
identity-making in the quote above, one composes an autobiography from the standpoint
of a certain crossroad: that between “past histories” and the “present discourses” in which
one is engaged. In other words, one doesn’t simply write about the past, one writes about
it from a certain perspective. Finally, writing the story of one’s life is a way of retracing
the steps that actually brought one to that “hard-won standpoint” (see Holland et al. quote I
above) fi'om which one writes. By putting the struggles, successes, joys, and failures of
life into some kind of narrative order, one lends a certain logic and credence to the
present. It helps to clarify the meaning of who and what one has become, and why.

Another reason for going with autobiography is simply methodological. How
does one research the quality of an individual’s experience over many decades? In this

work, I am interested in how individuals have come to understand the experience of

50

string 2

_.-n.¢m

Sandstone

h\,~ H ..
J.A.0.1Tlu
.5 n
“.3753“

"v’ufvrj‘.

hMilieu

becoming a person within the constraints and affordances presented by years of
institutional education. An autobiography, which encompasses a longer span of time than
one might study through, say, observation, has obvious advantages when studying the
development of identity. It’s a carefully reflected upon ‘public record’ of personal
experiences that cannot be attained through other means.

Finally, it is hard to go too far into the nature of autobiography without
confronting issues of narrative. Narrative is not only a literary device but a way of
understanding the world and oneself, that is, one’s identity (Gover, 1998). Both aspects
of narrative are central to autobiography. For that reason, having given my general
rationale for employing autobiography as a data source, I would like to explore the area
of narrative itself more deeply before then moving on to a broader analysis of
autobiographical form.

Narrative.

It is true that in the past two decades, the term ‘narrative’ has become widely

used. At present, I can think of five orientations toward narrative that are prevalent

(Table 1). For purposes of clarification, I would like to provide a quick overview.

51

Table 1. Uses of the Term 'Narrative'

 

 

Narrative viewed as
o a characteristic of mind
0 a form of meaning-making
0 a technique of teaching and learning
0 a method of educational research

0 a mediator of social power

 

52

 

lmtitr as

' ..l. ‘l
mitt (‘1

a J... A
.49.... “it.

v"? 1”

i r,

‘4. in: in
v

wiry,
L't‘fu }
'f‘- ilk
,; to o‘ _
”A "554‘!
r-3 4.,
‘l' "9:.
‘3” if”;

~s, Vi)».

' ....

Narrative as a characteristic of mind. In his book, Thou t and Lari a e, Lev
Vygotsky (1986, p. 148) wrote about two different, but related, forms of experience. He
suggested that each of these forms was predominately involved with one of two different
types of mental reasoning: spontaneous and scientific. More recently, Gordon Wells
(1994) has drawn attention to the similarities between Vygotsky’s twin categories of
thought and those proposed by psychologist Jermone Bruner (1985), narrative and
paradigmatic, and also by sociolinguist Michael Halliday (1993), dynamic and synaptic.
Elsewhere, philosopher Kenneth Burke (1989), who refers to humans as the “symbol-
using animal,” proposes that symbols are intended to represent two types of meaning:
metaphoric and syllogistic. The latter is logical or semantic in meaning while the former
is poetic. He writes, "'poetic [metaphoric] meanings cannot be disposed of on the true-or-
false basis. Rather, they are related to one another like a set of concentric circles, of wider
and wider scope" (p. 90). Finally, to draw yet one more theorist into this dualist camp,
these distinctions are roughly similar to the differences Rom Harre' identifies between
“consciousness as experiencing something and consciousness as knowing that one is

experiencing something" (1983, p. 27, italics added).2

‘—

2 As Wells (1994) points out, it is true that school-based discourse brings students to the edge of the
precipice between thought and word Bridging this gap requires that students learn to render consciousness
in prepositional form This gap is small, seamless in fact, when speech easily communicates what one is
attempting to say, that is, one's meaning. When it does not. breakdowns occur and the teachable moment
arises in which one becomes conscious or. critical of his or her own use of language (See Gover & Englen,
13:). For most of us, school is where training in this type of critical consciousness begins (cf. Vygotsky,

. p. 171).

53

Across these theorists, one type of thinking is concrete, personal, "empirically
rich but disorganized" (Kozulin, 1986, p. xxxv), and rooted in the detailed images of
immediate experience. In contrast, another type of thought or understanding depends on
the use of systematic thought and reflection. Each involves its own unique style of
communicating, to wit Bruner (1985) writes that “in logic and science [i.e., scientific,
paradigmatic, synoptic, or syllogistic modes of understanding], you attempt to mean what
you say. In narrative [i.e., spontaneous, narrative, dynamic, or metaphoric modes], to be
successful, you mean more than you say” (p. 109).3 Although each form of thought is
equally natural, Oliver Sacks (1998) takes the position that narrative constitutes a more

fundamental feature of mind:

The narrative comes first, has spiritual priority. Very young
children love and demand stories, and can understand complex
matters presented as stories, when their powers of
comprehending general concepts, paradigms, are almost non-
existent. It is this narrative or symbolic power which gives a
sense of the world - a concrete reality in the imaginative form of

 

3 These two types of thought parallel what Mitchell and Rosen (1983) have identified as “two great streams
0f thought” in Western philosophy. According to the enlightenment view (associated with empiricism,
positivism, of formalism), philosophy is a search for knowledge that is rational and secular, epitomized by
the mutual sciences. From this perspective, “phil050phy must be cognate with the sciences. ..either it is to
become a branch ofscience itselfor.. .prepare the conceptual ground where the edifice ofscience is to be
constructed” (p. 3). According to the understanding view (associated largely with analytic philosophy 313
Wittgenstein, for example). philosophy is understood in terms of “the contribution it makes to human
understanding in general - to our ability to find the world and our deeds in it intelligible” (p. 3). Each of
courserepresentsitsownepistemology, itsown setofprocedures, assumptions, andvaluesastomeaning
and how we come to know.

54

136.109.

r

4 a
i"? ‘r‘lfi't
it our i.

9..
‘r‘ :91 5!:
.._.W ‘1'

‘n .
s it

n, A

in

I.II
r

"I-i.

“in;

symbol and story - when abstract thought can provide nothing at
all (p. 183-184, italics in original)“

Although Saks attributes it to the human mind, there is not space enough here to
go into speculation regarding the ‘location’ of what Ricoeur calls the “narrative
function.” (1991). While some might see this function as rooted largely in culture, there
are others who take a different stance. Adhering to what I’ve elsewhere termed narrative
individualism (Gover, 1998), some writers turn to cross-cultural and developmental
evidence that argues that narrative is ultimately an innate characteristic of mind
(Bamberg, 1987; Mandler, 1978; Monague, Maddux, & Dereshiwsky, 1990; Olson &
Gee, 1988; Rumelhart, 1975; Schank & Abelson, 1977; Stein & Glenn, 1979). Indeed,
some conclude that the mind itself is "a narrative concern" (Sutton-Smith, 1988, p. 12). It
has been suggested that a basic narrative form or structure, such as commonly realized
within folktales, provides ample evidence for the "universal structuring of human
memory" according to narrative-like “schemes” or mental operations (Mandler, Scribner,
Cole, & DeForest, 1980, p. 21).

Narrative as a form of meaning-making. Narrative, as a way of understanding,
therefore mediates our views of world and self, a means through which we give form and

meaning to our experience, including the very existence of self. Freeman writes,

—_

.‘On the other hand, Kieran Em (1998) would argue that it is only through narrative that young children
In fact gamma; to such abstract philosophical and moral concepts, or “binaries,” as good andevil.

55

‘ggttov W

“nu-e i ..L

arr-ti .r .
>fi..ilii

h~a.

owl»

”He-h §~

"$30.,
I‘;' .

me

it';..
1‘~k!
t

..‘O

The very attempt to answer the question “Who am I?” and “How
might I have come to be that way?” requires an act of synoptic
understanding, a configurational process of transforming the
events and experiences of the past into episodes, into parts of a
story ...Taking these ideas one step further, if in fact narrative is
tied in some fundamental way to selflrood, as I believe it is (at
least in the modern West), it follows that we too, as selves, are
products of such labor: hence the idea of the poetic construction
of selfliood (1999, p’. 105).

In this way, narrative can been said to play a “privileged role” in the process of

identity-making (Miller, et al., 1990, p. 292). Ricoeur, 1991, uses the term "narrative

identity" to describe "the kind of identity that beings acquire through the mediation of the

narrative function" (p. 188). He turns to the concept of "emplotment" (an idea whose

pedigree can be traced to Aristotle’s Poetics) to "reforrnulate the relation between life and

narrative" (p. 21). The idea of emplotment implies that the ‘record’ Brunet refers to

above is not a simple listing of events but entails a logical arrangement of incidents, a

plot in which one thing leads to another in a story-like fashion.5 Writes Polkinghome,

the experience of self is organized along the temporal dimension
in the same manner that the events of a narrative are organized
by the plot into a unified story. . . It is the plot that gathers
together these events into a coherent and meaningful unity, and
thereby gives significance to the contribution that the individual
episodes make toward the overall configuration that is the person
(1988, p. 152).

 

5 A potentially negative aspect of emplotment is Freeman’s (Freeman, 1999) depiction of what he refers to
as “narrative entrapment.” This describes the situation in which a person feels turable to extricate him or
herselffrom thecurrent ‘plot’ structuring one’s life. One is named withina certain story line and is unable
to imagine or access alternative stories through which other life-options might be realized

56

'9” if"
damning.

no..."
I . .

'. Bu‘

””‘n a ,

'- «film! l

as
..A‘.

Polkinghome agrees with Ricoeur that this plot incorporates the future as well as present

and past. The events in one’s identity narrative have a telos.

Self, then. . . is a configuring of personal events into a historical
unity which includes not only what one has been but also
anticipations of what one will be (Polkinghome, 1988, p. 150).

Although they are rooted in the details of an individual's life in a specific
community ata certain point in time, Ken Gergen argues that the ability of an “identity
narrative” to communicate something intelligible depends on how well it follows the
contours of conventionalized story forms (Gergen, 1991, pp. 161-163). According to
Gergen, culture provides us with a limited array of story genre that serve as the template
for identity narratives. Many of these are defined by how they begin and end. For
example, there is the “rags to riches” or “riches to rags” story. There are “happily-ever-
afier” stories and tragic narratives. Regardless, Gergen (1994) writes that the conventions

surrounding the telling of stories

sensitize us to the limits of self-identity. To understand how
narratives must be structured within the culture is to press
against the edges of identity’s envelope - to discover the limits to
identifying oneself as a human agent in good standing" (p. 189).

To illustrate what these conventions might actually look like, Gergen offers six

"historically and culturally contingent" criteria for how narratives and, by extension,

57

33m 713:-
mesa

Edi

‘WQ-Ha
iii-tuba.“

‘ \
mi .

:- ‘ we v
Q 15 UH‘

72‘"? N
Email ii

i
J
‘4‘ ‘

M,

-5l.l.
‘9. ‘
s. O
4., .31

w:
l
H)"

. ‘I
\.o \
“i""w
Va“ '

...

.

identity narratives, traditionally organize themselves (Gergen, 1994, ch. 8)" These are
the criteria by which our stories about ourselves are rendered intelligible to self and
others.

First, in a story, there is typically a culturally valued endpoint of some kind. A
story resolves in a way that meets our expectations and is in accord with cultural
standards. Similarly, with an identity narrative, although I might interpret the outcome of
a particular episode in my life (attending college) as ‘a success’ (I obtained a good job),
this is only a meaningful outcome in relation to a culture that values economic
attainment. James Gee (1991) writes that “any event is contingent on a narrative, and any
single narrative is contingent on a wider set of narratives (a narrative context in which it
is embedded)” (p. 3). Thus, individual identities are always surrounded by, or enveloped
in, the more inclusive narratives of gender, race, religion, education, and so on.

Second, in somewhat backwards fashion, the selection of relevant events for
inclusion in a story depends on how the story ultimately ends. In a typical rags-to—riches
story, for example, the greatest elaboration is given to those events that feed the image of
finally succeeding over tremendous odds. Similarly, with an identity narrative, one
wishing to portray their life as a ‘success story’ might reconstruct it by selecting only
those episodes that contribute to that kind of story. events can be left out while others can

be elongated or abbreviated.

——_

6 BMW (1996, pp. 133—149) also offers a set of criteria for analyzing narratives. Somewhat broader than
Gergen’s, Bruner refers to these as “nine universals of narrative realities.”

58

mm
instill
mice i
:[nero

Meats

Third, in narrative, there is the convention of a linear temporal ordering of events,
an ordering that may or may not correspond to events as they actually occurred
historically. Eudora Welty, the writer, remarks that “the events in our lives happen in a
sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves, they find their own order” (quoted
in Cameron, 1992, p. 11). For humans, the experience of time is marked and regulated by
the events in one's life. Writes Bakhtin, “at the heart of these ancient forms lies a new
type of biographical time and a human image constructed to new specifications, that of
an individual who passes through the course of a whole life” (1981, p. 130, italics in
original). Although events are reconstructed as having occurred in a logical order, the
logic is ultimately in terms of the genre. The events contained in a success story, for
example, must first present the main character with some type of obstacle which is then
overcome. Were triumph to be followed by his or her unexpected death, we would have a
different genre (a tragedy).

Fourth, in a typical narrative, the stability of a character's identity is usually stable
over time. Heroes do not suddenly become villans and visa versa. Similarly, with our
own identities we feel the need to characterize ourselves in consistent ways over time.
Obviously, there are life events that can work against this such as career changes,
divorce, death of one close to us, or life-changing illnesses or injuries. These events may
bring changes in how we see ourselves, forcing us into the often difficult work of
integrating them into a revised identity narrative.

Fifth, in a well-formed story there is a culturally and historically contingent range

of viable causal linkages. It is the ties between events that lead to a story's ultimate

59

ah of a sh
inner
:niemit‘
nine sci
ignore (
r»; 433 'h

:éi‘hy5 \ll

3'15.

3:
f M

«iv.
(1:4

“7 9 35 .

“ raid-t)

..
i '"A .l"
”“15?“
w .

conclusion. To borrow Gergen's example, “1‘ he king died then the queen died” is not
much of a story. However, “The king died then the queen died of grief” provides a cause
and the meaning of that cause for human actors. The same comparison could be applied
to an identity narrative. I could say of my work life, “I was a musician and then I entered
graduate school.” OrI could say, “I was a musician and then, disillusioned, began a quest
for a more challenging and secure firture by entering graduate school.” Again, the latter
provides the meaning of events in the context of a life. Beyond that life, the ‘cause’ of
entering graduate school could perhaps be seen as simply a result of living in a culture
that places a premium on education or self-fulfillment.

Teaching. Within formal educational contexts and without, “for millenia, human
beings have learned about life and the world through the telling of stories” (Toms, 1998).
Although we must be able to think both ways, scientifically and spontaneously (to borrow
Vygotsky’s terms), one may sometimes find it easier to retain knowledge by situating it
within a meaningful, storied context, one rich in associations, rather than through
organizing it within an abstract logical framework. When facts are embedded in a story
they can seem to take on a new relevance. The voice of one of my own students provides
a telling example of how narrative fiameworks may provide a scaffold for knowledge.

The following appears in one of her journal entries:

In my own experience, I have an easier time in subjects where I
can read a book and be asked to describe events. This is one
reason why I love history. I really like hearing about people's
lives and events. For some reason I have a very good memory
when it comes to history. On tests I can simply recall events and
details that interested me very easily. However, when I take a

60

0n

5:353:13:

7" ‘3"?
”3. u

'.
.. ‘ C36

‘W'nw
~Mhu‘
H

I
e,

science class, I try to apply the same strategies and they don‘t
work as well. Scientific terms may be very similar and my
memory doesn‘t differentiate them as well. I can usually
remember reading the material but I cant quite pick the correct
answer. Today I had a test in physiology and I couldn‘t
remember the difference between similar terms such as diastolic
and systolic (journal entry, Spring, 1997)."

One wonders how this student might have performed in physiology had she been
encouraged to embed terms like ‘diastolic’ and ‘systolic’ in a story-line regarding the
development of our understanding of the heart. With the belief that narrative really does
represent a unique way of human knowing, a large group of contemporary authors and
researchers are engaged in exploring the connections between narrative, learning, and
teaching (Dyson, 1993; Egan, 1998, 1992; Gallas, 1994, 1997; Gee, 1991', Gill, 1995;
McEwan & Egan, 1995; Turski, 1991).

Far from being incapable of abstract thought, Egan (1988) claims that even young
children understand stories through their ability to grasp the meaning of such abstract
moral struggles or “polarities” as good versus evil, security versus danger, courage versus
cowardice, and so on. Egan argues that children are socialized into these ways of
understanding through the structure such polarities lend to childrens’ stories and that
these same structures can have a pedagogical purpose. The human stories behind the
development of, for example, mathematical, scientific, or historical ideas can be

integrated into teaching in a way that makes them interesting and meaninng to students.

‘—

7 Used with permission.

61

Rest

r pt". of
when.
started?
:Eflfi
{in :25

Earth .

l“
“u“
I:
xt.“.

I
.r,
”v.1: in

KER

Research. The educational researcher, Elliot Eisner, writes that “the eye is not
only part of the brain, it is part of a tradition”( 1998, p. 46). Eisner means that all
researchers, in one way or another, must ultimately view their subject from within some
larger tradition, some system of concepts, beliefs, and values that informs their thinking
and behavior as researchers. The term ‘narrative’ has been used to describe a relatively
new research tradition in the human sciences McAdams, 1996). In 1996, Kathleen
Casey published a chapter in The Review of Edugation titled The New Narrative
Research in Education (Casey, 1996). In her chapter, she uses the term “narrative
research” to encompass a wide range of current research practices, many of which
overlap with one another. Among them are, for example, autobiography, life writing,
personal narratives, life stories, and life histories (see Casey, 1996, pp. 211-212 for
review and references). Casey writes that ‘Vvhat links together all of these lines of inquiry
is an interest in the ways that human beings make meaning through language” (p. 212). In
all of these forms of ‘data,’ there is a direct link between the subject and his or her words,
that is, between one person and one ‘voice.’ Voice, in this sense, ‘carries’ meaning and is
an instrument of affiliation with others. (For a more critical review of the construct of

voice, see Pinar & Pautz, 1998.)

Voice is meaning that resides in the individual and enables that
individual to participate in a community...The struggle for voice
begins when a person attempts to communicate meaning to
someone else (Britzman, in Connelly & Clandinin, 1990).

62

n4 ‘

' 'Df‘ "

‘L ‘NM
5

rights

Power. Gearing and Sangree ask a question that is compelling in its simplicity:

How does it come about flat, in any community, every person
comes to learn some things, and different persons come to learn
difi’erent things? Said differently, Why, in any given
community, doesn‘t almost everyone come to know everything?
What constraints necessarily noncognitive and non-motor in
nature, reduce the expected randomness in how 'commonplace
know-how' is distributed (Gearing & Sangree, 1979, p. 1)?

We learn about ourselves and those around us, particularly in terms of class, race,
and gender by the stories those around us tell.8 But not all stories have an equal chance of
being heard. Freeman writes that “certain stories become sanctioned and others
disallowed. . .the very world in which one lives becomes crossed with boundaries which
all but dictate what can and cannot be said or done” (1993, p. 185). Thus, there are
critical theorists who attempt to illuminate the dynamics of power that determine what
narratives can be employed for which persons. That is, they look at the dynamics of
social power that influence what is or is not considered an appropriate accounting of
one’s experience and self.

In Janet Miller’s case, one of her reasons for using narrative as a research tool is

to actually foreground these issues of voice and power.

‘
8

We... seemingly holy trinity” of race, class and gender. For example, other social divisions might
be based on such things as sexuality, ability, age, nationality, or bodily politics, all of which constantly
mm With I308, class, and gender.

6 (1999. p. 12) reminds us that there are, in fact, social divisions that go beyond the “relatively

63

For
an a: e;
“ripen

-..o bi]

“Wet 'n
x543. ...
§

- .
‘rl ' ,.
finalise“!

New
't «:2;
‘1 “ligg

w it

Our uses of narrative, biography, and autobiography as forms of
educational inquiry have a particular focus. We use these
inquiries in ways that highlight how the personal and the private
voice, for example, are inextricably bound up in varying social,
historical, and cultural influences on and constructions of the self
and the truth (Miller, 1998, p. 230).

For Mary Belenky and friends (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule's, 1986),
a lack of education prevents acquisition of new narratives of identity through which one
finds the power to imagine a fiiture self, an image that may help guide one’s attempts to
change in the present. In their book, Women's ways of knowing (1986), these writers
interviewed a small group of women whom they describe as exhibiting “an extreme
denial of self” (p. 24). Common among the women is a background of social, economic,
and educational deprivation. These are individuals “silenced” by an environment that did
not value their words. As a result, neither did the women come to place value in the
power of their own thoughts and words to effect change in their lives.

With little encouragement or opportunity to participate in the language practices
by which we symbolically mediate our participation in the world, by which we reflect,
abstract, and make ourselves into an object of thought, these women seemed to live and
react almost totally in a self-absorbed present. Their imagination largely uncultivated,
they were unprepared to generate prospective images of themselves. One women says
Simply, “I haven't thought about the firture” (p. 32).

Belenky et al. found that identity, for the at-risk women they interviewed, some of

Whom were in long-term abusive relationships, was very much a function of the degree to

64

nth they
tartar

“nits" I

. air“! 0“
{tank 6”

tan it

‘1

CziéOll
5' 1 ,n

‘ 6"",
"“‘v in!

’3‘ ‘F; -
with“

which they had been able to appropriate the cultural tools available for identity
construction, particularly the language through which (in Freeman’s terms) they might
“rewrite” their lives. A discursively impoverished context precluded the development of
identities that might draw upon wider cultural artifacts (e. g., a different system of values,
a different way of thinking about themselves) and through which they might obtain a
greater degree of personal power.

Finally, it should be pointed out that the media itself has massive control over the
kinds of narratives that get communicated on a grand scale. George Gerbner, a respected
telecommunications scholar, has argued that it is no longer families, churches, and
teachers that have control over the propagation of cultural narratives, that is, the stories
that reflect, sustain, and change us as a culture. Instead, the power to communicate stories
on a large scale lies in the hands of the media, where the decisions that are made must
serve commercial interests. As a result, the types of narratives disseminated on a large
scale provide a distorted perspective, disseminating a view of our culture that is far from

the reality of most people’s lives.

Prime-time television presents a world in which men oMumber
women three to one; young people under eighteen are about one-
third of their true proportion in the population; older people
sixty-five and above, about one-fifth. It is a world driven by
marketing, which prefers the best consumers and ignores those
who are not the best consumers. The lower one—third of our
population in terms of income and education are represented by
1.3 percent of the characters in prime—time" (Gerber, in Toms,
1998, p. 22).

65

Ti

Having dealt with the nature of narrative, the next section will offer a history of
the autobiographical genre and the particular relevance this genre has for the historical

development of various cultural perspectives on self and identity.

Autobiography - History of the Genre

The author of an autobiography is literature’s version of the folksinger. Like the
folksinger/songwriter, the autobiographer tells us stories. Like folk songs, these stories
have their origins in the life and experiences of the writer. Nonetheless, because its author
is human, it is presumed that the story’s meaning will ripple outward to connect with
other lives. Although as a piece of writing, an autobiography communicates the
experience of an individual, it is also saturated with the values, traditions, and social
dilemmas of a particular time and place, a time and place occupied by others, some of for

whom that individual’s story will have meaning.

I write of one life only. My own. If my story is true, I trust it
will resonate with significance for other lives (Rodriguez,

p. 7).

66

mm

to: n

‘l‘ ‘n .
“Witt

As a technique, autobiography is deliberately introspective. 9 It is an attempt to see
within oneself and confess what one finds there, good, bad, or otherwise, and to do this in
the ‘presence’ of the audience for whom one is writing. Although autobiography
presumes the self, it presumes a certain kind of self, one based on the idea of a
circumscribed and bounded individual (Mascuch, 1996). This is a particularly Western
notion and, historically speaking, a comparatively recent one at that.10 Mikhail Bakhtin
(1981), in The Dialggic Imagination, traces the voice of the individualist self as it has
emerged in and through Western literary form. As he does so, he describes historical
changes in the literary construction of time itself, time of course being the frame or
background against which a life is ultimately understood.

Bakhtin begins with the ancient genre of the epic (Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey

being prototypical) and the notion of adventure time by which the epic is structured.

Adventure time is constituted by a hero or heroine and the series of supernatural or

 

9 Some make a distinction between autobiography and memoir. Autobiography is a chronicle, it tracks a
life from start to the present in a more-or-less linear way. It “moves along in a dutiful line, from birth to
fame, with nothing omitted” (Zinser, p. 11). For some, this can be distinguished from a memoir. Memoir
assumes the life and instead focuses on events of special importance or events that prove a particular point
(Goodwin, 1993; Mascuch, 1996). Zinser writes, “A memoir writer takes us back to a moment in his or her
life that was unusually vivid, such as childhood. or that was framed by war or travel or some other
exceptional event. . .Memoir is a window into a life” (p. 11). The writer of a memoir must become the
editor of his or her own life, imposing a narrative pattern and an organizing idea on an tmwieldy mass of
events (Zinser, p. 13).

To the extent that they are selective in their choice of events in order to foreground the experience of
fomnl education, the three autobiographical texts I will be using overlap with the category of memoir,
Which is essentially Bakhtin’s second chronotope of adventure-ame-of-everydav-Iife. However, since the
meaning of the term ‘autobiography’ is literally ‘words about one’ s own life,’ one could consider memoir
(Of a diary or journal, for example) as simply another form of autobiography

OOther cultures, even sub-cultures (the feminist sub-culture in America, for example) are argued to have
Other ways of conceptualizing the nature of self and personhood (Morris, 1994)

67

ethical er
titres it
is: not re
1307.111 .
ms

is

'Mnflgny
1 I. .
“hr ...“

mythical events in which he or she is involved, events that take place in “an utterly
different and inaccessible time and value plane” than that of the reader (p. 14). An epic
does not reveal the personal thoughts and emotions, the ‘inside,’ of a hero. More
important are the hero’s or heroine’s external characteristics such as strength, persistence,
and courage - characteristics that are more expressive of national ideals than of a
particular individual. ”

Following the epic, the more recent genre of the novel begins to appear.
Irnportantly, Bakhtin argues, the novel is the first written genre that had not first existed
as part of an oral tradition, its emergence being bound up with the advent of writing. With
the existence of ‘hard copy,’ authors began to be more enduringly identified with their
texts. This had not necessarily been the case with the epic, which was typically handed
down orally over the generations, its origins lost in time. In what Bakhtin calls “the
novelization of literature,” a new view of the individual was ushered in. Where the epic
had dealt with historically distant mythical events and the fixed characteristics of a hero,
the novel hops between past, present, and future, portraying shifts in the internal thought
and emotions of its subjects. Bakhtin terms the novel “the genre of becoming” (Bakhtin,
1981, p. 21). Where the epic spoke in a communal voice laden with history and tradition,
the novel was now associated with an author, a single person who spoke from the same

cultural times and spaces as the read er.

—___

LSee GoverandConway(l997) fora sociocultural perspective ontherole ofheroesandheroines inmoral
elopment

68

‘

'1!” i
tell llt

read 1

‘ I

“a! ‘.
‘1 0'
NW»...

3"]?"ei

There is an interesting and relevant side note regarding Bakhtin’s notion of
novelization. In an epic, the fictional subject (the hero or heroine) was of course the
center of the story, the reader’s ultimate focus. That is to say, the hero or heroine him- or
herself is what the story was ultimately assumed to be ‘about.’ In contrast, it is widely felt
that in present times the self or identity of the author of a novel has become an even more
compelling reality, a more viable and believable subject, than the fictional selves he or
she actually creates. To some extent, as a culture of readers, we have become unable to
grant fictional characters enough ‘reality’ to make a story compelling. Instead, we read
beyond the text to its presumed roots in the dynamics of the author’s psyche - here we
find out what the story is really ‘about.’ We look for the connections between the author
and his or her characters, his life and their lives. In a sense, the authorial mystique has
become a more compelling reality in contemporary fiction than the fiction itself.12

Pointing out that fewer and fewer young persons are looking to literature as a
source of moral guidance in how to live their lives, Jill Ker Conway, in an interview with
journalist David Gergen (Gergen, 1998) suggest that autobiography is the only genre
remaining for which readers may still be willing to “suspend their disbelief.” Conway
argues that there is a waning of modern readers’ ability to imaginatively involve
themselves with fictional characters, to find them credible, viable, and compelling, a real

concern since, as J. Hillis Miller writes, “we need fiction in order to experiment with

m

‘2 Ofcourse, one couldalso go the other way and site modern literary criticism depictingthe ‘death’ ofthe
authoras ultimate source or origin of a text (Barthes, 1974; Barthes, 1977; Foueault, 1977).

69

visible sch
may bel
1‘ iii tJC 0f

iCOiSORil

in; {it o

 

possible selves and to learn to take our places in the world”(Miller, 1990, p. 69). Instead,
Conway believes modern readers may be drawn to biography and autobiography simply
by virtue of the fact that the subjects of the story are or were real (i.e. living) selves. That
is consonant with our modern ideology of self: Self, or Bakhtin’s “personal experience”

being the one reality against which all others are compared. Bakhtin writes,

To portray an event on the same time-and-value plane as oneself
and one’s contemporaries (and an event that is therefore based

on personal experience and thought), is to undertake a radical
revolution, and to step out of the world of epic into the world of
the novel (p. l4)...Epic disintegrates when the search begins for a
new point of view on one’s own self(p. 34)...The present, in all
its openendedness, taken as a starting point and center for artistic
and ideological orientation, is an enormous revolution in the
creative consciousness of man...the novel, from the very
beginning, developed as a genre that had at its core a new way of
conceptualizing time (p. 38)...At its core lay personal experience
(p. 39).

For Bakhtin, the novel sets the stage for the emergence of three chronotopes, a
literary device (literally time/ space) that reflects various cultural understandings of time,
particularly the way time fi'ames human lives.13 The first of these, also seen in the epic,
Bakhtin calls adventure time. Adventure time is firll of chance and the unexpected. It can

be recognized by conventional phrases such as “suddenly,” or “at just that moment.” On

—__.2

'3 The chronotopes Bakhtin proposes are derived from his analysis of Classical Greek literauue. Although
Bakhtin is concerned with what he refers to as “ancient” rather than contemporary forms, his chronot0pes
would seem equally applicable to contemporary genre.

70

 

Eh :Iure‘

31:44"

"mum.
.

if!"

u.“-

._ .
#2.,

v"'Vtt

either side of the unexpected, the story is typically bounded by a beginning (in a romance
the actors must meet and fall in love) and an end (there must ultimately be a successfiil
union). In adventure time, we do not typically meet the actors prior to the beginning of
the story nor do we follow them into the happily-ever-after. The central metaphor in
adventure time is that of the trial.

Throughout, actors (the hero or lovers, for example) remain basically unchanged,
their basic character (e.g., courage, faithfirlness, etc.) only further affirmed by events. In
adventure time, writes Bakhtin, “nothing changes: the world remains as it was, the
biographical life of the heroes does not change, their feelings do not change, people do
not even age (p. 91)...the world and the individual are finished items...there is no
potential for evolution, for growth” (p. 110). ”

As mentioned, adventure time is structured and defined by two predictable points:
beginning and end. In contrast, it is precisely the nature of developments themselves,
what happens between beginning and end points, that structures and defines Bakhtin’s
second chronotope: adventure-time-of-everyday—life. Represented by the folktale, the
metaphor for adventure-time—of—everyday-life is that of a path. Not the entire path of a
character’s life, however, but “the exceptional, utterly unusual moments of a man’s [sic]
life, moments that are very short compared to the whole length of a human life” (p. 116,
italics in original). These moments bring change and transition and provide new contexts

for identity. Unlike the epic, the subject of a folktale is transformed by events and, in

h—

14 Is it possible that spaper comic strips might represent the purist modern example of adventure time?

71

tic: bet

Blifllll‘t

3.. R
n. 0716K

hm

hm C

-.l. V

tr "r
“ it

|

b

i r
'R.
you.
I. V .. .
(1“

effect, becomes something different than what he or she was before. According to

Bakhtin,

the folkloric image of man is intimately bound up with
transformation and identity (p. 112)...metamorphosis serves as
the basis for a method of portraying the whole of an individual’s
life in its more important moments of crisis: for showing how an
individual becomes other than what he was (p. 115)...The series
of adventures that the hero undergoes does not result in a simple
afirmation of his identity, but rather in the construction of a new
image of the hero (p. 117, italics mine).

Finally, Bakhtin’s third temporal framework builds on the one previous. It is the
chronotope of biographical or autobiographical time. The innovation here is that we are
presented for the first time with the image “of an individual who passes through the
course of a whole life” (p. 130) rather than only circumscribed periods of a life. Until
about the mid-17"1 century, a biography provided a rhetorical account of the surface
features of an individual’s life. ‘5 In fact, there was as yet no interior-exterior distinction,
no difference between the person as he or she appeared and what would later, with the
rise of the romantic view of the individual, be seen as the deep interior or soul of a

bounded and autonomous person (Gergen, 1991). In contrast, a modern autobiography is

'5 In fact, the use of the term self in the modern sense. that is, of an enduring and intrinsic ‘core.’ did not
appear until the 17'h century (Goodwin, 1993).

72

much ab
is per 52.

Th:
inns in \l

t, .. ‘1! _
”Czar“

lfi of se
the sat
tibiae

I
4

l
a I.
I LACE

'f‘péa
‘5}th

as much about the self and one’s personal identity as about the historical events in one’ 5
life per se.

The general point here is that intertwined with the appearance of certain cultural
forms in Western culture, particularly the genre of epic, novel, and
biography/autobiography, has also been the development of a certain culturally-based
view of self (Mascuch, 1996), a self whose experiences constitute a story worth telling.
At the same time, it is important to note that these genre reflect a model or cultural code
that accords more closely to male than to female experiences of self. Cultural models of
self have historically been different for men and women and this may well be reflected in
the autobiographical genre, argues Conway. In her book, When Memory Speaks (1998),
Conway refers to “the internalized code a culture supplies about how life should be
experienced” (p. 17). She believes these such cultural dictates are deeply encoded into the
autobiographical genre. In this way, cultural norms are mirrored and perpetuated.
Conway observes that the history of autobiography as a genre reflects the contrasting
myths and expectations Western European culture holds for the typical life course of
males as opposed to those of females. Typically for males, autobiographies are built
around a test or trial of some kind (as outlined previously), a “classical journey of epic
adventure” (Conway, 1998, p. 9). The protagonist “is tested by the forces of nature and
by cultural conflict, and he acts as an agent” (p. 10).

In contrast, according to Conway, the autobiographies of women in Western
culture have typically followed the romantic myth, “the life plot linking the erotic quest

for the ideal mate with property and social mobility” (p. 13). “What is important about

73

yhmen

eeMo

mew

hmmh

'3 term ll]

ms

the Western romantic heroine,” writes Conway, “is that she has no agency, or power to
act on her own behalf. Things happen to her” (p. 14). But this may not be the actual
experience of women, says Conway, even those who portray a certain passivity over
events in the telling of their story. Instead, it may represent an artifact of the genre itself,
the form into which women must squeeze their stories if they are to be intelligible to

others.

What are we to make [of this]? Should we agree that the Western
cultural mirror distorts women’s self-perception so that they
cannot see their own agency? Can women really not... reflect on
their own political life? Are they not capable of forging their
own tradition for the expression of political motives? Clearly this
is not the case, because frontierswomen and pioneer women
reformers kept diaries and wrote letters which dealt with their
physical bodies, openly acknowledged the wish for power and
depicted the writers as political beings. So the problem is one of
censorship for public self-presentation (p. 16).

Gender aside, what is it that ultimately motivates one to write an autobiography?
Wald suggests that "the recognition of a discontinuity between past and present and the
desire to make them continuous give rise to a narrative of identity, which in turn imparts
the way people know, understand, and experience themselves - or their selves" (1995, p.
4). This desire for an integrated “life story” (McAdams, 1992; Zinsser, 1995) is therefore
one motivation to write. Putting the events of one’s history into a narrative order can give
it a composure that may not have existed previously. One is consoled by the sense of

having lived a life that tells a cohesive story, a cohesion that ultimately spreads to self.

74

(crazy. for

mire,”

lo

I:
- 3..”
let...

.,._
I r} .\
“Mud

5‘. 'V
‘3' 3"?
"W \._

, .
an
' “v.

‘9‘.
‘5.“

v .

Conway, for example, talks about one of her reasons for writing what she refers to as a “quest

narrative”

because the modern consciousness, which separates some private
essence that we think we have from the roles we play, leaves a
thoughtful person with a quest to put all those lives together and
see what they have added up to (in Zinsser, 1995, p. 160).

For Erik Erikson (1959), of course, identity dynamics represent developmental
impulses. We come to a place in our lives where we hunger to perceive its outline in a
way that traces an integrated, inevitable, and fulfilling whole. In his own words, it is a
quest for "the acceptance of one's own and only life cycle, and of the people who have
become significant to it, as something that had to be and that, by necessity, permitted of
no substitutions" (1959, p. 104). For most of us, such a quest rarely implies more than
moments nostalgically reminisced, past feelings relived, perhaps some degree of closure
achieved or relinquished. For the formal autobiographer, however, this quest is both more
compelling and more complicated. The autobiographer does not merely provide a
descriptive chronicle. She strives to describe how it was for herself, to share her
Perceptions, feeling, thoughts, and emotions.

Yet, as she does, there is also a certain turning back that occurs. That is, the
recounting of thoughts and actions, in some way or other, turns back upon the author so
that she is changed by it. As she is changed, so inevitably does the understanding of her

SUbject: herself. This is more properly the process of autobiography, a self-reflexive,

75

f" '

w

twill?!

lad ma

1

developing dialogue between author and subject, present self and historical self, narrating
I and narrated I (Genette, 1980). It changes both. As Pinar and Pautz write, both
biography and autobiography “tell a story in a voice that simultaneously creates distance
and intimacy between a reader and the subject of the story, even when the subject is
oneself” (1998, p. 68).

For example, Aniela J affé, the person to whom Carl Jung dictated his memoirs,
first with reluctance and then with mounting enthusiasm, recalls the following (Jung,

1961):

During the years in which the book was taking shape, a process
of transformation and objectivization was also taking place in
Jung. With each succeeding chapter, he moved, as it were,
farther away from himself, until at last he was able to see himself
as well as the significance of his life and work from a distance

(p. xii).

Indeed, in the following comment, Jung states that by distancing himself, that is, by
PUtting himself in the role of a ‘narrating I,’ he made strange the very subject of his

narrative, which was of course Jung himself.

In fact it seems to me as if that alienation which so long
separated me from the world has become transferred into my
own inner world, and has revealed to me an unexpected
unfamiliarity with myself (359).

76

0f c
i :9er
:hseoch‘
fillilii‘zn

than:

1th??-
“Mu

Of course, this seems like a typically Western experience. Michel De Montaigne’s
16th century collection of autobiographical essays (written - as were others [for example,
those of Benjamin Franklin, St. Augustine, or Rousseau]- well before the term
autobiography existed) states that "I myself am the subject of my book" (p. ix).
Montaigne’s essays imply a sense of autonomy and individuality regarding his identity, a
potential and often desirable separateness of himself from the selves of others. For
example, to obtain the kind of solitude he believed was necessary for self-reflection, he

writes,

it is not enough to withdraw fi'om the mob, not enough to go to
another place: we have to withdraw from such attributes of the
mob as are within us. It is our own self we have to isolate and
take back into possession (pp. 98-99).

In contrast to this are experiences of identity and self that make sense only in cultures
where these are construed as discursive (Harre’ & Van Langenhove, 1991), dialogic
(Hermans, Kempen, & van Loon, 1992) or jointly constructed (Shotter, 1993', Shorter,
1995). There are indeed cultures whose inhabitants perceive their own identities and
selves to be more ‘in’ a culturally shared history and its traditions than ‘in’ the individual
Per se, more communal property than personal possession (see Chandler, 1998, 2000).
In his dictated autobiography, for example, Black Elk (an Ogalala Sioux, second
cousin to Crazy Horse and a “holy man”) shared his memories regarding the history of

his peeple during the mid to late 18003 (Neihardt, 1932). All of his life, Black Elk had

77

If} h'flt‘. !
2333:8513
the c
332313 t

H.783

13 $3

carried “visions” or prophecies. Most of these he had received in dreams as a young
adult. They pertained to his people. At no point was he inclined to think of these visions
as belonging to him, as creations of his own mind and therefore his personally. Instead,
they were regarded by himself and others as gifis given to him by “the grandfathers” (i.e.,
his ancestors). As holy man, Black Elk’s purpose was to carry them. Still, throughout his
life they continued to puzzle him, for they so contradicted what he had actually come to
witness: the swift destruction of his people by the Whites. In the end, to save his visions,
he surrendered them to a White anthropologist. He relates this choice, in which he must

finally sacrifice his sacred position as cultural repository, in a most poignant way:

I have lain awake at night worrying and wondering if I was
doing right [to tell his story, including his visions]; for I know I
have given away my power when I have given away my vision,
and maybe I cannot live very long now. But I think I have done
right to save the vision in this way, even though I may die sooner
because 1 did it; for I know the meaning of the vision is wise and
beautiful and good; and you can see that I am only a pitiful old
man after all (Neihardt, 1932, p. 206).

Black Elk did not tell his story for himself. Reconstructing his life, going through
the process of autobiography, for Black Elk meant preserving the story of his people, not
his own personal story. Indeed, Montaigne’s belief that one must “withdraw. . . from such
attributes of the mob as are within us” in order to achieve clarity and ownership of self
would have struck Black Elk as peculiar. Further, the effect telling his story was anything

but integrating for Black Elk. Where, for Jung, the energy for telling came from the

78

2333 Elk
mire. it '
33.33333
he who
airshow
hi. If‘f‘.‘

their

va-o 1"}

'x “it:

..
.
,r‘s‘m.‘

“he, Ci

37“!”
~ .u‘

ti he
has 532

'-~. .' '
4.3"?
m.‘

1.33.3};

gravity of a single self (his own) pulling the disparate pieces of single life together, for
Black Elk - because his identity was built on the collective and because, in an oral
culture, it was he who held, contained, and preserved the story of that collective - telling
it (especially to a White man) achieved almost the opposite effect. To sacrifice control
over who had access to his people’s story was an act that Black Elk experienced as
somehow diminishing him personally. In fact, he believed it was likely to hasten his own
death (“for I know I have given away my power when I have given away my vision, and
maybe I cannot live very long now”).

Several additional points about the nature of autobiography can also be made.
First, although the autobiographer is concerned with the events in his or her life, an
autobiography should not be presumed to constitute a true or accurate historical record of
empirical fact. Instead, it deals with the experiences an author considers having had the
most personal significance. As a researcher, if it were the empirical facts of a life and
their faithfulness to historical truth that I was after, then autobiography would have to be
considered a secondary source (which is by no means to say that authorial memory is
always inaccurate or ‘unreliable’). However, if my interest is in how a person has used
his or her experiences to construct an identity, to render a certain image of him or herself,
then an autobiography is primary source material.

The criteria for judging an autobiography is not merely fidelity to the truth. Mark
Freeman (1993), while acknowledging the cultural and historical layers of narrative
construction, some of which I have touched on here, argues that poems and

autobiographies are products of the same impulse. Part of that which constitutes any

79

entire 3
iiitiduai

were

narrative construction, including an autobiography, is the “imaginative labor” of an

individual attempting to write a story that gives “form and meaning” to his or her

experience.

Whether we are considering the crafting of poems or
autobiographical narratives. . .there is in fact a good deal in
common between the two: What poets ofien do, I have
suggested, is rewrite the world, such that we, readers, may learn
or see or feel something about it that might ordinarily have
escaped us. What autobiographers often do, in turn, is rewrite the
selfi which is to say, they seek, through the narrative
imagination, to refigure those dimensions of past experience
made available, so to speak, through the vantage point of the
present. . . Autobiographical narratives, like poems, therefore, are
not only artifacts of writing. . .they are products of imaginative
labor, of giving form and meaning to experience (Freeman,
1993, p. 105, italics in original).

Regarding the claim that autobiography represents ‘merely’ an act of interpretation

Freeman writes,

The very act of self-interpretation is at one and the same time an
act of self-construction, of poesis, that creates a new self even in
the midst of discovering it... [it] is to be understood as a
practical activity (1993, p. 109, italics in original).

For those who have come up through westemized educational systems, ‘rewriting
the self often involves revisiting and reinterpreting one’s school-related experiences.

Blumberg and Blumberg (1994) found that adults, when asked about their education,

80

thirdly u
3233.3 5‘
teak-e
Fr. run 3
firm i
lhbeg

..
herein:
' V

3r

J 536.7

typically worked to shape their memories of school-related experiences into some kind of
cohesive story. These stories not only communicated something about their image of
themselves as learners (shaping that image even as they wrote or talked about it, as
Freeman suggests), they also included memories of their personal experiences of the
different educational contexts through which they had passed. The fi'uits of these labors,
Blumberg and Blumberg believe, constitute a vital but untapped source of information

regarding the private dimensions of educational experience.

What is it that. .adult memories of school might have to offer
beyond a bit of humor and nostalgia? We think that it can ofl‘er a
glimpse into a side of life that occurs in schools that is obtainable
in no other way. That is, in a sense, these stories and untold
numbers of others like them constitute a type of knowledge
about schools that needs to take its place alongside other bodies
of school-related knowledge (Blumberg & Blumberg, p. 6).

Bruner (1996) also is quite clear about the role of institutional education in the creation of
those autobiographical narratives by which we understand who and what we are as

learners and as persons.

What characterizes human selflrood is the construction of a
conceptual system that organizes, as it were, a ‘record’ of
agentive encounters with the world, a record that is related to the
past (that is, ‘autobiographical memory’, so-called) but that is
also extrapolated into the future . . . schools and school learning
are among the earliest of those places and activities [through
which this record is constructed] (Bruner, 1996).

81

uni-mgr:
it nor in
thin an
it razio
airti-

3" .... .
131M

A second additional point regarding the nature of autobiography is that, although
autobiographies may be approached as such for analytic purposes, like all narratives they
are not fully self-contained, autonomous creations. As a genre, they nest themselves
within and thus ‘contain’ larger cultural narratives regarding gender, race, class, power,
and national history, for example. “T he autobiographer gazes at himself in the mirror of
culture, just as the portrait painter must when working on his self-portrait,” writes

Conway (1998, p. 4). Says James Gee,

any single narrative is contingent on a wider set of narratives (a
narrative context in which it is embedded). And where does this
wider narrative context come from? It can only come from one's
history, traditions, socialization, and the narratives groups of
people share with and repeat to one another (Gee, 1991, p. 3).

Finally, as a retrospective, an autobiography is probably as much about who one
is as much as who one was. As mentioned, any narrative in autobiographical form divides
the subject of the autobiography into two actants: the narrating I and the narrated I
(Genette, 1980). Past events are evaluated and made sense of in the light of the present.

Rodriguez writes.

In writing this autobiography, I am actually describing the
man I have become - the man in the present (p. 1 76)

82

Shrine 1i
22:33:23} st.
urah
thence l

'r 1
333531526

ifl 5W

heme

$le 1‘.
'r‘ a!

{I}

So rather than providing a firlly ‘true’ or ‘real’ historical account, an autobiography is a
personal statement regarding the role of particular past events in the construction of who
one is at the time of its writing. '6 Indeed, it could not be otherwise. Although the
reference has escaped me, somewhere Bakhtin writes words to the effect that it is just as
impossible to forge an identity between myself, my own 'I,' and that 'I' that is the subject

of my stories as it is to lift myself up by my own hair.

Hermeneutics

In classic mythology, Hermes was the son of Zeus and father of Pan. He traveled
with great swiftness, wings on his sandals and cap, carrying messages between the gods
and humans. The term ‘hermeneutics’ refers to a collection of traditions all of which
involve the interpretation of texts. Like Hermes, the interpreter might be said to mediate
between a source (a text) and its eventual audience. Although its roots are thought to lie
in biblical scholarship, there are long hermeneutic traditions in theology and
jurisprudence as well as in philosophy and the humanities [for a more comprehensive
history see Grondin (1994) or Mueller-Vollmer (1985)].

Educational philosopher, David Blacker (1993), writes that hermeneutic

principles are basic to human understanding, particularly the notion that understanding

-__

16 Of : 2, even accuracy and truth are relative to some cultural standard For example, alter telling the
legend of how his people acquired the tradition of the peace pipe. Black Elk says, “This they tell, and
whetherithappenedso or not I do not know; but ifyou thinkabout it. youcan see that it’s true” (p. 5).

83

the

I

e!

u
. "he?

1.

a

‘ in:
L' a
phfi!

always involves a back-and—forth movement between a part and the greater whole to

which the part belongs.

All understanding - whether of a text or of another person - is
interpretive. Briefly and roughly, what this means is that,
whatever else it is and does, understanding moves in what
Heidegger called a “hermeneutic circle.” This is not, however,
the vicious circle reviled by formal logic.

In other words, the meaning of a thing is not contained within the thing itself. One must
look to the larger context, a context whose understanding always comes through the
‘fitting together’ of its parts. For example, we understand the meaning of an individual
word (part) most fully within the context of the sentence (whole) in which it is used.
Word lends meaning to sentence, sentence lends meaning to word.

The boundaries of what constitutes part and whole are not fixed. That is to say,
for example, that the meaning of a sentence (now considered as part) can be understood
in the context of a paragraph (whole), or the meaning of a book (part) in the context of an
author’s entire literary output (whole), and an author’s entire literary output (part) in the
context of the culture time and place in which he or she lived (whole). The boundaries of
‘part’ and ‘whole’ are ultimately determined by what it is that one wishes to understand.
Bontekoe (1996), who refers to part and whole as ‘poles’ of the hermeneutic circle, writes

that

84

in his

tree 3

:r; the

use:

what distinguishes the hermeneutic circle from the vicious circle
is that the amount of information contained within the former is
being constantly augmented. And this new information (which
may enter the circle at either or both of its two poles) makes
possible the progressive development of new insights (p. 3).

From a hermeneutical point of view, there is no single ‘true’ interpretation of a
text. This is because we presume that our perspective, how we read and understand, is
forever colored by where we ourselves are located within a particular time and culture. At
the same time, this does not mean that all interpretations are somehow equal, that one is
as good as another. Ultimately, the best interpretations are those whose meaning is most
viable for the text as a whole, that are the most cohesive and free from internal
contradiction.

It has become part of the postmodern view to assume that every interpretation
(indeed, every understanding) is forever filtered through the expectations, purposes, and
values of the one doing the interpreting. As such, interpretations cannot be considered
revealed truths. They are a way of understanding embedded in the same world of human
culture and events that sustains the hermeneuticist him- or herself. Wexler addresses the

issue of hermeneutic integrity in light of its interpretive nature:

An interpretive, hermeneutic understanding of social reality does
not mean abandoning the possibility of a ml story, a
comprehensible narrative, where there is we and attention not
only to the form of telling, but also to the facts and to the
characters of the story. . . But I ‘take license.’ I select, condense,
juxtapose, underline, and, worst of all, I recontextualize lived
worlds into an analytical social language. Still, I am not the cold-
blooded instrument of an error-free objective knowledge-
machine that mirrors social reality; but, an historical, social

85

meet

his B:

113ml

analytic composer, and what follows is neither Truth nor Fiction,
but a composition ( 1992, pp. 1-2).

Like Blacker, Bonetkoe (1996) argues that all human understanding is
hermeneutic in terms of the meaning that various objects, events, and experiences have
for us. Because human understanding is always historically conditioned, it is always

timebound, a progressive process of “searching and building” (Goodman, 1978, p. 107).

All human understanding, by virtue of its occurring in time, is
hermeneutically circular. Because as sentient creatures we are
located always at some point in space during some moment in
time, information becomes available to us only serially. We
notice things in succession as one item after another attracts our
attention. This sequential appropriation of information, however,
is a matter of immediate perception, and does not yet constitute
understanding. Understanding occurs only when we recognize
the significance of the various items that we notice — which is to
say, when we recognize the way in which those items relate to
each other. Understanding then is an essentially integrative
activity (Bonetkoe, 1996, p. 2, italics in original).

The hermeneutic circle is a spiral toward progressively deeper levels of
understanding. This process, some would argue, is the same whether one is talking about
understanding in science, the arts, moral judgements, or religion (Polanyi, 1975). A text
then, broadly defined, is anything that must be interpreted. An autobiography is a text
whose parts, like parts of any text, are understood in terms of the text as a whole.

In research of all kinds, the researcher must begin by specifying the kinds of

things he or she is setting out to find. In hermeneutic research, these generally follow

86

iceaseu

:3R333. R

Br

from a set of questions posed to a text (Kvale, 1996). Thus, in my analysis of the books

by Rose, Rodriguez, and Conway, I was guided by the following general question:

In the complex transition back-and-forth between cultures of
home/community and school, (A) how do these authors manage (or
not manage) to take on the identity of a literate person; and, (B) how
is it that the authors get on under their particular circumstances: how

do they construct/preserve an identity and, at the same time, progress
through the educational system?

Borrowing from Radnitzky (1970), Kvale (1996) describes seven "canons," or
presuppositions of a hermeneutic interpretation of literary texts. These presuppositions

outline my general approach to interpretation.

There is a continual back-and-forth between one's understanding of the meaning of a
text as a unified whole and the meaning of its various individual parts in and of
themselves. For example, one might read a text from start to finish, ending up with
an overall understanding of what the text as a whole appears to mean. Going back for
a closer read, one might then scrutinize the meaning of an individual segment of the
text, which might then alter how one construes the text as a whole. This, in turn,
changes how one understands the relationship between its individual parts, et cetera.

The end of this process is reached when one obtains a coherent interpretation free of
logical contradictions.

One may "test" interpretation of individual parts against the overall meaning of the
text and even against other texts by the same author.

The text itself is considered relatively closed or autonomous. In other words, as much
as is possible, the meaning of a story is understood within its own context or frame.

It is presumed that the interpreter approaches the task already having a good deal of
knowledge about the general theme of the text.

1‘10 interpretation is ‘presuppositionless’. An understanding of any text is embedded
3n wider cultural traditions and ways of thinking that influence and shape
interpretation. An interpreter does have the Option (some might say the obligation) of

87

been
inlet

0 Interp-

hand 2
item

31:07:33 t
hr: 38

232133 at

1:33:12

becoming conscious of these factors, however, and making their influence on the
interpretive process more explicit.

0 Interpretation is a creative process. That is, interpretation goes beyond what is at
hand and “enriches the understanding by bringing forth new differentiations and
interrelations in the text, extending its meaning” 0(vale, 1996, p. 50).

Using this framework of assumptions, I put my broad question to the three texts.
Specifically, as I analyzed, my task was to recognize and interpret the importance of
various experiences, in school and without, for the developing identity of the author.
More detail about this process is provided below, where I describe the selection of the
books and my approach to reading them.

This study began with my interest in the role that formal education plays in the
constitution of oneself as persons. That formal education can affect who and what one
becomes is a foundational assumption of American democracy. Nonetheless, how it
happens remains an intriguing and ill-understood question. I wanted to try and address
this question in a way that would do justice to the complexity of identity, to the fact it is
simultaneously both public and private. The suggestion was made to me that a potential
source of ‘data’ might be the recollections of persons who have had to struggle with the
education-identity relationship in a way that makes this relationship particularly explicit.

I therefore began to look for books that dealt with the reconstruction of
educational experience by people who had made the transition to formal education fi'om
the ‘outside,’ from conditions far removed culturally from those of the classroom. Like
the proverbial fish who, floundering on the beach, comprehends the existence of water

for the first time, it is often those who have been required to move back and forth
between diverse cultural contexts who have the greatest awareness of culture per se as

88

iii as thel
3e. and

‘ la.
3.. 3303

\N‘IU:
I
\V.
.4" m
1' u
h
l
n _ .
l3“. a.
. .3
“I
'33.
~.j“‘-°“r
“in
z" 3
. j 'w .
-..33
r

well as their relation to it. There are not a large number of such books. I made a list of
seven candidates, all of them dealing with various contexts, populations, age spans,

ethnic groups, and theoretical orientations. This original list was as follows:

Brice Heath, S. (1983). Ways with words : language, life. and
work in communities and classrooms. New York: Cambridge
University Press.

Conway, J. K. (1989). The road from C oorain. New York:
Knopf.

Delpit, L. (1995). Other people 's children: Cultural conflict in
the classroom. New York, NY: The New Press.

Everhart, R. B. (1983). Reading, writing and resistance:
Adolescence and labor in a junior high school. Boston:

Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Purcell-Gates, V. (1995). Other people's words: The cycle of low
literacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Rodriguez, R. (1982). Hunger of memory: The education of
Richard Rodriguez. Boston: David R. Godine.

Rose, M. (1989). Lives on the Boundary. New York: Penguin.

From this list, I decided to select only these texts that had the strongest
autobiographical component. It was clear that, in terms of the intertwining of school-
based experiences and the author’s development as a person, the autobiographies of those
who have had to wrestle with this relationship might provide the greatest amount of

reflection and insight into its personal, identity-related aspects. I therefore selected the

following three texts:

89

meay, J. K. (1989). The road fiom Coorain. New York:
Knopf.

Rodriguez, R. (1982). Hunger of memory: The education of
Richard Rodriguez. Boston: David R. Godine.

Rose, M. (1989). Lives on the Boundary. New York: Penguin.

There are additional reasons for why I chose these three books. First, as
mentioned, they are all written in the same genre: autobiography. As such, they are
centered around the author’s first-person account of their experience. Second, each author
provides a retrospective of their lives and their education from childhood into adulthood.
Third, in reconstructing their experiences, the authors do not restrict themselves to the
portrayal of a single period or context in their lives. Instead, all three attempt to
foreground the significance and meaning of their transitions from one context to another,
in particular between home community and school. For each of these authors, this
movement appeared to spark a consciousness of themselves that could be enlightening
and inspiring but, at the same time, could also be a source of confirsion and even shame.
Finally, against the odds imposed by their respective circumstances and the fact that they
all began as outsiders in some way, each author managed to go on to advanced doctoral
study at an American university.

At the same time, there are also important differences. Mike Rose, an educator,
writes with a special sensitivity to issues of class. He has special insight into the struggles
of those who, like him, come from a place far removed from the rarefied atmosphere of
academia. In contrast, Richard Rodriguez is a critical essayist who has found a life

outside of academia. Raised in a middle class Hispanic home, his autobiography tends to

90

33333031 ‘
33 hen 13
33333133
Luring h
35: ion:
33 has er
3533233 31

t

I... n4 at
73631» ll.
"‘1”. a
333.3103

. I
\a: ”I“ '3
”(1)3‘464

a: "MAI
,3 .

mid

73533?
’budg‘

he.
31' :3-
._ w}

give most weight to issues of ethnicity. Having experienced an attempt to first disregard
and then to exploit his ethnicity, he is especially attuned to the moral contradictions and
disparities in American education. Finally, Jill Ker Conway is Australian by birth.
Leaving home for graduate work at Harvard, she writes with a special sensitivity to issues
of nationality. Also, as a woman, she maintains a strong consciousness of gender biases
she has encountered. Still, for her the doors of academia have opened easily. She is a
scholar and a historian with a joyful passion for learning and, as her tenure as a university
president would suggest, a personal commitment to the broader institution of higher
education. These difi’erences between the authors are important in that they lead to
considerable differences in how each interprets and writes about their experience of
eventually becoming highly literate individuals, including its implications for their
identity as persons.

What can such stories tell us? At one level, published autobiographies are only
written by those who have ultimately ‘succeeded,’ as have Rose, Rodriguez, and
Conway. Their stories have sold well and received much acknowledgement. The authors
themselves have all become respected public intellectuals. They constitute a tiny
survivors club. But what I wanted from these books was not an explanation of how they
managed to survive but, instead, of what it was like for them. What insights could these
formal, well-crafted reconstructions of their experience provide on the relationship
between education and identity-making in their lives? To the extent that their collective
stories addressed conditions common to 20‘” century education, my how was that there

might be some broader relevance.

91

For

3.233 A353.

333.: time
33133113

:33 or

is 353%

For my analysis then, I began with a re-read of Lives on the Boundag by Mike
Rose. Although I had read the book previously, my reading had not been analytic. This
time I read with intent, identifying various events, feelings, experiences, and perceptions
that might have been recurrent in Rose’s attempt to become highly educated and, at the
same time, achieve an integrated identity. As I read, I noted those passages that seemed to
deal with education and identity-making in some way, shape, or form. These were then
copied onto index cards with a note in the upper right regarding my broader sense of how
this passage might be characterized. That is, what did it appear to be ‘about’ at a general
level? As I next applied this same method to my reading of Rodriguez and then Conway,

themes began to emerge.

92

Stability Affiliation Immediacy
A A A

Learning W Identity-

making

 

 

 

l ti

Change Separateness Reflection

Figure 1 Essential Tensions Between Learning and Identity

Essential Tensions. Eventually, I found that across the three texts, those
passages having to do with education and identity could be placed into at least one of
three thematic categories (see Figure #1). None of the three categories seemed
conceptually simple. Instead, they had to do with some kind of tension, a tension
apparent in the authors reconstruction of what occurred over the course of their formal

education. Each of these tensions seemed very basic to me. Further, each of the them

93

seemed tc
provide it
.2“. broa
3333325

2503363

SlCCé'SSf
ml.
:33 e]

T‘"A9~
' ‘I
mm

In '
‘5-3‘ 1'
u.“

seemed to illustrate the relation of education and identity in its own way. They seemed to
provide incarnate or concrete example of the otherwise abstract relation between two
very broad ideas: “education” and “identity.” In other words, these tensions each seemed
to express, demonstrate, or reveal the relationship between education and identity-making
in some compelling and storied way.‘7

These three tensions, then, took shape around my reading of the memoirs of three
successful public intellectuals, Mike Rose, Richard Rodriguez, and Jill Ker Conway. In
general, for each author the tensions were involved in their transition to the new forms of
social organization that formal education represented. What is more, the further up the
authors moved on the educational ladder (elementary, secondary, then university), the
more opportunities they seemed to have to experience these tensions. Before I discuss
them more detail, since the idea of tension plays such an important role here, there are a
couple of points that should probably be made about the notion of tension in general.

First, although tension generally implies that some kind of contradiction exists, in
this case it involves a difference that stretches and pulls at what is really a fundamental
connectedness between things. Such tensions are said to be “essential” in the sense that to
dissolve them would be to collapse the differences by which one thing is defined relative
to another. It is also important to remember that tension is dynamic, it changes. Were it

not dynamic, it would not be tension but a static structure. To say that there can be an

—_-

H mm. the particular conditions under which, according to the autobiographies, a certain tension was
Camderedare somethinglwill be very concerned with

94

:03: spec

133130

essential tension between education and identity is therefore to say two things: (I) that
although the processes of formal education and the construction of oneself as a person are
inseparable, they can sometimes appear to work against one another, and; (2) this
relationship is not fixed but dynamic in nature. I will now define the tensions themselves
more specifically. Subsequent chapters will present the texts and my interpretations of
them through which the tensions are illustrated.

Stability and Change. In the three books, each author entered a progressive
series of educational institutions carrying with them a personal past as well as certain
ideas about the future. Where they came ill-equipped, adapting meant developing an
identity that ‘overcame’ their past, that accorded to the ways of thinking, feeling, and
behaving that would allow them entry into school culture. Indeed, this is modern

condition.

Self-identity for us forms a trajectory across the different
institutional settings of modernity over the durée of what used to
be called the ‘life cycle’ (Shotter, 1997, p. 188, quoting Giddens,
1991, p. 14).

0T. as Catherine Bateson suggests in her book, Composing a Life,

adjusting to discontinuity is not an idiosyncratic problem of my
own, but the emerging problem of our time (1990, p. 14).

95

lash I e
Rise. Rod
53m

are thz

33.3 “335 (1
tires. .
mi 3‘.
tithe
they.

Pl '
«Lil's:

To what extent did the various discontinuities involved in their formal education afford
Rose, Rodriguez, and Conway an identity that was continuous with who and what they
felt themselves to have been previously? To what extent did their education seem to
require that they devalue or turn away fi“om their past?

In concert with their personal development, change in the three authors’ sense of
self was driven by cultural forces. Culture, or more accurately the differences between
cultures, created turbulence. In their unique ways, as Rose, Rodriguez and Conway
crossed the boundaries between family, home community, and school, a tension was set
up between the authors’ experience of themselves in one context and their experience of
themselves in another. Although contemporary education is rhetorically cast as the way
of progress toward a self that is somehow better or improved, there were limits for these
authors in the extent to which preexisting ways of thinking, feeling, and acting could be
extended into their identities as a ‘good student’ or, eventually, an ‘intellectual.’ Given
that identities can never be perfected, only sustained, to what extent did the different
contexts these authors inhabited allow for the stability or ‘can'y-over’ of their identities
fi'om one moment to the next? Or, instead, were there pressures that demanded some kind .
of change in their behaviors, thoughts, and values.

Affiliation and Separateness. What do I mean to capture with the relatively
broad term ‘affiliation’ (as opposed to ‘relationship’ or ‘attachment,’ for example)? I use
it to refer to a sense on the pan of the three authors that their learning and identity were
connected in important ways to people, things, events, and ideas outside of themselves.

For them, achieving this experience required familiarity with the means by which they

96

n33 gain
place for I
213230.353
an: te
33330315

rectal 33

.- .. . _.

’t.’ ‘11,?“ r x v
“1

.1”. gs,“ ,v:_r*

could gain access to a particular culture, the points of entry by which could realize a
place for themselves in various worlds. ‘8 In terms of education, it might be a kind of
relationship (e.g., teacher-student), a particular social practice (e. g., teaching and being
taught, test taking, participation in a system of rewards and punishments), certain
traditions (e. g., reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, graduation ceremonies), or the use of
special mediational artifacts (e.g., books, language, or art).

Separateness, on the other hand, was the opposite experience, an experience that
one was living a life set apart fi'om the surrounding web of relationships, events, and
ideas. For the authors, separateness in and of itself was not necessarily good or bad. At
times, a certain amount of separateness was necessary in order for them to develOp
intellectual independence as well as personal autonomy. However, in terms of their
education, too much separateness from the academic cultures into which they desire entry
deprived them of the affiliations through which they could experiment with, or in essence
practice, their identities as intellectuals. Given sufficient affiliations with academic
culture, Rose, Rodriguez, and Conway were able to participate in their learning in ways
that explicitly brought learning and identity together. The unique constellation of these
affiliations at certain points provided them with a future-oriented space that was

important in moving them toward a new and substantive intellectual identity. It afforded

._

‘3 Shatter writes that through their affiliations, people “create and math tain between themselves. in certain
of the ‘basic’ communicative activities, an extensive background context of communicative
acuvitics...within which they are sustained as the kind ofhuman beings they are” (, 1993. p. 12).

97

mom

pecple an

red and
7am
3.533031 3'
new. I

izspec

Zlilimi

9:."
4:)..-

opportunities to try on, or play with, an academic identity vitally interwoven with the
people and practices of a particular educational community.‘9

In those instances in which an author’s affiliations with educational culture were
weak and feelings of separateness were an issue, the identity that learning moved him or
her toward seemed to be less clear, less certain. For example, with the exception of his
passion for books, the depth and breadth of Rodriguez's affiliations with academic culture
were not as great as those of Rose and Conway. His autobiography contains no mention
of a special mentoring relationship, for example. Nor was there mention of participation
in intimate peer groups. Although Rodriguez was indeed learning from an academic
standpoint, who and what he was becoming in that process remained unclear to him. At
no time over the course of his education did it become an explicit issue. As a result,
Rodriguez remained alienated, clear about what he was moving away from but less clear
about what he was moving toward.20

It was through their affiliations with people and things outside themselves that the
authors acquired images of how to be. While at its extreme, affiliation could lead to a
state of over-identification, a sense of their lives having been ‘co-opted’ by another

person, institution, or system of beliefs, affiliations essentially mediated the process of

g

‘9 Of course, such affiliations are generally the means by which one pursues an identity in cultures beyond
education as well. There are affiliations with family, ethnic group, faith community, or even socioeconomic
groups, for example. For the three authors. these affiliations could. at times, help them to realize a sense of
personal continuity, albeit a sense that might sometimes complicate their future-oriented efforts to change

20Although Rodriguez did have strong affiliations with Catholicism, these were not about learning per se
Nonetheless, they provided a sense of stability, 3 common threw to his past.

98

scene, 2
33. iii

trad :h

”a,“ ‘
‘M cl
““1“.
Ii“
'\
mp M
at”,

"(We-
..., ‘m

becoming formally educated. In contrast, separateness for these authors was, at its
extreme, a kind of existential loneliness. There was an absence of connectedness, a
certain difficulty in feeling that their Ieaming and identities interfaced with the world
around them. During such moments, they were aware of themselves as individuals set
apart fiom the particular web of relationships, things, events, and ideas that surrounded
them. While at its extreme, separateness could induce in them an experience of being cut
off, of alienation, in balance with affiliation it was vital to feelings of individuality,
uniqueness, and personal efficacy.

Immediacy and Reflection. Where the first theme, stability and change, is
concerned with the authors’ experience of personal continuity over time, the second
theme, affiliation and separateness, addresses experiences of social connectedness in the
back-and-forth between contexts. In contrast, immediacy and reflection alludes to the
tension between what might be thought of as two different modes of consciousness, two
ways of knowing, of taking in one’s experience. On the one hand, there are instances in
which the authors experienced themselves as very much in the present moment,
unselfconsciously engaged, alive to their senses and surroundings. In contrast to this are
moments in which they instead follow their intellectual impulse to analyze, to put their

experience into some kind of conceptual order or theoretical frame. There is a ‘stepping

99

tuck that
authors ti
heather
actual a
Laugh t

383‘.th

hGeh

it is

i'flu .
“sh

back’ that occurs.21 Although both of these modes are natural, there is a confusion the
authors feel as they move between contexts that tend to feature one type of knowing over
the other. An abrupt shift in consciousness seemed to accompany their movement from
sensual activities, activities in which the object of their attention was experienced bodily
through the senses (e. g., physical work) to activities whose object was conceptual (e.g.,
contemplating a theory or idea), from matters that were concrete to those that were more
abstract or imaginative.

In contrast to the favor that enlightenment traditions have shown rational thought,
the German philosopher, Martin Heidegger (1962), insists that our primary access to the
world is not through our intellect but via one’s practical, unreflective involvement with it,
what he called the ready-to-hand. Only secondarily, according to Heidegger, do we rely
on the kind of detached contemplation through which we isolate and order phenomena.
Winograd & Flores use the example of a hammer (1986, chapter 3). In practice, a
hammer is experienced unreflectively as an extension of the carpenter’s arm, ready-to-
hand. The carpenter does not contemplate the hammer or the act of hammering itself until
there is some kind of physical or mechanical breakdown that makes analysis necessary.
Immediacy might be considered akin to a mode of consciousness in which one’s

surroundings are ready-to-hand (I am typing but as I do so, unless my keyboeard

—_

21 There is a developmental aspect in that reflection on one’s experience demands more mature intellectual
skills As a result, tensions between the two ‘modes’ of thought that I am calling immediacy and reflection
donottendto appearinthe authors’ lives until late adolescence oryoungadulthood

100

uihnctior
hes not be
retire mc
reps 03 pa
up inch
cautious

.1855 10 1

“mp .. '
~ “gem

in

malfunctions or I make an error that requires me to direct my attention to it, the keyboard
does not become a conscious object of thought). In contrast, reflection represents that
creative mode of thought one might use to analyze a problem, breaking it into logical
steps or parts (were a particular key on my keyboard to stick or break, or the keyboard to
stop functioning altogether, in order to solve the problem I would need to become very
conscious of its mechanical workings, no longer oblivious to its role as a mediator of my
access to the written screen).

Immediacy and reflection, in a sense, tries to get behind what we mean when we
draw such dualities as practical versus intellectual, mental versus manual, applied versus
theoretical. Although there are bits of all of these contained in this theme, I do not merely
want to set up another dichotomy. I do not want to imply that reflective thought is not
somehow ultimately embodied, for example (cf. Johnson, 1989; Varela, Thompson, &
Rosch, 1991). There is a quote fiom an interview with the writer, Annie Dillard, that is
suggestive of the relationship between these two ways of experiencing the world. She

”Y3,

the interior life is in constant vertical motion; consciousness runs
up and down the scales every hour like a slide trombone. It
dreams down below; it notices up above; and it notices itself,
too, and its own alertness. The vertical motion of consciousness,
from inside to outside and back, interests me (in Zinsser, 1995,
pp. 42-43).

101

q

iitltllSlOl
mam an
relletmal
demon)
Figure on
he use tl

accuse

32cm

itch

The tension is in the movement between Dillard’s “dreaming down below,” living in the
moment and experiencing oneself fully as a social presence (i.e., immediacy), and the
intellectual impulse to ‘detach’ and notice from “up above” how things are ordered (i.e.,
reflection). It is somewhere in between these two that meaning is constructed.

In the three autobiographies, a particular activity and context usually tends to
feature one mode of consciousness, immediate or reflective, over the other. It is probably
the case that as education strives to invite students into the practices of abstract, rational
discourse, most schools place the greatest value on logical reason and reflection (Burner,
1996; Gardner, 1983; Wells, 1994). However, progressive educators have long pointed to
the pedagogical benefits that arise fiom moving students between immediate and

reflective ways of knowing. 22

‘Reason’ at its height cannot attain complete grasp...it must fall
back upon imagination - upon the embodiment of ideas in an
emotionally charged sense (Dewey, cited in Ganison, 1995, pp.
428-429).

‘2 As an interesting side note, Jill Ker Conway remarks on how aspects of today’s culture, particularly the
media, work ayinst developing powers of reflection in young persons. She writes, -

”The young women I got to know when I was [president of Smith College] were energetically interested in
writing and understanding themselves and their current life experiences. Their problem was that most of the
mrratives they saw, which were on television, were structured around very brief two- or three-minute
incidents. These women had never become accustomed to writing reflective expository prose - looking at
an event and reflecting on what it means - because events on television are so neatly mckaged that you
don’t think about the alternatives” (in Zinser, pp. 176-177).

102

An
tended b

tuned h

in ii
tit-.C‘C’LI

[Thought] is a dynamic system of meaning, in which the
afictive and the intellectual unite (Vygotsky, 1986, p. 10).

An example of the tension that can exist between immediacy and reflection is
provided by Rodriguez. He had abandoned graduate study, “cast off that culture” and
returned home to the imagined safety and comfort of his parents’ home. In the midst of
eating dinner with his mother and father, he was uncomfortably aware of his compulsion

to reflect on and analyze even this simplest of moments.

I rushed to ‘come home. ’ Then quickly discovered that I
could not. Could not cast ofl the culture I had assumed
Living with my parents for the summer, I remained an
academic - a kind of anthropologist in the family kitchen,
searching for evidence of our ‘cultural ties’ as we ate
dinner together (p. 160).

He could not reclaim his conceptual innocence. Although Rodriguez realizes that his
ability to think and abstract in complex ways is what has ultimately saved him from
reenacting the frustrated lives of his parents, because it is for him the voice of the
objective, white, authoritative academic, it threatens to separate him from them. He thus
Struggles with integrating it into his own identity.

General points. In the three tensions that I’ve proposed, there is no one outcome
that is generally better or more natural than another. Whether stability rather than change,

affiliation rather than separateness, or immediacy rather than reflection are most

conducive to learning and growth at any given moment is a consequence of the author’s

103

5:me
W“
{3‘ cl 3938'
his“
135 Ammed
35331 m
intent
sit ‘-

W 3;
{Mellon

fl

their
3533011?
an

mg 3

circumstances and his or her unique life trajectory. It is also true that the authors do not
experience both ‘poles’ of a tension at the same time. What I mean is that an experience
of change, for example, does not seem to occupy the same moment in time for them as an
experience of stability. Nor do they describe experiences of affiliation and separateness,
or immediacy and reflection, as occurring at the same instant. However, their stories do
reveal how their educational paths lead them to cycle between the two aspects of these
tensions, a cycling that was of greatest importance to the process of learning and identity-
making. In this sense, each of the tensions is a true dialectic: stability sets up the
preconditions for change (and vice versa), affiliation sets up the precondition for
separateness (and vice versa) and, similarly, immediacy sets up the precondition for
reflection (and vice versa).

Related to the above point is the fact that one’s life must inevitably be lived
somewhere between the poles of each tension. Part of the essentialness of these three
tensions is that one is, to varying degrees, forever moving between experiences of change
and stability, between feelings of closeness, similarity, and affiliation and feelings of
being someone different or apart, between moments of immediacy in which one’s
experience of one’s self is entirely ‘in the moment’ and those in which one has stepped
back from the moment in order to reflect on, analyze, and understand it.

In these stories, then, there seem to be three concrete ways that the relationship
between education and identity-making expresses itself (see Figure #1). First, there are
varying degrees of pull between stability and change in the context of one’s life, between

things remaining the same, on the one hand, or progressing toward a state that is

104

urehow ‘1
as these
'th 3161

relation to

nation:

fatten t

Mttildt

gun: \i

«ruse

(i0

somehow ‘better’ or ‘improved,’ on the other. Second, at various times and in various
ways, these authors write about confronting the tension between their affiliation to others
versus their need for separateness, that is, the tension between defining themselves in
relation to others (teachers, family members, or peers, for example) versus the need to
understand themselves as individuals apart from their relationships. Third, as their
educations advanced, each author eventually confronted the private or personal tension
between two fiindamental modes of awareness, a tension perhaps best summarized as
immediacy (living in the moment, senses alive to one’s surround) versus reflection
(giving way to the intellectual impulse to detach and analyze in order to understand).

The processes of formal education and identity-making are inextricably
connected. You cannot have one without the other. What has come to my attention in the
reading of these three autobiographies, however, are the tensions that can haunt this
relationship and that can ultimately moderate what these two processes are able to
achieve. For the authors, institutional education bred a struggle between who they were
and who they felt they were expected to be, between a sense of connectedness and a
sense of self-definition, between their personal presence in the moment and their
intellectual understanding of it.

Final note regarding a hermeneutic approach. I believe that a hermeneutic
approach provides the most viable means of analyzing what I am most interested in: the
ways that individuals come to understand for themselves the relationship between
learning and identity-making. An interpretive approach allows me to understand the

meaning and sense that each of the authors make of this relationship. I would argue that

105

n atulysis
nation a
math-e
Lhe‘r'ar
3th is U1
lh
Leseauto
ah of ill
titular
Lash.
Line. Lh.

:3 one

littil

my analysis of how these three individuals reconstruct the struggle between formal
education and becoming someone or something different provides one possible
perspective on the relationship between formal learning and identity-making, one rooted
in the ‘anrmth of a life being lived” [a phrase that Oates (1991, p. 5) uses to describe that
which is uniquely communicated by the biographical voice].

There are other ways, other roads of inquiry, by which one could have approached
these autobiographies, of course. For example, it is a fact that, throughout their lives,
each of the authors moved in and out of different communities of Discourse.23 In
particular, as they gradually became part of the academic community, they acquired the
discursive tools for becoming critical of the community from which they had originally
come, the one represented by their particular ethnic group or social class. At one level,
then, one might say that what comes into conflict for them are actually two conflicting
Discourses, two conflicting ways of perceiving, valuing, arguing, and interpreting. Gee

writes,

 

2’ Gee (1996) views Discourse, with a capital ‘D’, as a means of structuring social relations. He writes.

[Discourse is] a socially accepted association among ways of using
language, other symbolic expressions, and ‘artifacts, of thinking,
feelings, believing, valuing, and acting that can be used to identify
oneself as a member of a socially meaningful group or ‘social
network,’ or to signal (that one is playing) a socially meaningful ‘role’
(p. 131).

In sum, Discourse refers to a conventionalized way of communicating, dialoguing, or conversing that
accords with certain culturally channeled and rhetorically structured ways of perceiving, valuing, arguing
311d interpreting Discourses are intimately related to issues of social power. For this reason, “they are
always and everywhere ideological” (Gee, 1996, p. 132). Control over certain Discourses can lead to the
wquisition of social goods such as money, power, status

106

Dr.

mean I

It is sometimes helpful to say that it is not individuals who speak
and act, but rather that historically and socially defined
Discourses speak to each other through individuals . . . The
individual instantiates, gives body to a Discourse every time he
or she speaks, and thus carries it, and ultimately changes it,
through time. . .the individual is the meeting point of many,
sometimes conflicting, socially and historically defined
Discourses" (1996, p. 132).

Drawing fi’om Minnis (1994), Gee (1996) provides an example of how “conflicts

between Discourses can inhabit one and the same person” (p. 133). Minnis writes,

Given that mutual unspoken understanding between teachers and
students requires common prior experiences, most good law
students are traditional law students. They are students whose
economic, social, and educational backgrounds are much like
those of traditional law professors. These students, that is, are
members of middle- and upper-class society, the dominant
culture, the culture that shaped the law. Accordingly, they are
inclined to accept without question beliefs that are characteristic
of that culture and that give them an advantage in law school. In
short, their personal histories have taught them to confront the
world aggressively; they esteem reasoning over other ways of
knowing, individual accomplishment over collective
accomplishment, and competition over c00peration (Minnis,
1994, p. 380).

Accordingly, the Discourses of law school “conflict seriously with the social
Practices and positions of the other Discourses to which many minorities and other non-

mainstream [law] students belong” (Gee, 1996, p. 135). Gee continues,

The Discourse of law school creates kinds of people who
(overtly or tacitly) define themselves as difl'erent from - often
better than - other kinds of people. For many minority and other

107

h
'*

(aim:
Erich .
- t

3%.: '
.fi‘r

non-mainstream [law] students, the Discourse of law school
makes them be both kinds of people. They get to define their
kind (as law student) as different from - often better than - their
own kind (as member of one of their other Discourses). A
paradox, indeed - unforttmately one they get to live and feel in
their bodies and their minds (p. 135)

Gee is making two assertions. First, that one way to conceptualize the situation is
that “it is not individuals who speak and act, but rather it is historically and socially
defined Discourses that speak to each other through individuals” (1996, p. 132). Second,
and on the other hand, where there are “points of opposition” between Discourses, these
otherwise abstract ideologies are experienced on the site of individual. It is the person
who gets to “live and feel [them] in their bodies and their minds.” In this
conceptualization, the primary unit of analysis remains Discourse. Although as
individuals we get to “live and feel” them, in this account the bulk of agency nonetheless
continues to reside in Discourse itself. The individual is more or less a conduit through
which different and sometimes opposing Discourses pass and sometimes meet. While at
one level this may be a viable metaphor, absent from this account is an understanding of
what it is actually like to be spoken through. In other words, there is no way in this
account for individual experience to assume the ontological foreground. The same
problem would have been present had I chosen to use other sociolinguistic or ‘social
scmiotic’ approaches, those of Halliday (1989) or Lemke, (1989) for example. These are
methods in which the nature of the texts themselves as texts tend to retain analytic

Primacy (e.g., literary criticism or critical theory).

108

Ins
million as
little“
fit them ‘
19331361“
anti it

magma

, .
tremor

ricer

tend?»

math;
Mt
L‘itTpI

mi

Instead, in this study, it was how the authors’ made sense of the learning-identity
relation as it played out in their own lives that I wanted to understand and foreground.
How were they able to thread together the educational events in their lives in a way that
for them created a cohesive story? After all, these were not persons who experienced
themselves as “inhabite ” by the Discourses they participated in. There is individual
agency in the fact that they used these Discourses to get on with our lives, to learn, and to
construct and manage an identity.

The constitutive nature of social Discourses notwithstanding, what these
autobiographies ‘contain’ are the authors’ creative reconstructions of their lived
experience. In this case, broader issues regarding how Discourses might ‘speak through’
the individual are by no means dismissed. But they do take back seat to, or provide
background for, the author’s own experience of being spoken through. Again, this does
not preclude the idea that various social Discourses were integral to the identity-making
of Rose, Rodriguez, or Conway. It only seeks to foreground the individual perspective,
one that for the moment transcends questions regarding the origins and structure of the
Discourses themselves. In so doing, I have attempted to create for myself a more open
interpretive space, one that as much as possible allows the experience of the three authors

to inform my theorizing.

109

an of i

and is i

inlets
iris. 1

iii in

Lime;

in:

CHAPTER FOUR

Mike Rose

Lives on the Boundgy is a chronicle of Mike Rose’s lifelong struggle between a
view of himself and the world set against the economic and spiritual poverty of his youth,
and his identity within the American educational system. Even in his career as an
educator and scholar, where Rose seems to have found a degree of salvation from the
hopelessness of his youth, he carries with him a nagging sense of alienation. In Rose’s
words, Lives on the Boundary “is a book about movement: about what happens as people
who have failed begin to participate in the educational system that has seemed so harsh to
them” (p. xi). His is essentially a story about class, about the attempt to define oneself
through education in ways that repudiate the economic conditions of one’s past. Rose’s
autobiography shares his experience on the border between the promise of education and
the dead ends of poverty, between creating an identity of one’s own and existing for the
sake of others, between learning for the sake of ego and learning in order to serve,
between what one ‘is’ and what one was or would like to become and, finally, between
those who teach and those who are expected to learn.

43 gflmund. Mike Rose’s parents were both children when their families immigrated to
America fi'om Italy in the early 1900’s. His mother quit school in the 7'h grade to help
with her family. His father had a year or two of Italian elementary and “could write a few

words” (p. 11). When they were first married, Rose’s parents had operated a successfirl

110

 

Dim—Engama I

 

mSQ Haw—Ea o: Zia—8 2.on ..mnr 395m 05
man: ...on E3322. I gamma—25 I cm :23 8.8m cane—wan.
282— 5 maaoq <02 vmvar 00:88
8.5% 33
332 «6»:
Enema 5 13:2. macaw 0:358
<ogmo=£ E8 have.» moroc—
fianor I mm corn.»
38:3»:

16:3 ... 258 $93 . .230 ...:m 2 3&2. 43330:». m<m=$

111

r228 COP?
.93.. 4.80:3
non—cm

>888 @830: am E839
o». cnr> H.501». 0032

 

”Scan 8
Cor?

4.5038033».
Sana—am

was.» ,_ 3035.33. 3:6 meme .. :3» Cam 2 3&2 43:232.». M333

112

fine: in Alt:
regeflion .
wing :
mg of oc
Eclose, a
523:: was
“messy
393316;
W
mm
@3331 u

+ ‘0 I
1L. any

I.
.i'fa. ..
s ‘ a.“

5‘3:

diner in Altoona, Pennsylvania. But this folded when the railroad there went bust. At the
suggestion of their doctor, Rose’s family relocated to California for his father’s
increasing arteriosclerosis. There his mother worked as a waitress while his dad held a
string of odd jobs. The world that Rose’s parents moved in was small. “We were webbed
in close, a four- or five-block stretch” (p. 89), writes Rose. Because of his illness, his
father was home most of the time. Rose recalls his mother’s routine, taking the bus to her
waitress job in downtown Los Angeles six days a week, returning home worn out,
“enervated and mechanical.” What he remembers most is that “her life did not radiate
outwards” (p. 89). Eventually, his father’s worsening arteriosclerosis required the
amputation of his leg. This started a downward spiral in his father’s health and in his
general will to live. He died during Rose’s sophomore year in high school. Mike was
their only child.

Rose remembers his early years as “a peculiar mix of physical warmth and

barrenness” (p. 12).

I developed a picture of human existence that rendered it
short and brutish or sad and aimless or long and quiet with
rewards like afternoon naps, the evening newspaper, walks
around the block... (p. 1 7).

At the same time, the neighborhood where he and his parents lived was changing rapidly.

[We lived in] a house about one and one-half miles
northwest of Watts. Ihe neighborhood was poor, and it was

113

R0
school iibr

sofiere

r!“ I

suffi-

in transition. Some old white folks lived therefor decades
and were retired Younger black families were moving up
fiom Watts and settling by working-class white families
newly w'rivedfiom the South and the Midwest. Immigrant
Mexican families were coming in from Baja. Any such
demographic mix is potentially volatile and, as the fifties
wore on, the neighborhood would be marked by outbursts
of violence (p. 12).

Rose began reading early. The science fiction stories he discovered at his small
school library fueled his imagination. They began to give him a sense of story form. They

also offered a temporary means of escape.

I would check out books two at a time and take them home
to curl up with a blanket on my chaise lounge, reading,
sometimes through the weekend my back aching, my
thoughts lost between galaxies. I became the hero of a
thousand adventures, all with intricate plots and the
triumph of good over evil, all many dimensions removed
from the dim walls of the living room (pp. 20-21).

The summer before 6’11 grade, Rose got a job with some other boys picking
strawben'ies. As they drove back and forth to the work site, it became Rose’s task to
entertain them. This was the birth of Rose the Story-Teller. It was his first experience
using language in a way that could lead him out into the world and, at the same time, pull

others in. Otherwise, Rose has few recollections of his elementary years, which puzzles

him.

114

111

Stillmt

21:33am:

tired we

1331101121

4.. 11

v": ,,

Some people who manage to write their way out of the
worla'ng class describe the classroom as an oasis of
possibility. It became their intellectual playground, their
competitive arena. Given the richness of my memories of
this time, it '3 funny how scant are my recollections of
[elementary] school (p. 18).

When it was time for secondary, Rose’s parents saved the money necessary to
send him to Catholic school. Unfortunately, Rose’s test scores were confused upon
admittance with those of another student by the same name who had apparently not
scored well. As a result, Rose spent his first two years erroneously placed in the
vocational education track. These two years had a profound impact on Rose. He
internalized the hopelessness of his Voc Ed classmates. He accepted the low-achiever
identity bestowed on him by the school (an aspect of himself that, as a teacher of
marginalized students, would one day serve him in a meaningful way).

The error that had thrown Rose into the vocational track was not discovered until
the end of his sophomore year. At the beginning of his junior year, he was therefore
promptly transferred into the college prep track. The adjustment was difficult and Rose
floundered. Looking back, Rose believes that he was saved only by his relationship with
Jack MacFarland, a 26-y/o English teacher with a recent masters fi‘om Columbia.
MacFarland was brilliant, caring, demanding, and was passionate about language and
ideas.

It was not a definite plan of Rose's to attend college following high school. No

one in his family had attempted higher education. Only two uncles had ever completed

115

high schoc

satiation;

:iiile to

1331113111131
tit-.001 1'1
mm
mean

this or

5301311

111121

high school. “The reality of higher education wasn't in my scheme of things,” he writes
(p. 35). With Jack MacFarland pulling a few strings, however (Loyola was MacFarland’s
undergraduate alma mater), Rose was able to enter Loyola university under first year
probationary status. At that time, Loyola's student population was predominantly white,
middle to upper class, and exclusively male.

Loyola was foreign. Rose felt out of place. Disguising his discomfort with
contempt, he struggled to produce college-level work. Just two years out of the high
school vocational track, Rose felt that he lacked a “solid center of knowledge.” The
boundary between Rose and higher education felt impermeable. After a dismal fall
semester, Jack MacFarland, with whom Rose continued to have contact, phoned several
of his own former professor’s at Loyola. At MacFarland’s suggestion, they subsequently
provided special tutoring for Rose. This helped immensely and things began to improve.
In his final three years of undergraduate work, Rose became editor of the campus literary
magazine, moved out of the family’s home, and - to his amazement - secured a
scholarship for graduate study in English at UCLA.

The first year or so at UCLA went well. But Rose gradually found himself
disillusioned. His professors did not seem interested in his poetry, nor did they seem to
have much enthusiasm for writing themselves. Rose watched them in their enclosed
world of criticism and critique and it left him cold. He decided that whatever he was
looking for, he would not find it through graduate study in English. In the hopes that it
would lead him more directly out into the world of human experience, for the next year

Rose took undergraduate courses in psychology. Still, academic psychology did not seem

116

hfhhfih hit
not help hi

R0
inn lea
elements
firsts ea
1115115
Easter

at of {hi

1hzhe

8

W101
"5 Sp:

.1 11h.

11:1

to fulfill him either. It also seemed removed, too much about theory and research. It could
not help him to understand his own life and its apparent contradictions.

Rose eventually gave up his scholarship and left UCLA, joining Los Angeles’s
Urban Teacher Corps. Volunteers in the Teacher Corp worked as interns in low-income
elementary schools in Los Angeles. At the same time, they took a couple of education
classes each quarter at the University of Southern California, where the Corps was based.
This was Rose’s first experience with teaching and it amazed him. He worked with kids
the system had labeled ‘slow’ or ‘disabled.’ As he did so, he felt that what began to come
out of them were ideas, images, and abilities with language that would never have shown
up in the classrooms that had marginalized them. Rose’s understanding of learning itself
began to change. He began to see learning less as the acquisition of knowledge and more
as a “romance,” an “invitation” (p. 102). At the same time, the futility of his students’
lives spoke to him personally. It echoed the hopelessness of what he himself had grown
up with and still, in a sense, carried with him.

After two years in the Teacher’s Corp, Rose began thinking about returning to
graduate study at UCLA. He left the Teacher’s Corp and took a job that would allow him
that option. He worked 20-30 hours a week as an English tutor for returning Vietnam
veterans. The vets were men that wanted to change themselves, to “be transfigured by
books” (p. 138), who wanted to be “up and out of the pool of men society could call on
so easily to shoot and be shot at” (p. 137). Like himself, these were people very much in
transition, transitions much more dramatic than his own. He could certainly identify with

their desire to change their lives through education.

117

Ros
1mm] hm
11351511111
hmsef pu
Earth's
1146). l
m 111
hhrhing
11111031

3,1,1, ,
$1111

3:011:11
1118-01.

11331

. ‘5
:71
8-

in.“
s
1W1

:3 ‘11

j“...
s11?!"
‘\

Rose found himself teaching not just reading and writing to the vets but even
general intellectual strategies for making it academically; skills like summarizing,
classifying, comparing, and analyzing. The Veteran’s Program allowed Rose to define
himself publicly as “someone engaged with the language of others” (p. 146). “It was the
Veteran’s Program that really enabled me to come into my own as a teacher,” he writes
(p. 146). His work with the vets challenged Rose to find the logic and meaning in their
errors. It confirmed his belief that “even at the extreme, there is possibility” (p. 159).
Working with the veterans also turned Rose back once more onto his own experience. In
juxtaposition to his relationships with them, he reached a deeper understanding of the
depth and difficulty of the changes he himself had gone through.

From the veteran’s program, Lives on the Boundm finishes with Rose’s
recollections of his subsequent position as director of the UCLA Tutorial Center. He had
more-or-less come firll circle. The difference was that now, he writes, he entered the
university “with some responsibility for making it work” (p. 170). By this time, Rose had
learned a great deal about learning (“how to foster it, what impedes it” p. 164), about
transition into college, and about helping others with the “emotional spasms that come
with change” (p. 165). It was fi'om this distance that Rose finally obtained the fullest
appreciation for the nature of the changes that had brought him to where he was.

In the analysis to follow, the first section will concern itself with the tensions that
Rose experienced between experiences of stability and experiences of change. For Rose,
this was the tension between maintaining a sense of himself as a member of the lower

socioeconomic class, the son of immigrant parents while, at the same time, also

118

11
111111 11
12111 01
11121111
111101
EELS 1

311111:

transforming himself through learning in ways that would legitimate his identity as an
intellectual and scholar. My analysis of each of the three tensions will be organized
according to the transitions in the story that seemed to fuel the particular tension being

discussed.

Stability and Change.

Transition: Vocational Education to College Prep. Once in the high school
Voc Ed track, Rose gradually internalized what this placement implied regarding the
quality of his mind. For he and his peers, performing in ways that confirmed the
judgement that they were “slow” was less painful than trying to demonstrate that they
were not. Underperforming was a way of resisting change, of defending themselves,
although it did require a kind of intellectual suicide. Maintaining the stability of their
status did not involve a passive acceptance of their condition, in other words, but instead

required an active effort on their part.

You have to twist the knife in your own gray matter to make
this defense work. You ’II have to shut down, have to reject
intellectual stimuli or diffuse them with sarcasm, have to
cultivate stupidity, have to convert boredom fiom a malady
into a way of cory‘ronting the world (p. 29).

119

1111'
1111011515
110015 cat
:11 Rose ‘

“.1111an

When Rose was abruptly pulled out of the vocational track and tossed into college
prep courses at the start of his junior year, a simple administrative act changed the
school’s categorization: ‘remedial’ in the spring and ‘college-prep’ in the fall. Out of the
blue, Rose was publicly redefined in ways that bore little resemblance to the student he

had been previously. Changing his own perception of himself was not so easy.

I was an erratic student. I was undisciplined And I hadn't
caught onto the rules of the game (p. 30).

The transition was difficult. The vocational track had given him few opportunities to
identify, much less to develop, his particular intellectual talents. The discontinuity
between Voc Ed and college-prep was jarring. Every effort on his part seemed only to

succeed in exposing his shortcomings still firrther.

At the first sign of doing rather than memorizing, I would
automatically assume the problem was beyond me and
distance myself from it @. 43)...As long as I stayed half-
awake intellectually, there was no tension, no failed
attempts at mastery, no corirontation with my limits. But
now I was trying hard, and I could see how limited I was.

It would be quite a while before I could relax into the gifts I
did possess (p. 59).

Rose writes that Jack MacFarland could not have come into his life at a better

time. The changes that MacFarland introduced into how Rose was being taught were

120

:13111 .1111

111111151

531.11. L."
1.. '.
11 me

pivotal. Although many of his fiiends were beyond change, Rose was not. He found

himself responding to what MacFarland offered. This is what he remembers...

MacFarland ’s lectures were crafted . .He asked questions
often, raised everything fiom Zeno ’s paradox to the
repeated last line of Frost ’s “Stopping by Woods on a
Snowy Evening. ” He slowly and carefully built up our
knowledge of Western intellectual history... We wrote and
talked wrote and talked The man immersed us in
language... Ihere were some lives that were already beyond
Jack MacFarland ’s ministrations, but mine was not (p. 33).

Transition: University. The culture of Loyola was a dramatic contrast to that of
South LA, to the world that surrounded his family’s home on South Vermont street. To
Rose, they felt discontinuous with one another. He was “in the middle of Loyola’s social
world without a guidebook,” no way to find direction or understand the background and
Significance of things. He writes that he was torn between “contempt for” and “exclusion
from” this world: both rejecting it as something foreign and wishing he could change

enough to belong.

Many of my classmates ccnne from and lived in a world .
very dtflerentfiom my own. Ihe campus literary magazine
would publish excerpts from the journals of upperclassmen
traveling across Europe, standing before the Berlin Wall...I
had never been out of Southern California. ..Fratemtttes
seemed exclusive and a little strange... John [John
Connors, friend from South LA] and I pretty much kept to
ourselves...simultaneousl)z feeling contempt for and
exclusion fiom a social life that seemed to work with the

121

Nor
111 1111111
human
31111111

1:111 of

1111111

2.11 11.

21131 ‘

11.3-

11:11
.311

m
3:11.31

mystery and enclosure of the clockwork in a music box. (p. ‘
42-43).

Nor did Rose have the academic background that might have made for at least
some intellectual bridging between secondary and higher education. He still maintained
his contact with Jack MacFarland. This and his friend John provided a modicum of social
continuity. Even though his days were spent on campus, South LA. still felt like home.
In spite of its “dreary impotence,” isolation, and the deep sadness it engendered in him
regarding the tragedy of his parents' lives, it was familiar. In contrast, Loyola seemed to
be an extension of the Ozzie and Harriet world Rose watched on television: white,
middle class and happy, alien to the economic and spiritual poverty of South LA.

Rose held below a C average by the end of his 2'“d semester. Meanwhile, Jack
MacFarland knew that Rose was in trouble and what he would need in his second year if
he were to survive. Of particular importance was a personalized kind of help, which
MacFarland was able to arrange. Rose began to receive private tutoring fi'om his
Professors during his second year. He recalls an important change in the quality of his

eXperience. . .

T0 journey up through the top levels of the American
educational system will call for support and guidance at
many, many points along the way. You ’11 need people to
guide you into conversations that seem foreign and
threatening. You ’11 need models, lots of them, to show you
how to get at what you don ’t know. You ’11 need people to
help you center yourself in your arm developing Ideas... The
teachers that fate and Jack MacFarland ’s crisis . '
intervention sent my way worked at making the humanities

122

All
21th A
'21 111111 1
1311113015
151-71her G
1191 1101
2111?} Of
shel- l
1153111
113 the ?

firth“

l
I.“

truly human. What trcmspired between us was the essence
of humane liberal education, and it enabled me to move fcn'
beyond the cognitive charade of my freshman year (p. 48).

All during this period, Rose had been commuting back and forth from Loyola to
South LA, where he lived with his mother. As his comfort at Loyola increased, so did
his inner conflict. Although the conditions of his learning had changed dramatically, the
conditions supporting his identity as the son of disillusioned immigrant parents, a
member of the lower class, had not. He lived at home. His mother depended on him.
What would she do now that his father was gone? To worsen matters, Lou Minton, a
fiend of his father’s who had helped during his illness and now lived with Mike-and his
mother, had walked into the bedroom afier an argument with Rose’s mother and shot
himself. Rose felt the inherited stoicism and despair of his deceased father. Against this
was the hope engendered by his experiences at Loyola. Two different pictures of the
future battled it out, one rooted in static images of the past while the other held images of
change, hope, and growth. To leave home in search of knowledge and a better life would
have been to abandon his mother. But to simply give up on college would have
disappointed his parents’ dream that he live a better life than they. The tension literally

Paralyzed him.

I lived a life of choice and possibility during the weekdays
and then returned every evening to South Vermont. One
day in the middle of my junior year, I lay down on the
couch in the living room and could not get up... I stayed
therefor two days, getting up only to eat, retummg quickly
to keep the few at bay (p. 59).

123

thud 100
111110 mor

1111110 c

«.1111:

it 0:

u‘h
M11 I.

A friend took Rose to his family physician, who recognized his soul-sickness. He urged
Rose to move away fiom home. He assured Rose that his mother was strong and would

be able to care for herself. Something had to change.

It was simple. Move. 1 would have to move away fiom
South Vermont [street]. Dr. Metzger had released
something, and eventually, I would move. . . I knew that I
had to (p. 61).

As mentioned previously, things improved greatly for Rose his last three years at

Loyola. He received all A’s as a junior. He also took on editorship of the campus literary

magazine.

Those last years saw a gradual shift from the
somnambulance and uncertain awakenings of my earlier
time in college. I was involved, and I was meeting with
success. And success carried with it its own challenges and

threats (p. 60)

One of the challenges of academic success for Rose was the dissonance it conjured within
him. A juxtaposition was created between what he aspired to be and what he had been.
Had he really changed that much? Had he become the person all the positive feedback,
the honors, the awards said he had become? Or was this again some kind of fluke? Would
Someone suddenly show up telling him there had been a terrible mistake, that he should

never had been admitted to Loyola, that his admission papers were mistakenly confused

124

ail. someor

minglishz

with someone who - unlike him - really was intellectually gifted? Rose recalls receiving

an English award at one point. He writes,

My name was called and I walked to the podium... as I was
walking back and reading the inscription, I saw that the
engraver had made a mistake: Rose was spelled Ruse.
Ruse. A wily subterfuge. A trick. Ihe plaque was returned
and made right, of course, but the joke still went down. A
peek from behind the curtain. A wink in the hall of mirrors.
Was I the real thing or not (p. 61) ?

Transition: Graduate Study. Although Rose continued onto graduate study at
UCLA , he eventually became disillusioned. Graduate work did not seem to be leading
him “out into the world.” More and more, it felt to him like a species of learning that was
ultimately disconnected fiom life. In a sense, the hours of secluded study represented
only more of the same, a withdrawal from the world rather than a step fiirther into it, an

absence of change.

All this was becoming a variant of hiding away in the house
trailer on South V ermont (p. 77).

Rose’s subsequent year of study in psychology was an attempt to break the pattern. But

even this eventually Proved to be more of the same, more of the “worrn’s-eye view” (P-

73).

125

The

it time. a
hhelped
He began 1
member
same of \l

is same 1

Sub \r'e

hse'sl

The Teacher Corps Offered a significant change from university culture. For the
first time, as an intern Rose was not solely a student. He was given teaching assignments
that helped him tentatively explore what Mike-Rose-as-teacher might look and feel like.
He began to think of himself as a teacher. He was treated in a collegial way by the
supervisors, teachers, and administrators he worked with, part of a community of people
some of whom were quite passionate about helping students get hold of a better life. At
the same time, there was something about the experience that threaded hauntingly back to
South Vermont. The poverty and desperation surrounding the elementary in El Monte,

Rose’s Teacher Corp assignment, were so similar to the conditions of his own youth.

In some ways, I wasn ’t a greenhorn. There were South LA.
experiences that transferred to the East Side and to the
streets and back alleys of El Monte (p. 88).

It seemed as if moments of personal history were being
projected out onto the streets, reshaped and out of phase
but familiar: the faces and buildings of an unsettling
childhood dream (p. 89).

Although there was much that had changed in Rose’s life, he began to discern
Something in himself that had not. When Rose joined the Teacher Corp, he assumed that
education had been providing him with an escape from the conditions of his youth. What

he had learned so far had released him from a future of despair and proved that, if he only

126

baked. thl
meter. re
getting up
stages. re

,zssage de

knocked, there were doors that would open. Working with the students in El Monte,
however, rekindled a familiar futility that tied him back to what he had witnessed
growing up in South LA. Rose recognized a part of himself that, in spite of the many
changes, remained a stable part of who he was and how he reacted to life. The following

passage describes what this was like.

Months before [when starting with the Teacher Corp]. ..1
had a powerfitl realization that South LA. hadn ’t trapped
me, that I could come back to neighborhoods like mine and
do things. The street seemed fill] of life and promise. What I
felt as I sat with Ben [a student Rose worked with in the
Teacher Corps], and realized I ’d been feeling on and off
since arriving in El Monte, was something quite dtflerent:
It was the powerlessness of South Vermont, an impotence
as warm and safe as a narcotic. It wasn ’t clear despair - it
wasn ’t that articulate - it was more a soft regress to
chilcfltood, to hot and quiet aflernoons in an empty lot (p.

I 04). Little things could trigger it - a smell in the cafeteria,
a ramshackle house - and whatever I was doing - creating
a lesson, working with the children, shaping an observation
for [friends] Joe or Lillian - would begin to feel unworthy,
lifeless from the inside. I did my work in spite of all this,

but with an inner labor that I was just now appreciating,
holding a hazy and familiar ineptitude at bay with one hand
while framing a lesson with the other (pp. 104—105).

Rose acknowledged that he could not extract from himself the images of South

LA They had become a part of him, dark and enduring scenes with the power to

rePTOduce themselves in new environments.

127

its: mite
ie'nope fc
‘35 real. n
the mu;
Tiff he i

:help in

This, I thought, was how South Vermont kept hold of its
errant children. You can leave those streets, but the flat
time and the diminished sense of what you can be continues
to shape your identity. You live with decayed images of the
possible (p. 105).

Rose writes that this tension between a lack of change in a perpetually dead present and
the hope for something different in the future ‘Vvas not simply an intellectual tension.” It
was real, rooted in the physical conditions of actual lives, including his own. It was tied
to the struggle between stability and change, between what he felt he was and what he
hoped he could become. Rose saw it replicated in the elementary students he was trying

to help in the Teacher Corps.

I was living through the very conflict... the conflict between
two visions, one of individual possibility and one of
environmental limits and determiners; the vibrant power of
meaningful work versus the absorbing threat of South
Vermont. One day I saw the emerging human spirit, the
next day the naturalist's dreary landscape. Both were true.
And I guess, this was a tension the children felt, in their
way - something they couldn 't articulate, perhaps, as I
couldn ’t when I was a child but they were living it,
absorbing it into marrow (pp. 114-115).

Illtegrative Summary : Stability and Change
According to Rose, the first significant appearance of tension between stability
(remaining the same) and change (becoming someone or something new) emerged fi'om

his mistaken placement into the vocational track his freshmen year of high school. In the

128

3333301131 I

Mortal
that“
[gringo
meted

:thbl:

mini
be He
taspi

2‘: illi

:tlyb'

.,.'.
(.
a M]

vocational track, Rose found himself as apathetic as his buddies, rejecting or diffusing the
risks that Ieaming involved. To work toward an understanding of things as complex as
mathematical formulae, historical analyses, or compositional writing styles, one must be
willing to withstand the anxiety created by their initial meaninglessness, an encounter
made tolerable only by the faith that one can, in fact, eventually learn. However, in the
vocational track, such faith was a mistake. Indeed, Rose and his peers were motivated to
sabotage their attempts to learn in order not to become a certain thing: a ‘failure’ (cf.
Covington, 1992). Rose’s resistance to accepting any kind of intellectual challenge
hardened. Their presence was only a reminder to Rose that he was presumed to be
incapable of meeting them.

At home during childhood, with his books and chemistry set, curiosity and
imagination were traits Rose had learned to depend on. His mind had been comparatively
free. He could be inquisitive, imagine himself in a multitude of ways, as a mad scientist
or a space explorer. Now, ironically, at school he was in a context that made curiosity and
the stretching of his imagination dangerous. These could lead to aspirations that would
only be crushed by an academic environment that suffocated any serious intellectual
desires. The tension for Rose lay between the idea that things could actually be other than
they were, that he could learn and change and become part of the ‘normal’ student body,

and the resigned effort to accept the status quo lest his true ineptitude be revealed.‘

¥

' Stability is not always passive. Some people fight like mad to preserve stability, resisting change. Nor is
CW always active, as with Rose’s placement into Voc Ed and his subsequent relocation into college-
prep The latter was a change that he had no control over.

129

Latel
itself stru;
”mt L0}
ltgii lo nu
bmhungrt

:mtcted
fitteteie
sic of his

use: was

Later on, in his movement between Loyola and South LA, Rose again found
himself struggling between hopeful images of the future and a resigned acceptance of his
present. Loyola spoke to an emerging part of himself that Jack MacFarland had only
begun to nurture in high school: the writer, the thinker, the imaginer. This was a part of
him hungry for other possibilities. It sensed that learning and hope were somehow
connected. It pulled him toward a filture that he could not visualize. On the other hand,
there were images from the past. These whispered to him that, underneath it all and in
spite of his accomplishments, he was still a Voc Ed kid from the working class. This
voice was familiar, actual, it hugged to his past and to South LA. The pull toward Loyola
was a pull away from all that. Simple ‘code switching,’ behaving and talking one way at
home and another at school, would not work. This presumed a self constant across
contexts, a self that simply relied on difi‘erent words and behaviors to express itself. It
was precisely such a centeredness that Rose lacked.

Initially at Loyola, Rose was without the knowledge or habits of mind needed to
buy his way into a different culture. He found himself in an intellectual economy where
the gold standard was a set of thinkers far removed fi'om his own life. To succeed at
Loyola required that Rose become thoughtful, that he develop his capacity to criticize the
prevailing order of things and, ultimately, his own place in it. On the other hand,
conditions in South LA. turned such skills into a handicap. It was painfill for Rose to see
his home and life there fi'om a critical perspective. It opened him filrther to the fact that
things were not likely to change much. His intellectual development at Loyola, and the

fact that he was maturing physically and emotionally, all contributed during this period to

130

lumen
When
mnmc
iihu
shun
Emuuu
dawn
:hhh

new

Rose's deepening awareness of what continued existence at home would mean for him.
With the sensitivities of a poet, Rose gradually saw the filtility of his parents' dreams. He
grew more conscious of the “gray, dreamless deadtime,” stark and absolute, that engulfed
life in his community. Again, the tension for Rose lay between a resigned acceptance of
his life as someone from the lower class, and his longing for a different life, a life of
learning and ideas that could lead him out into the world. It was between a vision of stasis
and a vision of change. This tension reappeared during Rose’s stint in the Teacher Corp.
It has followed him into adulthood as a struggle, at the periphery of consciousness,
between lower-class despair and the educated person he has become.

Mike Rose was interviewed by journalist Bill Moyer’s in the late 1980’s
following the success of Lives on the Boundagz. In the interview, Rose speaks clearly
about the tension he experiences between the identity of a working class person (his
identity growing up) and the identity of a scholar (what he has become). Rose shared with
Moyers that for two days prior to the taping, he imagined everything that could have
possibly gone wrong with the interview; he might trip, or become inaniculate. He talked
about the fact that even though he eventually completed his doctorate and established a
place for himself in academia, feelings of inadequacy and exclusion continue to suggest

themselves.

Isn ’t it foolish? . . . I played out every awful scenario you
could imagine embarrassing you or embarrassing
myself. . . I finally realized what it was. This longstanding
feeling that develops in a lot of us who come from the
working class and find ourselves suddenly, or not so

131

litters as

suddenly, in arenas that are very difl‘erentfiom the ones we
grew up in. I think I continue to live with that sort of
naging uncertainty, that naging doubt that I have the
right to speak to a public about many of these issues.

Moyers asks if Rose ever attributed this to the fact that he is from the working class.

Its not that explicit. You know, I wish I could say it that
articulately to myself because then I could prove it to be
nonsense. But its, rather - I like the phrase fiom that
wonderful book, The Hidden Injuries of Class: its like a
kind of lingering doubt that ’s hard for me to grab onto but
is there. I think it stays with a number of us who sort of
move up through the class system into a profession that is
highly status-laden.

How might such feelings belie the mystique of education, Moyers wonders, the
myth that education has the power to pull “street kids, slum kids, illiterate adults, people
who can’t get out of the neighborhood, the lost people of our society” out of their
dysfunctional loop, help them to change, and set them on a more productive path? What
does it mean that after his degrees and twenty years in the profession, Rose still doesn’t

take himself quite seriously enough as a competent authority? Rose responds,

Interesting, isn ’t it? The mystique of education, particularly
the fiirther you move up the ladder of the educational
system, it is so powerful that it can act to deny our most
immediate and true experience. Its interesting because it
manifests itself in a lat of ways, people who are sullen and

132

Sht
fillhe
Ex oft
'tti For

tier. doe

.
..ci

. 3i"

/

, 1. Ir
' $33?

I. r" ‘
1’

silent, or people who act out, you lmow, make lots of noise.
joke around, become the class clown, people who get
stoned, people who are absent a lot. All of these are ways
that they ’re defending, I think, against that very feeling
we ’re talking about, of not belonging, of being inadequate.

Shotter quotes a passage from The Hidden Injuries of Class (Sennett & Cobb,
1972), the book referred to by Rose above. It speaks to the stability of self-doubt in the
minds of those who have earned a status in society higher than that into which they were
born. For such persons, this internalized devaluing of self is a basic aspect of identity that

often does not change.

This fear of being summoned before some hidden bar of
judgement and being found inadequate infects the lives of .
[many] people who are coping perfectly well from day to day; it
is a matter of a hidden weight, a hidden anxiety, in the quality of
experience, a matter of feeling inadequately in control where an
observer making material calculations would conclude the
[person] had adequate control (Sennett & Cobb, 1972, pp. 33-
34).2

In contrast to the tensions between stability and change, the next section wrll look

at tensions in Lives on the Boundary between experiences of affiliation and those of

 

seParateness. For Rose, experiences of affiliation were those that lead to feeling validated

‘

2 ShOtter (1993, . 194 re this sense of not belonging as an inevitable side effect of life in a.
WWW. He xfeminle um respect is not automatic in American culture. One must mqmtthfytggr
mummp in the society from which one wishes to receive respect. For some personsfim wr that they
.right’ background, membership is automatic and unconditional. For others, they mustmall mm
Wily. For these, even after they qualify there is anxiety that some failure could ever-1do by;

them, Whig them to their true origins. There is always some lingering core of self 11 .

133

by. or sim
tunnel
or the 011
lose. it l
was sort

geeral.

by, or similar to, important social others. His learning and his identity were felt to be
connected to the pe0ple, ideas, and events surrounding him. Experiences of separateness,
on the other hand, were those that lead him to feel disconnected, distant, or different . For
Rose, it was important that his learning direct him out into the world. Learning, for him,
was something that he felt should lead him toward a greater connectedness with life in

general. It was when the opposite seemed true that he tended to lose heart.

Affiliation and Separatengss.

Transition: Vocational Education to College Prep. During the summer before
6‘h grade, Rose had been reading a great deal of science fiction. He and some other boys
had a part time job picking strawberries and, sitting in the dusty back of the pickup on the
way to the farm, Rose would entertain the others by telling stories fashioned out of the

tales he had read.

Reading opened up the world There I was, a skinny
bookworm drawing the attention of street kids who, in any
other circumstances, would have had me for breakfast.
Like an epic tale-teller, I developed the stories as I went
along, relying on a flexible plot line and a repository of
heroic events. I had a great time... These stories created for
me a temporary community (p. 21-22).

Imagination had previously been a means of escape for Rose, a place he went to alone.
He had never dreamed that it, and what he had learned through books, had the power to

attract others to him. Unfortunately, this was only a brief and temporary niche. Rose

134

recalls an a

1 .
hilt:

recalls an almost opposite experience during his two years in the high school Voc Ed

track.

You '11 see a handful of students far excel you in courses
that sound elite: French, physics, trigonometry. And all this
happening while you ’re trying to shape an identity...1f

you 're a working class kid in the vocational track, the
options you '11 have to deal with this will be constrained in
certain ways: you 're defined by your school as 'slow';

you ’re placed in a curriculum that isn't designed to liberate
you but to occupy you, or, if you 're lucky, train you, though
the training is for work the society does not esteem; other
students are picking up the cues fiom your school and your
curriculum and interacting with you in particular ways.

In Rose's senior year, the same year that his father died, he took Jack

MacFarland's English course. Rose had never seen anything like him.

He was a beatnik who was born too late. His teeth were
stained he tucked his sorry tie in between the third and
fourth buttons of his shirt, and his pants were chronically
wrinkled At first, we couldn't believe this guy, thought he
slept in his car. But with time, he had us so startled with
work that we didn't much worry about where he slept or if

he slept at all.

Rose was fascinated by MacFarland’s character. It attracted him, presenting a powerful
image of what learning could make one into. Rose was accustomed to valuing the

Physical prowess and brute strength that it took to make it in the streets. But the image of

135

itbohem
in and e
which he

in 11 tel

P9531111
Tall .
Mt

\

the

the bohemian, the beatnik, whose intellect was a source of power and self-definition, was
new and exotic. Through his affiliations with MacFarland, Rose began to find a path by
which he could finally develop a sense of himself as literate. Pursuing this image was

filn. It felt like play.

Art, Mark, and I would buy stogies and triangulate fiom
Machu'land ’s apartment to the Cinema, which now shows
X-rated films but was then L.A. ’s premiere art theater, and
then to the musty Cherokee Bookstore in Hollywood to
hobnob with beatnik homosexuals - smoking, drinking
bourbon and cofl'ee, and trying out awkward phrases we ’d
gleaned from our mentor ’s bookshelves. I was happy and
precocious and a little scared as well, for Hollywood was
thick with a kind of decadence that was foreign to the South
Side (p. 36).

The bohemian lifestyle, the interest that MacFarland took in Rose’s ideas, the
Positive feedback he received about his writing, the intellectual talk, the things he was
reading, all these served to affiliate Rose’s learning as well as his identity with

“something outside it” (p. 34).

[MacFarland] gave me a way to feel special by using my
mind. . . I suppose I had been mediocre too long and enjoyed
a public redefinition. And I suppose the workings of my
mind such as they were, had been private too long. My
linguistic play moved into the world; like the intergalactic
stories I told years before on Frank's berry-splattered truck
bed these papers with their circled red B-pluses and A -
minuses linked my mind to something outside it. I carried
them around like a club emblem (p. 34).

136

lsmall “ll
bang out a
in OlllSldl

tillefthl

ill

A small “fledgling literati” formed around MacFarland. Rose and a few buddies would
hang out at his dingy, book-filled apartment. The group was a place, connected to school
but outside it, where Rose could bring learning and identity-making together in a way

that left him empowered, someone special in the eyes of his mentor.

Those visits became the high point of our apprenticeship.
We 'd clamp on our training wheels and drive to his salon...
most of all, I could share an evening, talk that talk, with
Jack MacFarland the man I most admired at the time.
Knowledge was becoming a bonding agent (p. 36).

[I would] read Rimbaud and not understand him and feel
very connected to the life I imagined Jack MacFarland ’s
life to be: a subterranean ramble through Bebop and
breathless poetry and backalley revelations (p. 40).

What Rose and his fiiends were learning from MacFarland became inseparable in
their minds from a kind of identity, that of the bohemian “disaffected hipster.” Although
Rose would soon reach its limits, this identity was critical in providing him with a way of
i““8““ng learning and becoming. It linked him to a world of passion and possibility that
extended beyond the stultifying limits of South Vermont.

Transition: University. Rose titles chapter three, “Entering the Conversation.”
BY enrolling at Loyola, Rose attempts to become part of something, a ‘conversation,’ that

is already well underway and with which he shares no history. He has no frame of

137

thence. r
it league.
aptitude
ithit Soul
anionic

no that

. “ml
5

reference, no understanding of the terms and conventions of the discussion. “I was out of
my league,” he concedes, vacillating “between the false potency of scorn and feelings of
ineptitude.” Commuting back and forth to Loyola with his friend and fellow student,
John, South LA. still felt like home for Rose. In spite of its “dreary impotence,” its
economic and spiritual poverty, it was familiar. It was continuous with who he has been

up to that point. Rose understands what things mean there.

[leaving campus] John and I would get in his car and
enjoy the warmth of each other and laugh and head down
the long strip of Manchester Boulevard away fiom Loyola,
away fiom the palms and green lawns, back to South
LA past the discotecas and pawnshops... through hustlers
and lost drunks and prostitutes (p. 45).

The fact that Rose was able to eventually find an entry point into Loyola, in his
words to connect his mind to what was then “outside it,” was due in large part to the
relationship that he eventually developed with several of his professors. They provided a
Specialized kind of help. These relationships were fileled by curiosity. They came
together around a mutually shared passion for language and Ieaming and, in Rose’s case,
by a desire for something better. As had his apprenticeship with Jack MacFarland, Rose’s
affiliations with his undergraduate professors provided him with a place where he could
begin pulling together the knowledge he was gaining with the changes this wrought in

how be perceived himself and, indeed, the world. For it was not only what his professors

138

Lilli him

31111111658 '

taught him substantively that was important. Just as vital was the opportunity to identify

with these men, to get close to them, to witness the ways they “lived their knowledge.”

They liked books and ideas and they liked to talk about

them... They lived their knowledge. And maybe because of
that their Imowledge grew in me in ways that led back out
to the world I was developing a set of tools with which to

shape a life. (p. 58).

The second semester of his freshman year, there was philosophy with Don
Johnson. Although he helped Rose learn to think logically and to read critically, how to
define terms and understand basic arguments, his greatest contributions were as a coach.

He encouraged Rose to persevere.

I was also gaining confidence that if I stayed with material
long enough and kept asking questions, I would get it. That
assurance proved to be more valuable than any particular

body of knowledge I learned that year (p. 51).

There was Frank Carothers, an English teacher for whom “being a professor was a
Profoundly social calling” (p. 55). Carothers helped Rose begin to overcome his sense of
alienation fiom Loyola's academic culture. Through these growing intellectual
affiliations, Rose began to feel that he might truly be able to create a different kind of

life.

139

Ex
511in ft
in to in
sled h.
its Dr. 1
use.
this
Eusb

101th (

[Frank C arothers] started his best work once class was
over... what I saw when I was around him — and I hung out
from my sophomore year on — was very diflerent from the
world I had been creating for myself afar cry fiom my
withdrawal into an old house trailer with a silent book.

Except for some experiences with MacFarland, reading had mostly been a solitary
activity for Rose. There was no active discourse or debate, the kind that would require
him to interact with the thoughts, interpretations, and criticisms of others. For this, he
needed help. In addition to the help provided by professors Johnson and Carothers, there
was Dr. Erlandson, who helped Rose crafi essays in an introductory Prose Literature
course. Erlandson “got in there with his pencil and worked on my style,” Rose recalls.
Erlandson drew on Rose's ears, reading his work back to him. Rose was shocked at first.
It was both humbling and enlightening to hear his words coming back to him from the
mouth of someone for whom he had such profound respect. Such experiences began to

impact the way he thought and felt about his own writing.

He [Erlandson] worked as a craftsman...he shuttled back
and forth continually between print and voice, making me
breathe my prose, making me hear language I'd generated
in silence. Perhaps he was more directive than some would
like, but, to be truthful, direction was what I needed I was
easily fi-ustrated and it didn ’t take a lot to make me doubt
myself When teachers would write “no ” or “awkward or
“rewrite ” alongside the sentences I had worked so hard to
produce, I would be peeved and disappointed . Well, .what
the hell do they want? ” I 'd grumble to no one in particular.
So Ted Erlandson ’s linguistic parenting felt just right: a
modeling of grace until it all slow/1y, slowly began to work
itself into the way I shaped language (p. 5 6)-

140

Till
professors
he not i
her coat

ifthis set

hatlessr

this unt

aignal 1

These affiliations changed Rose's perception of himself as a learner. His
professors questioned Rose in ways that forced him to defend and refine his thinking.
Rose not only identified with these men as intellectuals, but as flesh and blood characters.
They coached him through the inevitable insecurities and frustrations of a beginner. All
of this seemed to come together into a path that could lead away from the desperate
hopelessness of South LA.

Rose’s initial experience as a graduate student was a rude awakening. In contrast
to his undergraduate experience, Rose’s graduate professors expressed little interest in his
original poetry. The life they exemplified was one that Rose began to see more and more
as isolating and disconnected - the opposite direction from which he had hoped graduate

education would take him.

The scholar will write and write and only a few will know,
for the world of this romance is very narrow, solipsistic. It
is focused back forever on itself, an endless regress, like an
Escher print, of readings and readings about readings read
by a few suitors in a few other private rooms... The tight
partitioning of the library carrels, the vacant hallways of
the English Department, the solitary meals... all this was
becoming a variant of hiding away in a house-trailer on
South Vermont. (p. 77).

Rose writes about an important aspect of his learning during these post-

undergraduate years. He had maintained an active correspondence with a small group of

friends who were now scattered about the world.

141

 

lll'dllgl

mien

 

 

They were curious and disquieted and they traveled across
the country and through Europe to study... They were young
and, despite the postures of cynicism they sometimes
adopted they were painfully idealistic... we were drawn to
each other - I had a South LA. rambunctiousness, I
suppose, and to be sure, a passion for this mental thing (p.
80).

Through their correspondence, the small community of fiiends remained intellectually
connected. Rose writes that their letters were like “a postgraduate correspondence school
in politics, social theory, and literature” (p. 80). More important perhaps was the
validation they provided him regarding the legitimacy of his membership in an intimate
intellectual community. That gave him the courage to begin sending them copies of his

original work.

They helped me with my writing. ..My epistolary friends
became my first real audience, and through their
encouragement and their criticism, they also became my
first editors (p. 81).

Afler joining the Teacher Corps and trying out his own wings as a teacher, Rose realized
that teaching brought with it a need for balance between substance (i.e., curriculum or

content) and relationship. He remembered that with Jack MacFarland especially, teaching

had been an ‘embrace,’

142

litre 11
select
1 tier

Editor

71‘»
st . .
J‘“}e

V
My.

vii-2'.

no-nonsense and cerebral, but a relationship in which the
terms of endearment were the image in a poem, a play ’5
dialogue, the winding narrative journey of a novel (p. 225).

Teaching, I was coming to understand was a kind of
romance... You wooed kids with these things, invited a
relationship of sorts, the terms of connection being the
narrative, the historical event, the balance of casein and
water. Maybe nothing was ‘intrinsically interesting. ’
Knowledge gained its meaning, at least initially, through a
touch on the shoulder, through a conversation (p. 102).

Carrying forward the experience with his undergraduate professors at Loyola,
where knowledge had become a “bonding agent,” Rose knew that to survive
intellectually, the troubled, low performing elementary students he worked with in the
Teacher Corps would need to experience an affiliation, a personal connection, with
someone who truly cared about their mind and their ideas, “a guide sitting down on the
Steps. . .building a relationship through the words on the printed page” (p. 125). But
relationships were slow to form amid the “violence and abandonment, the guns and
Pregnancies, the paralyzing fatigue” surrounding the students’ lives (p. 112).

Rose suddenly felt himself flanked by two opposing images. One was of
connectedness, potential, hope, and the delicate vulnerability of the human spirit. The
other image was one of “anger and quiet despair” (p. 111), of defensive, guarded, and
to“Slit-med students, fated to imitate their parents’ alienated lives. Rose remembers a

scene from his office window that, for an instant, captured these two images, affiliation

143

aid sepala

serially

irate ang

that?
it‘ll
3 ll:

iftits

and separateness, and brought them together. It involved a retarded child and an
especially tough, sometimes violent student, Terry, “isolated, distant, minimacho - a

future angel fi'om hell in frayed sneakers” (p. 113).

Terry was shooting baskets alone when a young girl,
noticeably hydrocephalic and retarded wandered onto the
playground She saw T erry and walked over. T eny said
something to her I couldn ’t hear, and she responded and
he handed her the basketball. She tried to bounce it, and it

hit the tip of her shoe and shot ofl Terry ran after it, and
for about ten minutes he tried to show her how to shoot a
basket. Then he took her by the hand and led her back out

of the schoolyard (p. 1 13).

Although he had experienced it himself in the vocational education track, in the
Teacher Corps Rose became attuned from an inside and adult perspective to the means by
which the institution of schooling served its two purposes: socializing students into the
educational mainstream and separating out, through a ‘Vast patchwork of diagnostics and
Specialists” (p. 125), those who were different. The dilemma for Rose lay in the fact that
he himself was finding ways to connect to the minds of these children. As a tutor, he was
ex1’08ng knowledge and abilities that went undetected within the traditional curriculum.

And he was accomplishing it within the very system that had, and would likely continue

l0, alienate and silence them.

The school itself became the stage for playing out this
drama, creating... a place that fostered growth and

144

1n h
:sstudenn
rider well
their t1
veterans. '

in. as g
Ernie St
”til the 1
Edit dii‘.

lidilll

celebrated possibility, but creating, as well, the social
conditions for intensifying the child ’s marginality (p. I I 5).

In his subsequent work with the Vietnam veterans, Rose was again convinced of
his students’ need, like his own need many years before, to link their learning to the
wider world. But what could accomplish that? Whatever his curriculum was going to be,
he knew that it also would be the means of any relationship he was to have with the
veterans. There was something else about these guys that Rose identified with. He saw
them as grown-up versions of his comrades in the vocational education track many years
before. So this was how those “sullen high schoolers” would end up. What Rose realized
with the veterans was that everyone in his classroom, including himself, was shooting for

a life different than the one they had had before, and education was the route they had

chosen.

I started thinking about why the men had come to the
program . . . I found an answer, one that lay at the
intersection of the veterans’ lives and mind The men
wanted to change their lives, and for all their earlier
failures, they still held onto an American dream: Education
held the power to equalize things. They were bringing an
almost magical vision of what learning could do for
them...I could sure understand the desire to be transfigured
by books (pp. 137-138).

145

lntegratl

In
*legory
serendipi
anally
niellecn
alleged
nebula

‘ n

5011161111

Integrative Summary: Affiliation and Separateness.

In the high school vocational track, Rose was defined as different and placed in a
category from which no established routes of escape existed. His own break was entirely
serendipitous, a chance occurrence. In the Voc Ed milieu, his identifications were
naturally with those closest to him, students who had tested poorly and had no real
intellectual ambitions. Once the mistake was discovered and he was transferred into the
college-prep track, Rose abruptly found himself expected to fit in among those that, on
the basis of his presumed academic deficiency, he had previously been defined against.

Having entered the new track, a connection to the world of ideas was not
something Rose could immediately forge for himself. It came only through his
affiliations with Jack MacFarland, his like-minded friends, and the small intellectual
community they comprised. Through their sharing of ideas and attitudes, Rose began to
acquire a sense of his own intellectual identity. The “circled, red B-pluses and A-
minuses” that he says linked his mind “to something outside it” were not in and of
themselves important, it was who they came fi'om, Jack MacFarland, that gave them

potency. Indeed, as Rose himself shares,

My first enthusiasm about writing came because I wanted a
teacher to like me (p. 102).

It harkens back to what he had first felt as a boy, sitting in the back of a pickup telling

stories to other boys. It was not that he could spin a yarn that delighted him then, it was

146

ital telling
lonically,
assume I
As
longs. Tl.
ldtl‘llllltS ‘
ordinate
it doors
ion the
at an it
onto
Inning

onion

3‘"???
{'3'

what telling a story publicly did for him. It gave him the ability to connect with others.
Ironically, it was school and Rose’s mistaken placement in the Voc Ed track that lead him
to assume his abilities with language were not something to be taken seriously.

As an undergraduate at Loyola, Rose’s professors impressed him as integrated
beings. Their knowledge made a difference to how they lived their lives. Their academic
identities seemed inseparable from their identities in general. Had they somehow spoken
or behaved one way in the classroom and a different way in the office, backyard, or on
the doorstep, it would have mirrored the very condition that Rose was wanting to escape
fi'om: the feeling that he was two different people (i.e., the son of lower-class immigrants
and an aspiring scholar). But because they were willing to allow Rose access to their
lives, to witness how they ‘did it,’ Rose had something solid to identify with. It gave
learning a vital place within him where it could be nurtured into progressively more vital
connections with the world.

Still, at Loyola, Rose initially felt that he was not like other students. He was from
another place and who he was in that place seemed to have little bearing on the person
Loyola was now calling him to be. Further, the gratification that came with eventually
becoming part of college culture only increased the guilt Rose felt about abandoning his
mother. To become an aspiring scholar was to separate his life from hers. Although this is
Why he struggled, it was also why the struggle was worthwhile - he did not want to
forsake his mother but, at the same time, he did want to realize a different life than that
offered by South LA The willingness of his undergraduate college professors to take

Rose under their wing mediated this tension in an important way. It helped him to make

147

points of or
canons: be
As
lenteen hi
it unablt
night say
Engels in
is gradu
ntoorag
tilingu:
'slaclall

‘ A

into

points of contact with academic culture. Nonetheless, these also represented points of
contrast between that culture and the events in his life at home.

As mentioned, as a graduate student at UCLA, Rose experienced a separateness
between himself and the professoriate that had not been present as an undergraduate.’ He
was unable to find the right relationship around the right content or, as Hawkins (1974)
might say, the right “I-Thou” around the right “It”." There was tension and it came
largely from Rose’s frustrated attempts to achieve a more personalized relationship with
his graduate professors. He knew that his learning needed a catalyst, someone to
encourage and inspire him, someone who understood his passion for the creative aspects
of language. As an undergraduate, Rose had initially felt alienated. With the help of
MacFarland and his professors, however, he had found a point of entry. Now he found
himself alienated once more but in a different way. It was not because he was being
excluded from graduate culture. Instead, it was because he had entered graduate culture
and realized that he did not want what he had found there. He desired learning that would
lead him increasingly out into the world, into face-to-face contact with the reality of other
lives. What he found was a way of life that, to him, felt increasingly self-absorbed. It was .
a difficult time. He felt apart fi'om academia and yet could not go back to South LA.

g

3 Rose sees as an ongoing problem the fact that the professoriate in general is not passionate enough about
the intellectual development of young people. According to Rose, they see their job as “monitoring the
lightness or wrongness of incursions into their discipline” (p. 197), with preserving and promoting the
discipline. It is an unresolved problem, Rose writes, “how to interweave the social dimension of knowledge
With the preservation of a discipline, how to make the advancement of a discipline go on in concert with the
development of young minds” (p. 197).

_ The philosopher, David Hawkins, writes that “without a thou, there is no I evolving. Without an It, there

IS no content for the context” (1974. P- 52)-

148

R01
oi. perhaps
notation
odteach.
dedec'lsi
one om
rodents

can inte

Mn 1
stills

Elton

his

Rose’s story is one in which be continually seeks the affiliative path of learning
or, perhaps more true, in which he seeks to avoid the separateness and alienation that
institutional education can often engender. By deciding to drop out of graduate school
and teach, Rose was not ending his status as a student. Indeed, it may have represented
the decision to continue his own education in a way that felt more natural for him. At the
same time, working with students ‘with origins similar to his own, first with elementary
students and then with the Vietnam veterans, allowed him to finally begin addressing his
own internal struggle. As something in him resonated to the conditions of their lives, he
began to recognize and to own the internalized images and stereotypes he had carried
with him from South LA. He understood in a different way what it meant for him to have
grown up in that culture. Ultimately, this all fed into the relationships that he sought to
establish with his students where, in a sense, he had come filll circle to teach to the
person he once was.

The next section will look at the tensions in Rose’s autobiography between
experiences of immediacy and reflection. In his book, Rose communicates clearly that
through education he wanted to become someone intensely and immediately engaged
with the world. He craved unmediated contact, soaking experience in through the senses.
At the same time, Rose obviously wanted to develop as a skilled and critical thinker, to
become knowledgeable, comfortable with reflection as a way of knowing. With the

sensibilities of a poet, Rose lived in the tension created by these two ways of knowing.

149

 

’—

lln intel
telemer
that r
intompe

.lngeles

l 01 ll
tonic

m

E:

~t,’

Immedia ve Reflection.

As a child, there was very little in his surroundings that Rose remembers sparking
him intellectually. His parents “didn’t read or write very much” and, for whatever reason,
he remembers himself as a somewhat somnambulant elementary student. Rose attributes
at least part of this dulling to his defensive efforts to stave off both his feelings of
incompetence at school as well as the intimidating strangeness of life in South Los

Angeles.

All the hours in class tend to blend into one long, vague
stretch of time . .. [I] started daydreaming to avoid my
inadequacy... I realize now how consistently I defended
myself against the lessons I couldn ’t understand and the
people and events of South LA. that were too strange to
view head-on. I got very good at watching a blackboard
with minimum awareness (pp. 18-19).

For Rose, the world of South LA. discouraged a vital experience of life. Given that little
could be changed, for Rose to have experienced his surroundings with an even greater
immediacy, or to have reflected critically upon them, would only have intensified their
unpleasantness. So perhaps it was consciousness of any kind, immediate or reflective,
that the hopelessness of South LA. worked against. Rose remembers that it wasn’t so
much the violence that impressed him. What impacted him most was the complete

absence of creative and intellectual passion.

150

farther h
and his ‘.
persona

one. in

What finally cflected me was subtler, but more pervasive: I
cannot recall a young person who was crazy in love or lost
in work or one old person who was passionate about a
cause or an idea. I 'm not talking about an absence of
energy - the street toughs. .. had energy... The people I grew
up with were retired from jobs that rub away the heart or
were working hard at jobs to keep their lives fiom caving in
or were anchorless and in between jobs and spouses or
were diving headlong into a barren tomorrow (pp. 1 7-18).

With his mistaken placement into the vocational education track, Rose developed
further his half-asleep approach to life. It was not until he met Jack MacFarland and he
and his friends began to read, write, discuss ideas, and try on different intellectual
personas, that Rose began to realize his own capacity for reflective thought. At the same
time, in spite of its immaturity, this way of learning (assuming a persona that allowed one
to play with ideas) held great immediacy for Rose. The fact was that it did lead he and his

buddies out into the world. It introduced them to the possibility of another way of being.

Let me be the first to admit that there was a good deal of
adolescent passion in this embrace of the avant-garde: self-
absorption, sexually charged pedantry, an elevation of the
odd and abandoned Still, it was a time during which I
absorbed an awful lot of information: long lists of titles,
images fiom expressionist paintings, new wave shibboleths,
snippets of philosophy. .. With hindsight I realize how
layered and important that knowledge was. It enabled me
to do things in the world I could browse bohemian
bookstores in far-ofi mysterious Hollywood; I could go to
the Cinema and see events through the lenses of European
directors. . . It provided a critical perspective on society, and
it allowed me to act as though I were living beyond the
limiting boundaries of South Vermont (pp. 36-3 7).

151

Tran
inngRose
that he wa
hinmedi
tint His

right avo

‘3 ill:
lie l

iftfl

Transition: University. After Lou Minton committed suicide in their home
during Rose’s fi'eshman year at Loyola, Rose began to experience moments in which
what he was learning at Loyola seemed to reach out to the desolation he felt. It touched
the immediacy of his pain with an image of something better. He was at a vulnerable
point. His grief had begun to open him up to the possibility that, through education, he

might avoid being sucked into the emptiness of life in South LA.

Lou's suicide came to represent the sadness and dead time I
had protected myself against. .. another kind of death, a
surrender to the culture 's lost care. An alternative was
somehow starting to take shape around school and
knowledge. Knowledge seemed... was it empowering? . . . as
if I were untyingfetters (p. 46).

It is important to remember that only two years prior to starting college, Rose had
been identified by his high school as ‘slow’ and, like those similarly identified, had begun
to shut down intellectually. Now, in college, Rose suddenly found himself among persons
Who had a much different set of expectations for him. Through special relationships with
several of his professors, Rose was Ieaming the skills of reflection: how to read closely,
how to persevere with difficult material, how to ask good questions. He writes that
teachers like Father Albertson were “slowly opening the language UP, helping me
comprehend a distant, stylized literature, taking it apart, touching it” (p. 57). These were

the skills and the language he would need to become part of an intellectual community.

152

ln co‘
in for Ros
hinge at

a. for R0

fie]

if“?

1‘; l

In college, reading was again becoming the rich, world-expanding activity it had
been for Rose in grade school. He was learning to read reflectively, to analyze a text, to
challenge and interpret it, and this all circled back into a kind of imaginative excitement

that, for Rose, felt most immediate.

I took an art history course, and one day during a slide
show on Gothic architecture I felt myself rising up within
the interior light of Mont-Saint-Michel. I wanted to be
released from the despair that surrounded me on South
Vermont and fiom my own troubled sense of

exclusion... what I felt now was something further, some
tentative recognition that an engagement with ideas could
foster competence and lead me out into the world But all
this was very new and fragile . .. how easily it could have
been crushed (p. 46-4 7).

In the aesthetic experience of being lified up “within the interior light of Mont-
Saint-Michel,” a light went on inside of Rose, a desire to be transflgured. He sensed the
potential to become someone who could participate in the kind of activities that lead one
into more immediate contact with the world, that lead to futures that were not simply
endless reruns of the present. Learning could not only open up a path out of South LA, it
could lead Rose away from who and what he was there.

During his last three years at Loyola, there was an important juxtaposition of
immediacy and reflection in Rose’s interactions with his professors. Part of this was

because he was learning how to reflect and to think critically, to use language and

ImoWledge in ways that were making things new (the world, his fitture, himself). But at

153

thesamet

immediac

il'lOlll'

Stra‘tli

the same time, this was not something he was Ieaming in isolation. It took place in the

immediacy of flesh and blood relationships.

[ll/[y professors] encouraged me to make connections and
to enter into conversations — present and past — to see what
talking a particular kind of talk would enable me to do with
a thorny philosophical problem or a difficult literary text...
And it was all alive. It transpired in backyards and on
doorsteps and inside oflices as well as in the classrooms. I
could smell their tobacco and see the nicks left by their
razors (p. 58).

Transition: Graduate Study. UCLA provided Rose with a much different
surrounding than did the small liberal arts environment of Loyola. The campus was
sprawling, the competition between graduate students fierce. Rose was still aware of
large gaps in his knowledge. His background in literary history was weak and he had not
learned a foreign language. He writes about his initial motivations for accepting a
graduate scholarship. Again, these point to Rose’s strong desire to use his intellectual
gifts in a way that, through service and close contact with people, would lead him more

immediately into the world of human experience.

Jack MacFarland Frank Carothers, and the others created
the conditions for me to use my mind to engage the world
What I wanted so strongly now was a program that would
filrther develop my intellectual tools and equip me to . . . to
teach? . . . to use books to change the lives of others?

154

Ros
muse his I
win, in '
raids. in

blended t<

iiillll!

Dish

Rose was writing poetry at the time. But he suspects that the motivation behind it,
to use his mind and, in particular, language “to engage the world” was conceived much
earlier, in particular while listening to lyrics on the airwaves in South LA For Rose, the
words, images, sounds, and rhythms contained in the popular music of his youth all

blended together to create an experience that was most immediate.

Way before the printed poem was the radio dial, the only
lyrical index I had on South Vermont. The lamentations of
Hank Williams and Kitty Wells, the phrasing of the blues,
the rhymes and rhythms and sent-from-God saxophone
breaks of rock ‘n ' roll... this was the score on which TS.
Eliot played... honky-tonk angles and hot-rod Fords and
trucks on a lost highway; rivers of whiskey and... lips as
sweet as “petals falling apart a hotel on Lonely Street
where “the desk clerk ’s dressed in black .. This, I think is
where it started. . . familiar Iongings and distant lyrics and
musical cadences would reifit into an image at the center of

a poem (p. 73).

Writing for Rose, as well as the pleasure he took in reading, was very much about the
translation of immediate experience into language, a personal function very different in

his mind than the use of language as an analytical tool. Of his own poetry, he writes...

When the book lists and literary critiques and the wordplay
receded, the heart emerged (p. 82). Working on poetry
certainly got me to thinking about writing fiom the mszde

(p. 157).

155

Ros
Steve Drin
in he
personal a
new

ndhisbt

Rich and

Rose had made a couple close fiiends in the graduate program, Rich McBriar and
Steve Drinkard. They shared his excitement about language. “Language washed over
them,” he writes. As with Rose, their interests regarding literature and writing were
personal and immediate. But their passion seemed to get no response from faculty who
appeared to them uninterested in any kind of personal connections with words. To Rose
and his buddies, the professors’ focus seemed to be exclusively critical. Discouraged,

Rich and Steve dropped out before the first year was over.

“It ’s deadly, man, ” McBriar said hunched over a beer...
“They could give a shit if you like this stufi They could
GIVE A SHIT” (p. 76).

About this same time, Rose read a novel by Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg,
%, that he especially enjoyed. It contained images of “dreamy and dislocated peOple”
that reminded Rose of the people he had grown up around in South LA. He visited his

American Literature professor to talk about the book and his personal reactions to it.

{The professor] was nice but reserved and told me a little
bit about a critical study of Anderson I should read ... lie
told me that he thought Anderson ’s sentimentality limited

him, he wondered aloud if there might be a dissertation
topic for me in some of the novels the critics had neglected

(p. 75).

156

0n moth:
following

priorities

min.
under

hat v

I
in;

3’01

On another occasion, the chairman of the English department invited Rose to visit him
following the first quarter. It was a meeting that, for Rose, made the department’s

priorities clear.

I told him that I thought my own writing was making me
understand something that I hadn’t quite understood before
about the poems I was studying in class. He smiled and
continued, explaining about the departmental exams and
what courses I should be taking to prepare...He was
cordial and helpful, but by not addressing it, he made clear
to me the department ’s attitude toward my own direct
involvement with the writing of poetry versus the analysis

of it (p. 75).

For Rose, reading could be a most immediate and vital act. The same was true of
writing, which he approached in a very personal way. Through these he was both
understanding his life and reconstructing it at the same time. But Rose had begun to feel
that whatever graduate school was going to expect from him, it would mean severing
writing as a collection of personalizing, life-affirming acts from writing as critical
reflection. It would be expected to be objective, analytic, and impersonal. Although at
first it was only “a daydream during a lecture” or “a fleeting sadness in the library,” Rose
increasingly felt the tension between his need for a more immediate experience of the
world, on the one hand, and the kind of divorced reflection he believed he would have to
Wallace

Practice as a graduate student, on the other. He stumbled upon a poem by

Stevens that went straight to the heart.

157

mom
76) Ir.
humai
limo
mgr

Elie:

Arrival at the Waldorf

Home from Guatemala, back at the Waldorf.
This arrival in the wild country of the soul,
All approaches gone, being completely there,
Where the wild poem is a substitute

For the woman one loves or ought to love,
One wild rhapsody a fake for another.

You touch the hotel the way you touch moonlight
Or sunlight and you burn and the orchestra
Hums and you say “The world in a verse,

A generation sealed, men remoter than mormtains,
Women invisible in music and motion and color,”

After that alien, point-blank, green and actual Guatemala.

Wallace Stevens

Rose observes that Stevens ‘yvas consumed by the tensions between the vital but
uncontrollable natural world versus the crafted and orderly but artificial world of art” (p.
76). In a sense, it is the tension between life in a natural world, one created without
human intent, versus a cultured life, life amid a world of human objects, events, and
Purposes. This seemed to echo the tension of Rose’s own struggle in the graduate
Program between writing in the service of immediacy and writing in the service of

reflective, critical thought. Rose writes,

My professors spent endless hours with their books. Some
were in their oflices as I was going home, reading Macbeth
or Moby Dick again, but more ofien a book you would find
only in the card catalog of a research library. They
pursued the little-known fact, the lost letter, the lucky .
fissure in language that invites one more special reading. It
was not uncommon for me to spend eight hours a day in the
library - and for a while that was fine, for I was learning so
much - but when I began to think of a career of those eight-
hour days, to think of the unending drive to find one more

158

 

 

course
humar
he re
he lea

inma

piece of intellectual property, something went cold within
me (p. 76).

I began to feel more and more a desire to open the door, to
go out and read the world: ‘alien, point-blank, green and
actual’ (p. 77).

Rose dropped out of his graduate program. He began to take undergraduate
coursework in psychology hoping it would enable him to “turn scholarship out onto
human affairs” (p. 77). The humanist theories of Maslow and Rogers did help to counter
the negative images of life that Rose carried with him from South LA. He also felt that
he learned about important aspects of psychological research and the complexity of

human behavior. But, finally, he writes,

What I got was instead more of the worm ’s-eye view (p
78) Graduate work in academic psychology wouldn ’t
satisfy whatever vague thing it was that was fluttering.
within me. It would be a specialized and distant pursuit, no

different, really, fiom studying the collected letters of a not-
so-famous American author (p. 83).

Transition: Teachers Corp. After his disillusionment lead him to leave UCLA,

the Teacher Corp offered Rose a markedly different experience. He worked with actual

teachers. He became part of an established school community. He developed special

159

nlationsl
Southern
Snaihcz

IorealiZa

aspired
He in

ttader

relationships with the students. At the same time, he took classes at the University of
Southern California where the Teacher Corp was based: courses like “Social
Stratification” and “Sociology of Education.” In essence, this arrangement allowed Rose
to realize a kind of interplay between immediacy and reflection. It potentiated his
learning with a recursiveness he had been looking for. That is, he could come in from the
immediacy of working with struggling students in an urban elementary and, though his
coursework, reflect on this experience in a larger theoretical framework which could then
be taken back out into the field, et cetera.

Transition: Returning to UCLA- Teaching Veterans. As a teacher, Rose
aspired to share and infirse his students with his own excitement for language and ideas.
He wanted to fashion a curriculum that would equip the Vietnam veterans with the basic
academic skills they would need to make it through the system. In doing so, Rose was
compelled to look back on his own education. What had helped him? What was it that for
him had constituted an academic approach? And how could he teach reflection, thinking,

or in his own words, the ability to “think about thinking,” to the veterans?

Given the nature of these men ’3 needs and given the limited
time I would have with them, could I perhaps orient them to
some of the kinds of reading and writing and ways of
thinking that seem essential to a liberal course of stuay,
some of the habits of mind that Jack MacFarland and the
many that followed him had helped me develop... 1 was
looking for a methodical way to get my students to think
about thinking. Thinking. Not as firssbudget course, but a
course about thought (p. 138).

160

Rose ever
the funda'
do'elop:
some up
his later

lniegrai

pen a
sunour

niih th

Rose eventually settled on what he called four “intellectual strategies.” These represented
the fundamental thinking skills that he believed formal education had helped him to
develop: summarizing, classifying, comparing, and analyzing. Although he had finally
come up with his own personal definition of what constituted intellectual reflection, he
was later humbled to find that these were all modes of thought “as old as Aristotle.”
Integrative Summary: Immediacy and Reflection.

There is a passage in Lives on the Boundagg in which Rose remembers being
given a telescope as a young boy. It brought to mind for him the lost deadness of his
surroundings at that time and, in contrast, the solitary moment at night, in his front yard

with the telescope, in which he had imaginatively taken flight.

Poor Freddie, toothless Lester whispering promises about
making me feel good, the flat days, the gang fights - all this
receded for it was now me, the star child, lost in an
eyepiece focused on a reflecting mirror that cradled, in its
center, a shimmering moon (p. 22).

In the passage above, Rose moves from the perverse to the celestial in the space of one
sentence. It mirrors the juxtaposition of poverty and transcendence in his own life. For
him, this kind of betweenness, like the back-and-forthing between immediacy and
reflection, was part of the continued search for meaning.

As Jack MacFarland began to jolt Rose from his intellectual stupor, the back-and-

forth between immediacy and reflection finally began to generate some developmental

161

heat Fort
hiends the
essentiall
he beam

lifestyles

robe l“.
glimpse
more in
world 1
nnello
could
lose
inn:
men
has

Ros

heat. For example, through the small community formed by MacFarland and Rose’s
fiiends their senior year of high school, a tiny niche was created in which reflection
essentially became a form of play. They toyed with various intellectual personas such as
the beatnik or “disaffected hipster.” They tried on the language, the clothing, the
lifestyles. At such moments, learning and identity-making became tightly fused.

The middle ground between immediacy and reflection is where Rose desired most
to be. This was where language could, to borrow from Seamus Heaney (1995), provide “a
glimpsed alternative,” a “revelation of potential.” While learning could bring Rose into a
more immediate contact with the world, in the service of reflection it could also give the
world an ordered clarity. Moving between them gave the world meaning. The purpose of
intellectual reflection for Rose was not understanding alone, but an understanding that
could lead him out into a more immediate world of human experience. As mentioned,
Rose’s learning was often potentiated by the close juxtaposition of moments of
immediacy with the opportunity to then reflect on those moments. This is apparent in a
memory he has of Father Albertson, a professor at Loyola. Albertson’s main objective
was to shepherd his students into the intellectual conversation of the university. Although
Rose is referring to his own initiation into academic discourse, the terms he uses to

describe Albertson’s efforts to achieve this are actually quite immediate, even sensual.

What Father Albertson did was bring us inside the circle,
nudging us out into the chatter, always just behind us,
whispering to try this step, then this one, encouraging us to
feel the moves for ourselves @. 58).

162

1n :
riddle grr
give voice
one who.
was no 0
graduate
:ellectio
desire it
telnow
to in for
its ulr
could 1
onion

'i'lt “p

w

ted.

In graduate school, Rose initially found himself losing hold of this precious
middle ground. He had begun writing poetry, using its sounds, rhythms, and images to
give voice to the immediacy of his own experience. But there suddenly seemed to be no
one who, like Jack MacFarland or Father Albertson, shared that passion or need. There
was no one who could help him find a way to reconcile it with the typically more analytic
graduate discourse. Learning no longer seemed to volley between immediacy and
reflection. The scales were tipped in the direction of reflection and, in the face of Rose’s
desire for learning that lead into the world, this created a tension. Rose eventually
acknowledged the difference between literacy as it functioned in his own life and literacy
as it functioned in the life of his graduate professors. For Rose, the function of language
was ultimately to bring him into a closer, more intimate contact with life. From what he
could understand of his professors, literacy seemed to represent an end in itself.‘ He
perceived them as living in a self-enclosed world, reflection set adrift with no anchor in
the “point-blank, green and actual.” This is the point at which Rose felt he had to
abandon ship.

Leaving graduate school for the Teacher Corp, Rose’s learning became very self-
driven. It was motivated by his desire for a clearer understanding of the human condition

311d, of course, of himself.

‘

5 From a strictly critical or analytic approach, ifa particular piece of writing is passionate or sensual. for
example, it is not the potentially new insight or perspective on the this ofiers that ultimately interests the
cntrc, but the literary function such evoking serves and how this might fit within a the largetbody oftext.

163

Soil we
did tell:
olmovi
into the

dentin

A life of the mind can bring with it at least momentary
deliverance, an athletics of the spirit (p. 63)

I carne to better understand what I had once only felt (p.
1 72).

So it was as a teacher that Rose finally reclaimed the middle ground between immediacy
and reflection. In his involvement with the lives of students, he realized again the rhythm
of moving in and out, from critical thought, conceptualizing, and abstraction back out
into the world of human relationships, a dance between mind and spirit, learning and

identity.

164

The titl
deeply

tanhr

hill]

CHAPTER FIVE

Richard Rodriguez

Richard Rodriguez begins Hunger of Memory. ..

This is my story. An American story (p. 5).

The title of chapter one is “Aria.” A voice singing, unaccompanied. Because his story is a
deeply human one, and because he sings it with soul and passion, Rodriguez believes it

can have meaning for those who listen.

I write of one life only. My own. If my story is true, I trust it
will resonate with significance for other lives (p. 7).

mger of Memory consists of six chapters and a prologue that collectively
portray Rodriguez’s struggle to find a place for himself in mainstream American
academic culture. The chapters, writes Rodriguez, “are essays impersonating an
autobiography” (p. 7). Collectively they portray the futility of Rodriguez’s struggle to
construct an identity within a system that seemed to require that he amputate his cultural
past. They offer a retrospective of Rodriguez’s attempts to reconcile himself to, and find

a place in, the moral order of American academic life.

165

W
America
mother in
she hardl
haltingly
OptimiSi
Sacramr

enclave

hr

intol

Background. Like Rose’s parents, Rodriguez’s mother and father immigrated to
America. They had both left small towns in Mexico in the 19505. In American, his
mother had received a high school diploma “by teachers to careless or busy to notice that
she hardly spoke English” (p. 53). In spite of the fact that they both spoke English only
haltingly, his father dreamed of continuing his education and becoming an engineer.
Optimism and ambition lead them to settle in a middle-class section of 1950’s
Sacramento. Surrounded by the homes of Whites, their house soon became its own ethnic

enclave.

Our house stood apart. A gaudy yellow in a row of white
bungalows. We were the people with the noisy dog. The
people who raised pigeons and chickens. We were the
foreigners on the block (p. 13).

As a result, until the time that he began attending school, Rodriguez was more-or-less
insulated fi'om mainstream American culture. School was a shock. For the first time in his
life, with no family to steady him, Rodriguez confronted the dizzying gap between White
America and the culture of his parents. He watched his mother’s face dissolve on that
first day “in a watery blur behind the pebbled glass door,” the clarity of her comforting

Presence fading.

166

manna
Caro—mo
033383:

81% ~83...

C3535: 08958 5.51mi. W083 8
mam—amen mowoor r030: man—8.0%.
gmantach nor—BS» Emmaamaoa.
90: won—8.3 we: «83:.
90c 05.

 

m x L

29.3 u. 20.83 moaqficmN .. 4.3250 3 3&2. 433503. m<~=$

167

 

shite i
Englis
and th
consp

found

little

Sllldr

join

dn

 

 

It astonished Rodriguez that he was the only Spanish speaker and the only non-
white in the room (he had entered school understanding only fifty or so words of
English). He was keenly aware of the difference between his own socioeconomic level
and that of his peers, many of whom were the children of professionals. He suddenly felt
conspicuous, confused, and alone. But Rodriguez was intellectually gifted and eventually
found recognition and a certain type of validation in the classroom.

After graduating from high school (a time about which Hunger of Memory says
little), as a college student at 19605 Stanford Rodriguez encountered the term ‘minority
student’ for the first time. It was ironic. In his own eyes, he had finally made it. He had
joined the ranks. He was part of the majority. Suddenly, those at Stanford informed him
that this was not the case. Instead, they construed him as a member of an oppressed and
alienated minority and treated him accordingly. It confused him. He had worked one
summer on a construction crew among “lost pobres” (literally, the poor people), the
uneducated Hispanic construction workers. From his perspective, and that of his parents,
they were the oppressed and alienated, not he. By qualifying for a shot at the American
dream, he had left their ranks.

Later, as a graduate student in Renaissance literature at Columbia and then
Berkeley, this dilemma continued to lurk below thesurface, vague and unnamed. It was
ironic that during his tenure as a graduate student, Rodriguez met with some success as
an outspoken critic of affirmative action and bilingual education. Embraced by

conservatives, he was published, quoted, and invited to speak at conferences. His position

168

was that
inequitii
that the
odoeati
mainsti

Slltdlll

hlusei
tomp‘
and ti
llnse

ltlllt

begz
he

he

 
 

 

was that affirmative action and bilingual education are simply ways of ignoring the
inequities of social power. As one coming from the outside in, he had come to believe
that there could never be a true equality of cultures or of languages in American
education. According to Rodriguez’s stance in Hunger of Memcly. there will always be a
mainstream in America. It is education that should help one find his or her way into that
stream (cf. Floden, Buchmann, & Schwille, 1987).

Meanwhile, during a fellowship in London that involved long hours in the British
Museum, Rodriguez had felt himself becoming more and more alienated. On the verge of
completing the doctorate he had worked so long and hard for, the struggle between past
and future suddenly became clear. It condensed in the rarefied atmosphere of the British
Museum. Rodriguez had finally attained a scholar’s life and still he felt himself without a
center.

Too distracted by the internal tensions to continue with his dissertation, Rodriguez
began reading the educational literature. He was looking for a description of himself, a
lower-class minority who had successfully climbed to the heights of academia. He
needed something outside himself to validate what he had become and the internal battle
he was now fighting. Instead he found much that had been written about those who had
failed, about the inability of schools to make much of an impact on students from the

lower class. But nothing about those who, like himself, had succeeded. Then, he writes,

one day, leafing through Richard Hoggart ’s The Uses of
Literagy (195 7), I found in his description of the

169

iliOs E
good l:
Hoggm
and sun

biOllOl

sch

Scholarship boy, myself For thefirst time I realized that
there were other students like me. (p. 46).

The “scholarship boy” is a sociological category based on Hoggart’s analysis of
1950s British culture. It is intended to describe “the working-class child who ‘makes
good’ by entering the middle class world of grammar school and university” (Goodwin in
Hoggart, 1998, p. xiv). Although the educational system typically ofi‘ers encouragement
and support to such students (e. g., scholarships, special tutoring), conditions of home and

economic life typically work against their success. Rodriguez writes,

most working class children are barely changed by the
classroom. The exception succeeds. The relative few
become scholarship students. Of these, Richard Hogan
estimates, most manage a fairly graceful transition.
Somehow they learn to live in the two very different worlds
of their day. There are some others, however, those
Hoggart pejoratively terms ' ‘scholarship boys, ' for whom
success comes with special anxiety (p. 48).

Most compelling to Rodriguez, however, was the recurrent theme of Hoggart’s
scholarship boy: the incommensurability between the identity one constructs within

academic culture and the identity of one’s ethnic and cultural roots.

The Scholarship boy does not straddle, cannot reconcile,
the two great opposing cultures of his life m 66).

170

approacl
ohh Wit

skilled 1

would
Rodng

inhim

ripen

Rodr

n)
S

lifi'a

lid?

on

Afier London, Rodriguez returned home to complete his dissertation. As the time
approached for him to graduate and find work, however, the contrast between the ease
with which he seemed to be obtaining academic job offers and the difi'rculty his equally-
skilled White peers were having began to deeply trouble him. He knew in his own mind
that much of the reason for his success in obtaining offers owed to a push by departments
under pressure from affirmative action to meet minority quotas. Still, it was not really
Rodriguez the Hispanic they wanted. What they wanted, of course, was someone that
would fit into the preexisting culture of their mostly White academic departments.
Rodriguez believed that department heads who had interviewed him held no more interest
in him as an Hispanic, as someone whose cultural origins were far from mainstream
academic culture, than had the nuns on his first day of elementary school. In his
experience, he had never been able to have it both ways and he could not now.

Rodriguez felt himself being asked to forsake his integrity in a system that, during the
affirmative action of the 1960’s, sought him out for an identity that it ultimately
devalued.

In protest at the perceived hypocrisy, Rodriguez withdrew from the academic job
market. In fact, by refusing to finish his dissertation, he withdrew from academic culture
entirely. It was a move, however, that allowed him to reclaim both his ethnicity and his
Special intellectual gifts as his own. He writes (Richard Rodriguel, personal

communication, February 5th, 2001),

About the dissertation. I wrote it butno one has read it. I was ciln
such anger toward the liberal universrty that had created me an

171

then described me as a minority student, I refused to have a
committee of faculty members evaluate my work. For a long
time, the dissertation sat in my parents' garage. Now, I think, it
sits somewhere in my closet, along with several other secrets. I
wonder, sometimes, what it sounds like. I doubt I ever will
know.I

While the narratives in the two other autobiographies, MW and
The Road from Coorain, are moved along primarily by the dramatic force of events and
characters in the lives of their authors, Hu_nger of Memory continues to orbit around the
dynamic, subtle, but ever-deepening sense of alienation Rodriguez experienced
throughout his education, from elementary through graduate school. It is a sense that first
began in the classroom and eventually spread to home and finally, in adulthood, erupted
in a painful split between Rodriguez the scholar and Rodriguez as someone with roots in
a particular culture and, within that culture, a particular family.

As in the Rose analysis, the first section below will be concerned with the
tensions that Rodriguez experienced beMeen stability and change. For Rodriguez, this
was the tension between maintaining a sense of himself as the son of illiterate Hispanic
immigrants while, at the same time, changing in ways that could bring him closer to
feeling that he was a legitimate member of the classroom and, later on, of the academy in

general.2 As in the previous chapter, my analyses of the three tensions will be organized

—__

; Used with permission
The term “illiterate” in relation to Rodriguez’s parents is the term he himselfuses.

172

recording

discussed

ehssroor

illlOllllC

according to transitions in the story that seemed to fuel the particular tension being

discussed.

S bili and ban e.

Transition: School. Rodriguez remembers his first encounter with the
classroom. It was the first time adrift in gringo culture, on his own and completely

surrounded.

All my classmates certainly must have been uneasy on that
first day of school - as most children are uneasy - to find
themselves apart fiom their families in the first institution
of their lives. But I was astonished (p. 11).

For Rodriguez, education and the social making (or re-making) of himself were fused
from the very first day in parochial elementary when nuns literally assigned him a new

name: “Richard.”

Their English voices slowly prying loose my ties to my
other name, its three notes, Ri-car-do (p. 21).

In the classroom, Rich-heard with its clipped consonants and growling r’s,
replaced the rolling sounds of Ricardo. Rich-heard symbolized the difference between

how Rodriguez experienced himself as a student and his experience of himself as

173

Ricardo. tl
in this it
id to let
hlh parti

in his it

his grow
Wish:
it his it:

he felt

lithe

Who h

Ricardo, the family member. It signified who he was to be in public and the expectation
that this would be different than who he was at home. It was not merely that Rodriguez
had to learn to ‘code-switch’ between the languages of home and school before he could
firlly participate in either. To become truly teachable, that is, someone who he believed
that his teachers would accept, he sensed that he must change at a deeper level.

Looking back, Rodriguez realizes that one of the signs that he was changing was
his growing sense that the classroom was ‘his,’ that he truly belonged there. A sense of
ownership emerged as he began to claim the school’s ways of talking, valuing, and acting
as his ways. However, at the same time, with each pull toward the classroom Rodriguez
also felt himself pushed from the fold at home. The intense intimacy he felt at home
began to diminish, for it was an intimacy partially based on his family’s cultural isolation.
The latter was something the older generation more-or-less encouraged as a way of
fending off the inevitable diaspora. This fireled Rodriguez’s early awareness of a sharp
difference between his public (school) self and his private (home) self. He writes that
“the great lesson of school [was] that I had a public identity” (p. 19).

Rodriguez regards these early changes in self-perception, the awareness of the
distinction between private and public aspects of his identity, as the necessary kernel of

who he has become as an adult. It was the price of admission to an American life.

The social and political advantages I enjoy as a man result
fiom the day I came to believe that my name, indeed is
Rich-heard Road-ree-guess (p. 27).

174

htthrou
include l
America

hut oith

his p;
other

with

St: '
"T

£3"

no

In entering school for the first time, Rodriguez enters a double bind that was to
last throughout his formal education. To bring his ethnicity to school with him was to
exclude himself from membership in academic culture. But to pursue membership by
American-izing himself also meant losing his place not only within his family-of-origin
but within Hispanic culture generally. In his parents’ native culture, membership seemed
at least partially based on one’s refusal to identify with things American, even though

survival outside the home meant learning to carry oneself as an American.

As a Catholic schoolboy, I was educated a middle-class
American. Even while grammar school nuns reminded me
of my spiritual separatenessfi'om non-Catholics, they
provided excellent public schooling...I was taught well
those skills of numbers and words crucial to my
Americanization (p. 79).

For Rodriguez, the struggle between embracing the ways of school and those of
his parents' native culture was a zero sum game; more of one always meant less of the
other. Becoming more Richard meant becoming less Ricardo. The more that he identified
with the culture of his middle-class parochial school, the more that life at home Seemed to
leave him feeling strange, alienated and unfamiliar. At school, he began to feel himself
cut off from that by which he had previously felt himself defined. Although he was

surrendering to his studenthood, there was a certain sadness that he could not reconcile.

I was increasingly confident of my own public identity. I
would have been happier about my public success had I not

175

Fr
month
indhm
mhnz

hand

sometimes recalled what it had been like earlier (p. 25)
At last, even years old I came to believe what had been
technically true since birth: I was an American citizen. But
the special feeling of closeness at home was diminished by
then. Gone was the desperate, urgent, intense feeling of
being at home: rare was the experience of feeling myself
individualized by family intimates (pp. 22-23).

For Rodriguez, embracing academic culture felt inevitable. It was both cause and

cure of his alienation. Almost against his will, his identification with school-based values

lead him to redefine his parents’ attitudes and abilities in a negative light. To him, his

mother and father began to lack the very things the classroom was teaching him were

important, literacy in particular.

I was oddly annoyed when I was unable to get parental
help with a homework assignment. The night my father
tried to help me with an arithmetic exercise, he kept
reading the instructions, each time more deliberately, until
I pried the textbook out of his hands... (p. 44) the docile,
obedient student came home a shrill and precocious son
who insisted on correcting and teaching his parents with
the remark: “My teacher told us... ” (p. 50) what mattered
to me was that they were not like my teachers (p. 52).

At the same time, school helped ease the loss of family intimacy that seemed to attend his

every move toward Americanization. Although the transition had destabilized his sense

of who and what he was, Rodriguez, intellectually gifted, also sensed that learning how to

participate in school life might offer some means of compensation. It was many years

later before he understood the nature of this solution.

176

Roc
nionction ‘
items cor
in it was
education

tidening

Rodriguez adaptation was typical of the scholarship boy. As he grew, the
injunction to better himself through education had been strong. Both his teachers and
parents conspired on this point. And so he turned to his studies and away from his past.
But it was a past he remained conscious of, forever aware of the distance that his
education was putting between who he had been and who he was becoming. Eventually,

widening that distance became its purpose.

A primary reason for my success in the classroom was that
I couldn 't forget that schooling was changing me and
separating me fiom the life I enjoyed before becoming a
student (p. 45)...I never forgot that schooling had
irretrievably changed my family ’s life. That knowledge,
however, did not weaken ambition. Instead it strengthened
resolve (p. 50).

According to Hoggart ( 1957), the scholarship boy learns that he must turn to the
classroom for his sense of who and what he is to become. School promises to lead him
toward a fixture that is an improvement on the present, that will not recapitulate the lives
Of his parents. Through his education, the scholarship boy comes to believe that he can
become someone and something better. And yet, writes Rodriguez, education offers “a
nurturing never natural to the person one was before one entered the classroom” (p. 68).
For Rodriguez, the competitive and public identity created in the classroom could never

be continuous with, and in fact required that he distance himself from, the familial and

Private identity he developed at home.

177

felt inn

men
form

the

From the very first days, through the years following, it will
be with his parents - the figures of lost authority, the
persons toward whom he feels deepest love - that the
change will be most powerfully measured...Advancing in
his studies, the [scholarship boy] notices that his mother
and father have not changed as much as he. Rather, when
he sees them, they often remind him of the person he once
was and the life he earlier shared with them (p. 49).

Rodriguez recalls some of the external changes mirroring the transformations he

felt internally.

I grew increasingly successful, a talkative student. My hand
was raised in the classroom: I yearned to answer any
question. At home, life was less noisy than it had been (I
spoke to classmates and teachers more often each day that
to family members.) Quiet at home, I sat with my papers for
hours each night.

Simply mastering the academic challenges was not be enough to gain Rodriguez
membership at school. Something more was required. He had to somehow unhinge his
former life from the future that formal education held out to him. “They could make me
an educated man,” he writes (p. 50). It was confusing. It disoriented him in a way that he

dealt with only by clinging more tightly to the compensations of the classroom.

Those times [that] I remembered the loss of my past wrth
regret, I quickly reminded myself of all the. things my .
teachers could give me...I tightened my grip on my penal
and books. I evaded nostalgia. Tried hard to forget m 50).

178

lle attent
oleast o
tlaces. .e‘

chassroo

that

lino;

'lSlC

As a Catholic, an important thread of stability did run through Rodriguez’s life.
He attended a Catholic grammar school. This was important in providing Rodriguez with
at least one level of linkage between home and school; at least he was a Catholic in both
places. A picture of the Sacred Heart hung in his parents’ home. When he entered the

classroom of his first day, he saw this same picture on the classroom wall.

The picture drew an important continuity between home
and the classroom. When all else was dtflerent for me (as a
scholarship boy) between the two worlds of my life, the
Church provided an essential link. During my first months
in school, I remember being struck by the fact that -
although they worshipped in English - the nuns and my
classmates shared my family ’5 religion. The gringos were,
in some way, like me, catolicos (p. 82).

Although the church provided him with an important sense of continuity around his
Catholic identity, this did not diminish Rodriguez’s perception of the differences between
what he was expected to be at school (an American student) and at home (a member of an
Hi8panic household).

Transition: University. Rodriguez claims that the term minority student allows
us to believe that we have reached down into the levels of the poor and oppressed and
lifted such persons ‘up’ into academia when in reality, as Rodriguez views it, we have
only skimmed fiom the top. Those minorities who qualify for higher education are those
With the ability and means to make it academically, thus those fiom the upper echelon of

his or her minority group. But as a Stanford student, a school he had been attracted to

179

teeth by

Rodriguez

sill}:

“partly by its academic reputation, partly because it was the school rich people went to,”

Rodriguez did not consider himself part of an oppressed minority.

A dean said he was certain that after I graduated I would
be able to work among “my people. ”A senior faculty
member expressed his confidence that, though I was
unrepresentative of lower-class Hispanics, I would serve as
a role model for others of my race. Another faculty member
was sure that I would be a valued counselor to incoming
minority students. (He assumed that, because of my race, I
retained a special capacity for communicating with
nonwhite students.) (p. 14 7).

His professors did not realize that Rodriguez could not go back. In his mind, the
education that had gotten him to that point had also removed him from the category of the

Oppressed. It was a contradiction that went unnoticed by those around him.

The odd things was that in the classroom, teachers
reminded me of both my public identity and power as a
student of literature. But outside of class, few were willing
to recognize that I was, at best, paradoxically named a
minority student (p. 156).

Transition: Graduate School. In graduate school, Rodriguez sensed that the
coumerpoint of stereotypes (minority student and scholar) he embodied made his fellow
academics uneasy, as if there were something Pygmalion about him. He wondered If

maybe to his professors and peers it looked as if someone had grabbed an immigrant off a

180

work crew t

olthemseh

denial.
them t

the la

work crew and dressed him in professorial garb. Was he taunting them with a caricature

of themselves?

To many persons around him, [the scholarship boy]
appears too much the academic. There may be some things
about him that recall his beginnings — his shabby clothes:
his persistent poverty; or his dark skin (in those cases when
it symbolizes his parents ’ disadvantaged condition) — but
they only make clear how far he has moved fiom his past.
He has used education to remake himself (p. 65).

Rodriguez interpreted his colleague's imagined discomfort as a symptom of their
denial, a measure of the extent to which their own identity as academics had required
them to sever themselves from their past. He believed that his presence reminded them of

the fact that becoming a scholar requires one to basically change fi’om who one was.

[They] expect — they want — a student less chcmged by his

schooling. If the scholarship boy, fiom a past so distant
from the classroom, could remain in some basic way

unchanged he would be able to prove that it is possible for

anyone to become educated without basically changing
fiom the person he was (p. 66).

Transition: Leaving academia. Rodriguez left London and returned to

California. While continuing to struggle with his dissertation, he accepted a 1-year

teaching assignment at Berkeley. He was approached during this time by a gr oup Of

181

toting Chic:

institute" 2

hate be
novel 0
EOld lhr
dame
rei in
eonh

did n

young Chicano students. They had come wanting him to teach a course on “minority

literature” at a local barrio community center.

I had been submissive, willing to mimic my teachers,
willing to re-form myself in order to become ‘educated '
They were proud claiming that they didn ’t need to change
by becoming students. I had long before accepted the fact
that education extracted a great price for its equally great
benefits. They denied that price — any loss (p. 160).

It was an awkward moment. In fi'ont of him was the person he might (should?)
have become. He told them that he did not believe in the term ‘minority literature.’ “Any
novel or play about the lower class will necessarily be alien to the culture it portrays,” he
told them. The students, disappointed and bored, left his office. For Rodriguez, a sense of
shame hung over the encounter. Although sitting with the Chicano students had
reinforced the feeling that what he had left behind could not be returned to, he was

COHfiJsed by his inability to identify with the students - and by their conviction that they

did not need to change to become part of academic societY-

In retrospect, Rodriguez links his shame and confirsion to a truth that, at that

moment, he had been unable to confront. For him, the process of becoming educated had

WTOUght profound changes in who and what he had expected himself to be. In the face of

thiS, the minority students were a group of young Ricardos. They sat in front of him,

university students whose choice had been to not abandon their past. They were willfitlly

holding onto it. Rodriguez, in his own efforts to join with academic culture, had felt the

182

need to cut
lifetime ol

hen

scholars
li-e .
MOVE

his ties

he i
W

‘A
Kt”
i.

need to cut himself off from his cultural roots. It all felt somehow ludicrous, that in a

lifetime of trying to become like his teachers perhaps he had only become a caricature of

them.

The truth was that I was a successful teacher of white
middle—class students I was the bleached academic —
more white than the anglo professors (p. 162).

It was ironic that Rodriguez found a point of stability in the identity of the
scholarship boy, an identity rooted in instability, rupture, and change. Equally ironic was
discovering another kind of stability in his decision to bail out of academia. He realized

his desire to be a personally authentic intellectual.

I wanted to teach: I wanted to read; I wanted this life. But I

had to protest. How? Disqualifie myself fiom the profession
as long as affirmative action continued? Romantic exile ?

But I had to. Yes. I found the horizon again. It was calm.

The calm horizon was Rodriguez’s ethnic past. Although it had never moved, Rodriguez
was like a plane flying by sight through the darkness. Without a visual fix he could not

seem to orient himself to who he was, nor could he return to his point of departure.

How great is the change any academic undergoes, how far
one must move from one ’5 past (p. 68)-

183

personhc
Rodrigo
from an
hunted
himself
talue it

lumen

3th t1

trso

ill r

v
a

ten;

lite

! -
tilt

he

Intggrative Summagy: Stabilig and Change

Wald writes that “national culture defines and disseminates a concept of
personhood” (Wald, 1995, p. 8). The general difficulty in becoming a student for
Rodriguez was not so much the intellectual challenge as in its requirement to change
fiom an Hispanic to an American vision of his own personhood. Early on, Rodriguez had
intuited that only by changing in deep and significant ways could he establish a place for
himself in the classroom. He must learn to speak a new language (English). He must
value its speaking over the language of his past (Spanish). He must value the knowledge
fiamework of the classroom over that of his parents’ culture.

There is an important sense in which Rodriguez continued to regard these changes
as inevitable and necessary. As an adult and a critic of education, Rodriguez’s stance is
that good schooling is that which prepares every student for a place in society. One of
learning’s principal aims, he believes, should be to help students re-form, that is, to form
new ways of talking and behaving that contrast with those acquired in early family life,
ways that in Rodriguez’s experience had begun to create a public and inherently less
Personal presentation of himself.

At the same time, in his autobiography, Rodriguez’s desire to pursue such change
was driven by the paradoxical belief that only by doing so could he compensate for the
destabilizing of family closeness that seemed to follow his moves toward studenthood.
He could not become the kind of student that he believed his teachers and, in fact, his
parents wanted him to be without the forsaking of family intimacy. “Tightening the irony

into a knot was the knowledge that my parents were always behind me,” he writes (p.

184

53). Altl

claiming

Student.

respo

eth

Eng

53). Although the paradox was profound for Rodriguez, at another level he is also
claiming that formal education, by its very nature, works to create this paradox in every

student.

Good schooling requires that any student alter early
childhood habits. But the working-class child is usually
least prepared for the change (p. 47)...At once drflerent
from most other students, the scholarship boy is also the
archetypal ‘good student. ’He exaggerates the dtfiiculty of
being a student, but his exaggeration reveals a general
predicament. Others are changed by their schooling as
much as he. They too must reform themselves (p. 68).

But what if Rodriguez hadn't somehow figured out that it was schooling that was
responsible for changing him? The implication is that it was the power of this perception
that allowed him to capitalize on what school seemed to be offering; to be blind to it
would have meant missing the opportunities that surrounded him. The perception that
learning was changing him allowed him to seek it out for that very purpose. The intensity
of this awareness was special because it depended on the crossing of multiple boundaries:
ethnic, class, but particularly linguistic. Rodriguez held to the notion that through

English, and through books, he would be able to crack the code of becoming educated.

I privately wondered: What was the connection between
reading and learning? Did one learn something only by
reading it? Was an idea only an idea if it could be written
down (p. 59)?

185

Rodriguez

that he or

follouir
his fat!
lite d0:

llilier’

Rodriguez writes about his'early awareness of one “consequence of literacy.” It was one

that he was “too shy to admit but nonetheless trusted” (p. 61).

Books were going to make me ‘educated ’ That confidence
enabled me, several months later, to overcome my fear of
the silence (p. 61).

The “silence” was something that seemed to have enveloped Rodriguez’s life
following his parents insistence that they change from Spanish to English in the home
(his father, less fluent in English than his mother, had simply become quiet). Of course,
one does not acquire a language (native or otherwise) without also acquiring, in Janet
Miller’s terms, its function as “a constituting factor in the artificial separations,
hierarchical orderings, and essentialist constructions of public and private. . . self and other
(Miller, 1998, p. 229). In other words, learning a second language for Rodriguez was not
simply a matter of exchanging one system of representing and expressing himself for
another, one different in form but identical in function. Instead, the languages of home
and school mediated and made possible ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving unique to
each. To forbid Rodriguez to speak Spanish was to silence the ways of thinking, feeling,
and behaving that only Spanish made possible. To learn English, on the other hand, was
to Open the door to new (i.e., American) ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving. It was
in the tension between these ways (which was his way?) that the relationship between

learning and identity made itself known.

186

Th
f rged a d
that a cult
Ween l
school c'
Spanish
Rodogu:
kinds of
mired l

Ltd out

intent
hing
fitter :
on

Klimt

There were many circumstances surrounding Rodriguez’s education that, for him,
forged a distinct split between public and private, or public and personal. To the extent
that a cultural community is linguistically homogeneous, it is true that as one moves
between contexts that vary in the degree to which they are public versus private (home,
school, church, doctor’s office, barber, grocery store, etc), the basic language (English,
Spanish, etc.) nonetheless stays the same. It is only the degree of intimacy that varies. For
Rodriguez at a young age, however, there was no variation in terms of public and private
kinds of talk, the kind of variations that, again, might exist were all the contexts one
moved between characterized by the same language. There was only inside talk (Spanish)
and outside talk (English).

AT home, assuming his place in the family was joyfully simple, easy, and routine.
In contrast, at school, learning in a different language demanded profound changes in
Rodriguez’s sense of who he was and where he belonged. These were demands that were
never announced or made explicit. They could only be felt and experienced by
Rodriguez, who was without the capacity to yet understand. At no time or place in
Rodriguez’s education had his status as someone perched on the boundary between
cultures become conscious in a way that might have validated it.

That he could change, become someone new through learning, was obvious to
Rodriguez. So was the expectation, his own and others’, that this learning should occur at
school through formal education. The role that his native language or his parents
themselves would play in his learning was implicitly clear. Through silencing his

ethnicity, the school had made it plain that there was very little that could be learned at

187

home. His

was deva

could no
integrate
oducanr
Rodngi
acaden
Rodrig
social
Hispa
son 0'
embr
They

win

on
him

110'

home. His parents either lacked the knowledge or what they did know contradicted, or
was devalued by, school knowledge.

The big question is why Rodriguez felt that he could not straddle the two - that he
could not move freely between home and school and experience himself as a single
integrated person at the same time, even one experiencing change. Throughout his formal
education, an integrated sense of who he was and where he belonged continued to elude
Rodriguez. He could not straddle the world of home and past and that of mainstream
academic America. Prior to coming upon Hoggart’s description of the scholarship boy,
Rodriguez had really not been able to experience himself fully as a member of any public
social category, only as existing between them; between working- and middle-class,
Hispanic and mainstream culture, between his identity as an intellectual and that of the
son of uneducated immigrants. In other words, the changes that Rodriguez at once
embraced and were confused by did not unfold at home. Nor did they happen at school.
They took place in the back-and-forth between the two, between Hispanic and academic
cultures.

Terms like ‘back-and-forth’ or ‘between’ do not imply that Rodriguez
experienced this movement as if on a continuum, however. It was truly an either/or for
him, a binary logic of being either a family member and not American, or American and
. not a family member. This is ultimately why he could not straddle the two. It wa also
why neither place alone could provide him with a secure sense that what he was learning

and who he was becoming did not require denigrating some other part of himself.

188

lt
figure on
his attem
may hat
himself
someho
ways 0'
expect:

school

rel;

C01

It was here, in the choice between stability and change, that Rodriguez had to
figure out where he belonged. It was difficult in the face of his gnawing awareness that
his attempts to think, talk, and act in the ways of school culture, as much as his parents
may have encouraged it, only brought about a lessening of the closeness he felt between
himself and them. He was changing and they were not. Further, what was happening
somehow went against the natural desire of his parents to bring their children up in the
ways of their own culture. By requiring the changes that it did, particularly the
expectation that school culture be valued over that of the home, Rodriguez’s early

schooling undermined this parental function.3

Rodriguez. The name on the door. The name on my
passport. The name I carry from my parents - who are no
longer my parents, in a cultural sense (p. 4 ).

So the changes that schooling required, although they made the relationship
between learning and identity explicit, also made it clear to Rodriguez that this was a
relationship unique to school: it was through education and not his home life that he
could become a new person. The strong connection that Rodriguez sensed between
learning and identity evaporated as soon he walked into his family’s home. It was not

until university and the imposing of his status as a minority that people began to tell him

 

 

3 It is important to remember that, as a Catholic school, there was a strong link between school and the
church. The authority of the school was great, taken in essence from the church.

189

that things could also work the other way around: that his home or native culture and
what he had learned there could extend into the world of his formal education. This is an
idea whose feasibility Rodriguez continues to doubt.

Through the story of the Scholarship boy, Rodriguez finally began to accept his
own marginality. The point is not that it was impossible for him, at least at some point, to
have found some level of integration between the expectations of two different cultures,
home and school. But it was impossible as long as this expectation remained implicit
rather than explicit. For Rodriguez, the struggle between changing and remaining the
same was never publicly acknowledged and dealt with. By neglecting this struggle, the
acknowledgment of a strong and ever present relationship between learning and identity-
making was also pushed underground.

There were necessary losses at home that Rodriguez felt changed him, pushing
him further toward a more public, school-based identity. At the same time, throughout his
formal education, experiences of change began to lead him back toward a desire for the
stability of his ethnic home life and the easy acceptance he had once found there. In a
way, although difficult at first, the expectation of his earlier teachers that Rodriguez
assimilate himself to academic culture was a much less complicated problem than the
expectation of his college professors that Rodriguez be both a minority student and a
successful academic. At least, prior to college, things had been clear. To change, he must
learn to think, talk, and act like a White American student. But in the atmosphere of
1960’s campus life, the expectation that he personify two cultures at the same time and in

the same place, his own culture and that of higher education, was impossible for him to

190

fulfill. In a very real way, it was asking him to deny the relation of learning and identity,
to not express what he so keenly felt: that his formal education had involved a necessary
bleaching of his ethnicity.

At thirty, Rodriguez is finally brought to the point of recognizing the personal
quest his education represents. Only then, when the contradictions behind his identity
began to make some sense to him could he finally claim what had eluded him for so long:
a view of himself as a genuine intellectual, one unhaunted by a nagging sense of

illegitimacy.

Not until my last months as a graduate student, nearly 30
years old, was it possible for me to think much about the
reasons for my academic success. Only then, at the end of
my schooling, I needed to determine how far I had moved
fiom my past (p. 45) ...I was able to flame the meaning of
my academic success, its consequent price - the loss (p.
46).

It was paradoxical and poignant. Rodriguez abandoned his doctorate and, with it,
the struggle between the sophisticated, full-fledged academic and the child of illiterate
immigrant parents. It was in his conscious decision not to climb that last ten feet, not to
complete his doctorate, that Rodriguez was finally graced with a genuine and integrated
sense of himself as an intellectual. He reclaimed his past, that part of him that formal
education had ultimately failed to exorcise. In leaving academia, he grabbed willfully for
the stability of self he had longed for. Maybe now there could be greater equity between

stability and change, between those aspects of himself that felt abiding and constant and

191

those that felt mutable and changing. From now on, maybe he would control the balance
in the dance between learning and identity, between Richard, the intellectual, and
Ricardo, the son of Hispanic immigrants.

Having explored the tensions between stability and change, the next section looks
at tensions in IIerger of Memory between experiences of affiliation and those of
separateness. Experiences of affiliation were those that lead Rodriguez to feel that his
learning and his identity were connected in important ways to persons and ideas outside
himself while experiences of separateness were those that lead Rodriguez to feel that he
somehow existed apart. Because of the rewards of feeling validated through one’s public
affiliations, and because it is sometimes painful to experience oneself as separate
(particularly at an age when the world appears so black and white), entering school
forced Rodriguez to begin shifiing his affiliations from home to school, from parents to
teachers, from his parents' culture to mainstream culture. For him this ultimately meant

separating himself from the ideas, beliefs, and values of parents that he loved.

Affiliation and Separateness

Transition: School. In the early years of Rodriguez’s schooling, home is the
place he felt most firlly himself. With his family, he had shared a language and a way of

looking at middle-class White America, a way of feeling apart from it, that had bonded

them.

192

I was an extremely happy child at home. I remember many
nights when my father would come back fiom work. and I ’d
hear him call out to my mother in Spanish, sounding
relieved In Spanish, he ’d sound light and flee notes he
never could manage in English Some nights I ’d jump up
just at hearing his voice. With mis herrnanos I would come
running into the room where he was with my mother. Our
laughing (so deep was the pleasure!) became screaming.
Like others who [mow the pain of public alienation, we
transformed the knowledge of our public separateness and
made it consoling — the reminder of intimacy (p. 18).

At home, the sounds of Spanish meant belongingness and intimacy. Outside, they meant
differentness and isolation. Of course, the situation was just the reverse in terms of
English. The sound of it in the family home left Rodriguez feeling alienated while
bringing him closer to others at school. Prior to his parents’ mandate that they speak only
English, young Rodriguez could think and speak in Spanish, freely and easily, just like
his parents. Implicit in the prosody of his parents’ voices was something that identified
young Rodriguez as a particular and unique individual and yet a valued part of the family.
Even outside the family but within the larger Spanish community, Spanish was the

reminder of his separateness from mainstream American culture. It joined him to others.

Spanish speakers... seemed related to me, for I sensed that
we shared — through our language — the experience of
feeling apart fiom Los Gringos (p. 16).

Outside the Spanish community, on the other hand, aspects of his native culture

reinforced only separateness. Rodriguez looked different than the other students at

193

school. He talked differently. He felt surrounded by a culture that he could not enter.
School confronted Rodriguez with the realities of education in a culture in which there is

more than one language but in which not all languages are equal.

At the age of five, six, well past the time when most other
children no longer easily notice the diflerence between
sounds uttered at home and words spoken in public, I had a
diflerent experience (p. 16)...I easily noted the diflerence
between classroom language and the language of home (p.
20).

There was a private language, Spanish -— his family’s language. It marked his affiliations
with family and community. English, on the other hand, was a public language. It was the
language spoken on the outside to those in positions of power, to 105 gringos: teachers,
sales people, policemen, gas station attendants.

A Because home and school felt “at cultural extremes, opposed” (p. 46), Rodriguez
tried to avoid overlap in the ideas and expectations of each. He writes that in third grade,
for example, he was “carefisl to keep separate the two very different worlds” of his day
(pp. 44-5). In the beginning, things had changed abruptly. Half-way through Rodriguez’s
first grade year, the nuns who taught him had noticed that Rodriguez still was not talking
in class. They noted that his older siblings were having much the same problem. One

Saturday morning, they paid a visit to Rodriguez's home.

Strflly, they sat on the blue living room sofa From the
doorway of another room, spying the visitors, I noted the

194

incongruity - the clash of two worlds, the faces and voices
of school intruding upon the familiar setting of home. I
overheard one voice gently wondering, “Do your children
speak only Spanish at home, Mrs. Rodriguez? ” While
another voice added, “lhat Richard especially seems so
timid and shy ” That Rich-heard! (p. 20).

The culture of school had suddenly intruded into the home. It was a “clash of two

worlds” (p. 20).

With great tact the visitors continued, “Is it possible for
you and your husband to encourage your children to
practice their English when they are home? ” Of course, my
parents complied. What would they not do for their
children’s well-being? And how could they have questioned
the Church ’s authority which those women represented? In
an instant, they agreed to give up the language (the sounds)
that had revealed and accentuated our family ’s closeness.
Ihe moment after the visitors left, the change was
observed “Ahora, speak to us en inglés, ” my father and
mother united to tell as (p. 21)

Now it was no longer possible for Rodriguez to keep school and home separate. The nuns
knew what he had only sensed: that to truly join the classroom, that to affiliate himself
there, he “needed to speak a public language” (p. 21). Looking back, Rodriguez accepts
this as a necessary part of his Americanization. The sanctuary of Spanish had to be
forcibly closed off, its promise of shelter shattered. Since neither parent was fluent,
attempting to communicate with them in English only lead Rodriguez to feel separated

from them. His sadness grew as he watched their clumsy attempts to communicate With

195

him in English. Looking back, it all seems to have been a necessary push toward his

Americanization.

Most of all, I needed to hear my mother and father speak to
me in a moment of seriousness in broken — suddenly
heartbreaking — English (p. 21) the spell was broken (p.
22).

With the family’s speaking of English, the separateness Rodriguez felt in public
now invaded the home. Also, since it was partially the contrast with the sense of
separateness he experienced at school that made for the intense familiarity of home, as

school became less strange, the importance of home as an escape from that separateness

also began to fade.

We remained a loving family, but one greatly changed No
longer so close; no longer bound tight by the pleasmg mid

troubling knowledge of our public separateness...as we
chilthen learned more and more English, we shared ewer

and fewer words with our parents (p. 22-23) Once I
learned public lwrguage, it would never again be easy for

me to hear intimate family voices (p. 28)-

In retrospect, Rodriguez realizes that while the identity of Ricardo linked him to

his family, it also separated him from teachers and students. At school he was Richard,

“01 Ricardo. It was through the school’s expected ways of thinking, feeling, and

196

behaving, not the family’s, that he would gain membership in the classroom. Rodriguez

writes,

It is not possible for a child - any child - ever to use his
family’s language in school. Not to understand this is to
misunderstand the public uses of schooling and to trivialize
the nature of intimate life - a family ’3 “language (p. 12).

A passionate student, as the back-and-forth between home and school continued,
carrying his passion for learning into the house brought contradiction and change.
Because his parents did not understand it, Rodriguez felt as if it separated him fiom them.
He could not describe for them (In English? In Spanish?) what his experience was like. In

his own words, he had become a “good student, troubled son” (p. 48).

Withheld from my mother cmd father was wry mention of
what most mattered to me: the extraordinary experience of
first-learning (p. 51).

As Rodriguez continued to experience the sense of being “educated away” from the

culture of his mother and father (p. 147-8), he turned more and more to his connections

with the world of books.

[Reading Dickens], I loved the feeling I got - after the first
hundred pages - of being at home in a fictional world

197

where I knew the names of the characters and cared about
what was going to happen to them (p. 63).

Reading was not an escape from intimate family life but, in some ways, surrogate for it.
A diminishing sense of affiliation at home was being more-or-less balanced by the
satisfaction Rodriguez took in his developing identity as a student. He remembers the
gradual mental awakening. Melancholy, excitement, fulfillment, and uncertainty filled
him at the same time. At his age, these were feelings he was unable to articulate or share.
More importantly, with whom might he have shared them? Who would have understood

the contradiction?

I rarely looked away from my books...1 kept so much, so
ofien, to myself Sad Enthusiastic. Troubled by the
excitement of coming upon new ideas. Eager. Fascinated
by the promising texture of a brand-new book I hoarded
the pleasures of Ieaming. Alone for hours. Enthralled
Nervous. (p. 52).

As he progressed, Rodriguez’s affiliations continued to gradually shift from home
to school, from parents to teachers. He no longer wanted his parents’ lives. It was the

lives of his teachers he wanted. He began to model himself after them.

The urgency with which I came to idolire my grammar
school teachers... trusting their every direction. (p. 49).

198

When I was in high school, I admitted to my mother that I
planned to become a teacher someday. Ihat seemed to
please her. But I never tried to explain that it was not the
occupation of teaching I yearned for as much as it was
something more elusive: I wanted to be like my teachers, to
possess their knowledge, to assume their authority, their
confidence, even to assume a teacher ’s persona (p. 55).

It is important to acknowledge that during the early years of his schooling,
Rodriguez was able to find in his Catholic faith precious moments of integration. During
such moments, the tension between affiliation and separateness would temporarily
resolve itself. It seemed to him that the mysteries of his faith were somehow able to

reconcile, however briefly, the opposition of public and private.

At that time in my life, when I was so struck by diminished
family closeness and the necessity of public life, church was
a place unlike any other. It mediated between my public
and private lives... the mass mystified me for being a public
and a private event. We prayed here, each of us, much as
we prayed on our pillows - most privately - all alone before
God And yet the great public prayer of the mass would go
on (p. 96).

[Terms like sister and father] implied that a deep bond
existed between my teachers and me as fellow Catholics. A t
the same time, however, Sister and Father were highly
formal terms of address. .. It was possible consequently to
use these terms and to feel at once a close bond, and the
distance of formality. .. we were close - somehow related -
while also distanced by careful reserve (p. 97).

199

Transition: University. In college at Stanford in the 19605, a professor startled

Rodriguez by alluding to his status as a ‘minority student.’

Never before had a teacher suggested that my academic
performance was linked to my racial identity (p. 144).

This is the first time a teacher had explicitly acknowledged the difference that, according
to the term, separated Rodriguez from other students. This was not how his earlier
education had lead him to think about himself. It confused him. Up to entering Stanford,
he had worked so hard to affiliate with teachers and students, to feel a part of the
academic community. Suddenly, after finally making it to the exclusive club of the
university, it was announced that he was not like others and, furthermore, that this was
not a mark of shame but an honorable distinction that perhaps he could benefit from. This
contradicted everything Rodriguez had come to believe. He could not accept it as

legitimate.

Slowly, slowly, the term minority became a source of
unease. Minority, minorities, minority groups The terms
sounded in public to remind me in private of the truth: I
was not — in a cultural sense — a minority, an alien from
public life... The truth was summarized in the sense of irony
I ’d feel at hearing myself called a minority student: the
reason I was no longer a minority was because I had

become a [college] student (p. 147).

200

Rodriguez did not want to be separated out. He had a place in public life - the fact that he
had successfirlly navigated the White, middle-class educational culture of 1960s America
was the very reason he could not bring himself, in good conscience, to acknowledge
himself as under-privileged and oppressed.

His university experience strengthened the divide between Rodriguez and his
family. He writes about the experience of coming home for the first time as a freshman.
He could not describe college life to his parents in words that would have made sense to
them. It was not of their culture or experience. It was awkward at first as they groped for

common ground.

The first hours home were the hardest. ( “What ’s new? ’).
My parents and I sat in the kitchen for a conversation. (But,
lacking the same words to develop our sentences and to
shape our interests, what was there to say? What could I
tell them of the term paper I had just finished on the
‘universality of Shakespeare ’s appeal ’?) (p. 58).

Out of love and respect, they settled for a compromise: silence. "The silence that comes
to separate the [scholarship boy] from his parents” (p. 68). And yet, this was not so

different than it had been before. It was something they had learned long ago.

All those faraway childhood mornings in Sacramento,
walking together to school, we talked but never mentioned
a thing about what concerned us so much: the great event
of our schooling, the change it forced on our lives. Years
passed Silence grew thicker, less penetrable. We grew
older without ever speaking to each other about it (p. 190).

201

Working on the construction crew the summer after getting his undergraduate
degree was an enlightening time for Rodriguez. He and his family had always referred to
these crews as los pobres, the poor ones who had to depend on physical labor for work. It
amazed him to find out the contractor was a Princeton graduate. On the crew, he
unexpectedly found himself in the company of carpenters, electricians, plumbers,

painters.

These were not los pobres my mother had spoken about...I
am embarrassed to say I had not expected such diversity. I
certainly had not expected to meet, for example, a plumber
who was an abstract painter in his of hours... nor did I
expect to meet so many workers with college diplomas.
(They were the ones who were not surprised that I intended

to enter graduate school in the fall.) (pp. 133-134).

On a couple of occasions, the contractor had also hired a group of “Mexican aliens” to
complete a specific job. Although he would sometimes use Rodriguez as a translator,
Rodriguez felt keenly the distance between the Mexicans and himself. He thought about
talking more casually with them, asking them where they were fiom, but what did they
have in common to discuss? These were the real los pobres. It awakened him to the

immense separateness, despite their common heritage, between the conditions of his own

life and theirs.

When they had finished, the contractor went over to pay
them in cash. . . I can still hear the loudly confident voice he
used with the Mexicans. It was the sound of the gringo I

202

had heard as a very young boy. And I can still hear the
quiet, indistinct sounds of the Mexican, the oldest, who
replied. At hearing that voice, I was sad for the Mexicans.
Depressed by their vulnerability. Angry at myself The
adventure of the summer seemed suddenly ludicrous. 1
would not shorten the distance I felt from los pobres with a
few weeks of physical labor. I would not become like them.
They were dijferentfiom me @p. 135-136).

Through his education, Rodriguez had found a public identity, had forged affiliations

with the broader culture. Unlike him, these people would always remain separate.

There are people who would label me ‘disadvantaged’
because of my color...But I was not one of los pobres What
made me drflerent from them was an attitude of mind, my
imagination of myself... I will never know what the
Mexicans knew, gathering their shovels and ladders and
saws... They lack a public identity. They remain profoundly

alien. Persons apart (p. 138).

Transition: London. In London on his Fullbright, at first content just to be
studying, after about three months Rodriguez began to feel a creeping uneasiness. There

was uncertainty about the meaningfulness of what he was doing. And there was a steady,

throbbing loneliness.

Then came the crisis: the domed silence; the dusty pages of

books all around me; the days accumulating in lists of
obsequiousfootnotes; the wandering doubts about the

value of scholarship (p. 160).

203

It became clear that I had joined a lonely community.
Around me each day were dour faces eclipsed by large
piles of books... everywhere eyes turned away the moment
our glance accidentally met. Some persons I sat beside day

after day, yet we passed silently at the end of the day,
strangers (p. 70).

Rodriguez had crossed the Atlantic to initiate himself further into the intellectual
community, so why did the gap he felt between himself and other human beings seem
only to have widened? Shouldn’t things, shouldn’t he, be coalescing into something, into
Richard the scholar? Wasn’t this the identity in which he had presumed his years of
education would culminate? It is true that this quiet group of scholars in the library, some
who like him returned day after day, were connected in a way. They shared an interest, a
“common respect for the written word” (p. 70). But their relationships were never more
than a choreography of glances. As long as there was no personal contact, the affiliation

was gossamer-thin.

We did form a union, though one in which we remained
distant fiom one another (p. 70).

Rodriguez writes that more “profound and unsettling,” however, were the
affiliations he perceived between himself and the authors of his source materials. The
interests that knitted them together were highly esoteric, shared by few, and the pursuit of
them largely solitary. Among them there was actually more separating, more pulling

away from the cloth of larger society, than uniting.

204

Whenever I opened a text that hadn ’t been used for years, I
realized that my special interests and skills united me to a
mere handfirl of academics. We formed an exclusive -
eccentric! - society, separated from others who would
never care or be able to share our concerns... Who, beside
my dissertation director and a few faculty members, would
ever read what I wrote? (p. 70).

Transition: Leaving academia. In his decision to leave academia, Rodriguez
lodged his protest against the system that had created him, a scholar aspiring to
membership among a group of scholars, and then ultimately had separated him out as a
minority student. But his decision was also empowered by a deep acceptance. He could
now see and understand his own complicity. The intellectual dishonesty, the willingness
to abandon his own ideas, his na‘r've faith in education’s merit badge economy. These had

all begun in elementary as a bid for affiliation with those who had the power to validate

and reward him.

Always successfirl, I was always unconfident. Exhilarated
by my progress. Sad I became that prized student - anxious
and eager to learn. T 00 eager, too anxious - an imitative

and unoriginal pupil (p. 44).

And the complicity was there as an adult. Rodriguez grappled with it at the British
museum as he wrote his thesis. But he was much closer to it now. His bids for affiliation
with the world of academia had been answered, he was ostensibly there, but for him it

had become an empty place. He could not find his voice. Throughout his education,

205

Rodriguez had felt separated fiom his past. But this feeling intensified in London. Going
abroad had foregrounded his nationality. Although he was American, his features marked
him first as someone of color. And at that point, to say that he was American was also to
say that he was non-Hispanic.

Rodriguez attempted to write but could not. As a writer, one must speak from
someplace and he could not find that place. He felt separated finally from himself. For

Rodriguez, this was the crisis, the tension, that finally pulled his denial of himself to the

surface.

What I am about to say to you has taken me more than
twenty years to admit: a primary reason for my success in
the classroom was that I couldn ’t forget that schooling was
changing me and separating me fi'om the life I enjoyed
before becoming a student (p. 45).

Rodriguez longed for affiliation, for a time when answers - the right answers - came not
just from cultural outsiders but from inside the family, from his parents, from himself.

Hoggart describes the scholarship boy in terms that, at that moment, must have had a

gripping effect on Rodriguez.

[The scholarship boy] cannot go back; with one part of himself
he does not want to go back to a homeliness which was often
narrow : with another part he longs for the membership he has
lost, ‘he pines for some Nameless Eden where he never was’.
The nostalgia is the stronger and the more ambiguous because he
is really ‘in question of his own absconded self yet scared to find
it’. He both wants to go back and yet thinks he has gone beyond

206

his class, feels himself weighted with knowledge of his own and
[hrs own class’s] situation, which hereafter forbids him the
Simpler pleasures of his father and mother (Hoggart, 1957, p.
232).

Rodriguez suddenly understood that the separateness he felt at that moment was a
product of those very circumstances his formal education had taught him to aspire to,

even to compete for. He felt angry and, ultimately, betrayed.

Then nostalgia began. After years spent unwilling to admit
its attractions, 1 gestured nostalgically toward the past. 1
yearned for that time when I had not been so alone...I
feared the library ’s silence. I silently scorned the gray,
timid faces around me. I grew to hate the growing pages of
my dissertation on genre and Renaissance

literature... above all, I wanted to be less alone (p. 71).

Intggr_ative Summing: Affiliation and Separateness
In his autobiography, Rodriguez emphasizes what he perceives to be the

difference between his public and his private identities. His public identity was that
which seemed to draw on aspects of himself (speech, dress, behavior) through which he
affiliated non-intimately with others in contexts outside the home and ethnic community.
Rodriguez takes the position that the proper function of formal schooling was to help him
construct this public aspect of himself. At school, one’s learning does move into public
view. An original essay of his was published in the high school newspaper, for example.

Its potency as a public act of identity-making impressed him. Rodriguez recalls that “the

207

letters firmished evidence of a vast public identity writing made possible” (p. 181). His
public identity became that through which he could affiliate with a larger mainstream
culture.

In contrast, Rodriguez’s private identity was nourished at home. It was that aspect
through which he affiliated with intimates. It was based in part on his very separateness
(and, by extension, the separateness of his family and their culture) from public life. It
emerged from the intense personal relationships he had with his mother and father but
also including his grandmother, who held a special place in her heart for Rodriguez.“
Prior to beginning school, the words Rodriguez spoke were in Spanish. They were
intended only for intimates. But it was only through learning English that Rodriguez
believed he could change into someone that truly belonged in the classroom. He

remembers the moment in grammar school that “it happened.”

One day in school I raised my hand to volunteer an answer.
I spoke out in a loud voice. And I did not think it
remarkable when the entire class understood That day, I
moved very far fi'om the disadvantaged child I had been

 

4 The PUblic-private distinction is ultimately paradoxical. To say that an author’s relationships at school
were public and non-intimate is not to imply that they were non-affective or incidental to learning itself. It
means only that they are public in relation to those relationships the author held as personal or private. But
What about the “stranger on the bus” phenomenon; those moments in which we are moved to share things
deeply personal with a complete stranger? Writes Rodriguez, “This is what I have learned by trying to write
this book: there are things so deeply personal that they can be revealed only to strangers. I believe this. I
continue to write” (p. 185). Of course, Rodriguez is talking about revealing himself to strangers that he will
never meet or will meet only briefly with the anticipation of never seeing again This all foregrounds the
importance of history to those relationships we consider most persoml. While we may be moved to confess
our deepest secrets to a total stranger, without a shared history there is no personal relationship, nor at the
moment of disclosure do we likely desire one.

208

 

only days earlier. The belief the calming assurance that I
belonged in public, had at last taken hold (p. 22).

Rodriguez had two principal needs at the time that he entered elementary school.
There was a natural desire for affiliation, for feelings of connectedness and similarity to
others. In addition to that, there was the social need for him to construct an autonomous
public identity, an American identity. For Rodriguez, neither home nor school were
capable of serving both of these needs simultaneously. But this alone doesn’t explain the
tension, his active struggle to initially keep the two contexts, home and school apart. As

he says,

I was careful to keep separate the two very diflerent worlds
of my day (pp. 44-5).

Rodriguez struggled to maintain this juxtaposition because, in his mind, it was the only
way of keeping things straight. But why did these two worlds feel at odds with one
another, “at cultural extremes, opposed” (p. 46)?

In a very real sense, they were at cultural extremes. Rodriguez uses scare-quotes

around the word, language, when he first offers the generalizing phrase, “a family’s

language”.

It is not possible for a child - any - child - ever to use his
family ’s language in school. Not to understand this is to

209

 

misunderstand the public uses of schooling and to trivialize
the nature of intimate life - a family ’s ‘language ' (p. 12).

By qualifying his use, Rodriguez expands language to encompass a family’s broader
ways of communicating and making meaning, of talking, valuing, and behaving, ways
embedded in the history and traditions of one particular family and that bind them
together as intimates. For Rodriguez, especially early on, his family’s ‘language’ was the
medium of affiliation. It was his link to the warmth and safety of his family, where words
were valued for their powers of intimacy. The intimate talk of Rodriguez’s family, his
family’s ‘language,’ was for him a unique product of time and place. It was intelligible
only to them. Consequently, in his view, it would be impossible for the conditions that

made it meaningful to have been recreated elsewhere.

Intimacy is not trapped within words. It passes through
words. It passes. The truth is that intimates leave the room.
Doors close. Faces move away from the window. Time
passes... and there is no way to deny it. No way to stand in
the crowd uttering one ’s family language (p. 39).

In hindsight, Rodriguez believes that an important difference for him between
home and school lay in the purposes to which language was put. The raison d ’étre of the
classroom, for young Rodriguez, was the creation of a public self, the development of a
public way of talking, valuing, and behaving, one grounded in mainstream American

culture. The classroom prepared him to participate in that culture as an individual. On the

210

other hand, his family was'where he had first learned to participate as an intimate. This
intimacy was organized around a ‘language’ that was personal to his family for the very
reason that it was not publicly defined. Were it transferable to the classroom, it would
have longer been his family’s ‘language’.

So, for Rodriguez, words served a different purpose at school. At school, words
were in the service of a separate, autonomous self. In that public sphere, he used words
“that belong to the public” (p. 185). Their purpose was to announce himself to a
community of teachers and students, a generalized Other. Rodriguez had intuited that
words at school contained the knowledge, the facts, the information that he would require
to become a member there. When English first surrounded him in the classroom, lthe
Hispanic in him did not want to listen, it wanted to shrink away, to hide. At home it was
different. Spanish words were in the service of affiliation. They revealed the attachment
between family members. Words at home were the channel through which affect and
intimacy flowed.

Later, at the university, words were suddenly introduced who purpose was to
mark aspects of Rodriguez’s identity heretofore unmarked inside of academic contexts. In
stark contrast to his prior school experience, which had silenced his past, words like
minority, minorities, minority groups, and minority student, brought his heritage, and his
past to the foreground. For faculty and other students, these marked important features of
who and what Rodriguez was for them in that setting. For Rodriguez himself, however,
the experience was one of being separated out fiom other students and, in a sense, fiom

the academic mainstream. It was confusing then that, returning to his parents’ home as an

211

undergraduate, the silence between them seemed to represent an implicit
acknowledgement fiom both parents and son that Rodriguez’s identity, that of an aspiring
scholar, drew its water fi'om the gringo world.

The separation that Rodriguez experienced at the British Museum triggered the
crisis that allowed him to finally appreciate the connection in his own life between formal
learning and identity. He understood that behind the “Good Student” there was a genuine
need, the need to affiliate, to find membership and public validation. In the “Bad

Student,” this need had superseded intellectual honesty.

The reason [the scholarship boy] is such a bad student is
because he realizes more often and more acutely than most
other students... that education requires radical self-
reformation... (p. 67)... he remains the uncertain scholar,
bright enough to have moved from his past, yet unable to
feel easy, a part of a community of academics (p. 69).

In these examples of the tension between affiliation and separateness, one can see
that fi'om a young age, a clear relationship was apparent in Rodriguez’s life between
learning and identity, between Rodriguez’s education and the limits of who and what he
might become in the process. It was a tension that was internalized by Rodriguez.
Goodwin (in Hoggart, 1998, p. xiv) refers to “the very particular combination of affinity
and distance that is produced in the Scholarship Boy.” In contrast, the next section will
explore the tensions in Rodriguez’s experience between immediacy and reflection.

Experiences of immediacy refer primarily to those moments in which Rodriguez felt

212

himself connected to those around him, particularly family members, in a very direct and
intimate way. Reflection, on the other hand, attempts to describe those moments in which
Rodriguez found himself with the ability and, indeed, the proclivity to step back in order

to creatively analyze the world.

Immgiacy and Reflection

Transition: School. A parallel with his own experience, Rodriguez describes the
tension the scholarship boy encounters between the spontaneous flow of family life and
the atmosphere of the classroom, where order and reason presumably prevailed. The

following passage brings these nicely into counterpoint.

With his family, the boy has the intense pleasure of
intimacy, the family ’s consolation in feeling public
alienation. Lavish emotions texture home life. Then, at
school, the instruction bids him to trust lonely reason
primarily. Immediate needs set the pace of his parents ’
lives. From his mother and father the boy learns to trust
spontaneity and nonrational ways of knowing. Then, at
school, there is mental calm. Teachers emphasize the value
of reflectiveness that opens a space between thinking and
immediate action (p. 46) School oflers a difi'erently
ordered environment... a change from the confusions of

, busy family life... There are even rows of desks. Discussion
is ordered The [scholarship] boy must rehearse his
thoughts and raise his hand before speaking out in a loud
voice to an audience of classmates. And there is time
enough, and silence, to think about ideas (big ideas) (p.
47).

213

Differences between school and home in the way language was used again played
a large role in such contrasts. Where words at home seemed predominantly in the service
of relationships and of immediate thoughts, needs, or feelings, at school language
contained the solutions to a different type of problem, one typically requiring some
amount of analysis and reflection.5 For Rodriguez, playing into the tension between
immediacy and reflection were important distinctions between the sounds of language in
the classroom (the voice of a teacher giving instructions or making requests) versus those
at home (e.g., the voices of his family members as they casually gathered around the
dinner table). He recalls the distinction in his earliest years between the immediacy of
language as sound in contrast to the more reflective, denotative, or propositional aspects
of language. For example, as a child Rodriguez would listen to “the high and loud
sounds” of los gringos speaking English. Because he understood so little English, “exotic
polysyllabic sounds would bloom in the midst of their sentences” (p. 14). It was the
prosodic aspects of speech, the acoustics of language, that caught him up. “W ide-eyed
with hearing,” he writes, “I’d listen to sounds more than words” (p. 13). In musical terms,

Rodriguez reflects on the distinction for him between word and sound.

 

5 Hoggart’s observations would seem to be corroborated by a recent study by James Gee (2000). Gee
performed a discourse analysis on interviews with working class as opposed to upper nriddle class
American teens. Based on the relative presence of two categories of statements about self, one category
more affective and nanatively embedded with the other leaning toward more cognitive, abstract or
distanced statements, Gee found that while working class teens viewed themselves as “immersed in a
social, aflective etiologic world of interaction,” the upper middle class teens tended to fashion themselves
“as immersed in a world of informati on, knowledge, argumentation, and achievements built out of these”
(p. 416, italics in original).

214

Singers celebrate the human voice. Their lyrics are words.
But animated by voice those words are subsumed into
sounds. I listen with excitement as the words yield their
enormous power to sound - though the words are never
totally obliterated. In most songs the drama or tension
results fiom the fact that the singer moves between word
(sense) and note (song).

In his earliest years, the distinction for Rodriguez between the immediacy of
language as sound and language in its more denotative aspects neatly mapped onto the
distinction between private (home, Spanish) and public (school, English). Eventually,
however, as he became more fluent in English, he also grew less sensitive to the
separation of sound and ‘sense.’ Listening began to involve hearing more of the general

meaning of what was being said rather than the sound of language itself.

Until I was six years old, I remained in a magical realm of
sound... But then the screen door shut behind me as I left
home for school. At last I began my movement toward
words (pp. 38-39).

Rodriguez remembers that he spent a good deal of his time as a child with books.
Reading gave him great satisfaction. It validated him. For him, reading was a way to

acquire a sense of adequacy.

I found reading a pleasurable activity. I came to enjoy the
lonely good company of books. .. carrying a volume back to
the library, I would be pleased by its weight. I ’d run my
fingers along the edge of the pages and marvel at the

215

breadth of my achievement. Around my room, growing
stacks of paperback books reinforced my assurance (p. 62-
63).

The difference in young Rodriguez’s mind between reading and writing is telling. It
speaks to his view of learning at that time and what he believed it could accomplish for
him. Learning was about the accumulation of knowledge and it was reading that gave
him access to that knowledge. Writing was also important, of course, but its purpose was

limited to documenting what knowledge he possessed.

What did I see in my books? 1 had the idea that they were
crucial for my academic success, though I couldn ’t have
said exactly how or why. In the sixth grade I simply
concluded that what gave a book its value was some major
idea or theme it contained If that core essence could be
mined and memorized, I would become learned like my
teachers. I decided to record in a notebook the themes of
the books that I read (p. 62).

Writing was a process of recording his achievement, what he had presumably learned
through reading. It was not a personal or immediate process, one that went beyond the

information given.

Reading was for me the key to ‘knowledge, ’I swallowed
facts and dates and names and themes. Writing, by
contrast, was an activity I thought of as a kind of report,
evidence of learning. I wrote down what I heard teachers
say. I wrote down things from my books. I wrote down all I
knew when I was examined at the end of the school year.

216

Writing was performed after the fact, it was not the exciting
experience of writing itself ...In high school there were
more “creative ‘writing assignments. . . 1 won prizes
[although] I did not feel any great pride in my writings,
however(p. 181).

Looking back, Rodriguez refers to reading as a “habit.” A telling word, something
done without thinking or conscious reflection. Rodriguez recalls that he read without “a
point of view,” not reading so much to learn as to feel learned, to educate himself as to
feel educated. His conviction was that only through those things outside of himself,
teachers or books, could he truly become educated. In other words, he did not perceive
anything on the inside, no quality or trait, no part of himself that could produce

knowledge.

I entered high school having read hundreds of books. My
habit of reading made me a cornident speaker and writer of
English. Reading also enabled me to sense something of the
shape, the major concerns, of Western thought... In these
various ways, books brought me academic success as I
hoped that they would But I was not a good reader. Merely
bookish, I lacked a point of view. I vacuumed books for
epigrams, scraps of information, ideas, themes - anything
to fill the hollow within me and make me feel educated (op.
63-64).

Transition: Graduate School. Even at the university, the process of learning for
Rodriguez was still not a personal one. He was not there to learn about himself. Since

high school, teachers had urged him to write something more personal, “closer to home”

217

(p. 181). But the lesson fi'om the first day of grammar school had been that the point of
view Rodriguez brought with him (his family’s point of view, their ‘language’) was not
the appropriate one. In spite of his public success as a student, Rodriguez remembers

himself as a “great mimic, a collector of thoughts, not a thinker” (p. 67). In third person

he writes of himself,

He sits in the seminar room - a man with brown skin, the
son of working-class immigrant parents. (Addressing the
professor at the head of the table, his voice catches with
nervousness.) Ihere is no trace of his parents ’ accent in his
speech. Instead he approximates the accents of teachers
and classmates. C oming fiom him those sounds seem
suddenly odd Odd too is the effect produced when he uses
academic jargon - bubbles at the tip of his tongue: ‘Topos.
. . negative capability. . . vegetation imagery in
Shakespearean comedy. ’ He lifts an opinion from
Coleridge, takes something else fiom Frye or Empson or
Leavis. He even repeats exactly his professor 's earlier
comment. All his ideas are clearly borrowed He seems to
have no thought of his own (p. 66).

Transition: London. In London, in the British Museum, the shift fiom long
hours of self-absorbed reflection to the immediacy of even casual social contact was

difficult.

I ’d leave the library each dtemoon and feel myself shy -
unsteady, speaking simple sentences at the grocer ’s or the
butcher ’s on my way back to my bed-sitter (p. 70).

218

And the time had come, too, for him to write. It was his dissertation - the pinnacle of
years of Ieaming. Now it was his turn to speak. What would he say? What did he think?
What was his opinion, his perspective? He was unprepared. He had not been authorized
to have a point of view. At that moment, there seemed to be no connection between the
intellectual task he was attempting and the immediate concerns of his heart. Thinking had
become “lifeless.” Increasingly apparent with a gnawing immediacy of its own was the
age old dishonesty with himself. It was the root of his angst. Rodriguez suddenly longed

for “experience more immediate,” a simpler, more direct world of feeling and flesh.

Whenever I started to write, I knew too much (and not
enough) to be able to write anything but sentences that
were overly cautious, timid, strained brittle under the heavy
weight of footnotes and qualifications. I seemed unable to
dare a passionate statement. I felt drawn by
professionalism to the edge of sterility, capable of no more
than pedantic, lifeless, unassailable prose. Then the
nostalgia began... I became impatient with books. I wanted
experience more immediate... I wanted something - l
couldn ’1 say exactly what. I told myself that I wanted a
more passionate life. And a life less thought/511...] wanted to
be less alone (p. 7]).

Transition: Leaving academia. Returning to his parents’ home, Rodriguez
realized a sense in which he would in fact never be able to ‘come home.’ Although he
could physically leave academia, a part of that culture would always be with him. He had
in fact become a scholar. His education had formed in him certain ways of reflecting on

the world and, in a sense, it was his modus operandi, an important constituent of his

219

identity. Still, even though his reflective capacities might help him to understand his
parents in a broader perspective, Rodriguez knew this was a type of understanding that
would never connect him in the more immediate way for which he longed - a way that he

had felt compelled to give up before he was ready.

I came home. A fier the year in England I spent three
summer months living with my mother and father, relieved
by how easy it was to be home ...I felt easy sitting and
eating and walking with them. I watched them,
nevertheless, looking for evidence of those elastic, sturdy
strands that bind generations in a web of inheritance (pp.
71-72) [I] could not cast off the culture I had assumed.
Living with my parents for the summer, I remained an
academic - a kind of anthropologist in the family kitchen,
searching for evidence of our “cultural ties ’ as we ate
dinner together (p. 160).

At first, the realization disappointed him. His penchant for intellectual reflection
seemed to be something that detached him from his parents. However, it came to him that
this was also the skill that had allowed him, and would continue to allow him, to

understand and creatively transform his own life.

I realized that I had not neatly sidestepped the impact of
schooling. My desire to do so was precisely the measure of
how much I remained an academic. Negatively (for that is
how this idea first occurred to me): My need to think so
much and so abstractly about my parents and our
relationship was in itself an indication of my long
education. My father and mother did not pass their time
thinking about the cultural meanings of their experience. It
was 1 who described their daily lives with airy ideas. And

220

yet, positively: The ability to consider experience so
abstractly allowed me to shape into desire what would
otherwise have remained indefinite, meaningless longing in
the British Museum. If because of my schooling, I had
grown culturally separated from my parents, my education
finally had given me ways of speaking and caring about
that fact (p. 72).

The bigger problem for Rodriguez at this point was that his ability to reflect, to
abstract away from immediate experience, still did not feel genuine. Even the process of
trying to complete his dissertation had begun to feel like an aping of academic life. It was
only years later, after he had abandoned his academic goals, that Rodriguez was finally
able to trust the impulse to reflect, to make it his own, a bona fide aspect of himself. Only
then, at a point he ironically calls “the end of education,” did Rodriguez experience
himself as having an authentic choice over his future as an intellectual. There is an

acceptance that it could not have happened any other way.

It would require many more years of schooling (an
inevitable miseducation) in which I came to trust the
silence of reading and the habit of abstracting from
immediate experience - moving away fiom a life of
closeness and immediacy I remembered with my parents,
growing older - before I turned unqraid to desire the past,
and thereby achieved what had eluded me for so long - the
end of education 0). 73).

htmfl' e ngmagy: Immediagy and Reflectign

221

Central to the tension between immediacy and reflection in Burger of Memory
were two different levels at which Rodriguez remembers being conscious of language. At
one level, language was the ‘carrier’ of knowledge. It was the medium through which he
would become a ‘good student.’ Books in particular, Rodriguez believed, held the power
to transform him into an educated person. Academic language at this level served a
denotative rather than a creative or expressive function. It afforded an analytic, detached,
propositional access to a world that somehow did not include himself.

At another level, Rodriguez recalls also being conscious of a more immediate
aspect of language. For him, this was contained in the sound of words.6 Language could
be musical. From this perspective, meaning went beyond mere words to the relational,
imaginary, aesthetic, and affective meanings implicit in their sound. Who was
immediately speaking was as vital as what was said. This is the level to which
Rodriguez’s consciousness attuned as he read poetry or he listened to the voices of
intimates. Ultimately, for Rodriguez the richest sounds seemed to reside in poetry. Poetry
was never quite one or the other, word or sound for him. It continually moved back and

forth between them.

 

6 I recemly had lunch with a friend, a foreign student from a non-English speaking country. She is in
America working on her doctorate. English has continued to be a struggle. She shared that during her most
recent trip home, she was wondering what she missed most about her country. She realized that it was not
the food or the geography or the climate. It was the language. As she put it, she “cannot touch” in English
In English, because she must work so hard at the mechanics of it, she cannot get beyond the feeling of only
“exchanging information” For young Rodriguez as for my friend, words during the initial period of
language acquisition were a means of merely exchanging information. Suddenly, a sensitive child at a
critical point in his development (i.e., leaving the home to enter the first institution of his life), esmcially
once the family had shifted to English, Rodriguez could no longer ‘touch’.

222

It is the song created by lyric poets that I find most
compelling. Written poems exist on a page, at first glance,
as a mere collection of words. And yet, despite this, without
musical accompaniment, the poet leads me to hear the
sounds of the words I read As song, the poem passes
between sense and sound never belonging for long to one
realm or the other (p. 38).

Prior to his parents’ insistence that the family speak only English in the home, for
Rodriguez immediacy and reflection as ways of knowing mapped quite neatly onto home
and school, respectively. Or perhaps more precisely, they mapped onto Spanish and
English. Spanish in the home slid between sound and sense. It nurtured and sustained the
bonds between them. His mother’s voice held great immediacy. In Spanish, the sound

would ‘say’ to Rodriguez...

1 am addressing you in words I never use with los gringos.
I recognize you as someone special, close, like no one
outside. You belong with us. In the family (Ricardo). a).

I 6).

With the banning of Spanish and the introduction of English into the home, until
Rodriguez became more fluent, language existed in the first sense only, that is, as mere
words, a means of exchanging information only. For him there was a disturbing decrease
in the immediacy of the communications between himself and his family members.

A significant issue for Rodriguez, as written about in his autobiography, was a

concern regarding the quality of his reflection, the quality of his intellect. Because, as

223

mentioned, he wanted so much to be validated by his teachers, he had become
obsequious. He did not voice an opinion nor, for that matter, was he given the impression
that original or independent thought was a good thing. From his standpoint, his intellect
was not intended to serve him, it was intended to serve his teachers. Ideas were things to
be borrowed, repeated, lifted from a teacher or a book. This approach to Ieaming was at
frrst successful but, as Rodriguez moved through undergraduate and graduate school, it

gradually undermined him. It was this that prompted him to observe...

although I was a very good student, I was also a very bad
student (p. 44).

Not until his decision to leave academia was made and his formal education
terminated could reflection for Rodriguez, his trust in “the silence of reading and the
habit of abstracting fi'om immediate experience,” become truly his own. Only then did he
feel he had something important and original to contribute as an intellectual. For
Rodriguez, the “end of education” meant that he was now free to think beyond the

information given.

224

CHAPTER SIX

Jill Ker Conway

The Road to Coorain relates the events in the education and life of Jill Ker
Conway from 1929, when her folks purchased the family’s sheep ranch in the Australian
outback, to Ker Conway’s departure in 1960 for graduate school in the United States.‘
Ker Conway writes about her path from the outback, with its isolation and unforgiving
natural elements, to the complex social world of Sydney, where she, her mother and two
brothers relocated following her father’s untimely death. Conway’s education occurs
amidst, if not because and in spite of, her struggles against the forces of fate, family
tragedy, class, culture, and an increasingly self-absorbed mother. Rich in detail, m:
Road to Coorain is a book about how Conway first recognizes and then gradually learns
to cherish and protect her own intellectual freedom.

Background. Jill Ker Conway was born in the Australian outback in 1934. With her
family, she lived on a remote and isolated ranch that her parents' had purchased in 1929.
They named it “Coorain,” an aboriginal word meaning windy place. Her father raised
sheep and cattle, a tough job given the barrenness of the land and the unpredictability of
the elements. He had been a sharpshooter in the first world war and, upon returning to

Australia, had overseen a large ranching operation.

‘ Conway has also written a second book, True North (Ker Conway, 1994), that encompasses her arrival in
the United States, graduate school, and her subsequent personal and professional life in America. This work
will concern itself only with the events contained in W.

225

. . . . .n
. ween—<8 #35"? «$9 0895
$522.83

.29 gene: Karen conic:
. 95. 8 .035 >533
.58 3053 383. moroc— a
flwfific 082 $183. 2. 3.9.3, Mann— fine—.mp0
2. $953. 1:58. . 25:”
. pea—mar Eon—hm o:
985. 0835.

 

 

226

3.53 Eon.

p.35, range
0835 - ..E
mafia wage.
3.59588

 

>~§Qw MS?" MEG—5 S anon-0H WO—u afimmgsm

moroc— >vco£nis 9.9.. dain— S . USE cc. 2. we.
. >7 . . . . .55 8
A23 85 €358 5&9. _..=W.m¥_mr Ba “Human—Q emu c3333,
. . e ion

gnu—.5 ‘ CEeGEQ 0.. _

 

19.3 n ...... x3 00:23 - 4.3053 c." 3&2. 43.5503. minim

227

Although neither of Conway’s parents had much formal education, both were
intelligent and could read and write. Her father was mostly self-taught. “His education
had been the lore of raising sheep and cattle, breaking horses, knowing how to command
men,” writes Conway (p. 20). Conway’s mother had quit school at age 14 to work in
support of her family. Resenting this arrangement, she left home at 17 and began nurse’s
training, which she completed while still in her teens. Conway writes that her mother
used her profession “to educate herself.” Her mother would take positions in difi’erent
parts of the country where she could “sample” and “explore” life. After ten years of
working, she met Conway’s father. Aware of her lack of formal learning, Conway’s
mother undertook a program of self-education, reading widely during their period as a
young family at Coorain. Adhering to the colonial mentality of the time, she was
determined that none of her children should become associated, in education or manner,
with Australia's commonfolk.2 Because of the remoteness of Coorain, Conway’s only
contact with other children was with her two older brothers, who were both away at

boarding school by the time Conway was seven. So great was the remoteness that she did

not see another child her own age until she was eleven.

 

2 Historically, there has been an assumption that Australian commonfolk are descendants of rtus‘ ongrnatlh
European inhabitants, which were British convicts sent to the Austrahan colony during the 18 and 19
centuries in Briton’s efi‘ort to populate it. Unable to persuade ordinary crtrzens to immigrate, for two
hundred years the British government had sent ship afier ship of convrcts. to Australra (Sydney rtselfwas
originally a convict settlement). In subsequent generations, there was an inherited contempt among the
descendents of these original settlers toward those who identified themselves, rn education and manner, .
with "higher," genteel, British culture. Only recently has this begun to change tothe paint where the ability
to trace one's roots to Australia’s original European inhabitants has become a pornt of pnde.

228

Conway learned to read at an early age and, with her curious mind, was soon
reading “everything within reach” (p. 41). Books were not work, but provided a window
onto the world outside their isolated ranch. Because of Conway’s passion for reading, a
more formal early elementary education (which would have been by correspondence
nonetheless) was not pursued. At age eight, however, Conway did begin a
correspondence course designed for educating children in the outback.

Although the start of her parents’ venture at Coorain coincided with the Great
Depression and with what was to become an extraordinary period of draught, the early
years were good. Conway remembers these as a time of stability for the family. Life was

in rhythm with the seasons and the regularity of the tasks of ranching.

All in all, what might on the surface appear like a lonely
childhood especially after the departure of my brothers
[for boarding school], was one filled with interest,
stimulation, and friends...this world gave me most of what
we need in life, and gave it generously. I had the total
attention of both my parents, and was secure in the
knowledge of being loved Better still, I knew that my
capacity for work was valued and that my contributions to

the work of the property really mattered (p. 50).

Unfortunately, as the years passed, an extended drought began to ravage the farm.
The deterioration of her parents' dreams was difficult, eSpecially for her father. As things
worsened he began to isolate himself, withdrawing into a deep and extended depression.

Following his death fi'om an apparent drowning, her mother moved the family to Sydney

229

where Jill entered school for the first time.3 Conway’s mother maintained ownership of
Coorain, however, hiring a manager to run the day to day operations.

Sydney represented a huge change for Conway, both socially and culturally. Her
first experience of school was as a day student in a private school, Queenwood, where
she spent the remainder of her first year in Sydney. Concerned with the cost of private
school, Conway’s mother enrolled her in the local state school the following year.
Dismayed, Conway did not return after the first day.‘ Instead, her mother finagled an
interview for Conway with the head mistress of Abbotsleigh, a prestigious private school
for girls, where Conway completed the remainder of her elementary and secondary
education.

In her third year at Abbotsleigh, Conway’s brother Bob, whom she loved deeply,
was killed in a tragic car accident. He was 21. Conway remembers her grief and her
subsequent slide into a cocoon of defensive numbness. “Daily life was in black and
white...I mastered intellectual tasks as in the past, but they gave little pleasure” (p. 122).
'Her mother was paralyzed by the loss. Conway remembers that while away at school, she
would be “haunted” by the knowledge of her mother sitting alone at home, “anxiety-

crazed” and fearing that that Jill and her brother would also be taken by a sudden and

 

3 It remains undetermined whether her father’s death was a suicide or in fact accidental.

4 Conway writes: “In fact, had 1 persevered [and stayed in the state school] I would have learned a great
deal, though little of it from the harassed and overworked teachers in the ill-equipped classrooms. I‘d have
been obliged to come to terms with the Australian class system, and to see my family's world from the
irreverent and often hilarious perspective of the Australian working class. It would have been invaluable
knowledge, and my vision of Australia would have been the better for it It was to take me another fifteen
years to see the world from my own Australian perspective, rather than from the British definition taught to
my kind of colonial. On the other hand. had I learned that earthy irreverence in my schooldays, it would
We ruled out the appreciation of high cultln'e in any form. My mother had no training for that
appreciation, but she knew insunctively to seek it for her children” (p. 95).

230

unpredictable death. The overwhelming neediness of her mother weighed heavily on
Conway. It drew her away from her peers, a world her underdeveloped social abilities
already had her struggling to enter.

The following year, her mother surprised them by taking Jill, brother Barry (4
years older), and another fiiend on an ocean cruise to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Conway

writes,

My mother could not have decided upon arty experience
better calculated to banish our daily routine and
superimpose startling new experiences on the troublesome
memories of the year (p. 128).

This was Conway’s first exposure to a country other than her own and it jarred her
cultural moorings. Against the contrasts of a foreign culture, she realized how much of
what she knew was not necessarily true but simply presumed or taken for granted as true.
Suddenly, many aspects of Australian culture such as the brevity of its history, its class
system, and its religious foundations were no longer so transparent.

Conway graduated from Abbotsleigh with numerous honors and awards. Still, she
was sad to leave the sanctuary of the place and frightened by thoughts of the teeming
social world of the University. She wanted to get out from under her mother’s control but
felt bound by loyalty and tradition to care for her. To further complicate things, although
she knew she loved to study, Conway hadn’t the slightest idea of what she ‘Rvould

become” after three years of higher education. Nonetheless, following graduation,

231

Conway began to attend the University of Sydney while still actively attending to her
mother. Ultimately, she was disillusioned by her coursework It seemed trivial and
arcane, of little relevance to her own life. Also, her difficulty forming friendships lefi her
feeling alienated.

Conway decided to dr0p out of college midway through her first year, using her
mother’s ill health as justification. About the same time, her brother Bany, who had been
managing Coorain, left Coorain for good and was working successfiilly as a bush pilot.
Unlike herself, he seemed to have “made his own place in life” (p. 159). This left
Conway next in line for helping her mother to manage Coorain, which meant occasional
solo trips there.

Returning from Coorain afier the shearing of the sheep, Conway decided that she
needed to gain some financial independence from her mother. She found work in a
medical office where she served as an “all-purpose medical records clerk, receptionist,
appointments secretary, and occasional practical nurse” (p. 161). This period was an
important time for Conway’s sense of herself. She made deliberate improvements in her
physical appearance. Through her daily interactions with the public, she unexpectedly
found herself developing the ability to interact in a public context, abilities she had not
been able to develop on Coorain or in her isolated existence with her mother. Conway’s
relationship with mother improved during this time. Her mother was even willing to pay
Conway’s fees when she decided to return to the University. Returning to school,

Conway experienced herself and the University differently than before. She now had a

232

public self. She was able to begin forming relationships, many vital to her future as a
scholar.

Back at the university and confident, Conway even began skipping classes
occasionally. She was learning from her friend, Toni, “the art of enjoying life, of stopping
to savor the joys of the moment” (p. 165). Studying was crammed into nights and
weekends at home. That same fall, her mother visited Coorain with a friend for a couple
of months. Conway used this as an opportunity to further explore her new way of life,
inviting fiiends over for meals, study groups, overnight stays, parties, and general
conviviality. Word of this got back to her mother on Coorain who, deeply disappointed,
cut her trip short. Although Jill would be disciplined, her mother said, this could wait
until she had completed her imminent first year examinations. Her mother was convinced
that Conway had fiittered away her preparation time and that her showing on the exams
would be dismal.

I The day before the first exam, Conway reviewed “the fragmentary notes” of those
lectures that she had actually attended and glanced over the assigned books. She felt a
“sense of clam and detachment” the morning of the exam. The exam was on Tudor
history, a subject on which she had been reading independently for years. Following the
examinations, Conway and her mother were startled when telegrams and letters of
congratulations began arriving. Both Conway and her mother were taken aback. Jill had
succeeded wildly, taking a first in history and scoring highly in both English and
psychology. This inaugurated a period of academic stardom that was new and “heady.” It

began to form in Conway the confidence that her ideas could earn her recognition and

233

respect in the wider academic world. She realized that she could write and that, further ,
reflective thinking and writing (unlike in high school) were the kind of things valued in
the University.

As graduation from the University of Sydney approached, Conway applied for a
governmental position with Australia’s Department of External Affairs. “I wanted. . .to
play what I saw as a practical role in the general reorientation of the country’s culture and
external relations,” she writes (p. 187). In spite of her overwhelming qualifications, she
was denied the position on the basis of gender. It was her first run-up against the wall of
sexual prejudice in the Australia of the late 1950s She was bitterly disappointed. She
had “obtusely” ignored the fact that there was only one female on the history faculty and
that she herself was the only woman in the history program. She could not fathom that
conformity to gender stereotypes would actually take precedence over the value of the
many skills she possessed. This did much to raise Conway’s consciousness regarding the
historical conditions of women in society, including her own mother’s. She was
determined to learn more that might help her to eventually contribute to some kind of
cultural change.

After graduating with a degree in history, Conway took an extended trip to
England, Europe and Spain with her mother. The trip provided extensive exposure to
British culture, its class system, and its condescending attitude toward Australian culture.
She soaked up the history of the various sites they visited around Europe, putting this into
juxtaposition with Australian history. Building on the initial insights that had primed her

historical consciousness during her teen-age trip to Ceylon, the contrasts began to

234

produce special insights into the history, culture, and geography of her native land,
insights that reached beyond her previous colonial attitudes.

Conway returned to Australia with new eyes. Owing to her congenial relationship
with the faculty, she managed to secure a teaching job in the history department at the
University of Sydney. Meanwhile, she continued to live with, and care for, her mother.
She also made occasional trips in the service of managing affairs on Coorain. It was a
liminal existence: academic and bush cultures in juxtaposition. Although moving
between them provided Conway with unique insights into both, it also lead to a sense of
confilsion regarding which world she actually belonged in. Her desire for intellectual
fulfillment pulled to the fiiture. At the same time, her loyalty to her mother and to
Coorain hugged to the past.

During this period, Conway began a brief but intense romantic relationship with
an American businessman, a mining speculator whom she met while visiting her
brother’s farm on the outback. He was the first person with whom Conway experienced
complete acceptance of herself as a woman and as a professional. However, because both
had strong commitments to their professions, their relationship lasted only 16 months.
Nonetheless, it was influential in convincing Conway that her pursuit of learning and the
development of her identity as an intellectual must take precedence over the obligations
she felt to her mother and Coorain. Spurred by the sudden and stark realization of her
powerlessness over her mother’s increasing bitterness, Conway made the decision to
leave Australia for graduate study at Harvard. The R o C r 'n ends with her leaving

her native country, her mother, and her past for an unknown firture in the United States.

235

The next section concerns itself with the tension that Conway experienced
between stability and change. For Conway, in general, this was reflected through her
struggle to maintain a sense of personal continuity through her role as daughter and
caretaker while, at the same time, a series of major life events, her formal learning
experiences, and the press of her own ideas continued to move her toward becoming
something different. As with the prior analyses, the sections will be organized according

to those transitions that seemed critical to the particular tensions being discussed.

Stabilig and gghange.

Transition: School. The first important transition in Conway’s life involved the
death of her father and the family’s move to Sydney. It was an abrupt change from
Coorain where, although the spaces were vast, the rules regarding how to live one’s life
were simple and few. In Sydney, Conway’s mother enrolled her as a day student at
Queenwood. Here Conway suddenly found herself dropped into the “totally enclosed
world” of the school. It seemed complicated and mysterious. And in this urban setting her
knowledge of the natural world seemed completely useless. Most remarkable was the

experience of being among persons her own age. It was new, frightening, and fatiguing.

I found the small world inside the school gates alien and
intimidating. Having never had a playmate, I did not know
how to play. Never having known anyone my own age, I
was uncertain about how to begin with thirty or so other
eleven-year-olds (8 7) ...Each afternoon 1 was exhausted
not by the schoolwork, which mostly seemed very easy, but
by the stress of coping with so mcmy people and trying to
guess what the rules were for each new situation on. 89).

236

On Coorain, with the exception of her older brothers, all of Conway’s interactions
were with adults. They took place around adult projects and concerns. Although at school
she was in a world created especially for children, it was not a world she understood. The
purpose of activities was lost on her. Coorain had been an intelligible world. “One saw
visible results fiom one’s labors” (p. 50). The logic of Ieaming on Coorain was driven by
the immediate need to survive. If she got lost in the outback, she would die. Therefore,
Conway learned early on how to navigate the terrain. If a sheep could not be caught and
held, no wool would be obtained. Therefore, she learned the trick of tackling them so
they could be sheered. The role of children was to help. It was a familiar world and
Conway felt capable in it. Herein school, in what felt like a swarm, where everything
seemed so arbitrary and illogical, she suddenly felt herself inadequate. The change jarred

her.

The school yard with its busy ant heap of people skipping
rope, throwing basketballs, shouting, and playing
hopscotch reduced me to a paralysis of shyness. I had
never seen tennis or basketball played and had not the
faintest notion of the rules... I was used to knowing better
than most people what needed to be done. Here I was the
veriest incompetent, not only in games, but in the
classroom, where there were also rules to be learned It did
no good to ask why the rules obtained Answers were not
forthcoming (p. 87).

The rules that sustained school culture were much harder to understand than

anything Conway was required to learn academically. Out of school, as her mother began

237

to adjust to the change and loss, their relationship became a mooring. For a time, their
shared history and the gradual patterning of their home life provided a point of stability

for Conway.

With each day that passed in our new way of life, I could
see [mother’s] body relaxing. She was still haunted by grief
at the past and by anxiety about the firture, but the lines of
tension disappeared fiorn her boob/... On most days after I
arrived home, we had a leisurely afternoon tea gazing at

the Harbor, and then we read for an hour or so before
dinner (p. 89).. our first months together in Sydney were
golden (p.91)

Transition: State School. With Coorain still producing no income, Conway’s
mother began to be concerned with the cost of private school. As much as she hated the
idea, her mother asked Jill if she might like the local state school. Her suggestion that she
enter state school astonished Conway, who had internalized her mother’s colonial
attitude. She had thought of herself as above the commonfolk, and now) she was being
asked to join them? Sensitive to her mother’s predicament, she consented. She was

appalled and dumbfounded by what she encountered.

The first day of school in February was hot, 105 degrees.
The school, a brick building with an iron roof: was like a
furnace, and its inhabitants, teachers and students, wilted
as the day wore on. I hated it from the moment I walked in
the door. I was a snob, and I knew the accents of the
teachers and most of the students were wrong by the
exacting standwds we ’d had drummed into us at home @p.
93-94) Worse still was the unruly behavior of everyone of

238

every age. Boys pulled my hair. . . girls stuck out their
tongues and used bad language. Teachers lost their
tempers and caned pupils in fiont of the class. Few books
were opened as the stafir waged a losing battle to establish
order m 93).

As with her short experience at Queenwood, Conway could not fathom the logic by

which the state school operated. She remembers her befuddlement.

I was [again] in a more diverse social universe than I had
known at C oorain. I had no idea how to behave or what
the rules were for managing social boundaries. 1 had been
friends, one could say special friends, with [station hands]
Shorty, or with Ron Kelly, but that was in a simple world
where we each knew our respective places. Here, I knew
only that the old rules could not possibly apply (p. 94).

Even if the “rules” by which the school operated had been fathomable, Conway was not
likely to have joined with them. Her sense of herself told her that she was in the wrong
place. As she was set upon by the other students, it reinforced for her the difference
between herself and them and the impossibility that she could ever change enough to

belong there.

“Stuck up, ain't you, ” they yelled as I faced them in
stubborn silence. They were right... My encounter was a
classic confrontation for the Australia of my generation. I,
the carefillly respectable copier of British manners, was
being called to raucous and high-spirited account by the
more vital and unquestionably authentic Australian
popular culture (p. 94).

239

Transition: Abbotsleigh. In contrast to Queenwood and her brief experience at
state school, Conway was immediately comfortable at Abbotsleigh.5 She felt herself
among her own social class. (Not back among her class, by the way, for the fact is that
she had never physically been among an actual community of people who shared a
colonial mindset. It was always the attitudes and expectations of her mother that had
formed her colonial perceptions of herself.) At Abbotsleigh, Conway found there were
other bush girls who were also struggling to adapt. She writes that “many students were
boarders from distant country areas who had also had to overcome their shyness and
become social beings” (p. 97). The teachers, sensitive to this, helped Conway negotiate
the transition from an isolated world to the compressed world of the city. Slowly at first,
she eventually found her niche in a group of students who shared a characteristic

stoicism.

My boarder friends were mainly the daughters of the real
backcountry, people who were homesick for the bush and
their families and accepted the school as a term which must
be served uncomplainingly (p. 106).

The contrast between Abbotsleigh and her brief experience at the state school was

abrupt. It brought into stark relief the disparity between Conway’s own possibilities for

 

5 Abbotsleigh, which currently calls itself “The Australian School for World Citizens,” is still in existence.
The school maintains a website replete with photos: http://www.abbotsleigh.nsw.edu.au/

240

becoming educated and the bleakness of opportunity she saw for students at the state

school. She felt grateful.

The difference between our chances for education were as
night and day. At Abbotsleigh, even though I was
immediately ushered into a classroom of thirty-six total
strangers, it seemed as though I had already arrived in

paradise (p. 97).

It is important to add that although this was a time of great change in the
circumstances of Conway’s life, there were also significant changes taking place in
Australian culture generally. As in America, the period following WWII was one of
general prosperity in Australia. For many, college was becoming more necessity than the
privilege it had once represented. Also as in America, the boom of Australian post-war
babies reached adolescence in what was generally an optimistic time. The economy was
good and the pace of change in popular culture was swift. Things had been much
different for Conway’s mother, of course, who had grown up in a more cautious and

conservative era.

My mother's code of thrift, sobriety, and industry had
served her well growing up in a simpler Australian society,
but it had little appeal for her children, hungry for the
excitement and experience, and made aware of a more
complex society transformed by the economic stimulus of
the Second World War. In contrast to the cautious
mentality inherited by the generation shaped by the
Depression, we [C onway and her two older brothers] were
agog with the excitement of prosperity, and the questions

241

raised by Australia ’s wartime contact with American
culture @. 109).

A year or so following her brother Bob’s tragic death, Conway’s mother took Jill
and Barry on an ocean journey to Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Although her mother had intended
the trip as a diversion, something to distract them from their loss, the contrast of cultures
ignited Conway’s consciousness. She was jolted by the extent of her own ethnocentrism.
Things cultural had always been evaluated in relation to her own class, her own ethnicity,

and the values of Australian colonialism generally. Now, in Ceylon,

I felt so disoriented by the extremes of poverty and by my
uncertainty about how to behave that I could not relax and
enjoy the color, the vitality, and the richness of the new
sights and sounds (p. 131). I was puzzled about how to
understand and organize the daily flood of new images (p.
1 3 3 ).

Conway found herself calling her colonial perspective into question. She realized
the modest length of Australian history in relation to cultures whose traditions antedated
Christ. Australia’s class system was not the only possible class system, Christianity not
the only possible view of the human soul. For the first time, she viewed Australia from
the outside. As she did, Conway began to appreciate the arbitrary nature not only of

Australian culture, but of culture in general - the fact that, as a product of history, it could

242

always be other than it was at that moment. Finally, she began to discern the parochial

nature of her own education. 6

A new view of history began to shape my perceptions... Why
had no one taught me more about this earlier faith
[Budcflrism] so similar to Christianity in so many respects?
Moreover, why had I been taught to date everything from
the birth of Christ and the emergence of the Christian West
(p. 132) ?

Of course, a consequence of such epiphanies was to find herself questioning the
very ground of her own cultural identity. She saw its presumptuousness and even
arrogant. These awarenesses were powerful and unsettling for Conway. She felt a pull to

return home.

So much of the culture we were viewing in our journey
round the island was the product of religion. This was a
Buddhist and Hindu country. I wondered idly what
Australia was. Did people in Ceylon believe in Karma and
a cyclical view of history to explain away the terrible
inequities between classes and castes? This set me
wondering what beliefs we had at home to justibr our
inequities. Such ideas were unheard of I began to look
forward to going home and settling into a familiar routine

(p. 134).

5 Conway writes that the curriculum at Abbotsleigh was "inherited from Great Britain,” colonial through
and through. Consequently, it "ignored our presence in Australia..We might have been in Sussex for all the
attention we paid to Australian poetry and prose. It did not count (p. 98)." This was the colonial mindset.
Although Australian by birth, one's identity was tied to things British To learn was to reconstruct oneself
in the British style of thought and manner.

243

Conway’s experience in Ceylon brought her more than an awareness of class. She
was also becoming conscious of herself from a national perspective, an identity that
ultimately stood in relation to countries outside her own.

Transition: Thinking about University. During her final year at Abbotsleigh,

Conway wondered what would become of her.

I knew I couldn ’t cope with the world outside my family
and school yet. I ’d never managed to learn to chatter easily
with strangers, partly because my home and family wasn ’t
the kind I could chatter easily about (p. 144).

Abbotsleigh had surrounded her with the fi'eedom and the stability to discover her own
abilities and interests, to develop a sense of who and what she was apart from her family
relationships. It had provided a stable niche where she had begun to blossom

intellectually, establish extended fiiendships, and experience some sense of continuity

' regarding who and what she was as a person.

[A bbotsleigh] had given me a secure and orderly
environment in which to grow, and adults to admire who
took it for granted that women would achieve. Moreover, it
had been a haven of sorts from the pressures of home . . . It
had also given me fiiends with whom I could grow slowly
from chilcfltood to adolescence. In our time there, we had
all come to accept one another like comforting pieces of
fitmiture, and no longer had to hear one another ’s

approval (p. 144).

244

Now, suggestions for the future came from all sides. Many of these contained the
assumption that Conway’s educational filture, like that of most girls, would follow

stereotypical gender paths.

There were clear injunctions from the adult world about
what fields of university study were appropriate for a
woman... ”Don ’t take science, ” family friends advised
“There is too much mathematics, and besides, what would
a girl like you do in an industrial laboratory? ” The things
that were “nice for a woman ” to study were unintellectual

(p. 143).

Conway searched for landmarks by which to determine a course for herself. A star in the
night sky maybe, or some stable rock. Unlike the outback, the urban terrain provided no
such things. What would she make of herself? What could she make of herself? Female

professionals were rare in the late 1950s. Did she even have the freedom to consider such

options? Stereotypes danced tauntingly around her.

My family and fi'iends agreed that 1 was “brainy. ” This
was a bad thing to be in Australia. People distrusted
intellectuals. Australians mocked anyone with “big ideas”
and found them specially laughable in a woman. My
mother herself was divided on the subject. One moment she
would be congratulating me on my performance at school,
and the next contradicting her approval by urging me not
to become too interested in my studies. If I did I would

24S

become a “bluestocking, ” a comically dull and unfeminine
person @. 146). 7

Perhaps most importantly, following the path of learning and change by heading
off to university would mean leaving her mother. Conway had always understood herself

in the light of this relationship. It was difficult to imagine anything beyond it, something

else to which she could anchor an identity or self.

[Pride and self-worth obtained from the role of caretaker]
was no help when I thought about leaving school and
finding my way among the teeming thousands of young
people at the University of Sydney. I knew I loved to study,
but just what I would do there was unclear. What would I
become after three years of higher education? Try as I
might I couldn ’t conjure up a single image to fill in the
blank prospect of the future...My picture of myself as an
adult was as empty as the western plains (p. 14 7).

At the graduation ceremonies, Conway was depressed. She struggled between her
desire for her own path and the family loyalty that would lead down a road she was

already familiar with and, moreover, could predict with certainty. There was no joy at the

 

7 In mid-18th century England a group of women decided to replace evenings of card playing and idle
chatter with ‘conversation parties,’ inviting illustrious men of letters to discuss literary and intellectual
topics with them. One regular guest was scholar-botanist Benjamin Stillrngfleet. Hrs hostesses wrllrngly
overlooked his cheap blue worsted stockings (a type disdained by the elite) in order to have. the benefit of
his lively conversation. Those who considered it inappropriate for women to aspire ‘0 lwmns WU
called the group the ‘Blue Stocking Society.’ (Merriam-Webster, 2001).

246

awards she received that day. She was only irritated that the graduation speaker “slid

smoothly past the immediate question of why we had been educated and what we were
supposed to do with the rest of our lives” (p. 149). Although her mother had fallen and
fractured her wrist the day before, her mother’s absence at the ceremony was ominous.

Conway was confilsed. Hope and powerlessness warred within her.

Daughters in Australia were supposed to be the prop and
stay of their parents. Would I ever get away? Was it wrong
to want to? How on earth could I set about doing it? How
could I tell this woman who lived for me that I did not want
to live for her? . . . I often watched the Southern Cross in the
night sky, but it was not just a compass bearing I needed
now, it was a judgment about what would be the moral
path to choose (p. 151).

Transition: University . Although without a clear picture of where it might lead,
Conway finally made the decision to attend the University of Sydney. She would live at
home. This would make it possible to attend school while also continuing to care for her

mother. But she found it difficult to keep up both roles, university student and caretaker.

Would I get everything done in the house before setting out
for the thirty-minute walk to the train station?

“Everything ” involved seeing that my mother had what she
needed for the day, that she was downstairs safely, and that
the house was in apple-pie order (p. 155).

247

While university life confused and intimidated her, Conway returned home everyday to
the exhausting but familiar role of caring for her mother. It was a responsibility that

drained her energies for study and also isolated her from other students. The fact that she

found the content of her courses uninspiring did not help.

At [A bbotsleigh] sitting down to my books in the evening
had been the happy occupation which capped the day, but
now I was too weary to enjoy the work. I might have been
lifted out of it by the interest of my work, but I was finding
most of it dull or disappointing or both (p. 15 7).

After dropping out of the university in the middle of her first year, Conway began

to help her mother manage affairs on Coorain.

It was a sacred trust, [mother] said our last link to my
father and our once happy family life there. I embraced this
responsibility energetically, seeing it as a comfort to my
ailing mother, whose complaints were now numerous It
was comfortable to be working there (p. I 5 9).

Following the unsettling experience of the university, Conway found comfort in her roots
at Coorain and in the solitude it offered. At the same time, taking her first paid work
position during this period, a medical receptionist, marked an important change.
Although her motive had been to achieve a greater degree of financial independence from

her mother, it proved to be Conway’s first move toward developing a public identity. She

248

learned to make improvements in her physical appearance according to her own likes, not
her mother’s. “I was painstakingly constructing an acceptable public self”, she writes (p.
162). She no longer spent her evenings exclusively at home but began to date. She began
to feel for herself that she was really changing. Still, her mother was generally

disapproving.

I felt that at last I was traveling at a heady speed toward
adulthood dressed to kill and reaay for adventure. My
mother observed my comings and goings warily, but I was
too elated to notice her watchfirl and guarded behavior (p.
I 6 3 ).

Returning to the university one year later, Conway experienced both herself and it
differently. Her work at the medical office had helped here to feel more comfortable
socially. She had developed the skills and confidence to negotiate a place for herself in

public spaces.

This time...1 brew my way around and now accustomed to
talking to strangers, I could chatter easily with whomever I
sat next to in lectures (p. 164) .

The changes in Conway’s life up to this point seemed to be either imposed on her
or were somehow a result of her attempts to extricate herself from unhappy

circumstances. Either way, she struggled to adapt. The next major change was not like

249

this. Instead, it was sparked by an exceptional performance on her first year

examinations. Conway and her mother were startled when the telegrams and letters of

congratulations began arriving.

It gradually dawned on me that 1 had done very well...I had
come first in history, earned high distinction in English,
and had ranked high in the class in psychology (p. 168).

For the first time, Conway had the “inner feeling” that she had found something at which
she could excel. In addition, she had found the means by which she might open doors in
the future, particularly one’s through which she might be unindentured from her

responsibilities at home.

If I were to become a success academically and chose a
career which would take me away fiom Sydney, it would
finesse the whole question of leaving home. My mother
would never stand in the way of success. Moreover, if it
were public enough, its sweetness might cushion the blow

of my departure (p. 168).

There were suddenly dramatic changes in how those in Conway’s academic
setting acknowledged her. She had gone from being simply another student to one whose
intellectual gifts distinguished her. She was welcomed into the honors program,

reinforcing her new-sprung sense of herself as someone with special talents.

250

The beginning of my second year at the University of
Sydney was a heady time. People brew who I was. F aculty,
hitherto superior beings clad in black gowns, now nodded
as they passed me in the Quadrangle. Everyone taking
history or English honors in the years above me began to
taking an interest in what I was doing. I started out taking
a double honors program in history and English, enjoying
the special status that this ambitious program brought (p.
1 6 9).

However, after being rejected on the basis of gender for the government position
she had hoped to acquire upon college graduation, Conway again found herself in a
dilemma. Although her desire to become a professional scholar was strong, she also
feared the implications this would have. She had made personal changes that provided
her with a stronger sense of herself as a woman. Yet these changes, which she valued,
when carried into the academy threatened the stability of the academy’s patriarchal

structure. She was afraid to follow the path of change and yet she was afraid not to.

At a deeper level I feared choosing a career that was
universally seen as unfeminine. I feared the only sensible
choice for me, the life of a scholar, because I was too
uncertain of my identity as a woman to risk the cultural
dissonance the choice involved (p. 196).

But Conway’s subsequent year abroad with her mother, undertaken first as an
escape fiom the dead ends she had encountered, only brought her back to her passion for
questions of history, culture, and identity. She began to understand what it meant that she

was Australian, that she had grown up in the outback where one’s eyes grew accustomed

251

to tremendous distances and a natural, austere beauty. She realized it was where she had

formed her aesthetic sense.

It took a visit to England for me to understand how the
Australian landscape actually formed the ground of my
consciousness, shaped what I saw. ..My landscape was
sparer, more brilliant in color, stronger in its contrasts,
majestic in scale, and bathed in shimmering light (p. 198).

As Conway and her mother traveled,

the journey involved the redefinition of our relationship to

the past and reconfiguring our sense of geography. Just as
we brow ourselves in relation to others, so I brew how

beautiful Australia was only after encountering the real
rather than the imagined landscape of England and Europe

(p. 201).

Thus, it is against a dramatic change in culture and topography, living and traveling in the
countries of Great Britain, France, Portugal, and Spain, that Conway acquired her deepest
sense of herself as Australian. She recognized then how her very consciousness had been
shaped by the history, culture, and geography of her homeland. It was something she

desired passionately to understand. In this desire, she found the moorings for a career.

I brew now what I was going to do. I was going home to
stuay history. It was no use pretending that I wasn ’t a
scholar @. 209) I was going back to Australia to test my

252

new sense of the world and my new perspective on
Australian society (p. 210) ...It was absurd that it had taken
me until I was twenty-three years old to get oriented on the
globe, but I was glad that I finally brew where I was (p.

1 I ).

Returning to Australia with new eyes, Conway was asked to teach a course on
American History at the university of Sydney. It brought her face-to-face again with the
gender stereotypes that becoming a scholar would challenge. Could she hang on to her
hard-won sense of herself as a woman? It was a change that she had worked hard to
achieve and that was still somewhat fragile. To strive to firlfill herself intellectually
within 1950’s Australian culture would represent a challenge to the status quo, a threat to

deeply entrenched traditions.

The morning of each lecturing day, I woke up with a hollow
feeling in the pit of my stomach and set out for the
University like a prisoner headed for the guillotine. I was
beset by a sudden new set of worries about my appearance.
I diah ’t want to hide my anomalous female self under the
conventional black academic gown. . I ’m a woman standing
here teaching, not some apologetic, sexually neutral
person. I didn ’t have the powers of analysis to understand
that my tenseness and anxiety came from crossing social

boundaries (p. 219).

Although Conway had made plans to pursue graduate work, she still had one foot
in the outback. She had continued to take responsibility for affairs on Coorain. “I was

puzzling about my filture and what world I really belonged in” (p. 224), she writes. About

253

this time, Conway had also begun to feel a certain emptiness in her life. She seemed to
live in two different worlds between which she was the only constant. Either place, there
was a part of her that didn’t belong. In the academy, she sometimes felt like a rancher
dressed in professorial garb. On Coorain, she was an academic in rancher’s clothing.

There was no one who had witnessed and could validate both identities.

There was no one in any of the variety of circles in which I
moved who could participate with me in all the various
worlds I liked to inhabit (p. 225).

It was during this time that she met Alec Merton, an American businessman, with whom
she had a 16 month romance. A uranium speculator with a college background, he was
someone at ease in both of Conway’s worlds, outback and academia. He understood both
aspects of her life. His insistence that her greatest gifts were as a scholar therefore had a

special credibility.

I couldn ’t believe it; I ’d found a man who respected my
work and who shared my exacting standards about it... In
many respects he was the first really sane, thoughtfitl, and
mature person I ’d known, and as a result he began to set
me straight about many of my approaches to life... when I
mentioned my duty and responsibility to the family, he just
shook his head “Your duty ’s to your talents, ” he said
“Never forget it. You can pay someone to run that ranch
almost as well as you ’11 do it. But no one else can develop

your gifts ” (p. 228).

254

Their relationship played a critical role in solidifying Conway’s image of herself as a

professional woman. Merton admired her work and she began to take it more seriously in

return.

It was not long after their relationship had ended, both faithfirl to the precedence
of their professional lives, that Conway’s mother exploded in an irrational rage at
Conway’s brother and his wife during a visit. Suddenly, Conway saw the truth of what

her mother had become.

My mother was now an angry and vindictive woman, her
rages out of all proportion to any real or imagined

slight... [she was] impregnably entrenched in her quest for
self-immolation (p. 231) . . . I realized in what amounted to a
conversion experience, that I was going to violate the code
of my forefathers. . . I wasn ’t nearly tough enough to stay
around in an emotional climate more desolate than any
drought I ’d ever seen...I was going to admit defeat; turn
tail; run for cover (p. 232).

The next morning, Conway stopped at the registrar’s office and picked up the

addresses for Harvard’s history department and for Radcliffe’s graduate school.

I wasn ’t exactly elated about it. I felt more like an early
Christian convert who has died to the old ways and lives
under a new law...I could use my reason to live by another
set of rules. As a historian, I brew how few free choices
ever face us in life, but this choice of mine now was
unquestionably one (pp. 232-233).

255

To break from her mother and her life in Australia was to admit to herself that Australia’s
intellectual climate would never be friendly to her desire to understand Australian history
on its own terms. She could not form an intellectual identity in a country that denied the
existence the of the very subject she wished to understand: an authentic Australian

culture. She toyed with what she might say in her essay to the admissions committee.

What would the hapless committee chairman do if I wrote
the truth, I wondered? That 1 had come to an intellectual
dead end in Australia; that I had rejected the cultural
values of the country, and wanted an escape while there
was still emotional life lefi in me; that I needed to be
somewhere where one could look at the history of empires
truthfully; that life had been so trying recently that I had
taken to drinking far too much... that Cambridge was
halfivay round the world fiom Sydney, and that was a
comfortable distance; that I was looking for a more
congenial emotional environment, where ideas and feelings
completed rather than denied one another (p. 233-234)?

Her musings revealed to Conway her own uncertainty regarding the story of her leaving.
It didn’t seem to follow any plot that she was familiar with. What kind of narrative was it,

this that represented “both a sentence and a release” (p. 238)?

It was certainly no romantic quest. I had had my great
romantic experience and sought no other. And there was no
way to see it as an odyssey, for I wasn 't setting out to
conquer anything and there would be no triumphant return.
I was leaving because I didn ’tfit in, never had and wasn ’t
likely to... I was going to another country, to begin all over
again. I searched my mind for narratives that dealt with

256

such thorough and all-encompassing defeats, but could
come up with none (p. 236).

As Conway finally walked out to the plane that would carry her to America, she
had the sense of leaving her father, now long buried in the outback. Her mind settled on
the idea that even though she left bodily, her soul would always be Australian and that it
would one day return to join her father’s. Even in death, she would continue to agitate the

views of her countrymen. In the book’s final paragraph, Conway writes,

My mind flew back to the dusty cemetery where my father
was buried Where, I wondered, would my bones come to
rest? It pained me to think of them not fertilizing Australian
soil. Then I comforted myself with the notion that wherever
on the earth was my final resting place, my body would
return to the red dust of the western plains. I could see how
it would blow about and get in people ’3 eyes, and I was
content with that (p. 238).

Intggrative Summagy: Stabiligy and Change

Moving fiom the outback into the world of a modern city was a dramatic change
for Conway. She had little to go by. In the classroom, since learning was no longer
embedded in the activities that helped one live from day to day, its purposes seemed lost
on her. At the state school, she felt the class differences in the tensions between herself
and her classmates and it only solidified her sense of herself as somehow above them.
Things changed somewhat for the better once she was accepted into the private boarding

school, Abbotsleigh. There, for the first time, Conway found a social niche among others

257

her own age. She and other girls from the outback recognized one another as kindred
souls, accepting and supporting one another “like comforting pieces of filmiture.”

The contrasts offered by travel abroad played a large role in the development of
Conway‘s cultural identity. During her first trip abroad, to Ceylon, she was confronted
with her own ethnocentrism. It set up a tension between her Australian colonialist
attitudes and the possibility of another way. She says she felt “disoriented,” and “could
not relax.” Her cultural gyroscope had been knocked off center. Although it was draining
and she eventually longed to return home, nevertheless this kind of disruption in her
sense of herself culturally and socially continued to disturb, intrigue, and compel her. In
fact, it was during her year abroad with her mother following college graduation that she
began to realize a sense of stability around her persistent curiosity regarding questions of
history, culture, and identity. As such questions continued to shape themselves in her
mind, Conway finally accepted them as evidence of who and what she was: a scholar.

Throughout, the question of pursuing higher levels of education brought Conway
into conflict with the gender stereotypes of mid-century Australia. When Conway
assumed a college teaching role, she wondered at first whether it would be better to be
perceived as feminine or as highly educated - these two seemed mutually exclusive. And
at home, was it better for her to not rock the boat, continuing her responsibilities as a
daughter? Or should she pursue the path of learning. and of change? Her relationship with
her increasingly bitter and self-absorbed mother was such that she could not fulfill the

daughter role and still develop intellectually in the ways she desired.

258

Conway's decision to dr0p out midway through her freshman year turns out to
have been a good one. For the first time, her work at the medical office demanded but
also supported personal change. She needed to interact with doctors, nurses, and patients.
After a life that had rarely thrust her into contact with strangers, she had taken a position
that now did so on a daily basis. She had to develop a public identity. As a result, she was
able to return to the university a changed person, more confident in her capacity to
interact socially. At the same time, this did create tension by threatening the stability of
her role vis-a-vis her mother. Her mother, who had grown increasingly rigid, responded
negatively to most of Conway’s efforts toward change.

When Conway returned to school and eventually found herself moving between
her responsibilities on Coorain and her work at the university, she experienced the
outback and academia as two different cultural worlds. She writes that for the moment
they were “mutually stimulating” (216). However, it was her past and a sense of
continuity that tied her to Coorain. And it was her filture and the desire for change that
pulled her toward academia. There was a stability and a sense of rootedness on Coorain
that Conway had not yet found in academia. She understood its people, terrain, and
culture, even though she admitted that she herself would probably not be able to survive
the solitude that life there involved. To try would be intellectual suicide. At the same
time, travel back and forth between Coorain and academia continued to filel her questions
about what it meant to actually be Australian. These were the questions that began to

define her as a scholar.

259

Conway's memories in The Road to Coorain reflect the fluctuation between her

 

search for a sense of rootedness and stability, lost with the sudden death of her father and
their abrupt move to Sydney and, at the same time, her unremitting desire for change and
growth. With time, that which had once offered stability in the face of change
(specifically, her relationship with her mother) gradually became an impediment to
change. At the same time, a new kind of stability had begun to emerge around Conway’s
academic identity, around her passion and persistent curiosity regarding questions of
history and culture. Her decision to leave for Harvard was a quest to pursue the latter. It
was the questions she had formed that she now wished to form her intellectually.
Nonetheless, it was hard to leave Coorain. Conway had a bond with it that she
realized, no matter how much things changed, would endure. The outback would always

be there and its images would always remain a part of her.

People will grow old and die; the house will decay, but the
desert peas and saltbush will always renew themselves.
That ’s the way to remember it. Even if I never see it again,
I ’1] know just how they look, and the places where they

grow (p. 235).

As realized in the tension between her struggle for a sense of personal continuity
and her desire to become someone or something new, the pursuit of learning and the
making of an identity in Conway’s life were inseparable. The next section will look at the

tension in Conway’s autobiography between experiences of affiliation and those of

260

separateness. Experiences of affiliation were those that lead Conway to experience her
learning and her identity as connected in important ways to people, things, and ideas
outside herself. Experiences of separateness, in contrast, were those that those that lead to

feelings of being someone set apart.

Affiliation and Separateness.

For those in the Australian bush, family life constituted a culture unto itself.
Sealed from the outside world by sheer distance, Conway’s sense of herself was sustained
in relation to her mother, father, two brothers, and one or two avuncular station hands.
She had no one her own age by which to judge herself as smart, dull, or otherwise. Her
world was an adult world, her awareness centered around adult concerns, adult hopes and
worries, and adult suffering. With the exception of her mother’s colonial mindset, which
insisted that she and her family were above the Australian commonfolk, the family
defined itself not so much through its affiliations with society as in relation to the
elements of wind, sun, and rain. These could occasionally be generous but were more
often cruel and withholding.

With her father, Conway learned early on about the practical aspects of bush life.
He taught her about the land, the animals, the elements, and how be a station hand. Even
as a young girl, she contributed in important ways to the family’s survival. Working with
her father also provided plenty of moments for talk. Most of their exchanges were

Prompted by the natural surroundings.

261

I would ask endless questions about the weather, the
vegetation, the transmission of characteristics through
several generations of sheep. How to breed to eliminate
that defect, or promote the desirable characteristic (p. 42).

But morality and ethics were also fair game.

As we did our day's work, theological questions kept
cropping up. “Isn't it wrong to kill?” I would ask, as we
drove home with a fat young sheep, feet tied together, who
would be slaughtered when we arrived at the wooden block
near the dog kennels used for such purposes. ..God made
the creatures of the earth for man 's use, my father
responded... it was moral to kill what we needed to eat (p.
43).

The family’s geographical isolation, her mother’s ardent feminism, and working
alongside her father, helped Conway develop an image of herself that was relatively free
of gender stereotypes. She remembers her responsibilities on the ranch and how natural it

seemed to perform what might otherwise be seen as masculine tasks.

[Father] needed help with mustering sheep, something
which needed two people on horseback to accomplish
easily. I rode out with him to check the state offences. .. to
clean watering troughs, carry out the maintenance of
windmills, trim and dress the fly-infested spots which
developed around the crutch of sheep where flies would lay
eggs in the hot summer months. Dressing fly-blown sheep
was hard, hat work because one had to round up the
particular flock, get the sheepdogs to hold them, and then
dive suddenly into the herd to tackle the one animal whose
fleece needed attention. An agile child was better at doing

262

the diving than an adult, and in time I learned to do a kind
of flying tackle which would hold the animal, usually

heavier than I was myseM until my father arrived with the
hand shears (p. 41)

In contrast to the practical knowledge she gained fi'om her father, Conway
obtained knowledge of a literary sort in her relationship with her mother. Her mother was
an ideal teacher for her at the time. Capitalizing on the impetus of Jill’s ample curiosity,
her mother was able to devise learning situations that were largely self-directed. Writes
Conway, “her teaching was always carried out so imaginatively that her pupils simply
had fun gratifying their curiosity” (p. 35). At age eight, by the time both older brothers
were away at boarding school, Conway had begun a more formal education by

correspondence. However, her mother still offered a self-motivating environment.

There was no pretense that I would keep a daily school
schedule. On Friday afternoons, from 2:00 p. m. until I
finished (usually around 4:30 pm), I did my week ’s
school. My mother made it a pleasant occasion for me by
saying, “Today, you don ’t have to work out of doors. You
can sit in the shade [or if it was winter, in the sun] on the
veranda, have your own pot of tea, and do your
schoolwork. ” Thus I was introduced to study as a leisure
activity, a gift beyond price m 54).

For Conway, however, it seemed that a darker motive had also begun to infect her
parents’ teaching. Her father’s ambition as a rancher had been simple: to own his own

ranch and have it be successful enough to provide a good life for his family. Her mother’s

263

ambitions were more complex. She expected herself to be a good wife and a good
mother. But Conway also mentions her mother’s continuing efforts at self-education,
trying to somehow make up for her own lack of formal education. Moreover, in spite of
the ruggedness of Coorain, her mother maintained the belief that she and the family were
of the colonial class, their cultural roots being in Great Britain, not in Australia. She
therefore expected them to possess the sophistication that marked them as different from
those her mother regarded as more “common” (i.e., the lower socioeconomic, relatively
uneducated, Australian - see footnote #2, this chapter). Efforts directed toward furthering
her own education and that of her children was a way to affiliate, in spite of their
geographical distance fiom urban life, with the colonial class and thereby maintain their
presumed separateness from the common folk.

So as the ranch began to falter, Conway remembers the difficulty her parents had

separating their own fiustrated ambitions from who and what they expected her to be.

One troublesome aspect of the frustration of my parents ’
dreams was the extent to which they transferred their
ambitions to their children. My brothers, being five
hundred miles away, were not readily available as vehicles
for ambition. Being at hand I became the focus of all the
aspiration for achievement that had file/ed both parents ’

prodigious energies (p. 65).

The nighttime conversations now made me nervous because
they fiequently settled on what a remarkable child I was,
and how gratijying it would be for parents to observe my

264

progress. I had no way of assessing their judgements, but I
was certainly uncomfortably aware that I and my

performance in life had become the focus of formidable
emotional energies (p. 66).

Suddenly, there was the implication that no conflict should exist between
Conway’s natural interests and the expectations her parents had for her intellectual
talents. The development of her mind and abilities had become her parents’ one
distraction from the sad events of their lives, something else going on at the time that
could take them away fiom their anxiety and depression regarding the deterioration of the
ranch. Of course, balancing the loss of their dreams was a lot to put on the Ieaming of a
Child. Conway recalls that prior to the failing of the ranch, discipline in the home had

always been swift, predictable, and somewhat malleable. But then things changed.

Now, however, I encountered more subtle, and to me more
terrifi/ing, punishments. If I misbehaved, my parents simply
acted as though I were not their child but a stranger. They
would inquire civilly as to who I was and what I was doing
on C oorain, but no hint of recognition escaped them. This
treatment never failed to reduce me to abject contrition. In
later life my recurring nightmares were always about my
inability to prove to people I knew quite well who I was. I
became an unnaturally good child card accepted
urrcritically that goodness was required of me If my
parents ’ disappointments in life were ever to be
compensated for (p. 66).

The meaning of this for Conway was that only Good Jill would receive her parents’

affections. Anything different and she was shamed and alienated. It confirsed her terribly.

265

In that situation, with only her parents, there were no other relationships by which she
could validate who she was. She learned that the best and most acceptable self was the
“unnaturally good” one, whose goodness might somehow offset the harsh reality of her
parents’ lives.

Transition: School. Following her father’s death and their move to Sydney,
Conway’s first realization upon entering school (Queenwood) was of the differences

between herself and the other students. School was strange and, in this setting, so was

she. The other students perceived her as ‘irnusual.”

When the bell rang [At Queenwood] for recess or lunch,
my heart sank because I knew no one and had no subject of

conversation remotely like the cheerful chatter which
swirled around about weekend activities. Queenwood was a

day school and there were no other girls fiom the bush
there. It was painful when others talked happily about their

fathers or boasted about the family fortunes. I couldn 't join
in either, and became slowly aware that my family and life

circumstances were unusual (p. 88).

Conway wanted to join with other children but experienced herself as different, separate,

from another world. This impression was magnified by her one day at public school,

where class differences separated her even further.

Transition: Abbotsleigh. When Conway finally entered Abbotsleigh, it was a
revelation. She saw the head mistress, Miss Everett, as a very knowledgeable person. But
it wasn’t Miss Everett’s knowledge that impressed Conway the most. It was the joy with

which she approached learning. There was a playful element. This attracted Conway and

266

she felt herself drawn to Miss Everett. Learning the practical tasks of survival at Coorain
had been serious business or, in her mother’s attempts at self-education, ego driven. It
wasn’t about following one’s intellectual interests or the love of ideas. An alternative

began to take shape at Abbotsleigh. Miss Everett soon became Conway’s first intellectual

mentor outside the family.

I felt real benevolence radiating from Miss Everett...we
began a friendship that mattered greatly in my fitture. I
never ceased to wonder at her, for Miss Everett was the
first really free spirit I had ever met. She was impatient
with bourgeois Australian culture, concerned about
ideas...She loved Ieaming for itself, and this made her a
most unusual schoolteacher (p. 96).

Whereas, in the context of the state school, aspects of Conway’s identity had only
ostracized her, accenting her feelings of separateness, here was a context in which her
history was both understood and valued. Her experiences matched the experience of
others; she identified with them and they with her. Like Conway, many of the students
were relocated bush children, shy, reticent, and with little prior exposure to other
children. Her teachers were sensitive to this and consciously worked to help them make
the transition. Conway’s history in the outback was now worth something. It connected
her. At Abbotsleigh, Conway began to affiliate with others in a way that lead outward
from the restricted world she had shared with her mother.

In her final year, Conway was made a prefect along with a small group of other

senior girls. They were given special privileges in return for helping to keep the rest of

267

the students in line. This seems to have been an important experience, giving Conway her

first exposure to the intimate joys of belonging to a small intellectual community.

Outside our study, we were models of decorum, but within
our sanctuary we were a noisy, irreverent, and lighthearted
group. One of our number, a gifted mathematician with
shining aqua-marine blue eyes and pigtails of unbelievable
tidiness, straightened out all our corfusions on
mathematics homework. My good friend Robin and I,
friendly rivals for the school history prize, coached people
who were slow to get the point of history questions.
Everyone argued vociferously about the interpretation of
the English text of the moment, while those who had chosen
biology instructed the group about evolution, and the
physics and chemistry wing talked portentously about the
splitting of the atom (pp. 141-142).

As Conway’s intellectual development progressed, she began to read more widely
and more deeply. It began to open a whole new world of affiliations. She was excited to

find herself drawn into sympathy with distant authors.

Their images and characters peopled my imagination for
more than anyone in my everyday suburban world (p. 14 0).

Some writers assuaged Conway’s feelings of isolation. They seemed to be writing about
her experience. They could trace with a firmer hand than her own the outlines of her life
thus far. Literature, this sense of affiliation with authors, offered Conway a way to begin

integrating the events of a disjointed past. Conway remembers how TS. Eliot in

268

particular seemed to draw fi'om the mix of images and feelings in her own mind. He

helped to give some kind of order and meaning to her sense of alienation.

[Eliot] was a new and astonishing discovery. Someone in
my own day who wrote blank verse and who shared my
feeling of distance from the emptiness of modern life. Eliot
might have been writing about my feeling of detachment
from the surface of things, and my longing for a world of
real feeling and passion, instead of the polite proprieties of
afternoon tea in the suburbs. I quickly borrowed “The
Waste Land” ...it was a revelation. Here was [a] poet
whose attitude to nature was not romantic, who mentioned
deserts and whitening bones. It was great poetry about a
landscape I knew mp. 140-141).

Transition: Thinking about University. During her last year at Abbotsleigh,
Conway struggled with what the future might hold for her. Her mother’s dependence on
her had increasingly become an impediment to stronger afiiliations with peers. When she

'did visit with the families of friends, she found herself wishing that she too had parents
that were tickled by their children’s adventures instead of shaming them for their

independence.

My weekends were spent in reading and gardening, and
doing errands for my mother. We lived together like an
elderly couple with an iron routine which was never broken
[or] my mother became flustered, didn ’t sleep well, and
s‘ufleredfiom headaches... When 1 went to the houses of
fiiends, 1 would look hungrily at the fathers and mothers
who were quietly amused by their sons ’ and daughters’
scrapes, and wish above all else to have a normal family

a). 145).

269

Outside of school, Conway still lived in an adult world. She found that her
intellectual interests had the tendency to separate her from others her own age, boys in
particular. She still took satisfaction from her role as ‘Good Jill,’ her mother’s caretaker,

and the status it gave her among adults.

Outside school, I still spent all my time with adults. My
obsession with Tudor history and Elizabethan drama did
not make me an interesting conversationalist with young
men (a. 145)... With adults 1 overcame my shyness...1
swelled with pride at discharging my responsibility to care
for [mother] so well and at the approval given my conduct
and sagacity. 1 might not be pretty, and I was certainly
dangerously bookish, but it was clear that I won lots of
approval from the adult world (p. 14 7).

As the time for college drew nearer, it was hard for Conway to justify setting out for
herself when cultural expectations, and the tugging of her own conscience, were that she
would continue to look after her mother. The tension between her affiliations with her
mother and the desire for a separate life was strong. There was no benchmark by which to

gauge her choice. Who would she be if she were no longer ‘Good Jill’?

I dreaded being stranded at home, the only companion of
an increasingly dependent mother, even as I took my sense
of self-worth from doing the job well (148) Daughters in
Australia were supposed to be the prop and stay of their
parents. Would I ever get away? Was it wrong to want to?
How on earth could I set about doing it? How could I tell
this woman who lived for me that I did not want to live for
her .7... I often watched the Southern Cross in the night sky,
but it was not just a compass bearing I needed now, it was

270

a judgement about what would be the moral path to choose
(p. 151).

It was Conway’s affiliations with her English and history teachers, her respect and

trust for them, that finally tipped the scale toward an intellectual future.

Miss Shell and Miss Hughesdon, my English and history
teachers, swung the balance. “It will be a great loss if you
don ’t go on to do firrther study in history and literature, ”
they told me. “You could do outstanding work. ” 1 didn ’t
[mow what was involved in doing outstanding work, or
were the study of English and history might lead, but if they
said so, I was ready to follow their advice (pp. 143-4).

Still, Conway was without a picture of where such advice might lead. At the graduation
ceremonies, which she attended alone because of her mother’s broken wrist, Conway
looked at seemingly intact, happy families. She felt herself empty and set apart. Why did
her life seem so different in comparison? At that moment, her education struck her as
worthless. It had failed to fill the hole left by the deaths of her father and brother. She
wondered who she been learning for. She realized that after all was said and done, it
wasn’t her academic accomplishments that had brought her the most satisfaction at

Abbotsleigh; it was the relationships she had established there.

Why hadn ’t I realized how empty success was? I had fooled
myself by thinking that covering myself with honors would
be some sort of surrogate fulfillment for the promise of my
dead father and brother. It was not, nor, I realized sadly,

27]

was it ever likely to be. Ihe real satisfactions of my
schooling had been the fiiends I had made (p. 149).

Transition: University Conway’s first days on the university campus were

overwhelming. She felt different. She was confused and her lack of direction seemed to

separate her from other students.

The week of Freshman Orientation was sunny and hot.
When we began to crowd into the University ’s largest
lecture hall at the beginning of the Orientation week, the
crowd was vast and intimidating. Outside it seemed as

though throngs of young people occupied every square inch
of the campus. lhey all seemed at ease and clear about
what they were doing, whereas 1 was in a constant state of

anxiety (p. 155).

It was confiising. Conway’s identity still drew so much from her role as daughter.
At the same time, the emotional and physical demands of this drained the time and

energy she might have used for adjusting to college life, making friends, and establishing

herself.

lhe causes of my extreme shyness were complex. I didn ’t
look right and couldn 't blend with the crowd I worried
constantly about my responsibilities at home. At a deeper
level, I felt I had no right to exist unless serving the family
in some tangible way. At the University, the reassurance of
playing that role was not possible (1 5 6) . . . 1 lasted to the .
middle of the year before using my mother ’s increasing ill
health as an excuse to escape fiom the daily ordeal of

272

having no fiiends and no place where I felt I belonged (p.
158).

It was not until Conway went to work in the ‘real world’ that she began to make
significant headway against her persistent feelings of separateness from urban life. Her
position at the medical office vested her with some degree of authority, and this
empowered her affiliations with others - in this case, the staff and patients of the clinic.

Conway refers to this 18-month period as a “concentrated education.”

I learned that once a person dressed in a white starched
coat, however unqualified, chances among those seeking
medical advice, the mantle of authority descends, and his
or her advice is sought about all manner of human
predicaments. I had scarcely sat down at my desk in the
outer oflice of the surgery than the first talkative patients
arrived and began to volunteer all sorts of startling
information about their intimate lives. My shyness was
irrelevant to people who needed to talk about themselves
and their problems (p. 161).

In her work at the clinic, Conway began to listen beyond herself, hearing the
human condition more widely. It opened her up. She gained perspective. She became

more empathic and less absorbed in her own circumstances.

Listening. . . 1 saw the uncertainties and worries behind
people 's appearances, and realized that my troubles in life
were modest... It was not simply about the ailments which
brought each patient to the doctor’s oflice, but about the
social context surrounding each patient and his or her

273

family... It was like being thrust inside the mind of a gifted
novelist. lhenceforth I looked at people, myself included,
with more compassion and more distance (pp. 161-162).

Returning to college, Conway did not experience the same sense of separateness
from the student body as before. She found that she was now able to affiliate with those
around her in a different, more intimate way. She made friends with another student,
Toni. With the addition of Toni’s brother, they became a happy trio. She began to learn

how to play and be more spontaneous.

We took to one another, and began one of the intense
undergraduate friendships through which young people
learn about themselves by discovering the inner life and
feelings of fiiends They came fiom a country family, had
attended schools like mine, and shared my questions about
whether I belonged to Australia’s bush culture or to its
urban professional classes. They were cheerful hedonists
who took it for granted that one should enjoy one ’5
university life (p. 164)

As a result of doing so well in her first year examinations, Conway was able to
participate in advanced seminars. These brought her into contact with a different type of
teacher and a different caliber of student. Through these affiliations, she began to develop
a critical distance on herself and her family. She began to analyze her own life in a

broader perspective, for example in terms of issues of social class and power.

274

Marx and Engels opened my eyes to another way of seeing
my parents and the enterprise of Coorain. Was it true that
we were monopolizers of land that Shorty and all my other
shearer fiiends were expropriated laborers? Were the
family values of thrift and industry simply signs that we
were bourgeois? Who were the righg‘ul owners of the
land... What had happened to the tribes which once used to
hunt over our land (pp. 1 70-1 71)?

Conway had yet to apply such analyses to herself as a gendered being, however,
to understand how gender stereotypes could ultimately separate her from opportunity.
Prior to being excluded on the basis of gender for the government position, adherence to
gender stereotypes seemed to Conway more of a personal decision. She did not

appreciate their institutional nature.

I had unthinkingly taken on the identity of the male writer
and intellect present in all that I was reading, and did not
take in emotionally that the subordination Engels wrote
about applied to me. Obtusely, I did not pay heed to the fact
that I was the only woman taking history honors that year,
or how unusual I seemed to all my friends because 1 was
aspiring to excel academically (p. 1 71).

At the urging of two union organizer fi'iends, Conway visited the Communist
Book Shop in downtown Sydney. Afterward, they took her out to a “real working-class
pub” to celebrate. She experienced the working-class and, from her lefi-wing friends,

developed a critical perspective on the class system itself. While among them, Conway

275

realized the consequences stemming from her mother’s decision many years before that

she should be educated in the colonial tradition.

For the first time, I glimpsed what a choice had been made

when my mother took on her extra job to send me to
Abbotsleigh (p. 171).

It reflected her mother’s determination that, through education, Conway would not
affiliate with (and thus become like) those whose company she was now enjoying. She
finally understood what this choice meant: it was a means of preserving her family’s
separateness from the working class and their status as members of the bourgeois.

Now Conway was moving across those separations and learning a tremendous

amount in the process. She writes,

I was curious about the other Australia 1 had fled so
precipitously as an eleven-year-old. .. Whenever I went of
to work on C oorain, 1 was conscious that academic
Australia was made up entirely of urban social types,
people totally dtflerent from the rough, hard-bitten men
and women of the western plains... Nothing could have been

in greater contrast to the sedentary life of the urban
scholar (p. 1 72).

Traveling with her bush pilot brother, Barry, to remote towns and ranches added even
more complexity to the web of relationships against which Conway was attempting to

define herself. She realized the inability of cultural theory to contain or communicate the

276

reality of what she was experiencing. Also, there was no theory that seemed to articulate
the cultural identity of someone like herself, someone defined through their affiliations

with multiple cultural categories.

Juxtaposed in my mind when I returned to the city would be
the image of some wiry Queenslander, body burnt brown
above tattered khaki shorts, heaving around petrol drums
at a back-country airport, or the faces of the aboriginal
stoclanen...1 could make a class and race analysis of this
world according to the categories I was learning in my
history seminars... [but] they had been written by sedentary
people who had never lived in the bush and had no notion
what settling it was like (p. 1 73).

As graduation from the University approached and Conway considered a position
with the Department of External affairs, she found herself “headed for a traumatic
confrontation between ambition, love, and duty” (p. 187). Professionally, she wanted to
help develop Australia’s identity as an Asian or Southern Pacific country. It would be a
way of releasing her fiom her responsibilities as a daughter since her mother would never
stand in the way of such a prestigious career. After stumbling across Carl Jung’s essay,
The Positive and Negative Aspects of the Mother Archetype, the quality of the bond she

had with her mother suddenly became more clear. It was “a thunderbolt.”

It was astounding. There I was, described to a TI There was
my mother sitting on the page before me, as though Jung

277

had known her every mood... there was no getting away
from the fact that my mother’s emotional need for me went
far beyond normal limits.8

This underscored the importance to Conway of achieving an emotional and psychological
separation from her mother, of a redefinition of that relationship and her role in it. At the
same time, Conway had also begun her first romantic relationship. According to tradition,
for her (a woman) to commit to her career as a first priority would be disloyal to her
partner. Finally, behind all of this was the voice of her dead father spurring her on to

make something of herself.

Caught as I was between my mother ’s hostility and skillfitl
war of nerves over my ties to [boyfriend] Peter, and his
anger that he did not take precedence over my work and my
family, I began to feel trapped. . . My response was to make
more contradictory promises to everyone demanding my
attention... I knew that turning one ’s back on one ’s duty
was dishonest. So far as my ambitions were concerned I
knew they were deviant. Women were supposed to be
governed by love. Yet, though he had been dead more than
a decade, I still heard my father ’s voice saying, “Do
something, Jill. Don ’t just put in time on this eart .. When
the inevitable confiontation came I chose duty and
ambition, motivations I still thought compatible, and
abandoned romantic love mp. 187-188).

 

lsJungian analyst, Daryl Sharp (1995), writes, “At the core of any mother complex is the mother archetype.
which means that behind emotional associations with the personal mother, both in men and in women,
there is a collective image of nourishment and security on the one hand (the positive mother), and

devouring possessiveness on the other (the negative mother)”

278

Although she was denied the government position she had applied for, Conway
eventually came to see this as a blessing. Not only did it “foster a little humility and
shatter the complacency” of being a big intellectual fish in a small pond, it lead her to

affiliate with the plight of women in general.

I needed to be made to think about what it meant that I was
a woman, instead of acting unreflectingly as though I were
a man, bound to live out the script of a man ’s life. This one
blow of fate made me identijy with other women and
prompted me, long before it was politically fashionable to
do so, to try to understand their lives (p. 193).

By affiliating herself with the condition of women in Australian society, Conway was
able to understand her relationship with her mother in a different light. In particular, she
was able to attribute aspects of her mother’s decline to a conspiracy of external forces

rather than to the seemingly self-destructive choices her mother had made directly.

My new ability to empathize with other women made me
see my mother differently. My perceptions were so painful I
could hardly bear them...l was living with a tragic
deterioration brought about because there was now no
creative expression for this woman’s talents. Lacking a
power for good, she sought power through manipulating
her children... No one had directly willed her decline. It
was the outcome of many impersonal forces (p. 195).

279

Conway saw her mother in yet another light during their extended time abroad.
Her mother seemed to come alive in these new settings. She shed much of her anxiety

and rigidity, her reactions became “strong and spontaneous.”

New facets of my mother ’s character emerged... I marveled
at the sight of this woman, totally solitary at home, in
animated conversation with strangers (p. 199).

This must have only heightened Conway’s sensitivity to the role that Australian culture
had played in her mother’s demise. It may also have been a harbinger of what continued
affiliations with that culture might eventually lead to in her own life: an isolated existence
instead of one that interacted vitally with the lives of others.

Prior to leaving for her travels with her mother, Conway had met a medical
researcher just returned from doctoral study in the United States. This chance connection
planted a seed in Conway’s mind regarding alternative intellectual paths. She had never
really considered seriously the idea that there might be other traditions of scholarship

than those set down by Australian academics.

His attitudes to life were just what I needed to hear. He
wasn ’t trouble by the restrictions of A ustralian academic
life, he told me. One could be a scholar with an
international group of colleagues anywhere in the world
One didn ’t necessarily have to accept the Australian
definition of the role. He set me thinking about the fitture
less parochially, and encouraged me to think about
creating new styles of scholarly life if I didn 't find the
current ones congenial. He was an inspiration at a low

280

point in my life, a new model of a professional scholar (p.
196).

When Conway returned to Australia, teaching at the university introduced her to

“a new society.” Suddenly, her professors had become peers.

We all sat round the same lunch table, or gossiped together
over coflee . . . It was a heady experience... They were a
wonderful group of friends, encouraging about my
teaching, interested in my career (p. 214).

At the same time as these new affiliations were forming, Conway was making regular
trips to Coorain, spending long hours driving across the outback. It was an opportunity to
appreciate her roots there. It still felt like home. Sometimes she would add an extra day
and spend the night at the home of Angus Waugh and his family. Angus had been a ranch

hand on Coorain when Conway was a child.

It was just plain comfortable to sit by the fire in the
evening... [Angus ’s] tales were full of close observation of
people, psychological insight, and a wonderful sense of the
absurd He would tease me for being “a bloody
intellectual, ” but underneath the laughter was an old-

fashioned Scottish respect for learning (p. 222).

As her mother’s behavior became more irrational, Conway finally surrendered to

her own powerlessness to effect any type of positive change in her mother’s

281

circumstances. Deciding to leave for graduate study in America, she knew she must
separate herself from this predicament or else go down with the ship. It was a decision
that expressed her sudden determination to separate her values and attitudes, her identity,

fiom those of her parents.

1 wouldn ’t tell myself anymore [that as a backcountry
person ] I was tough enough for any hazard, could endure
anything... I wasn ’t nearly tough enough...I was going to
admit defeat; turn tail; run for cover. My parents, each in
his or her own way... had not been careful about harvesting
and cherishing the experiences that nourish hope. 1 was
going to be different. I was going to be life-afi‘irming (p.
232).

Still, there is a very significant way in which Conway did not cut her ties to her
mother. In her desire to study and understand the history of women in society and turn
this to purposes of cultural reform, she made the conscious decision to dedicate her
professional life to her mother’s plight. It is something that kept Conway connected to

her mother, easing the thought that in leaving Australia she might also be abandoning her.

I had set things in good order on C oorain, but that was the
last thing I could do for my mother... Perhaps if I got far
enough away, 1 ’d be able to see the causes of her undoing
(p. 232) ...I wasn ’t sure how to go about studying those
relationships and their evolution over time, but clearly I
was going to find out. It wasn ’t exactly the way I ’d
expected to find a vocation, out of guilt transmuted into an
intellectual calling, but perhaps it was as good as any. I
had a talent for history, and the fates were prodding me
toward putting it to use m 23 7).

282

Integrative Summary: Affiliation and Separateness

As a child on Coorain, learning was an activity that strengthened Conway’s
affiliations. It bonded her with her mother who took great delight in Jill’s intellectual
growth. It also brought her closer to a father who valued her help with the practical tasks
of ranching, as well as her company on the lonely outback. Gradually however, as the
ranch began to fail, her parents’ emotional stress took its toll. Withdrawing stoically into
their pain, they seemed to Conway to become less open-minded. When her brothers came
home from boarding school, she was aware that that their education had somehow
separated them from the family. Given the situation on Coorain, the school knowledge
they professed was only a source of tension, a measure of their distance from the reality
of what was happening on the ranch. It was derided by their father. What good was any
knowledge that could not help him save his life’s dream?

In the family’s transition to Sydney following the father’s death, there was a
significant playing out of affiliation and separateness issues for Conway. Formal
schooling quickly revealed how different she was from the other students. She was from
a different class, a different geography, a different social world. She understood nothing
of school culture. At the same time, this sense of alienation pushed her closer to the
security she found with her mother. Then, at Abbottsleigh, Conway realized her first
close affiliations with persons her own age, many of which took place around intellectual
activities that actively engaged her. In concert with her development, she was also lead to
strong identifications with various authors and ideas. These began to help her make sense

of her own desultory life path.

283

As graduation from Abbottsleigh approached, however, and the possibility of
college loomed, Conway was unable to break free from her increasingly dependent
mother without feeling that she would somehow be abandoning her. Nor did she believe
that there was any viable intellectual path open to her in Australian culture. Besides,
following her ambitions might only separate her fiom others who perceived intellect in a
woman as unfeminine. This was supposed to the moment in which her fiiture would take
flight, but Conway found herself with neither wings nor a destination to home in on. The
uniqueness of her family’s circumstances, the inability of her achievements to make up
for the loss of her father and brother, her fi'ustrated intellectual passion, and the thought
that she could only exist if she were serving the family in some way confused her and
amplified her feelings of separateness fi'om the lives of those her own age.

Things did improve for Conway’s during her work at the medical office, however.
By developing the ability to identify and connect with others she obtained a securer sense
of herself. This was invaluable in her return to the university where, the second time
around, she was able to make entry into various social circles. Later, afier accepting a
teaching position following her undergraduate work, she began the back-and-forth
existence between academia and the outback. Her teaching had brought Conway into the
fold of professional scholars. Although she felt accepted there, she also realized another
part of herself through her affiliations in the outback. Each context provoked a strange
awareness of how different her participation was relative to the other contexts she
inhabited. The contrast ultimately fueled a tension that gave the nature and meaning of

each identity, academic and outback, a greater clarity. Although by leaving for the states,

284

Conway finally settled on a path that meant she would never again be a citizen of the
bush, it was also a path through which she could seek, through becoming a scholar, to
affiliate with that culture in a different way. .

The next section looks at the tensions between immediacy and reflection in
Conway’s experience. Experiences of immediacy refer to those moments in which
Conway felt herself to be firlly in the moment, her senses astir and her consciousness
alive to the here-and-now of the surroundings. Reflection, in contrast, represents those
instances during which Conway found herself stepping back from her direct experience in
order to understand its meaning. Reflection was the creative process through which
Conway reached for a broader level of analytical or conceptual understanding of her life

and the world.

Immediacy and Reflection.

Transition: School. On the outback, the labors of Conway’s father were physical. Their
object was immediately at hand. Practical knowledge, skill, and prudence, these were
what could make a life on the outback. When Conway’s brothers went off to boarding
school, however, they were exposed to a way of learning that of course drew heavily on
reflection. Solving problems in the world of the school required contemplation,
theorizing, and the rhetorical skill to make one’s case in academic terms. As a result, the
two boys and Conway’s father held different perspectives on knowledge itself. For the
boys, for whom school had become the flame of reference, curricular knowledge -

history, politics, philosophy, for example - was important.

285

For their father, however, school knowledge necessarily played second fiddle to
the know-how of running a ranch. For him, labor was not the act of acquiring knowledge,
it was the process of applying it to problems in the real world. As the harshness of one’s
circumstances increased, so did the value of savvy and know-how. Conway notes that
when the boys came home for vacations, the two conceptions of knowing were not easily
reconciled. Contributing to the clash was the frustration of Conway’s father at being

unable to save the ranch from the drought that immediately ravaged it.

My brothers would return home from boarding school to a
household consumed with anxiety. C oming, as they did,
fi'om the totally enclosed world of a school... inevitably their
world contained many points of reference beyond C oorain.
Much of what they reported se emed frivolous to parents
who had never attended a fashionable school and had
struggled for the considerable Ieaming they possessed . .In
better times they might have jumped enthusiastically into
this new world of their sons, but my father in particular
jumped to the conclusions that his sons were not working
hard at school. In fact they were, but they now lived in a
culture in which it was a serious faux pas to indicate that
one worked hard at study. The two worlds were not easy to
mesh (p. 55).

Afier her father’s death and the move to Sydney, Conway presumed that there
was some practical purpose embedded in the routines of school, although she could not

fathom what it might be. Instruction often seemed pointless and arbitrary.

[At Queenwood] we memorized the provinces of Canada,
and recited them starting in the east and traveling

286

westward I was used to learning very exact details of

topography in order to find my way about a countryside
with no signs and few landmarks, but when I asked why we
listed Canada '3 provinces fiom east to west no one
understood why I thought directions important (p. 87-88).

I could not arrive at the reason why the first ten minutes of
every morning were devoted to something called mental
arithmetic. The teacher called out a problem every few
seconds, to which we were meant to scribble an answer.
Given time, I could arrive at the correct answer, but here
speed was important, though no great matter hung on the
outcome of the problem solving (p. 88).

Transition: Abbotsleigh. Arriving at Abbotsleigh, Conway recalls that the
teachers approached students newly arrived from the outback differently than they did
other students. Teachers seemed to realize that children making the transition from the
bush were not merely Ieaming new concepts and ideas, they were Ieaming them in new
ways and for new reasons. Unlike for working class students at the state school, the
teachers at Abbotsleigh acknowledged that children coming in from the outback were in
the throes of a difficult transition. They realized the importance of helping bush children

reflect on the reasoning behind activities that were new to them.

Even the strange ritual of the gymnasium was less puzzling.
The teachers were used to bush children and took the time

to explain what the exercises were for, or to tell me that I
would soon learn the eye-hand coordination I lacked (p.

98).

287

Conway writes that in her third year at Abbotsleigh (her junior year), she
“transformed from adolescent rebellion to genuine intellectual interests” (p. 114). She
remembers this as a time when she especially began to blossom intellectually. Her
developing capacity for reflective thought had suddenly begun to make itself known. She

found herself integrating ideas into what seemed to her new and wondrous conceptions.

As Miss Everett [head mistress at Abbotsleigh] had
predicted, I began almost without noticing it to become
absorbed in my studies at school, and it was these rather
than the entertainments of my school fiiends which drew
me into a world outside the family. Chemistry and biology
were not just subjects, they oflered the vision of an ordered
material and living universe, whose elements and their
components were arranged in complex patterns, the
principles of which were dazzlingly simple. The wonder of
making crystals and understanding the reasons why they
formed left me so preoccupied I missed my stop on the
afternoon train, and had trouble explaining why 1 was so
late home. History classes now treated the question of
causation, leaving the memorization of dates for larger
questions of fiee will and determinism (p. 112).

It was a period of intellectual awakening for Conway. She writes about the growth
in her awareness of language as “a set of structures of miraculous complexity.” Learning
French was also enabling her also to hear English in a different way. Instead of hearing

simply words, she became attuned to the immediate experience of their sound.

For six years I had marched every morning into the school
assembly and listened idly to the instructions and sermons
of the day... Now, as though 1 had been deaf before, I began

288

to hear Miss Everett ’3 beautiful voice lingering lovingly
over the cadences of the King James Bible. I had loved
poetry before because of its imagery, but now I heard
language as a form of music (p. 139).

Following her brother’s death, Conway’s ability to absorb herself in ever more
complex levels of thinking provided her with moments of solace and comfort. Ironically,
these were times when she remembers actually breaking through her sense of emotional

detachment. Intellectual work had the power to somehow integrate her.

Just as with our departure fi'om C oorain, my consciousness
had retreated to a great distance. It was hard to bring it
back to earth unless I was concentrating every energy on
some difficult intellectual eflort. I came to love my hours of
homework because when I finally sat down alone in my
room with my books, I could get my mind and body
together again, and escape the discomfort of watching the _
world fiom the other side of some transparent but
impenetrable window (pp. 121-122).

This ability to reflect and to intellectually put her world into some kind of order
seems to have been an alternative unavailable to Conway’s mother. In fact, Conway

believed that her mother’s “lack of education,” the absence of a more complex and

289

meaningful fi'amework for understanding, was something that prevented her mother from

reconciling with the tragic experiences in her life.’

[Mother ’3] lack of education was a real handicap, because
she had no historical or philosophical perspective from

which to analyze her own experience of loss and grief (p.
1 15).

Transition: University . At the university, Conway recognized the desire in
herself for something beyond the conventional life. The idea of ‘a life of the mind’
sounded to her like a lovely alternative to the emotionally draining work of, for example,

a helping profession, even though her mother thought the latter more appropriate.

My mother favored “something practical ” like medicine... I
didn’t much like the idea of caring for sick people. My
years spent caring for the emotional needs of others made
me long for some wonderfully abstract study, elegant,

clear, free of messy human demands (p. 143).

9 More than anything, this attribution speaks to Conway’s view of the role education has played in her own
life, in the way shehas learnedto make sense ofthe worldand, hence, herself. Inasimilarandperhaps
more profound way, psychiatrist Viktor Frank] (1959) attributed his ability to have survived the horrors of
internment in Nazi mncentration camps indirectly to his own education and the rich intemal world it had
endowed him with. Not only did Frankl’s intellectual life provide him a ‘place’ to retreat to imaginatively
duringthe worst oftimes, it also helpedhimplace whatwas happeningto him ina largerframeworkthat
gave it some degree of meaning

290

Still, Conway began her time at the University of Sydney undecided. She had set up
idyllic expectations regarding the content of her courses and was deeply disappointed.

They seemed overly analytic and abstract.

I thought philosophy would be about wisdom, that French
would enable me to read more of a literature I found
enchanting, and that history and English would be more of
the subjects I had loved in school (p. 155) [Instead] I was
finding most of it dull or disappointing or both (p. 15 7).

In philosophy, I could do the logic exercises, but I didn ’t
really care whether an argument contained a syllogism
with an undistributed middle clause or not... this
painstaking analysis of language seemed dull. I had looked
forward to reading Plato and studying Greek philosophy,
but the hours spent on the Euthyphro were not spent
dealing with what it meant and how that fitted into the
Greek view of life, but on analysis of every word, comma,
and phrase (p. 157).

Conway found herself longing for a type of learning that would help her to understand
the immediate human world of her own struggles. Her response to the esoteric nature of

the courses, as well as to “the daily ordeal of having no fiiends and no place [to belong]

(p. 158) was to hunger for something that was less abstract and more immediate. Her

mother conspired with this sentiment.

291

Each day she asked me hungrily what I was Ieaming,
hoping to live out her own thwarted longing for education
through me. When all I could tell her was an account of
classes in logic or phonetics, she would make some derisive
comment and remind herself and me that at my age she had
already been working and supporting herself for many
years (p. 158).

After dropping out of the University and traveling to Coorain on one of her
managing errands, Conway found that she enjoyed the immediacy of physical labor in the
outback. It brought her back into touch with the terrain and the uncomplicated nature of
her relationship with it. Such simplicity had special meaning given the confused .

frustration of her aborted university experience.

It was comfortable to be working there, once again tracing
familiar patterns over the contours of the land A fier my
unsatisfactory studies, the practicality of simple physical
labor delighted me (p. 160).

By taking on work in the medical clinic during this period, Conway also realized
a different kind of immediacy. The work was not mentally demanding. Its challenges
were instead emotional and social. She writes that it was a job “endlessly interesting in its
human details” (p. 161). Conway was involved daily in the drama surrounding major
events and crises in the lives of her patients and their families. It was so different from

the crises in her own life. These had always been hers, with herself and her family at the

292

center. That center was suddenly being invaded by a new and more immediate collection

of scenes and images through which she began to connect more widely.

My shyness was irrelevant to people who needed to talk
about themselves and their problems. Listening and making
soothing sounds, I saw the uncertainties and worries
behind people ’s appearances, and realized that my troubles
in life were modest in relation to the human predicarnents
which people paraded before me daily... The complexity of
the human drama each day was gripping... When the ofi'ice
was busy I received a more concentrated education. It was
not simply about the ailments which brought each patient

‘ to the doctor ’s oflice, but about the social context
surrounding each patient and his or her
family... Thenceforth I looked at people, myself included
with more compassion and more distance (p. 161).

In her white starched coat, Conway was endowed with the some of the same
status of a medical professional. This would motivate patients to share with her details of
their circumstances and lives. Working in this capacity provided Conway with a more
intense, sustained, and immediate contact with people than she had ever experienced. It
counterbalanced the alienation in own life and helped her develop a more sophisticated
sense of empathy. She could listen to others, as she says, with “more compassion and
more distance,” that is, with both immediacy and reflection.

After returning to school and succeeding so thoroughly in her examinations,
Conway now had another aspect of herself, her intellect, validated socially. She realized
that “learning and reflection” were what was valued in academia. Moreover, these were

things she could do very well and that might eventually rescue her from her fate as a

293

“bluestocking,” a spinster caring for an aging and increasingly bitter parent. She could

have her own life, a life of the mind.

[I had a] new awareness that university study was about
learning and reflection, not the cramming of texts and
information. Now I had a purpose in life... it would finesse
the whole question of leaving home. My mother would
never stand in the way of success...I could [also] remain
true to my obligations to the family by covering the family
name with honors (p. 168).

Conway began taking a double honors program in history and english, although

she found history the most compelling. It was an exciting and “heady” time for her.

We took seminars on modern European and British history,
and on historiography. We plunged into reading Vico,
Marx, Hegel, Burckhardt, Acton, Mannheim, Max Weber
and modern philosophers of history like C ollingwood
without pausing to consider whether we had the
background to analyze them critically... our discussions
were about the 1848 revolutions in Europe, the character
of industrial society, the concept of alienation (p. 169).

I found myself intoxicated by the pleasure of abstract ideas,
by the company of others who shared my interests (p. 1 70).

294

For the first time, Conway found herself in a delicate balance between immediacy and
reflection, her need for close human relationships and the satisfactions of an intellectual
life. She had also begun to make fiiends. They encouraged her to become more

spontaneous, to appreciate and enjoy the immediate pleasures of life.

Our conversations were not intellectual, but focused on our
parents, our families, our uncertainties and insecurities,
our feelings about being Australian, our puzzlement about
what to do in life... From Toni and her brother I learned the
art of enjoying live, of stopping to savor the joys of the
moment, and of letting the cares of tomorrow wait @p. 164-
1 65).

In the midst of this, Conway had an epiphany regarding the quest that her studies
represented. She recalls “a sudden vision of what the young were seeking from a
university” (p. 175). Like others her age, Conway wanted knowledge that could lead her
to an understanding of the world that was whole and without contradiction, that could set
everything into some kind of larger order. She wanted more direct knowledge, not just
symbols and shadows, once-removed Platonic representations. She wanted to see
Australia for what it was and not from a derived and derisive colonial perspective. She
wanted knowledge of herself and of what she was supposed to become in life apart from
the contradictions of her talents and desires, the constrictions of caring for her mother,

and society’s stereotypes. What Conway longed for was a world in which immediacy and

reflection came together.

295

Like Stephan [in James Joyce ’s Portrait of An Artisfit] I was
seeking “wholeness, harmony and passion, " the claritas
which was the Christian equivalent of God Somewhere,
somehow it must be possible to reconcile the corflicts of the
emotions, the pains of life, the sense of beauty, in one
unifiring understanding. This was what I was doing here,
what these stone walls had been built for, and why these
books had been painstakingly accumulated (p. 1 75 ).

Transition: Returning from Abroad. Returning fi'om her post-graduation
sojourn to England and Europe, Conway was even more passionate about her search for
understanding. She was annoyed with those who were “hostages” of the British
worldview and with the attitude that authentic Australian culture was somehow second
rate. What did it mean to be Australian without reference to external standards? How had
the environment shape the people who lived there? How had people learned to survive
and sometimes even flourish in the bush? How was Australian poetry and painting a
unique reflection of the “existential awareness of the continent”? These questions had
become her questions. “None of this was in the history texts,” she writes, “and at first I
thought no one but me noticed its absence” (p. 185). These questions began to shape her
intellectually. Further, by understanding the authentic Australia, she found she coming

face to face with the historical, cultural, and social narratives to which her own identity

was answerable. She felt alone in her quest.

I wished there was a clear way to understand the process
by which a people 's dominant myths and mental imagery
took shape. Now [that] 1 had seen England and Europe,
these myths seemed more important to me than any stuay of
the politics of Federation, or of the precise details of

296

nineteenth-century land policy. .. there was so much to learn
I could barely fall asleep at nights because my mind raced
on at fever pitch about a set of questions I felt no one else
understood or even cared much about (p. 219).

During the period in which Conway taught at the university and cared for
Coorain, she was constantly moving back and forth between the practical and the
theoretical, the physical and the intellectual. '0 This movement is what fueled Conway’s
interests and imagination. But no one else she knew was in a similar situation. No one
else was intrigued by the questions that popped into her head as she crossed the
boundaries between one culture and another. She recalls the frustration of her attempts to

engage others:

My one problem was that [the faculty] had very little
interest in intellectual and cultural history. I couldn ’t make
them understand the kinds of events I thought interesting.
Our department was strong on techniques of research, but
no one could understand the kinds of cultural documents I
wanted to study. They weren ’t in archives, but in people ’3
minds and imaginations (p. 215).

 

‘0 I contrast terms such as practical and theoretical, or physical and intellectual, only to represent aspects
of Conway’s experience. I do not mean to present them as realms naturally opposed to one another. Nor are

they stand-ins for immediacy and reflection.

297

During this period, Conway remembers feeling most fiilly herself in the outback.

She had begun to understand and appreciate in a different way the uncomplicated ways of

its inhabitants.

The place I was most at home in was the bush. The older I
grew the more I liked backcountry people. I enjoyed the
slow and unstylized way conversations with strangers
developed -— the weather, the state of the roads, where the
kangaroos were swarming this year, whose yearling had
run well at the picnic races (p. 222).

Of course, Conway was a backcountry person herself. She even entertained the idea of

returning to that kind of existence. But she realized what the danger might be for her.

I sometimes toyed with the idea of settling on C oorain
myself but much as I loved it, I knew I would become a
hermitlike female eccentric if I settled into that isolation

alone (p. 223).

At the same time, although she loved her work at the university, Conway could not see
herself engaging it as a career in the same fashion of her professors. She wanted a type of

scholarship that was more immediate in its application, that lead out into the world.

1 couldn ’t see myself settling down to become a
professional scholar. The year of my graduation was
notable for a series of petty wrangles between Australian

298

historians on subjects of only minor antiquarian interest. I
feared becoming similarly pedantic (p. 196).

The romantic relationship that Conway developed with Alec, the sensitive and
cultured American mining speculator, was instrumental in helping her to find a balance
between the immediate demands of caring for her mother and for Coorain, on the one

hand, and her desire to live a creative, reflective, intellectual life, on the other.

I ’d found a man who respected my work and shared by
exacting standards about it. Like all people whose business
involves speculative risk, Alec had a talent for living
completely in the moment and letting tomorrow ’s worries
wait... we took the time to be happy, to savor the pleasure
we took in one another ’s company. In many respects, he
was the first really sane, thoughy‘ul, and mature person I ’d
known, and as a result he began to set me straight about

many of my approaches to life (p. 22 7)

Integrative Summagy: Immediagy and Reflection

Conway recalls the distinction when she was young between what her father
respected as knowledge and the kind of worldly knowledge that her brothers brought
home from boarding school. This contrast reappeared during Conway’s initial transition
to the “totally enclosed world” of the school. It introduced one of school’s initial
perplexities for Conway: the apparent absence of any logical rationale for learning. For
her, knowledge was still that which one applied to the problems in one’s immediate

circumstances.

299

At Abbotsleigh, as her mind matured, Conway discovered pleasure in reflection,
in analysis, and the aesthetic and creative aspects of thought. At the same time, this
ability had put itself to practical use by helping her to weather the tragic death of her
much-adored brother. In dealing with the pain, retreating into her academic world was
not merely an act of ‘intellectualization,’ defensively disconnecting from her immediate
feelings. In fact, Conway found that the passionate interest she took in her studies could
lead to precious moments of integration when she would once again feel herself come
together in body and mind. It was after her employment in the medical office, upon her
return to the university, that Conway began to find and create social niches offering
patches of mid-ground between immediacy and reflection. She discovered that, in fact,
there are those who can offer her both the emotional and intellectual companionship she
hungered for.

Through these relationships, Conway finally began to learn that she could balance
her physical and social world with a life of the mind. Through her fiiendships with peers,
she realized that she could be spontaneous and connected to the world and still have
access to that part of herself that was a scholar. In the context of her relationship with
Alec Merton, she finally accepted her life as one that should be built around her
independent intellectual talents. She decided that properly stewarding these gifts was
ultimately of greater importance than her role as a daughter or as manager of the family’s
legacy on Coorain.

The Road to Coorain, at one level, is about Conway’s search for a way to bring

real human meaningfulness into her work as a scholar and, at the same time, intellectual

and creative strength into her life as a woman and as an Australian. Indeed, throughout
the book there are moments when the results of analytical understanding, when applied to
her own life, proved themselves personally and immediately healing. Unlike her mother’s
life, Conway’s education seemed to allow her the ability to analyze her life within a
series of progressively larger, more abstract but, at the same time, more meaningful
frameworks. Paradoxically, as she did so, she also seemed to understand more completely

her desire to live a life that was humanly real and immediate.

301

CHAPTER SEVEN

Comparisons and Contrasts

The previous chapter followed the educational histories, from elementary through
doctoral study, of three intellectuals: Mike Rose, Richard Rodriguez, and Jill Ker
Conway. I interpreted their autobiographies individually in the light of three themes that
upon close reading seemed to emerge from them as a group. At this point I would like to
concern myself with the ‘error variance,’ if you will. In other words, using the same three
themes as a framework, I would like to look at the differences and similarities between
the authors. I hope that this will make it possible to come to a deeper and more complex
understanding of the three tensions themselves. As I said earlier in chapter three, these
tensions ultimately reside in the authors’ account of their experiences. As such, they
provide us with storied examples of a more theoretical and abstract relation, that between
learning and identity.

In this chapter, I step back in order to summarize the three tensions as understood
thus far, providing a brief explanation for each including how it makes manifest the
relation between learning and identity-making. Next, I move to a somewhat broader
comparison and contrast of each tension across the three authors. This will explore the
more obvious similarities and differences between the authors regarding their experience
of the tensions, shedding further light on the nature of the tensions in the context of each

of their lives. This will be followed by a discussion of the relationship between the three

302

tensions themselves. Finally, some observations will be made regarding autobiography
and gender.

Briefly reviewing the three tensions, stability and change refers to the tension in
the three autobiographies between a sense of personal continuity and a sense the authors
had that they were becoming something new or difi‘erent. To what extent did the various
transitions in their formal education afford them an identity that was continuous with who
and what they felt they had been in the past? Or to what extent did their education seem
to require that they devalue or turn away fiom that past? In contrast, the tension between
affiliation and separateness refers, on the one hand, to the authors’ attempts to find ways
to legitimately participate in academic culture and, on the other, their attempt to develop
an identity that was uniquely their own. Finding a balance was not easy. It meant
discovering a way to become intellectually honest while still remaining true to their own
interests and, most importantly, to their past.

Finally, immediacy and reflection refers to the tension in the authors’ educational
careers between two modes of consciousness, two ways of knowing or experiencing the
world. To what extent did a particular transition afi‘ord them with instances of feeling
engaged with others, alive to their senses, vitally present in the here-and-now? Or to what
extent did their learning allow them to put some kind of conceptual order and meaning to

what they had previously only experienced?

303

Comparisons Across the Authors.

Stability and Change.’ Based on his autobiography, the initial transition
between home and classroom life was an intensely disorienting experience for Rodriguez,
who spoke only fifty or so words of English. Disorientation was also true for l 1 year old
Conway, whose late entry into the “totally enclosed world” of the school put her far
behind her peers in understanding its ways and means. Both Rodriguez and Conway
retain vivid memories of their first day. The stability of their lives had been disrupted.
Rose, on the other hand, recalls little about his transition to elementary. Although he
attributes this to his self-protective response of dreamily tuning out, it is also true that
Rose had attended an elementary in his community, that English was his first language,
and that his parents were already quite Americanized. This contrasted with Rodriguez,
who lived in a middle-class White neighborhood, whose parents spoke Spanish and clung
to Hispanic culture and also with Conway, who came into the classroom directly from the
remoteness of the outback. In other words, for Rose there really were no big changes
involved in the initial transition to school. His first sense ofa break in the stability of his
life and his identity came much later during his high school transition fiom Voc Ed into
the college prep track.

Between them, it seemed that the most important and also the most difficult

educational transitions for these authors were the ones that required them to change and

 

' Stability and Change refers to the tension in the three authors’ experience between a sense of personal
continuity and the sense that they were becoming something new or different. To what extent did the
various transitions in their formal education afford them an identity that was continuous with who and what
theyfeltthey hadbeeninthepast?0rtowhatextent didtheireducationseemtorequirethattheydevalue
or turn away from that identity and that past?

304

reorient at two tightly interrelated levels. One level was academic prOper. They had to
‘learn how to learn’ in the style of the school. They had to confi'ont the academic tasks
that were required, the ‘work’ of the classroom. At another level, they had to learn to
adapt themselves socially to the ‘culture’ of the classroom through which its work was
accomplished. In their stories, Rodriguez and Conway did not seem to have too much
trouble orienting at the academic level. Neither of them encountered the long period of
intellectual struggle that Rose faced. Instead, it was at the level of culture that Rodriguez
and Conway continued to experience the greatest periods of disorientation and tension.

For Rose on the other hand, the demand that he adapt himself academically was
encountered two years prior to any big cultural transitions.2 The greatest need was for
him to come up to speed academically. This meant that he needed to completely change
how he saw himself as a thinker and learner. His image of himself suddenly needed to
include competence and, at the urgings of Jack MacFarland, even certain intellectual
gifts. This was a process that preceded and then continued into Rose’s subsequent
transition to Loyola, where both cognitive and cultural change became issues. Again,
because their academic abilities were recognized from an early age, one does not get the
sense that Rodriguez or Conway ever had to reconstrue their own levels of intellectual
competence in the same ways or to the same extent as did Rose.

Many times, the process of change for these authors seemed to require them to let

go of aspects of their past that they felt unable to maintain into their educational futures.

 

2 Although the jump to Voc Ed did redefine him within the culture of the school itself, this was not
comparable to the dramatic cultural changes that Rodriguez and Conway’s first contacts with education
involved

305

In order to more firlly embrace the classroom, school, or campus as a new point of order,
one status quo had to be exchanged for another. Various transitions either made this
possible or they made it necessary. For example, distancing himself from his past was a
process that Rose had begun with Jack MacFarland, the first person to seriously challenge
his academic perceptions of himself. Rose needed to let go of the image of himself as
Voc Ed material before he could take the risks involved in the college prep track. Later,
Rose found that he had to detach himself somewhat from his origins in South Los
Angeles in order to make a firller transition to university life. Only then could he fully
accept the idea that his education might really open up new worlds of possibility.

On the other hand, for Rodriguez there was a strong tie to his parents solidified by
ethnicity that he felt must be let go of (Rose and Conway had strong bonds with their
mothers strengthened by the tragedies they shared but these were essentially without the
ethnic dimension). For Rodriguez, speaking English in the home announced his transition
to the ways of school culture. It symbolized a weakening for him of his tie to his parents.
But English was also the only means by which he could build a public identity, one that
the classroom would recognize and reward.

Finally, for Conway, although her transition from the outback to urban life as well
as her initial trip to Ceylon certainly challenged her view of things, the first time it
appears to have been necessary for her to truly change, to let go of an aspect of her own
identity in order to embrace a new direction in her learning, is when she reached
university. Here she found that in order to fiilfill her aspirations of becoming a scholar,

she had to release herself from the expectation for her gender that she stay at home and,

306

as a daughter, continue to care for her mother. Further, she needed to distance herself
from the myth that one could become scholarly to the point of abandoning one’s
womanhood. Perhaps the reason this did not happen earlier for Conway was that she had
not come across anyone who could help her mediate between her academic and outback
identities. It seemed that her brief but intense relationship with Alec Merton was the
catalyst that helped her begin sorting out who she was and what she should become as a
person. It empowered her to let go of her role as caretaker of her mother and their legacy
on Coorain.

At the same time as each author found it necessary to let go of some aspect of
their past in order to change, there were also times when they realized the impossibility
of ever completely doing so. There were transitions during which, as they teetered on the
boundary between cultures, the more enduring aspects of who and what they were
became more obvious to them. For example, while in the Teacher Corp, Rose’s
identification with his students sensitized him to the presence of the past within himself.
He realized that the “decayed images of the possible” he had internalized growing up in
South LA. would always remain. It was Conway’s travel between countries, on the other
hand, that seemed to make conspicuous for her the colonialist attitudes inherent in herself
as well as those aspects of her, a certain way of apprehending a landscape for example,
that were Australian through-and-through. Finally, it was only late in his formal
education, sitting by himself alone in the British Museum, that Rodriguez could finally
appreciate the indelibility of who he was as a Hispanic, the son of illiterate immigrant

parents. In some important ways, the changes that had allowed these authors to complete

307

the transition to an academic world, to find there new points of stability, were in fact
never firlly complete. The tensions between stability and change was never firlly resolved.
Although it lessened at some moments and increased at others, it remained an integral
part of who they were.

Thus, within the context of each of the three narratives, the author’s experience
renders views of him- or herself and the world from very different places. In a sense,
although they may have departed these places physically, there is also a sense in which
they never really left. Conway never left the expansive remoteness of Coorain nor did she
leave Harvard, Rose never left South LA. nor did he leave Loyola, and as he enlisted as a
member of an academy that he ultimately rejected (or that rejected him), Rodriguez never
lefi the Spanish speaking warmth of his early family life. Finding their own sense of
place, their own integrated identity, for each of these authors has meant bringing these
places together in a way that has finally allowed them to connect.

Perhaps because of the extent to which Rose and Rodriguez felt their transitions
to academic life had transformed them fi'om who and what they were, they continued to
experience self-doubt throughout their educational careers, doubts that denied they had
changed in any truly significant way. Were they the ‘real thing’ or not? For example,
Rodriguez’s doubts were evoked by the persistent contrasts in ethnicity between himself
and his academic peers. Rose, on the other hand, although he had made huge shifts in his
intellectual view of himself, continued to feel the tug of having spent two years in the
Voc Ed track as having been a denizen of LA. ’5 lower socioeconomic class. For

Conway, owing partially to the schools her financial circumstances had allowed her to

308

attend (private schools whose culture was consonant with her colonial attitudes), her
whiteness in a White culture, as well as the early recognition of her intellectual gifts, the
‘real thing’ issue was not one she appeared to struggle with. Her own self-doubts
stemmed more from the constrictions of gender and the moral issues this raised for her:
was it appropriate for her as a woman to become a scholar and, as a daughter, did she
have that right?

Perhaps driven by such self-doubts, in those instances in which the authors appear
to have made some kind of academic progress, all of them seem to have experienced an
impulse to sabotage the change. After his transfer into the college prep track, Rose
struggled against the habit he had acquired of under-performing. Later, while attending
Loyola, he fought the pull to stay in South LA. where life was familiar and he could
continue to look after his mother. Conway, on the other hand, struggled against the
dictates of gender for the Australia of her time. She wondered if her place was in
Australia, at home, caring for her mother. Or was it as a ranch owner on Coorain? Either
choice would have ended her academic path.

Finally, the nature of Rodriguez’s self-doubts and the direction these took him in
were a bit more complicated. Although his refusal to defend his dissertation, in spite of
the fact that it had been completed, would appear to have been a deliberate attempt to
sabotage his own academic career, in reality it was the only way he could not sabotage
himself at a deeper level. By abandoning this quest, he was also avoiding the continued
self-sabotage of the scholarship boy who, by splitting from his past, destroys his own

integrity. The dissertation, at one level, embodied his entire education. It was a symbol of

309

who he was as an intellectual. However, he now realized that his academic identity was
one that sought to deny his origins as a Hispanic, the son of illiterate Mexican
immigrants. To defend it publicly in front of the faculty would have only been to
continue the charade and the intellectual dishonesty. It would have been a betrayal, one
now conscious, of the past that he was finally claiming for himself.

Ifwe look at the tension between stability and change simply as the result of a
cultural clash, the ‘old’ culture of one’s past colliding with the ‘new’ culture of the
present, there are three obvious ways such a tension could logically resolve. First, one
could actively pursue membership in the ‘new’ culture. Second, one could reject this
option and retreat or resist membership. Third, one could find a way to ‘code-switch’ or
translate between the two. That is, one could say to oneself, “While these two places are
different, while I’m here I ’ll be this and while I’m over there I’ll be that,” speaking and
acting accordingly in each.

Although each of them did try, none of the three authors seems to have been
successful with this last option (i.e., code-switching). They were unable to translate
between worlds in which things held such different meanings, at least without becoming
painfully confused about themselves and who they should be as persons. The second
option, to retreat or resist is some way, may be the easiest and the choice many students
who come fiom conditions much different than those of the classroom actually make.
Rose, Rodriguez, and Conway are therefore exceptions in having gone with the first

option, that of pursuing a place for themselves in the thick of academic culture.

310

Of course, for none of the three authors did their transitions occur overnight. They
often involved a long, extended process. There was constant back-and-forthing between
old and new ways of thinking, Ieaming, and doing. Sooner or later, the tension generated
a crisis.3 There was a sense of having lost the horizon (to borrow from Rodriguez), 3. lack
of anything by which to orient their sense of themselves, nothing to get a fix on. At the
same time, it was usually only during such crises that the impetus seemed to appear for
moving forward. For example, during undergraduate Rose continually commuted back-
and-forth between South LA. and Loyola, daily crossing what were predominantly lines
of class. The tension and confusion this generated ultimately paralyzed him. It was then
that he made the decision to leave home for good. Rodriguez moved back-and-forth
across lines that were more broadly cultural, marked largely by ethnicity: Hispanic and
White. In London, his attempt to parachute deep into academic territory precipitated his
surrender to the fact that he could not, or was unwilling to, disregard his past for a place

in academia. Not long after this, he abandoned academia entirely. Finally, the crisis for

 

3 I realize that the term ‘crisis’ carries some theoretical baggage, particularly having to do with Eriksonian
theory. Crises for Erikson were between states within the indivithlal (e.g., trust versus mistrust, industry
versus inferiority, ego-identity versus role-confusion, integrity versus despair). In contrast, although my use
of the term ‘crisis’ refers similarly to moments in which one’s identity is at risk, it is not used
developmentally. For Erikson, the dynamics of crises were shaped by the forces of inner development
(‘epigenesis’) confronting the structure of outer society. Reconciling these crisis in the appropriate way at
the appropriate time resulted in the accruing of basic personal virtues (e.g., trust, competence, fidelity,
wisdom). In this study, the dynamics of a crisis are explained in terms of the juxtaposition of two different
forms of social organization and the mediational means that do(or do not) facilitate one’s movement
between them. The rmit of analysis is not the individual, nor an individual’s developmental period, it is the
individual-in-transition, which naturally includes as a constituent the nature of that which the individual is
moving between. The crises in the authors’ lives were driven by the identity that they arrived in various
contexts ‘with’ and the inability of a particular context to sustain that identity (i.e., that way of thinking,
talking, acting, and valuing). In this view, a critical constituent of crisis is the nature of the prior or former
context and its generating and sustaining of a certain identity. Finally, the resolution of the crisis is not
supposed to have endowed Rose, Rodriguez, or Conway with particular virtues. The resolution simply
allowed them to move forward with a life whose trajectory they felt they had lost control of.

311

Conway came only after years of constant movement between home and her role there (a
daughter caring for an ailing mother) and the world of academia (an aspiring scholar). At
that point, she was essentially moving back-and-forth across lines marked by gender. An
irrational tirade by Conway’s mother was the event that finally triggered a moment of
clarity for Conway. Admitting the distortedness of this relationship, Conway was finally
able to make the conscious decision to stop the back-and-forthing and begin a more
focused pursuit of an academic career.

To more deliberately pursue their education, all three authors at some point
needed to abandon the attempt to be one person in one context and a more-or-less
contrary person in another context. Beach (1999) might characterize this change as
moving from a “collateral” transition in which one moves continuously between two
different contexts to a “lateral” transition in which one turns away from one’s past in the
service of a more complete and final change. For these authors, it was actually out of
their collateral movement that the momentum for a more lateral movement toward a
different kind of future arose. Having accomplished the latter, it is true that Rose,
Rodriguez, and Conway do finally look back. In general, it is class, ethnicity, and gender
respectively that inspire them to do so. But this looking back is by no means a desire to
actually return to what they once were. In deed, their inspiration for remembering comes
only by having moved quite some distance from where they began. Only by virtue of this
distance can they now understand the broader picture of themselves.

One possible reason that all three authors did decide, against the odds, to continue

their educations into college and graduate may come from their shared belief that

312

education could somehow remake them. There was an overarching faith on their part that
knowledge and books would transform them. Of course, a necessary ingredient of this
was a strong desire on their part to be transformed. Rose’s desire began to unfold during
his senior year in the context of his intense student-teacher relationship with Jack
MacFarland. He wanted to become something other than what he saw around him in
South LA. He wanted education to lead him out into a richer world of experience. For
Rodriguez, on the other hand, desire sprouted early. From the earliest days of elementary,
he wanted to be a ‘good student.’ He wanted to belong there as he had belonged among
his family. He sought validation as an important and legitimate member of the academic
community.

Conway’s desire for change through education was different in the sense that it
was not so all-encompassing. Unlike Rose and Rodriguez, Conway was more
comfortable in the multiple worlds she inhabited. With the exception of her desire to be
released from her role vis-it-vis her mother, the university did not necessarily represent a
means of escape from an identity and a past she wished to forget (remember that
Rodriguez, who was from a strongly Hispanic family background, had chosen to become
an English major, specializing in Renaissance literature). The transformation in herself
that Conway sought from formal education instead had more to do with her identity as an
intellectual. She had an idea of what she wished to accomplish as a scholar. In fact, as a
historian, she wanted to look back. By doing so, she had hoped that she could attain a
deeper understanding of the issues that had been so integral in her mother’s life and, thus

far, in her own - particularly gender, colonialism, and nationality.

313

 

 

In summary, across the three texts, certain things can said about the tension
between stability and change. First, at some point for all three authors, the stability of
their identity was lost during the course of significant educational and life transitions.
There was a break with the past that somehow disoriented them. This, in turn, set up a
tension between the author’s need for personal continuity, on the one hand, and the desire
for a kind of learning that would help him or her become someone or something new, on
the other. From one author to the next, there were differences in when this destabilizing
occurred, differences that depended on the timing of events as well as on where each of
the authors were in their own developmental trajectory.

Second, tensions between stability and change could be created by a sudden shift
in the intellectual expectations accompanying certain transitions, as with Rose’s transfer
to the college prep track or his initial year at Loyola. At the same time, other transitions
seemed to involve more of a shift in cultural expectations than in what was expected of
the author academically. Examples of the latter would include Conway’s transition from
Coorain to urban culture following the death of her father, or Rodriguez’s initial
movement between home and grammar school.

Third, although part of the tension between stability and change came fiom a
certain resistance to letting go of various aspects of their past, such letting go was also the
path by which this tension could be lessened and thus change more fully embraced.
Having said that, however, it is also important to note that each of the three authors found
themselves faced with the impossibility of ever completely doing so. There was an

important sense in which the tension generated by an earlier transition, particularly those

314

involving the exchange of one status quo for another (e.g., the status quo of
home/community for that of school), was enduring and in fact never fiilly resolved.
Perhaps this is what prompted them to look back in the first place. Although it may have
seemed to them at times that their education required a severing from their origins, each
eventually reached for the sense of personal stability that came with reclaiming their
identifications with the past.

Finally, over the course of their formal education, the tension between stability
and change often seemed to be fueled by the authors’ transition back-and-forth between
one cultural context and another. This movement, motivated in part by a vague idea of
how their education might change them, seemed to incite further the tension between who
they were or had been and what their learning promised they might become. They
essentially moved between cultures that each held different trajectories for them. One
culture, home and community, lead in the direction of the past and a continuation of who
they had been there. The other, school or academia, afforded a change in destination,
heading them toward futures in which they could become something different, although
what this might be often seemed obscure. This tension gradually built to a crisis that then
provided the impetus for a more committed lateral movement toward the fiiture, a fiiture
that at least promised opportunities for a more integrated self. At that point, they were
able to assume a more conscious control of the change in their lives, a control that had
not existed before (although each would still need to reconcile their future identities with

the past, as discussed in the next section).

315

In these ways, each of the authors followed educational paths that introduced a
tension into their lives between their need to maintain a sense of stability regarding who
and what they were as persons and the opposing desire to become something different, to
move beyond the constraints of their past. As Rose, Rodriguez, and Conway pursued
higher levels of academic achievement, tensions between stability and change were
generated by their ongoing awareness of contrast. Moving back and forth between
academia and a world closely affiliated with their past continually foregrounded the
differences between these two. These differences were not merely in terms of contexts
however. Each of the authors also had a strong experience of essentially moving between
one identity and another and that moreover these identities were somehow mutually
exclusive.

For all three authors, their most significant periods of transition involved some
type of crisis before a conscious commitment toward some future set of coordinates could
be made. For all three authors, these crises were very personal. They were not shared by
others around them and were not necessarily precipitated by any kind of catastrophe in
the author’s life. The crisis was an outcome of the author’s struggle with the frustrated
tangle of old and new. Although, of course, they could not have planned it this way, as a
crisis unfolded it often afforded them with the conditions for its own resolution. The next
section will now gather together the main points that seemed to have emerged from my

analysis of the tension between affiliation and separateness.

316

Affiliation and Separateness.‘ The tension between affiliation and separateness,
and the way this played into the public-private distinction, was a phenomenon that all
three authors encountered during their various educational transitions. The quality of their
experience depended in large part on the circumstances that they were coming to school
fiom. Typically, these were circumstances that had served to separate them a particular
school’s culture. In Rose’s case, life among the economically lower-class, racially mixed
population of South LA. had little in common with life on the predominantly upper-class
White campus of Loyola University. For Rodriguez, the fact that his was the only non-
White in the classroom, and moreover that he did not speak English, was sufficient
enough to induce feelings of separateness upon entering school. For Conway, her family
lived on a ranch so geographically remote that prior to age 11 there essentially was no
public to have felt separate fi'om. Perhaps because of this, unlike Rodriguez, it was only
outside of academia, during her stint as a medical secretary, that she could finally begin
to construct “an acceptable public self’ (p. 162). In sum, in different ways, some aspect
of the authors’ lives prior to significant educational transitions made it difficult at times
for them to construct their public identities as students once such transitions were

underway.

 

4 As defined in chaner three, Afiiliation refer to the authors’ experiences of feeling that their learning and
identity were connected in important ways to people, things, events, and ideas outside themselves.
Achieving this experience required access to the various means by which they gained access to a particular
culture (e. g, means would include significant Ieaming relationships such as those with teachers. mentors,
0r peers as well as their own skill, knowledge, and familiarity with regard to various cultural artifacts).
Separateness, on the other hand, was essentially the absence of such means, an experience of themselves as,
to some degree, an individual set apart from the particular web of relationships, things, events, and ideas
surrounding them While at its extreme, separateness induced an experience of alienation, in balance With
affiliation it was also important for a feeling of individuality, uniqueness, and personal efl'reacy.

317

To varying degrees, Rose and Conway’s intellectual development depended
heavily on their affiliation with individuals who were able to serve as catalysts for their
learning. Some were mentors. Probably owing to the academic leap he needed to make
(Voc Ed to college prep), mentorship seem to have had the greatest importance for Rose.
Along with receiving help in the development of his academic skills, first in his
relationship with Jack MacFarland and later with his college professors, Rose was also
shown a personal side of his teachers’ lives. He saw that their private identities were
consonant with their public identities and this inspired him to emulate them. At different
times, Rose and Conway also searched for affiliations with educational culture through
their involvement with various small school-related peer groups. These intimate
communities provided a temporary niche where learning and identity-making could be
brought together in a more explicit way.

For all three authors, niches such as these were an important means of
maintaining a sense of personal continuity in the face of dramatic change. Although not
i all of these niches were within academia, through them each author was able to find at
least some degree of stability. For example, for Rose there was his friendship with a
buddy from high school who had also been accepted into Loyola. He and his friend
would commute back and forth to campus from South LA, sharing their frustration with
Loyola and their pleasure in returning every evening to familiar surroundings. Rose was
also part of the small circle of fiiends who, after graduation from Loyola, wrote to one
another, sharing bits of their original poetry. With them, he was a poet. An affiliation

vital to Conway’s sense of continuity was provided by her relationship, albeit brief, with

318

friend and romantic partner, Alec Merton. He was someone who could mediate, perhaps
for the first time, between her life on the outback and her life as a scholar. Finally, for
Rodriguez it was through his strong affiliation with the church, in the context of his
identity as a Catholic, that he realized some degree of personal continuity in the
confusing back-and-forth between home and grammar school.

However, given the importance of someone who could serve an intellectual
catalyst in the lives of Rose and Conway, the absence of similar affiliations in Hunger of
M is striking. I continue to puzzle about their absence. As mentioned, Rose and
Conway each encountered small pockets of friends, or a mentor here or there, that
afforded them small, temporary, but apparently important niches where they could start
pulling together their past with who and what they were becoming intellectually. Given
their circumstances, it is not difficult to come up with possible reasons why. Conway
attended an exclusive boarding school that shared her colonial mindset.5 Both Rose and
Conway were fortunate enough to meet up with friends and teachers that shared their
passion for language and learning. And neither of them had to deal with ethnicity, or
second language issues, in quite the same way as did Rodriguez.

Still, I remain curious as to why a similar niche never seemed to appear for
Rodriguez, at least as written about in Hunger of Memory. Was there really no place to

resolve the tensions between past and firture, aside fiom the continuity provided by his

 

’ The fact that Conway’s mother was so intensely, albeit ambivalently, involved with her education (both
personally and financially) and was literate herself (both Rose and Rodriguez’s parents had very little
formal education) provided an environment that was comparatively supportive to Conway’s intellectual
development.

319

identity as a Catholic? Although the fact of it not happening was critical to his
'breakthrough' in the British Museum (or that's how I interpret it), was there really no one
to have helped him along the way, no one who understood his struggle in moving
between Hispanic and academic worlds? Perhaps not. Although he might have been
helped by someone who could serve as a model of the successful Hispanic-American
intellectual, a theme of his autobiography is of course the impossibility of doing precisely
that, of incorporating his ethnicity into his identity as an American academic.6

Throughout their educational careers, Rose, Rodriguez, and Conway all struggled
with the powerful and enduring affiliation between their own lives and the lives of their
parents. They struggled because, in order to develop their own individual path, there was
also the need for them to appreciate the ways in which their lives were in fact separate
from those of their parents. This was not a simple task. The conscious decision to avoid
replicating the lives of their parents sparked feelings of guilt. Except for those occasional
niches that brought learning and identity together, that helped them to integrate their past
with what they were now learning formally, the author’s intellectual development seemed
to symbolize a turning of their backs on the lives of their parents, maybe even an

abandonment.

 

6 I did correspond briefly with Rodriguez regarding this issue. He replies,

Of course, there were favorite teachers. And I always expected, as a boy, that books
mysteriously would transport me one day into the company of educated people. But no.
Otherwise, my education was a strangely solitary journey. To this thy, I write and I work
as a kind of public intellectual within a circle of loneliness. That loneliness feels like a
burden at times, but it also gives me they impulse to write (to touch other lives, to
puncture the silence) (R Rodriguez, personal communication, Apil l, 2001, used with
permission).

320

For example, each eventually had to acknowledge and accept the stark differences
between their own educational opportunities and those of their parents. All three
autobiographies portray the glow and optimism of their parents’ early lives in contrast to
what eventually became a string of disappointments and dead—ends. Unlike their
offspring, whose educations had spanned the prosperous decades following WWII, all
three sets of parents had been born into hard economic times. It had been necessary for
them to forsake education at a young age in order to work. Also unlike their offspring,
each of the authors’ parents had married young, had children, and continued to work in
support of a family. In one way or another, each of the authors’ quest for academic
achievement is construed by them as having been an effort to compensate for the
disappointment of their parents’ unfulfilled dreams. As a result, the authors all reach a
point where they are conflicted about who it is they are truly learning for. Who should
their educations serve? Why did their Ieaming seem to separate them from their parents
instead of strengthening that affiliation?

At her high school graduation, Conway felt empty. She realized that no amount of
accomplishment could bring back her deceased father and brother. Nevertheless, her
education continued to be one way of remaining faithfirl to her father’s admonishment, as
his ranch was collapsing, to make something of herself. Further, it was only through
paradoxically devoting herself intellectually to improving the cause of women (a means
also of indirectly maintaining her affiliation with her mother’s life) that Conway could
physically leave her mother for a separate life in America. Similarly, before Rose could

wholeheartedly pursue a college career, he also found it necessary to realize a more

321

conscious separation of his life from the life of his widowed mother in South LA. It is
also telling for Rose that at the point at which he had decided to give up his scholarship
and leave his graduate program, it was toward his deceased father that he felt most

apologetic. He remembers the images that came to him that afternoon. He had resigned

from UCLA and lay on the bed in his apartment.

The rain was streaming ofl the roof drain and down along
the window. I could see my father. His face was quiet,
comatose, his cheeks soft and stubbled His lips were open
slightly. Dad? I slid my arms under his arms - he was hot
and damp - and tried to sit him up in bed. Dad, sit up.
Please. “Come on, Dad, ” I heard myself cry. “God
dammit, Dad. Dad Dad. Oh, Dad. I ’m so sorry ” (p. 83)

Finally, a prominent dynamic in Rodriguez’s autobiography was the increasing
separateness that education seemed to engender between he and his folks. Throughout his
education, Rodriguez found himself repeatedly having to reconcile academic
achievement and the opportunity for a better life with a sense of being alienated fi'om his
parents, although he viewed this struggle as an inevitable and even necessary part of his
Americanization.

Differences between the authors’ backgrounds, especially in terms of their family
histories, meant that they came to education from different places, with different
constellation of affiliations by which they felt themselves defined. There were differences
between them in the breadth and depth of affiliations between their family of origin and

the world external to it. Rose’s parents had immigrated from Italy to America’s east coast

322

and, in hopes that an improvement in weather might slow his father’s arteriosclerosis,
from there to the west coast. However, the move west only separated them further from
extended family as well as from the life for which they had hoped. Rose’s autobiography
contains no reference to the involvement of aunts, uncles, cousins, or grandparents, for
example. “Isolated and deceived,” his parents were “two more poor settlers trying to
make a go of it in the City of Angels” (Rose, 1989, p. 13).

In contrast, although Rodriguez’s parents were new to America, the fact that they
had come from nearby Mexico allowed for a greater degree of affiliation with their
extended family and native culture, which likely endowed Rodriguez with a greater sense
of ethnic heritage, while heritage is something Rose says little about (of course, this
deeper sense of ethnic heritage also helped to explain Rodriguez’s angst regarding his
having been co-opted by White academic culture).

For Conway’s parents there were no immigration issues. Moreover, in spite of the
hardships involved in running the ranch, the purchase of Coorain had in fact moved
Conway’s family into Australia’s owning class. As a result, she had access to resources
that Rose and Rodriguez did not: private boarding school, vacations abroad. Further,
although all three sets of parents valued and sacrificed for their children’s education,
Conway’s mother was different in the set of high standards she maintained for Jill’s
Ieaming as well as her level of involvement with it. The fact that Conway’s mother was
relatively literate allowed her to participate more directly in Conway’s education. She

and Conway read together. There were many books in the home. She even assumed the

323

role of teacher during Conway’s early years on Coorain" Thus, there were certainly
differences between the quality of Conway’s initial transition to the academic work of the
classroom, for which she was well prepared, and the more difficult transitions of
Rodriguez and in particular Rose.

In counterpoint to Ieaming that seemed to separate them from others, at various
points in each of the three autobiographies, there are moments in which Rose, Rodriguez,
and Conway experience an affiliation between their own lives and the lives of published
authors. In literature, as they personally resonated to a particular story or poem, they were
able to realize a kind of distant mentoring. About Shakespeare and Elizabethan theater

Conway writes,

I could scarcely read a page without self-discovery, for it
seemed as though my experience of life and the one
expressed in the plays were identical. When Hamlet spoke
of the smallness of man washed up “upon this bank and
shoal of time . . . creeping between earth and sky, ” it
evoked my sense of smallness before the vastness of the
bush. The inexorable swiftness with which the fates closed
in upon Macbeth reminded me of my chilcfirood arp. 139-
1 40).

In the poems of Wallace Stevens, Rose was able to recognize his own desire to “open the

door, to go out and read the world: alien, point-blank, green and actual” (p. 77). The same

 

? The tension between Affiliation and Separateness that Conway’s formal learning eventually introduced
mtoherrelationshipwithhermotherhadto do with the threatthat heredueation posedto Conway’s roleas
daughter and caretaker.

324

type of affiliation with literature, seeing reflected in it the nature of the struggles he was
presently engaged with, seemed to have occurred less frequently for Rodriguez. Perhaps
this owed to his denial regarding the change that education was requiring. Eventually,
however, Rodriguez did find himself and his situation characterized with stunning
likeness in the pages of Richard Hoggarts’ (1957), The Uses of Liteggy. The scholarship
boy was more than a metaphor for Rodriguez. It was a categorical description of his life.

Finally, in considering the tension between affiliation and separateness in these
authors’ stories, Conway leads me to consider issues surrounding gender and the
definition of self. One popular view of gender and relationships has it that, for various
reasons, the psychological and emotional concerns of women generally orbit around
themes of ‘self-in-relation,’ of human connectedness and affiliation (e. g., Gilligan, 1982;
Miller, 1984; Surrey, 1985). In contrast, according to this view, male psychological and
emotional concerns generally have more to do with issues of autonomy, power, and
separateness. The reasons for these differences are usually attributed to a mix of
biological, psychological, and evolutionary development and how these combine with
culture to explain the construction of gender.

Based on the broader concepts of affiliation and separateness as they are defined
here, I do not find this to be the case in these autobiographies. Rose’s educational career
was very much preoccupied with, indeed driven by, his need and desire for human
relationship. His determination to be educated toward a broader sense of affiliation with
others is what initially pushed him out of graduate school and into teaching. It was then

as a teacher that he actually felt himself come into his own intellectually. Rodriguez, too,

325

was preoccupied with relationship issues during his education, although in a perhaps

more self-absorbed way. The loss of intimacy with his parents that his education seemed
to entail is a recurring theme in his autobiography, as is a persistent loneliness. Finally,
and in contrast, although her identity was obviously greatly invested in her maternal
relationship, Conway was also very much concerned with whether or not she would
ultimately be able to take an independent stand. She struggled for assurance that she had
the power and right to realize an identity separate not only fi'om her mother but from
broader gender stereotypes. Conway, who also takes a broader view of human connection

and separateness, writes elsewhere...

I’m very much opposed to the current sentimental school of
female psychology, which argues that women never separate
from their families of birth because they bond with their same-
sex parent and never develop boundaries that separate them from
the primal mother... .I think that’s wrong for a great variety of
reasons. .. .I see men lodged in networks of supporting
relationships everywhere I go... in fact they have many ways in
which they display affection or support for each other...Women
don’t get to watch them doing that, so they’re not aware of it. So
I wanted to write a story about separation - as honest an account
as I could give of that process. My new memoir, True North,
pursues that motif of separation. It’s my personal testament in
opposition to the sentimental school of thought about women”
(in Zinsser, 1995, p. 166-7).

In summary, some general points now can be made about the tension between
affiliation and separateness. First, although constructing an identity through which they
could affiliate themselves with a more general public was critical to negotiating the

various academic cultures they encountered, it was precisely this transition between

326

private identity, nourished through intimate relationships, and public society that was
difficult for the three authors. The various educational contexts through which these
authors passed were all different (e. g., grammar school, private boarding school,
parochial high school, undergraduate and graduate campuses in America and in
Australia), but they were all public.

Second, in spite of the fact that the contrasts between where they had come from
and where the broader academic culture seemed to be taking them could make this
private-to-public transition difficult, most of all it required an array of affiliations through
which they could bring learning and identity-making together, through which they could
find acceptance of themselves at a public level without having to cut off important
aspects of their personal pasts. In one way or another, each author’s story represents the
struggle to find those learning circumstances though which, by virtue of an optimal
degree of affiliation and separateness, some degree of integration between past, present,
and future identities might be achieved.

Third, each author believed that learning could somehow change them. Each of
them desired that change. At the same time, each of them needed to work out who it was
that they were learning for. Once they realized that it was not so much their own personal
pasts they were trying to transcend as those of their parents, they needed to resolve for
themselves the meaning their education held.

Fourth, there were of course differences between the authors in the depth and
breadth of the affiliation-separateness tension, which could be attributed largely to how

their stories differed according to the importance of economic factors, ethnic and racial

327

heritage, and individual family history. F ifih, there were instances of ‘textual’ affiliation,
a personal connection with literature, that brought learning and identity together for each
author. Such connections helped them to understand and, just as importantly, experience
the meaning that their lives and struggles might hold. Finally, although these are only
three individuals, the fact that Conway was a woman while Rose and Rodriguez were
male seemed to play little role in determining the quality of the tensions between
affiliation and separateness. More important seemed to be issues of class, ethnicity or
race, and family history.8

The preceding were some of the ways that each of the authors’ educational paths
involved a tension between the feeling that their learning and identity were connected in
important ways to persons, events, ideas, and objects outside themselves, on the one hand
(affiliation), and the sense that they were to some degree, an individual set apart from the
particular web of relationships, things, events, and ideas surrounding them, on the other
(separateness). Resolving the tension depended largely on finding a middle ground
between family and academia. For the three authors, this middle ground took the form of
brief, informal, but important niches, times and places in their learning in which the
voices of past, present, and firture could begin to differentiate and thus be brought into
dialogue. These niches were brief contexts in which their future self, the part of them that
held an idea of where their education could potentially take them, could ‘converse’ with
who and what they were at that moment, including those aspects of the past that still

remained a part of them.

 

8 This does not mean that gender was not a very real and contimring issue in Conway’s life.
328

In all three cases, out of this sometimes torturous and difficult dialogue between
past and present came a third direction, one that was neither entirely new nor that relived
their past but that to some extent integrated both. An example would be the “fledgling
literati” that Rose and a few buddies formed with Jack MacFarland during Rose’s last
year of high school. Although the bulk of Rose’s identity was still ensconced in South
LA. in the learning context of this small group he began to pull himself toward a very
different kind of future. Or one can envision Rodriguez at the British Museum, hunched
over a copy of Hoggart’s Uses of Litergrgy, agog at finding such an astonishingly accurate
depiction of his struggles and planting the seeds for his eventual decision to abandon
academia. The final section will now pull together the main points that came out of my

analysis of the tension between immediacy and reflection.

Immediacy and Reflection.9 Obviously, in terms of differences between the authors, the
tension between immediacy and reflection played itself out over the course of very
different life settings. This is true for the other tensions as well, and perhaps more could
be said about this. However, I will focus here on those things that seemed to contribute
most to similarities and distinctions between the authors in terms of the tension between

immediacy and reflection.

 

9 Immediacy and reflection refers to the tension in the author’s experience between two modes of
consciousness, two ways of ‘processing,’ knowing, or experiencing the world One mode seemed to be
conceptual, analytical, and abstract and the other was represented by moments in which the authors
experienced themselves as very much ‘in’ the present moment, unselfconsciously engaged, alive to their
senses and surroundings.

329

 

There were geographical transitions that played a much stronger role for Conway
than for Rose and Rodriguez in mediating the immediacy-reflection dynamic. For both
Rose and Rodriguez, all of their major transitions were contained within the physical
boundaries of urban society. Conway’s most significant transitions, on the other hand,
incorporated her movement between the natural world of the outback and the artificial
world of the city (to the extent that one considers cities artificial). There was thus a

manner in which Conway experienced the immediacy-reflection tension in ways that

 

 

Rose and Rodriguez did not, this tension being fed by her back-and-forth between
outback and urban academic life. In addition, tensions between immediacy and reflection
for Conway were different in that there was not the same sense of struggle, a burning
desire for more human contact and immediacy of experience in the face of academic
pressure for more analytic types of reflection. Conway’s movement back and forth
between academia and outback was not driven by the press to inject greater immediacy
into her life. It was merely a requirement of her dual roles: one in academia and the other
on Coorian.

For Rose and Rodriguez, tensions between immediacy and reflection were mostly
an aspect of their transition between the social and cultural worlds of home/community
and academia (where, again, this transition for Conway was overlaid with her transition
between natural and urban environments). For Rose, issues of class fireled this tension.
The ethic of toughness and survival in South LA. worked against efforts to develop more
reflective modes of consciousness while, for Rodriguez, the tension between these two

ways of knowing was fed primarily by the differences in ethnicity and tongue between

330

himself and his teachers or classmates. In spite of such differences, however, there
remain important points of similarity between the authors regarding the tension between
immediacy and reflection.

There were impediments to becoming a reflective intellectual for the three authors
that can be thought of as more properly cultural. Although these resided in external
society, they were also internalized in ways that each of the authors struggled to
overcome. Rose struggled with overcoming the inhibition created by having come from a
segment of the lower socioeconomic class while, for Rodriguez, the struggle stemmed
from his own continued efforts to suppress his ethnic origins. In Conway’s case, there
were internalized gender expectations such as the perception that femininity and intellect
excluded one another, or that her most important role was that of caring for her mother.

For all three of the authors, there was also a point reached where they felt a sense
of disillusionment in the direction that their education was taking them. In particular,
there was a perception that their learning was leading them away from more direct
contact with the world. At some point, learning at the graduate level struck each of them
as valuing a disembodied type of thinking that took precedence over more immediate
ways of knowing (see Gover, 1997 ). This seemed to be the expected approach toward
one’s intellectual work.

At the same time, for both Rose and Conway, Ieaming seemed to be driven by
broader questions having to do with class, history, nationality, and gender, for example.
These were concerns immediate to their own lives. Rose and Conway had both hoped

that advanced levels of learning would lead them out into the world in the direction of

331

such issues. Although their undergraduate years, once they had accustomed themselves to
campus life, had eventually contained powerful intellectual awakenings, both were then
disillusioned when graduate study did not contain more of the same. Instead, there were
times when graduate study struck Rose and Conway as arcane and obtuse, reflective in
the extreme, abstracted away from the things that really mattered to them (more
specifically in Rose’s case, for example, away from the process of writing itself and, in

Conway’s case, away from issues of gender and her interests in an authentic Australian

 

 

character). At some point, both Rose and Conway lefi their graduate circumstances in
response to this perceived lack of immediacy (Rose for the Teacher Corps and Conway
for a different kind of intellectual environment in America). Eventually, they reassumed
their studies in conditions that allowed them to incorporate topics of more immediate
personal relevance into their intellectual work.

In contrast, although Rodriguez also experienced his work as having acquired a
certain irrelevance at the most advanced levels, he does not seem to have experienced a
loss of immediacy in quite the same way as did Rose and Conway. It was not so much
that he had come to long for experience that would lead him immediately out into the
world. Instead, Rodriguez’s desire was for experience that would lead to a more
immediate connectedness with himself. Perhaps this was because Rodriguez had felt
himself co-opted by academia to a greater extent than did Rose or Conway. Since he had
disowned more of himself, there was more to reclaim. Also in comparison to Rose or
Conway, Rodriguez’s intellectual interests had focused themselves in a somewhat narrow

way on Elizabethan theatre. For that reason, distracted by the pursuit of something that

332

had so little apparent relevance to his ethnic past, it was not until the 11'h hour that
Rodriguez finally began to deeply question if where he was headed intellectually was
truly consonant with the person he was now admitting himself to be: the son of illiterate
Hispanic immigrants. This was the point at which his own immediate experience, his
identity, and particularly his desire to embrace his personal past, finally became the most
important thing.

For all three authors, it seemed that the greatest meaning was ultimately not found
in immediacy or in reflection alone. Instead, the richest meanings only seemed to arise
once they had obtained a degree of steady movement between these two ways of
knowing. Of course, circumstances that could support this oscillation also had to be in
place. For example, the most meaningful moments in Rose’s education, those most
formative to his unique identity as an intellectual, seemed to be those instances in which a
certain niche afforded opportunities for intellectual work that was, at the same time,
embedded in the immediacy of his close personal contact with others. First, there was
Jack MacFarland and, after that, his undergraduate professors at Loyola. There were also
close relationships with like-minded fiiends along the way. Later, Rose’s own work as a
teacher included moments in which the immediacy of his contact with struggling students
often lead him to reflect in important ways on himself, his own knowledge, and the
nature of literacy itself.

For Conway, a middle ground that brought together the immediacy of outback
and the reflectiveness of academic life was difficult to find. Each time she found herself

coming in as if fi'om the outside. In other words, Conway was constantly moving between

333

 

 

contexts in a way that allowed her to see both the one she had left and the one she was
entering ‘as if for the first time.’ There was no niche that provided a middle ground from
which Conway could reflect on the larger picture of her life. This is not to say that the
reflectiveness that characterized her identity as a scholar was divorced from the
experiences of immediacy surrounding her identity as a rancher. Indeed, to momentarily
step back in order to appreciate the immediacy of life in the outback, its hard physical
labor, its natural elements and one’s fight for survival against them, was in itself an act of
reflection. At the same time, there was a sense of immediacy that Conway carried back
into her work as a scholar. This compelled her, in academia’s otherwise rarified
environment, to root herself intellectually in concerns that were of immediate interest and
concern to her, whose relevance went beyond the confines of her small academic
department. Ultimately, such cross-fertilization was not the same as having a third space
that was somehow set apart fi'om both her life as a scholar and as a rancher. She lacked a
middle ground from which she could understand and, more importantly, evaluate her dual
identities more objectively.

Conway finally realized a very temporary but intense middle ground within the
context of her relationship with Alec Merton. For Conway, Merton was someone besides
herself who was comfortable in the many worlds she inhabited. Like Conway, he could
work, play cards and drink with the best of them on the outback but, at the same time,
was well-educated and reflective. As a result, he was able to help Conway sort through
her outback and academic identities and, ultimately, decide that her intellectual gifts were

her strongest suit.

334

 

 

In Rodriguez’s autobiography, one has the sense that he never found a niche
within academia that could reconcileimmediate and reflective ways of knowing in the
same ways that did Rose or Conway. As a child, Rodriguez was in fact intensely aware of
its absence. Like the scholarship boy, his consciousness at home was consumed with the
immediacy of family life. He learned “to trust spontaneity and nonrational ways of
knowing” (p. 46). At school, he learned to reflect analytically, to “trust lonely reason.”
Instruction stressed “the value of reflectiveness that opens a space between thinking and
immediate action” (p. 46).

Perhaps for Rodriguez until he left academia, there was no middle ground
between these two ways of knowing. Conway, in her back-and-forth between home and
academia, whether living an immediate or reflective kind of life, nonetheless remained
Australian. Up until university, Rose was among his own lower socioeconomic class
whether at home or at school. However, Rodriguez was Hispanic at home, in the
immediacy of family life, and an aspiring American at school, where reflection was
- prized. The fact was that these were incommensurable; he could not have conceived of
himself as ‘Hispanic—American.’ This made it very difficult to integrate immediacy and
reflection as two equally valid ways of knowing. Each of Rodriguez’s identities
(Hispanic son and American student) corresponded with different and mutually exclusive
forms of consciousness, different ways of knowing. It was only after he had ultimately

left academia for his life as an essayist and writer that he seemed to find a way to use his

335

 

reflective gifts in the service of those interests and concerns that were most personally
immediate to his own life. ‘0

In their own ways, at some point all three of the authors became fascinated with
the two-sided, immediate and reflective, functions of language. For each of them, while
the sound and music of language conveyed something that was very immediate (a feeling,
an attitude, a longing), language as a symbolic tool opened up the possibility of creating
new ways of understanding and thinking (a concept, an idea, a theory). This fascination is
something that eventually drew all of them to poetry. For them, poetry as a form was an
exemplar of the movement between sound and word, immediacy and reflection. In Rose’s
case, poetry (in which he would include song lyrics) and writing were important not only
in his own personal and intellectual life, but often as a means of reaching his students.

The immediate and reflective functions of language were also apparent to
Rodriguez from an early age. As a young child non-fluent in English, Rodriguez was
peculiarly sensitive to the differences between the sounds of English in public and the
sounds of Spanish at home. The differences in sound for him also contained a difference
between the purposes to which language was put. At home, language served the
immediacy of family relations. At school, it served reflective learning and the emergence

of his identity as an American.

 

1° Since leaving academia, it is indeed interesting that Rodriguez has become an essayist, only one of a few
careers that concerns itself with the widest possible field of topics. Also, as an essayist, he must always - in
fa“ is expected to - speak from his own unique position and experience. That is, his daily work now entails
reflecting on what seems to him to be of most immediate concern.

336

 

 

Finally, Conway too writes about the point at which she “heard language as

music” (139).

Ihis sense transformed my reading of Shakespeare, which I
now began to read aloud to myself instead of memorizing
the blank verse with silent joy (p. 139).

In addition, as pointed out in my analysis (chapter 4), poetry and literature provided
Conway with an important tool in helping her to understand her transition from the
outback to urban life. As these afforded opportunities to reflect on her life, it became
more immediate. There were certain poets and writers who had the potential to bring
Conway into more direct contact with, and thus begin to integrate, her own feelings of
“distance from the emptiness of modern life” as well as the images of “deserts and
whitening bones” she had internalized from her life on Coorain.

In summary, some basic observations can be made regarding the tension between
immediacy and reflection. First, on the road toward becoming intellectuals, which meant
developing the ability to critically reflect, it was not merely societal roadblocks that
impeded the three authors. By acting on those aspects of culture that had been
internalized and that thus informed their immediate sense of who they were at that
moment, particularly negative attitudes and stereotypes, they themselves had the potential
to play an active role in blocking (Rose had he stayed in South LA, Conway had she

succumbed to gender stereotypes in Australia) or destroying the integrity of (Rodriguez

337

had he continued on in what he felt to be his hypocritical position as an academic) their
future identities as scholars.

Second, each of the authors reached a stage in their education (graduate school for
all) where learning seemed to have become too abstract an endeavor, one removed from
the reality of their lives. Reflection had become divorced from the immediacy of the real
world and they struggled for relevance. Each of them left education in response. Rose and
Conway returned once they had realized an academic direction closer to the concerns of
own lives. Rodriguez found relevance elsewhere. As a brief side note, each of the authors
at one time or another viewed their intellectual abilities as a means of escape (through
education) from unhappy circumstances. It is also important to note that each of them, as
exemplified by their having written an autobiography, has turned that ability to reflect
and analyze back upon themselves. There is a certain recursiveness achieved between
immediacy and reflection in the act of turning back on their own education to give it
meaning in the light of who and what they have become. It may be another way of
bringing greater immediacy, a sense of ‘realness’ and integration, to the person they have
construed themselves to be at the moment of writing.

Third, the experience of a relation between learning and identity for these authors
seemed strongest when there was an optimal degree of oscillation between moments of
immediacy and moments of reflection. But each had to realize the circumstances that
could sustain this movement. In order to achieve it, as with the affiliation-separateness
tension, it seemed to have been important for them each to temporarily attain various

niches where the two ways of knowing, immediate and reflective, could cross-fertilize

338

 

one another, where a rhythm of moving back and forth between them could be realized. It
was in this movement that the relation of learning and identity seemed most obvious, that
they seem to have experienced Ieaming in ways most relevant to their concurrent efforts
at identity-making.

Fourth, Rose, Rodriguez, and Conway all eventually allude to the ways in which
language served to mediate the tension between immediacy and reflection. Each of them
came to appreciate language as sound (lyrics, poetry, the voices of intimates). Meaning at
this level was very immediate: a feeling, an attitude, a longing. At the same time, as
literate persons, they also came to embrace language as word or symbol, where meaning
takes the form of concepts, ideas, or theories. This fascination is something that seems to
have attracted them all to poetry, which for them epitomizes the movement between
sound and word, immediacy and reflection.

This section has attempted to summarize many of the ways that the authors’
educational paths involved a tension between a way of knowing constituted through
immediate experience contrasted with a consciousness that depended more on critical
analysis, reflection, and imagination. It seemed that, for these authors, their Ieaming as
well as their development as persons was most optimal in those circumstances that
allowed them to oscillate between these two ways of knowing, that in effect allowed one
way of knowing to ‘play off of’ another in the context of their lives. The oscillation was
not merely in terms of the authors’ internal experience. Their internal experience was
simply one aspect of continuing to move between contexts that tended to foreground

either one way of knowing or the other. The rhythm of this oscillation between

339

immediacy and reflection appeared to engender for them greater clarity and a deeper
understanding of what they were learning its larger meaning in relation who they were
becoming.

At more advanced levels of learning, however, tensions emerged that seemed to
break this balance. For all three, there was a point during advanced study at which a
perceived absence of immediacy in their learning effectively stopped the oscillation.
Learning had lost its momentum. Although the result varied from the generalized pain of
ennui (Rose), to feelings of personal alienation and irrelevance (Rodriguez), to a more
basic dissatisfaction in the light of personal goals (Conway), the outcome was a
conscious effort to effect some kind of change in their lives. At the very least, such a
decision might get them out of this painful position, one in which they had felt
increasingly stuck.
Relationships Between the Three Tensions. Having dealt with the tensions separately,
in this section I will try to touch briefly on the possible interrelationships between them.
Although I’ve separated them here for purposes of analysis, they were of course very
much interdependent. Through his education, Rose hoped to reach out and affiliate
himself more solidly with the world of immediate flesh-and-blood experience. That
which Rose appears most driven to understand seems frequently to have been the
immediate experience of those, including himself, struggling with “the dislocations that
come from crossing educational boundaries” (p. 9). Doing so, however, paradoxically
required that he also define himself as someone apart from those (including his mother)

outside academia, those still inhabiting the world from which he came.

340

 

For Rodriguez, on the other hand, the tension between a sense of personal
continuity (stability) and the process of becoming someone or something new (change)
was often intimately coupled with the tension between affiliation and separateness. The
circumstances of his very first contacts with the classroom left him feeling separated and
apart: the only non-White, non-English speaker, non-American. He had to bring himself
into closer affiliation with the culture of the classroom and the only way he could
accomplish that (in fact was encouraged to accomplish it) was through urgent efforts to
change, to divorce himself from the familiar, to drastically and hurriedly transform who
and what he expected himself to be. To change in the ways that he believed were
necessary, he ultimately had to devalue his identity as a member of Hispanic culture and,
ultimately, as the child of illiterate immigrant parents. Therefore, an important
component of change for Rodriguez, as well as for Rose and Conway, involved altering
the network of affiliations through which they sought to define themselves.

In Conway’s case, the tension between stability and change interacted in
important ways with the tensions she experienced between moments of immediacy and
reflection. This was particularly the case as she transitioned back and forth between her
ranching duties and her role as a scholar and student at the University of Sydney. Her
experiences of immediacy in relation to the outback provided a sense of stability and
rootedness in the midst of change as she developed her identity as a scholar. At the same
time, reflecting on her identity as a rancher fed into who and what she wanted to become
intellectually: as a scholar she wanted to explore and even advocate for an authentic

Australian identity that stood apart from a colonialist mindset.

341

 

 

Because I do not see the three tensions as being mutually exclusive, 1 have not felt
compelled to reduce my interpretations to a single tension in any given case. In fact, as I
tried to get a fix on how learning and identity-making came together at certain moments
in the authors’ lives, the widest understanding was occasionally offered by instances in
which all three tensions seemed to be operating simultaneously. As an illustration, 1 go
back to Rodriguez’s experience in the British Museum and his eventual transition out of
academia entirely for life as a social critic. This series of transitions made clear for
Rodriguez the tension between the changes in himself effected over years of formal
learning and his contrasting need for a sense of stability and personal continuity. But, in
addition, these transitions also illustrate the struggle between Rodriguez’s need for closer
affiliations and the validation that formal learning offered him, on the one hand, and the
separateness that this seemed to create between himself and the ethnic world of his
origins, on the other. This was a struggle that had started his first day of elementary and
that sitting in the British Museum only brought to a head. The series of transitions that
ultimately lead Rodriguez out of academia involved the conflict between a life in which
the value of reflection seemed to have become inflated and his desire for a life in which
immediate experience could regain its currency. In this case, each of the three tensions
illustrates important facets of the relationship between learning and identity-making.
Autobiography and gender. As mentioned in chapter three, in her book, When Memory
59% (1998), Conway reflects on the history of autobiography as a genre that reflects
the contrasting myths and expectations Western European culture holds for the typical

life course of males as opposed to females. Typically for males, autobiographies are built

342

 

 

around a test or trial of some kind, a “classical journey of epic adventure” (p. 9). The
protagonist “is tested by the forces of nature and by cultural conflict, and he acts as an
agent” (p. 10). For females, the protagonist typically portrays less control over the events
in her life, less agency. As in the romance, things happen to her.

Much of the cultural “code” that Conway encountered in her native Australia had
to do with these gender norms and, given that she was female, what seemed or did not
seem to be culturally appropriate paths for her to follow. There was no apparent story line
she could map her life onto, no quests or odysseys featuring the successes of a strong,
intellectually independent women. In the typical romantic plot, the heroine defines
herself primarily through her intimate affiliations with the hero. A heroine whose
autonomy, agency, ambition and separateness served to define her was not an appealing
character in British colonial culture. Yet, this is precisely the identity Conway’s
education was nurturing. Even though she found comfort and belonging in the stability of
her role as caretaker of her mother, it was the lack of change this role involved, its
intellectual deadness, that pushed her to challenge gender stereotypes, even though she
had no clear vision of an alternative. In contrast, at no point does one get the sense that
Rose or Rodriguez were pitted against issues of gender in their struggle to realize a
degree of personal agency in academic culture. The nature of what they were up against
had much more to do with class and ethnicity.

The final and last chapter will offer a broad statement of my basic premise. I will

also include a broad overview of the picture that my interpretation presents regarding the

343

relationship between learning and identity and the value of the three tensions as analytic

tools for portraying more specifically the s0phisticated nature of this relationship.

344

CHAPTER EIGHT

Synthesis

In this work, I viewed the relation of Ieaming and identity through the lens of
three authors who each had profound experiences of transition between their past and the
academic cultures into which they desired entry. I began with the commonsensical
assumption that an integral relationship exists between learning and identity, that what
and how we come to know is inextricably intertwined with who we are becoming as
persons. However, I argued, in the transition to formal education the definition and
structure of learning change in such a way as to obscure this relationship. Although our
perception of it may be obscured, it is a relationship that remains nonetheless vital. The
difference is that we longer acknowledge it as quickly or as readily. As a society, as the
relation of Ieaming and identity becomes hazy, this ironically permits us to separate
issues of identity, including matters of class, ethnicity, and gender, from the larger
problem of who gets educated, where, and how. Ultimately, we may become confused or
discontented as individuals not only regarding the purposes and meaning behind our
education, but about who we are becoming in the process.

Using a hermeneutic approach, I explored the published autobiographies of three
public intellectuals: Mike Rose, Richard Rodriguez, and Jill Ker Conway. I interpreted
their texts in terms of the relationship between learning, on the one hand, and their efforts
to construct an integrated identity within mainstream academic culture, on the other. In

various ways, in their journey toward becoming highly educated persons, all three

345

struggled to define themselves within academia’s accustomed ways of thinking, acting,
and talking without, at the same time, distancing themselves from vital aspects of their
past.

In the three autobiographies, the relationship between formal learning and
identity-making seemed to express itself most strongly through the tensions these authors
experienced in the transition between home/community and academia. At some point, for
each of them this essentially amounted to an experience of moving between two separate
identities, each defined in the context of a different culture. The activities through which
the authors constructed themselves as persons, if they were to be relevant, had to survive
the lived confluence of the different worlds they inhabited. It was between
home/community and school cultures, as they moved back and forth from one to the
other, that they ultimately realized the implications of their learning for who and what
they were becoming as individuals.‘

Three basic themes emerged from these narratives. These themes each revealed a
basic tension in the learning-identity relation that was then used as an analytic tool for
subsequent interpretation. As well as providing a metaphor for organizing opposite
frames of mind, the tensions provided a unique means of articulating the more abstract
relationship between learning and identity. The first theme, stability and change, refers to
the tension in the three authors’ experience between a sense of personal continuity, on the

one hand, and the sense that they were becoming something new or different, on the

 

' For work that attempts to provide a broader framework for understanding the complex interrelationships
of different life contexts see Beach, 1999; Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Lerner. I997.

346

other. In general, moving through significant life transitions produced increasing levels of
tension that emerged from the authors’ attempts to reconcile past and present identities.
Their sense of who and what they were bumped up against a new context, one that had an
entirely different set of expectations for them. For Conway and Rodriguez, an example
would be their initial entry into elementary, which precipitated a major break in their
sense of self-continuity. For Rose, the demand for change felt especially strong during his
transition to university life. For all three authors, some type of crisis was ultimately
necessary before any degree of resolution could be obtained. These crises were very
personal and were largely an outcome of the struggle between their past identity and the
ways of talking, valuing, and behaving that constituted the academic settings they were
moving into.

The second theme, afiiliation and separateness, represents the tension between
the authors’ need to feel that their learning and identity were connected in important ways
to people, things, events, and ideas outside themselves. At the same time, they also
needed to retain a sense of their own individuality, an individuality that was defined
partially by their past. Rose, for example, felt he had initially lost this balance in graduate
school. It was largely because learning seemed to have become so impersonal, to have
lost its affiliations with his own life, that he was unable to follow the path his graduate
professors had laid out for him. Rodriguez’s affiliations with academia were strong up
until the very end, at which point he opted out. He had strived to realize his childhood
aspiration of becoming like his teachers. And yet he also increasingly struggled to find a

place for himself as an Hispanic. The latter was a part of himself that he experienced as

347

separate, as standing outside of academia. For Conway, the tension was experienced as
she moved back and forth between academia and the outback. Although she had strong
affiliations in academia, retunring to the university from the ranch foregrounded her
feelings of separateness from those in her academic world, most of who had no
experience in the outback. Conversely, as she returned to the outback, she could not help
feeling a tinge of alienation there also, an academic in rancher’s clothing.

For the three authors, therefore, progressing through the tension between
affiliation and separateness required special niches, times and places in which the web of
affiliations through which they defined themselves could become conscious, in which
voices of past, present, and future could be brought into dialogue. Out of this sometimes
torturous and difficult process came a future-oriented third direction, one that was neither
entirely new nor that relived their pasts but that, to some extent, integrated both. Rose
found an important niche, for example, as a teacher afler temporarily dropping out of
graduate school. It afforded him relationships with poor and struggling students,
important not only in helping him to construct himself as someone “engaged with the
language of others,” but also in bringing him into contact with aspects of his own past
that had yet to be integrated.

For Rodriguez, the British Museum was a much different kind of niche. It was
demarcated by his distance from home and an intense solitude. In these circumstances,
the tension between affiliation and separateness came to a peak that finally forced him to
confrom the internal struggle. He considered his affiliations to his family, to his work, to

the other solitary souls in the library, and to his newly acknowledged identity as a

348

‘scholarship boy.’ Conway’s short but intense affiliation with Alec Merton, her exposure
to his liberal ideas, his life-is-too-short attitude, and his great respect for her, provided a
context in which she could both acknowledge her heritage in the outback and also begin
to separate from it. As a result, she was finally able to disentangle the trajectory of her
own life fi'om that of her mothers. She made plans for studying in America.

Finally, immediacy and reflection refers to the tension in the authors’ experience
between two ways of knowing or experiencing the world. While one way seemed to be
conceptual, analytical, and abstract, the other involved those moments in which the
authors experienced themselves as very much ‘in’ the present moment, unselfconsciously
engaged, alive to their senses and surroundings. Oscillating between the two appeared to
have afforded the authors the widest and deepest perspective regarding what they were
learning and the meaning of this in relation to their own lives. At the graduate level,
however, tensions emerged that broke up this movement. For all three authors, there was
a point in their later years of study at which a perceived absence of immediacy stopped
the rhythm. Although the results varied fi'om the generalized pain of ennui for Rose
during his first pass at graduate school, to Rodriguez’s sharp feelings of alienation and
irrelevance while on his fellowship in London, to Conway’s sense of dissatisfaction with
Australian academia in the light of her scholarly goals, the outcome was a conscious
decision to finally effect some kind of change. They decided to leave their present
academic surrounding. For example, Rose dropped out of his graduate program and went
to work for the Teacher Corp, Rodriguez ultimately lefi academia entirely, and Conway

left graduate work in Australia for graduate study in America. At the very least, such

349

decisions took them out of circumstances in which they had begun to feel increasingly
stuck.2

Are the tensions I’ve explored here productive or problematic? Are they
inevitable? Are they necessary? Looking first at the tension between stability and change
for the three authors, personal disorientation during times of significant change created
special windows of opportunity for reconstructing themselves as persons. The discomfort
of change, of temporarily loosing their social bearings and their natural desire to regain
them, put their identity ‘at risk.’ In different ways, all three authors describe how delicate
and vulnerable was their view of themselves as a thinker and learner during periods of
change (starting elementary school, changing academic tracks, starting or leaving or
returning to college, the move to graduate school), periods during which their self-views
could just as easily have been swayed toward the negative as toward the positive. And yet
it was precisely this change-induced tension that compelled them to evaluate the quality
of their learning and, in the later years for Rose and Rodriguez, to finally confi'ont the
images of themselves they had carried forward, images formed during their long tenure as
students.

For the authors, certain transitions ushered in a change in what was expected of
them. There was tension to the degree that they felt unprepared for such change. From an

academic standpoint, Rose’s initial transition to the college prep track in high school and

 

3 Following their decision, the authors were each eventually able to resume their intellectual river in
circumstances that ayin afi‘orded them a grcater degree of movement between immediacy and reflection.
Rose eventually returned to UCLA and a more involved role as an educator, Rodriguez found a career as an
essayist and critic, and Harvard allowed Conway to pursue the questions she herself had formed regarding
matters of history, gender, and culture.

350

his first year at Loyola University were discouraging. Without social supports, he
languished and could easily have succumbed to his overwhelming self-doubt. The tide
was turned by a string of mentors that encouraged him, acknowledged his successes, and
provided models of the authentic intellectual. In contrast, Rodriguez felt the weight of his
parents’ and teachers’ expectation that he become a successful student. Although he was
able to compete academically, from a cultural standpoint this meant adapting his identity
to the White, middle-class values of academia at the time, suppressing not only the
expression of his ethnicity but his own sense of himself as Hispanic. The subsequent
tension fireled the crisis that ultimately lead to his decision to leave academia.

Finally, for Conway, the move from Coorain to Sydney following her father’s
death and her entry into a formal learning environment caused her much anxiety,
confusion, and bewilderment. Like Rodriguez, the challenges were not so much academic
as cultural. She felt alien and developed an over reliance on her role as daughter for a
sense of belonging. And yet, this tension between identity change and a sense of personal
continuity was to play a productive role in sparking Conway’s interest in questions of
history, culture, and gender - questions that eventually informed her identity as an
intellectual.

In their movement back-and-forth between the expectations of home/ community
and school, the tension between who they were or had been and who they should become
gradually built to a crisis. This provided the impetus for a more committed lateral
movement toward the firture. As a result, the authors were able to assume a more

conscious control of the change in their lives, a control that had not existed before. Of

351

course, things do not always turn out this way. These crises occurred in the context of
lives that contained opportunities. For example, Rose’s serendipitous encounter with Jack
McFarland had opened the door for him to attend Loyola. Rodriguez’s parents had made
the decision to settle in a White, middle-class section of Sacramento and send him to a
White, middle-class school where he followed the same path as his affluent peers.
Conway’s mother had a strong if overly vicarious interest in Jill’s education and the
resources to ensure that she was in the best possible Ieaming environment. This allowed
Conway to form relationships with those who could encourage and mentor her and help
her make the transition (at Abbotsleigh, for instance) from outback to urban society.

In terms of the tension between affiliation and separateness, the three
autobiographies described how important educational transitions required the authors to
develop an identity that was more public and through which they could form affiliations
with non-intimates. To them, this was an identity in contrast to the more private
experience of being with family members. Rodriguez is clear that this public identity is
what allowed him to progress academically, to attain his goal of becoming an intellectual.

Formal learning does require that one learn how to interface with a broader
public, to construct an identity within a larger society. This is an identity based in part on

the very separateness between public life and the exclusivity of one’s intimate

352

relationships.3 At the same time, if the public identity one develops in the process of
formal learning leads one to devalue aspects of who one is among intimates, or if the
unique nature of one’s family relationships works against the formation of a more
separate public self, significant educational transitions may bring about a rupturing of
self-continuity. At such times, the relationship between learning and identity-making is
no less vital, but the relationship may have become a negative one.

We saw how important it was for the authors to find circumstances in their
educational lives by virtue of which an optimal degree of both affiliation and
separateness could be achieved. These were places where the authors could try out and
play with different ideas, identities, and personas and, out of this, find some degree of
integration between past, present, and future identities. As important as these niches
were, they were serendipitous, personalized, and unique and generally found outside of
the formal curricula. Perhaps there is no way to transform something so informal into a
systematic component of the curriculum. At the same time, it does speak to the need for
facilitating the opportunity for learners to realize those circumstances in which they can
experience for themselves the relationship between what they are Ieaming and who they

are becoming.

 

3 Although there is not room to expand on it here, Chandler’s discusses the results of his extensive and
compelling research with adolescents that suggests two different and basic philosophical attitudes toward
the self, attitudes heavily influenced by culture. Chandler calls these ‘Entity’ versus ‘Relational’ forms of
selfhood (see Chandler, 2000). Where Euro—American adolescents were shown to have a more essentialist
or romantic view of self, Native American youth “commonly adopt a more narrative approach to the
problem of weaving together the various threads of their lives into some culturally available fabric” (p.
209). This seems to parallel Rodriguez’s experience of formal education as requiring him to develop a
public identity based on an American individualist notion of self, an isolated entity speaking to an
anonymous public. For him, this was in strong contrast to the more relational selfhe experienced among his
family.

353

The fact that all three authors consciously confronted the affiliations between
their own lives and the lives of their parents was a good thing in one respect. It allowed
them to transcend the educational limits of their parents’ lives. Although each author held
the covert desire that his or her successes could somehow compensate for their parents’
lack of achievement, for the most part these desires were transmuted into motives that fed
into the authors’ future careers as intellectuals. The flip-side of this was the pain of
surpassing and ‘abandoning’ their parents. It was their conscious grappling with this pain
that finally allowed them to become honest with themselves regarding the motives behind
their desire to excel academically. Coming into their own as authentic intellectuals
required that they take ownership of these motives. Only then could they decide what
their education meant in the context of their own lives rather than vis-a-vis the lives of
their parents.

Regarding the tension between immediacy and reflection, as was said earlier, the
authors’ learning seemed to be optimized by a steady back-and-forth between immediacy
and reflection. The rhythm between a type of knowing that was immediate and in the
moment and one that was more conceptual appeared to generate for them the broadest
moments of awareness regarding the relationship between what they were learning and
the implications this had for who they were becoming. Such experiences were not
frequent but they were motivational. They were something that each author eventually
came to look for and without which their Ieaming seemed unfirlfilling.

For Rose, Rodriguez, and Conway, it was necessary to find a niche that could

sustain this rhythm between immediacy and reflection. The emergence of these niches

354

was often informal and unplanned. Other times, they were an outcome of situations that a
teacher had a direct role in structuring (for example, for Rose it was meetings at Jack
MacFarland’s house or backyard barbecues with his professors). More than anything, the
tension between immediacy and reflection was about the absence of niches. It can be
difficult to find those circumstances within formal education that value immediacy as a
way of knowing. By the same token, it can be hard to find conditions outside of school,
within one’s home life, that support reflection. Although the authors’ disillusionment
with an over-emphasis on an analytic type of reflection and the accompanying lack of
immediacy in their academic worlds was painful, it also brought each of them to
important decision points. The resulting tension compelled them to make a change in
their educational lives that lead to the eventual creation of circumstances that could
support for them a way of learning vitalized by its relevance for identity-making, even if
such learning lay outside the formal institution of education.

There were cultural impediments to becoming a reflective intellectual for all three
authors. Each author struggled with the internalization of cultural stereotypes.4 Indeed,
intellectual qualities can be perceived by oneself and others as incongruent with one’s
class, gender, ethnicity, or in and of themselves qualifying one for membership in a

pejorative category (e.g., a ‘nerd’). Such incongruities depend on a certain stereotype of

 

4 Since they exist in the same social milieu as everyone else, it is casy for members of certain groups to
internalize the negative attitudes underlying prejudice and discrimination. These attitudes are then directed
against themselves. Just as many gays and lesbians must overcome their own internalized homephobia, or
addicts and alcoholics their internalized stereotype of the jrmkic or drunken wino, so must members of
certain ethnic, lower socioeconomic, and gender groups confront the degree to which they have absorbed
social Stereotypes that seek to define them in negative ways, constraining their efforts to change.

355

the intellectual, of course, as well as on conventional views regarding what constitutes
knowledge or intelligence. Although this and other stereotypes are not objective truths,
they are cultural truths and therefore, as individuals and groups, we contend with them.
The tension involved in becoming a reflective individual may come fi'om the fact that one
may both want to develop intellectually and, at the same time, may not want to challenge
the stereotypes, the traditions or prevailing attitudes and expectations that inform how
one is perceived by self and others. For Rose, Rodriguez, and Conway, making this
tension conscious was a critical facet of their formal learning. Their experience suggests
that it may be during periods of significant transition that one’s internalization of cultural
stereotypes becomes most visible. It was the very visibility of the stereotypes that finally
permitted the authors to more consciously understand and contend with them. The
outcome of this struggle was ultimately a greater degree of conscious choice over what
formal learning would entail, how it would position them socially, and who they might
become in the process.

There is no question that, as written about in their texts, the three tensions could
be seen as productive in the lives of Rose, Rodriguez, and Conway. And in hindsight they
were necessary to the story that each author tells about their formal learning careers. But
they are not inevitable in the same way as a devel0pment stage might be construed as
inevitable. Again, to repeat my quote of Rodriguez in chapter one, “education is not an
inevitable or natural step in growing up” (p. 48). The transitions that afforded the
emergence of tensions cannot be reduced to developmental impetus. They depended on

218pr of the authors’ personal histories. At the same time, given that these histories

356

 

played themselves out in the more general context of modern culture, it would be hard to
argue that their experiences were thoroughly unique to them as individuals. As much as
anything, I regard the tensions as representing one potentially neglected aspect, the
human or experiential aspect, of the familiar transition between learning among intimates
to Ieaming in the context of institutionalized education. To the extent that this transition
can be construed as a concomitant of education in a modern and culturally or
economically diverse society, I do not consider the authors’ experiences necessarily
restricted to their particular historical and cultural circumstances.

There were pivotal moments in all three narratives during which the authors could
have easily chosen to opt out of or otherwise sabotage their learning. Given the gap they
often experienced between life at home and at school, it might have been simpler for
them to simply have remained as they were, resisting the changes that formal learning
imposed. From this perspective, the tensions presented here could indeed be construed as
problematic. For society in general, it would be problematic were they so aversive that
individuals abandoned their education altogether, dropping out or otherwise selling
themselves short. The potential was certainly there for Rose, Rodriguez, and Conway.

In fact, the gap between the cultures of home and school is typically seen as a
problem. Attempts are made to bridge it through, for example, policy initiatives
(Bempechat, 1992; Miriam, 1993; Texas Kids Count Project, 1999), changes in practice
(Au, 1981, 1993; Floyd-Tenery, 1995; McCarthey, 1999), or attention to issues of family
literacy (Heath, 1986; Morrow, 1995; Nistler & Maiers, 1999). In each case, the

implication seems to be that the more similar we can get the school to the home, the more

357

ways in which school can accommodate a diversity of home cultures, the better off we
will be. But is the ideal solution to actually eliminate these tensions? Would the most
helpful thing for students be for the transition between home/community and formal
education to be as seamless as possible? I would like to describe a period from my own
educational career that I believe has particular relevance for this question. I offer it for
purposes of comparison. While I will not try and interpret it to the same extent as the
three autobiographies, it does provide another perspective on the tensions pr0posed here
and, through these, on the relationship between Ieaming and identity-making.

As a child in the early 1960s, there was a great deal of continuity for me between
home and the academic world. Some of this was due to the fact that I was white, middle-
class, and from the cultural mainstream. Both of my parents were college educated. But
there was more. The elementary school I attended sat directly across the street from our
home. From the front of our house, I could look out either one of two large picture
windows onto the school and its parking lot. School was always a visual presence. Even
on sick days, I could hear the guilt-triggering sound of the bell and the noisy throngs at
recess. When at school, I had only to glance out of the classroom window to know that
home was never very far away. I could see my father’s pickup pull into the driveway at
lunchtime. Probably more unusual, however, was my relationship to the principal, a
woman that once, in fi'ustration with her job, had warned me against ever considering a
career in education. She was my grandmother.

The fact that my grandmother was principal seemed mostly a good thing. I was

not a standout either academically or athletically. So I came to value being “Mrs.

358

Conaway's grandson.” It was important to howl saw myself. It made me different and
somehow special. After all, I had an inside with my teachers’ boss? In my young
elementary life, school became an extension of family life and family life an extension of
school. They were both part of the same network of affiliations and my grandmother was
the node that joined them. As vice-president of the school board, my father provided even
further continuity. Adult conversations in the house were frequently about the more
political aspects of education: millage proposals, new hirings, et cetera. Not until
adulthood was I able to acknowledge how unusual all of this was.

Rodriguez’s position would probably be that those whose education requires very
little change or contrast between the culture of home/community and that of academia are
generally less aware of education as an agent of change. But are there also developmental
implications? In my own case, education was certainly not perceived as an agent of
change, at least not to the same extent as for the three authors. I was the proverbial fish,
oblivious to the existence of the water. With no thermocline between home and school,
there was little contrast of old and new, no back-and-forth between ways that marked my
membership at home and those that marked my membership in the classroom. My
grandmother sat at the dining room table on Sunday afternoon and behind the principal’s
desk on Monday. The same basic affiliations defined me in either place. The Ieaming that

was involved at school did not especially require me to become anything new, it didn’t

 

5 This did have its negative side. Iwas sent to the office two times during elementary for disciplinary
reasons. IimaginethatthefearlfeltwaSprobablyworsethanformostothersurdents Itwasn’tjustthemix

ofrespect, fcar,andafiectionlfeltformygrandmotherthatcameintoplay. Myparentsmightjusthave
well been in the room also since word of my exploits always made it home.

359

require me to reflect upon or change who I felt myself to be as a person. Although I
certainly acquired new knowledge, I did not have to change much in terms of my basic
identity.

Further, returning home at various times in their educational careers, Rose and
Rodriguez felt as if they were coming in from a foreign land that their parents had never
visited and could not understand. In my case, the adults in my house not only understood
my school, they ran it. It’s probably accurate to see my circumstances as representing
‘privilege’ or ‘advantage.’6 I had one up on those students who had not come to school
already walking and talking in the expected ways. I had the ‘cultural capital,’ Bordieu
(1973) might say. In other ways, I’m not so sure. I also can’t help but wonder about the
absence of tension. For Rose, Rodriguez, and Conway, in a sense the logic of their
autobiographies depends on the assumption that, at some point, formal learning had to
disrupt their sense of personal continuity. It was the home-school contrast that initially
revealed to them the new, that suggested the potential for a kind of learning that might
lead them out and away from what was. Tension arose from the juxtaposition of this with
their need for stability. I cannot remember my early education containing this kind of
tension. The fact is that there simply was little experience of transition for me in terms of

culture or class as I crossed the street between my home and my elementary.

 

‘ Indeed, the conditions of my childhood education could be described as ‘privileged’ or ‘advantaged.’ 1
had opportunity and resources. But terms like 'privileged’ reveal little about how Ieaming and identity
cooperated in my own educational career, nor how my status (my father also owned a large depth-uncut
store) Oflen made meamarkforthose who resentedit

360

Even in high school, home and school were all part of the same cultural past and
present. I attended college at first by default. Since all the adults in my family had
attended, I don’t ever recall doubting that I would also. I lived at home and attended the
local state university. When I received my undergraduate degree, I remember vowing that
I would never return to what I perceived then as the suffocating structure of education. It
felt as if I had been studying about life all those years and now I wanted to go out and live
it. Perhaps, like the three authors, this was my own desire to find greater immediacy,
experiences closer to the bone. And perhaps it is because in a sense, although I had
started school, I had never really left home and was only now doing so. Not until my
return to college a decade latter, in pursuit of a career change, did I have the sense that
formal learning could lead me to become someone or something different.

What my own experience suggests is that the tensions described here are not
inevitable. Obviously, to the extent that we learn the attitudes, values, and behaviors that
inform who and what we are becoming as persons, there will always be a connection
between learning and identity. For every kind of student, entering a formal learning
context compels us compare, to gauge and evaluate the extent of our intellectual abilities
relative to others. At the same time, there isn’t necessarily a connection between formal
learning (as opposed to learning generally) and identity change. Instead, it is the degree
to which such learning requires us to cross boundaries (social, cultural, economic, and
otherwise) that determines its relevance for transformations in our fundamental attitudes,
values, and behaviors. Otherwise, as in my case, the culture of the classroom is more

likely to sustain the identity one enters with than to change it in any dramatic way.

361

Thoughts regarding autobiography and the study of Ieaming and identity-
making. However one wishes to conceptualize it, in school-learning we accomplish two
things, neither of which can be divorced from the other. One, we construct an
understanding of the world and our individual place in it. Second, by virtue of this
understanding (and in concert with the understandings of others), we act in ways that
identify us, that is, that position us in social space relative to those around us (see Davies
and Harre, 1990). Since identity and Ieaming are so fundamentally dialectic, there cannot
be identity-flee learning. We cannot separate learning how to do from learn how to be.
Nor can there by any significant learning that does not depend on, sustain, or alter our
identities in some way. Since learning (or the failure to learn) always positions us
socially, learners’ construction of knowledge cannot be separated from their
constructions of themselves as people. But how can we study such a relationship? Where
do we look?

Given that transition is such a prominent aspect of life in an industrialized society,
perhaps Bhabha’s (1994) suggestion that we look in the “interstices” between what he
refers to as cultural “domains of difference” is a helpful one. At least here, one can begin
to understand the great complexity of learning and identity-making. As described in
chapter one, we are likely to find that each domain of difference in our lives (home,
community, school, work, church, etc) contains a different presuppositional framework,
a different ‘take’ on the relationship between these two fundamental aspects of life.

Bhabha writes,

362

It is in the emergence of the interstices — the overlap and
displacement of domains of difi‘erence - that the intersubjectr've
and collective experiences of nationness, community interest, or
cultural value are negotiated. How are subjects formed 'in-
between,’ or in excess of, the sum of the ‘parts' of difference
(usually irrtoned as race/class/gender, etc)? How do strategies of
representation or empowerment come to be formulated in the
competing claims of communities where, despite shared histories
of deprivation and discrimination, the exchange of values,
meanings and priorities may not always be collaborative and
dialogical, but may be profoundly antagonistic, conflictual and
even incommensurable (1994, p. 2, italics in original)?

Similarly, Jiménez (2001) cites Rosaldo's (1989) suggestion that “researchers
place the cultural borderlands at the center of their gaze rather than at the margins” (p.
996). Jimenez believes that these borderlands may in fact be “the most culturally and
linguistically productive spaces in contemporary society.” Again, as the three
autobiographies illustrate, the relationship between learning and identity-making in all its
richness and complexity may be clearest in those brief moments of transition as we move
between one domain and another.7 My argument for using autobiography as a data source
is that it provides one possible perspective on these interstices or borderlands. Of course,
there are other possible perspectives that might further deepen our understanding. I
wonder about the value of an ethnographic approach. By studying the transitions of those

engaged in the actual process of crossing educational boundaries, would the three

 

7 In the lead editorial of a special issue of Cultural & mchology devoted to the development of self and
culture. Lightfoot and Lyra (2000) suggest that the ”conjunctive relationships" between issues of culture,
self or identity, and time ”are somehow fundamental to justifying such principal dualities, paradoxes or
tensions between opposites as those commonly understood to exist between continuity and transforman‘on,
subjectivity and relatedness, and coherence and diversity” (p. 99).

363

tensions serve a purpose in understanding their experience? Would they provide any
insight into the experience of those who are presently at risk of failing or abandoning
their education? If so, this might have something important to say about where the social
supports for such persons should be located.

Final Thoughts.

As each of the authors found, it is not only that moments of significant transition
foreground the present contrasts and contradiction of living in a culturally diverse world.
They can also make conspicuous the consistent threads of stability that run through our
individual lives, that maintain our bonds to the past. As Rose drew closer to becoming a
member of the educated elite, his recurrent images of South LA. and its “decayed images
of the possible” threaded him back to his roots in the lower economic class. As Rodriguez
sat for long hours in the solitude of the British Museum, the thread was the long-
suppressed but ever present call to embrace his origins as the son of illiterate Hispanic
immigrants, to personify rather than to deny his past. As Conway left for America, she
was aware of the Australian dust deep in her bones. This was a thread that would forever
tie her to Australia and to her father buried in the outback.

At the same time, what continues to strike me about the three autobiographies is
the extent to which significant transitions in their educational careers continually evoked
for them images not only of what they were in the present, but of what they were not yet.
Philosopher Kenneth Burke (1989) comments that a human is the only creature to live its
life in the presence of the negative. Higher consciousness brings with it the realization

that whatever is so, could conceivably be otherwise. We not only perceive a tree. Unlike

364

other sentient organisms, we can also conceive of the tree’s absence (we can think “not-
tree”). We might even imagine some alternative in the tree’s place. Rose, Rodriguez, and
Conway all struggled with who they were in the context of formal learning. Although
their identity at any given moment had its origins in their personal pasts, the trajectory of
their learning was toward what they might become. Learning carried with it images of a
future self. It was these images that either inspired or discouraged their continued efforts
to learn and, finally, to become intellectuals.

Although effective learning programs will always require some degree of looking
back, of assessing where we have come from and what we have achieved, we should not
neglect their role in helping us construct images of what we might still become.8 Jack
MacFarland’s admonition to Mike Rose, “Look. You can write!”, was as much about the
possibility of what Rose could be as about any skills Rose possessed at that moment. Of
course, ethnicity, social class, and gender may represent the kinds of categories through
which our individual identities must ultimately speak, but neither could my interpretation
‘ of the three texts have been reduced to these terms. As the three autobiographies reveal,

there is always a certain amount of agency contained in the ability of learners, and of

 

’ Again sec thework ofBelenkyetal. (l986)onliteracy, gender, andpower, reviewedinchapterthree, for
an example of the absence of such imagining and its affects on personal agency.

365

those who help them, to imagine something different. As teachers and educators, we are
very much in the image business”

I would be surprised if the basic premise with which I began, that there is it
relationship between learning and identity, strikes the reader as news. Indeed, it was not
my intention to try and establish this relationship as fact. The purpose was not hypothesis
testing. The purpose was to see what might be learned about the relationship between
learning and identity, in all its richness and complexity, from the documented experiences
of three individuals. My hope is that this particular arrangement of the details provided
by their stories may help us to understand more deeply an idea that we may already
accept but, like myself, wish to understand more fully. It is intended to add to the already
existing literature on the relation between ‘identity work’ and learning.10 Speaking in the
abstract, I would summarize what I’ve learned here in this way: Ieaming is an experience
and identity is the juxtaposition by which that experience is realized Or, conversely,
identity is a juxtaposition and learning is the experience by which that juxtaposition is

obtained. The activities through which we learn anything always position us relative to

 

9 The way we talk to one another about Ieaming and identity is also important It is a fact of the disciplines
that those who talk about learning in mostly cognitive terms tend to talk less about it in social, situational,
or cultural terms and vice versa. This is all ‘academic,’ as they say, until the conversation turns to a
particular person, until the ‘cognitive functions’ of which we speak attach themselves to a specific
individual. At that point, to the extent that the conversation is peppered with words and phrases such as
‘cognitive functioning,’ ‘intelligence,’ or ‘aptitude,’ we tend not to be talking about the part of a mrticular
student’s Ieaming (indeed that part of his or her identity) that we ourselves are responsible for, that is
constituted by the social and cultural worlds of which we ourselves are a part

‘0 The phrase, identity work, was originally used by sociologists Snow and Anderson’s (1937) in the
context of their study of identity construction among the homeless. Their model has been extended to, for
example, the study of marginalized students in an alternative high school (Fraser, Davis, and Singh, 1997).
The phrase, though not attributed to Snow and Anderson, was also used recently in an essay on literacy by
Gee (2000) as well as by Hemmings, (1998) in her case study of the identity construction of three African
American students in a desegregated urban high school.

366

someone or something. From that position, by virtue of that identity, we continue

learning what is and is not possible for us at any given point.

367

POSTSCRIPT

In the case of all three authors, these autobiographies provide examples of a more
complex, multifaceted, and challenging form of contemporary identity. Afier all, these
are probably not stories that one would have been invited to publish 50 or 100 years ago.
They are not the tale of an All-American-Boy-Made—Good written by an older male
reflecting on the obstacles in his life and how they have been overcome. These are stories
written by middle-aged persons about their search for a transcendent stand, a third space
that was neither family-and-past nor traditional academia but, out of the movement
between them, an integration of both that was their own.

Further, and perhaps unfortunately, it is probably more of an aberration than the
norm that the interplay of formal learning and identity-making would yield someone so
capable of such severe institutional criticism as Richard Rodriguez and Mike Rose. These
are authors who remain rigorously critical of contemporary academic culture. Because
.they have occupied the margins, they have been rendered extremely sensitive to the fact
that, in practice rather than rhetoric, the highest values of modern institutional education
do not involve enlightenment and the quest for knowledge but the dynamics of social
power. It is somewhat of a paradox therefore that Rodriguez and, to some extent, Rose
continue to remain attractive to higher education audiences. Perhaps it is a good sign that
something in the psyche of academia feels compelled to reward Rose and Rodriguez for

being so severely critical of the very system that produced them.

368

Bibliography
Anderson, J ., Reder, L., & Simon, H. (1995). Applications and misapplications of
cognitive psychology to mathematics education. (Accessible at
http://wwwpsy.cmu.edu/~mm4b/misapplied.html).

Anderson, 0. R. (1997). A neurocognitive perspective on current learning theory and
science instructional strategies. Science Education, 81(1), 67-89.

Apple, M. (1999). Power, meaning, and identity: Essays in critical educational studies.
New York: Peter Lang.

Au, K. (1981). Participation structures in a reading lesson with Hawaiian children:
Analysis of a culturally appropriate instructional event. Anthropology and
Education Quarterly, 1 7(3), 91-115.

Au, K. (1993). Literacy instruction in multicultural settings. Forth Worth, TX: Harcourt
Brace.

Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The dialogic imagination (C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Trans).
Edited by Michael Holquist. Austin, TX: University of Texas.

Bakhtin, M. M. (1984). Problems of Dostoevsby's Poetics (C. Emerson, Trans.)
Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Bamberg, M. G. W. (1987). The acquisition of narratives. New York, NY: Mouton de
Gruyter.

Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Barthes, R. (1974). S/Z (Richard Miller, Trans.) New York: Hill & Wang.

Barthes, R. (1977). The death of the author, Image, music, text . New York: Hill & Wang.
Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an ecolog of mind. North Vale, NJ: Aronson.

Bateson, M. C. (1990). Composing a life. New York: Penguin Books.

Bazerman, C. (1994). Constructing experience. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois
University Press.

369

Beach, K. (1999). Consequential Transitions: A Sociocultural Expedition Beyond
Transfer in Education. In D. Pearson (Ed), Review of Research in Education
(Vol. 24). Washington DC: American Educational Research Association.

Belenky, M., Clinchy, B., Goldberger, N., & Tarule, J. (1986). Women’s ways of
knowing. New York: Basic.

Bell, J. S. (1997). Literacy, culture, and identity. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.

Bempechat, J. (1992). Fostering high achievement in African American children: Home,
school, and public policy influences. Trends and Issues No. 16. New York, NY:
ERIC Clearinghouse on Urban Education. Ascencion Number ED328464.

Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The location of culture. London: Routledge.

Blacker, D. (1993). Proceedings of the Forty-Ninth Annual Meeting of the Philosophy of
Education Society (online document). http://‘mvwed. uiuc.edu/EPS/PES-
yearbook/93_docs/blacker.htm (Accessed Aug 8, 2001).

Blumberg, A., & Blumberg, P. (1994). The unwritten curriculum: Things learned but not
taught in school. Thousand Oaks, C A: Corwin Press, Inc. (A Sage Pulblications
Company).

Bontekoe, R (1996). Dimensions of the hermeneutic circle. Atlantic Highlands:
Humanities Press.

Bowers, C. A. (1988). The cultural dimensions of educational computing: Understanding
the non- neutrality of technology. New York: Teachers College Press.

Bordieu, P. (1986). The F onus of Capital. In J. G. Richardson (Ed), Handbook of Theory
and Research for the Sociology of Education . New York: Greenwood Press.

Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.

Bruner, J. (1985). Narrative and paradigmatic modes of thought. In E. Eisner (Ed),
Learning and teaching: The ways of knowing (Part II) . Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press.

Bruner, J. (1996). The culture of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Burke, K. (1989). On symbols and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

370

Casey, K. (1996). The new narrative research in education. In M. W. Apple (Ed), Review
of research in education (Vol. 21, pp. 211-253). Washington, DC: American
Educational Research Association.

Chandler, M. J ., & Lalonde, C. (1998). Cultural continuity as a hedge against suicide in
Canada's First Nations. T ranscultural Psychiatry, 35, 191-219.

Chandler, M. (2000). Surviving time: The persistence of identity in this culture and that.
Culture and Psychology, 6(2), 209-231.

Chandler, M. J. ((in press)). The time of our lives: Self-continuity in Native and Non-
Native youth. In H. W. Reese (Ed), Advances in child development and behavior.
. New York: Academic Press.

Cherryholmes, C. (1993). Reading research. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 25(1), 1-32.
Chickering, A. (1969). Education and identity. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology: A once and fiiture discipline. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.

Coleman, J. (1961). The adolescent society: The social life of teenage and its impact on
education. New York: The Free Press.

Connelly, F., & Clandinin, D. (1990). Stories of experience and narrative inquiry.
Educational Researcher, 19(5), 2-14.

Cook-Gumperz, J. (Ed). (1986). The social construction of literacy. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.

Cooley, C. M. (1902). Human nature and the social order. New York: Charles Scribner's
and Sons.

Coupland, N., & Nussbaum, J. (Eds). (1992). Discourse and lifespan identity. Newbury
Park, CA: Sage.

Covington, M. V. (1992). Making the grade: A self-worth perspective on motivation and
school reform. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Davidson, A. (1996). Making and molding identity in schools: Student narratives on
race, gender, and academic achievement. Albany, NY: State University of New
York Press.

Dyson, A. H. (1997). Writing superheroes: contemporary chilcflrood, popular culture,
and classroom literacy. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

371

Eckert, P. (1989). Jocks and bumouts: Social catogories and identity in the high school.
New York: Teachers College.

Egan, K. (1988). Teaching as storytelling: An alternative approach to teaching and the
curriculum. London, UK: Routledge.

Eisenhart, M. (1995). The fax, the jazz player, and the self-story teller: How do people
organize culture? Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 26(1), 3-26.

Eisner, E. (1998). The enlightened eye: Qualitative inquiry and the enhancement of
educational practice. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Erickson, F. (1996). Inclusion into what? Thoughts on the construction of Ieaming,
identity, and affiliation in the general education classroom. In D.Speece & B.
Keogh (Eds), Research on classroom ecologies (pp. 91-124). Mahwah, NJ:
Erlbaum.

Erikson, E. H. (1959). Identity and the Life Cycle. New York: International Universities
Press.

Fader, S. (1993 , May 16). Expanding roles: Brave new societal changes could reach out
to men, improve marriage. Chicago Tribune.

Floden, R., Buchmann, M., & Schwille, J. (1987). Breaking with everyday experience.
Teachers College Record, 88(4), 485-5 02.

Forio-Ruane, S. (1997). T 0 tell a new story: Reinventing narratives of culture, identity,
and education. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 28(2), 152-162.

Foucault, M. (1973). The order of things: An archeology of the human sciences. New
York: Vintage Books.

Foucault, M. (1977). What is an author?, Language, counter-memory, practice: Selected
essays and interviews . Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press.

Frankl, V. (1959). Man's search for meaning. Boston: Beacon Press.
Fraser, J ., Davis, R, & Singh, R. (1997). Identity work by alternative high school

students. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 10(2), 221-
235.

Freeman, M. (1993). Rewriting the self: History, memory, narrative. London: Routledge.

Freeman, M. (1999). Culture, narrative, and the poetic construction ofselfhood Journal
of Constructivist Psychology, 12, 99-116.

372

Gallas, K. (1997). Sometimes I Can Be Anything : Power, Gender, and Identity in a
Primary Classroom. New York: Teachers College Press.

Garrison, J. (1995). Deweyan prophetic pragmatism, poetry, and the education of eros.
American Journal of Education, 103, 406-431.

Gash, H., & Conway, P. (1997). Images of heroes and heroines: How stable? Journal of
Applied and Developmental Psychology, 18, 349-3 72.

Gearing, F., & Sangree, L. (Eds). (1979). Toward a cultural theory of education and
schooling. The Hague: Mouton.

Gee, J. P. (1991). Memory and myth: A perspective on narrative. In A. McCabe & C.
Peterson (Eds), Developing narrative structure (pp. 1-25). Hillsdale, NJ:
Erlbaum.

Gee, I. P. (1992). The social mind: Language, ideology, and social practice. New York:
Bergin & Garvey.

Gee, J. P. (1996). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses. (2nd ed. ).
London UK: Taylor & Francis.

Gee, J. P. (2000). Teenagers in New Times: A New Literacy Studies Perspective. Journal
of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 43(5), 412-420.

Genette, G. (1980). Narrative discourse (Lewin, Jane, Trans.) Oxford: Blackwell.

Gergen, D. (1998). Reflections on autobiography (online document).
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/gergen/june98/conway__6-l .html (Accessed July
27th, 2000).

Gergen, K. J. (1990). Social understanding and the inscription of the self. In R. A. S. a.
G. H. J. W. Stigler (Ed), Cultural psychology (pp. 569-606). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

Gergen, K. J. (1991). The saturated self. New York: Basic.

Gergen, K. J. (1994). Realities and relationships. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.

Gergen, K. (2001). Narrative, moral identity, and historical consciousness: a social
constructionist account (online document ).
http://www.swarthmore.edu/socsci/kgergenI/text3.html (Accessed March 27,
2001)

373

Gill, J. H. (1995). Learning to learn: Toward a philosophy of education. Atlantic
Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.

Gilligan, C. (1982). In a diflerent voice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Giroux, H. A. (1997). Pedagogy and the Politics of Hope: Theory, Culture, and
Schooling. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Giroux, H. A., & McLaren, P. (1992). Writing from the Margins: Geographies of
Identity, Pedagogy, and Power. Journal of Education, 174(1), 7-30.

Goodman, N. (1978). Ways of world making. Indiannapolis, IN: Hackett Publishishing
Company.

Goodwin, J. (1993). Autobiography: The self made text. New York: Maxwell Macmillan
International.

Gover, M. (1996). A review of The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human
Experience (Varella, Thompson, & Rosch. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991).
Mind Culture, and Activity, 3(4), 295-299.

Gover, M. (1997). Negotiating borders of self and other: Schools as sites for the
construction of learning and identity. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the

Jean Piaget Society, Montery, CA. June 19-21. ERIC ascension number
TM027684.

Gover, M. (1998). The narrative emergence of identity. In J. Knuf (Ed), Proceedings of
the Fifth International Conference on Narrative. Lexington, Kentucky, October
18-20, 1996. College of Communication and Information Studies: University of
Kentucky.

Gover, M. R. (1999, April 19-23). Identity is a verb: A relational view of knowing. Paper
presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research
Association, Montreal, Canada.

Gover, M., & Englert, C. S. (1999). Orchestrating the thought and learning of struggling
writers: CIERA Report #1-002. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, University
of Michigan, Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement. Also
available online at http://www.ciera.org.

Gover, M., & Conway, P. (1997, November 20-22). To Borrow and Bestow:
Identification as the Acquisition of Value. Paper presented at the Association of
Moral Education, Atlanta, GA. ERIC Accession Number C6029132.

374

Gover, M., 8: Gavelek, J . (1997). Educating the emotions: Implications of a relational
view of knowing for learning and development. Paper presented at the annual
meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, I]. ERIC
ascension number TM027685.

Green, 3., & Lee, A. (1994). Writing Geography: Literacy, Identity, and Schooling. In
A. F. a. P. Medway (Ed), Learning and Teaching Genre (pp. 207-226).
Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook Publishers, Inc.

Greeno, J. (1997). Response: On claims that answer the wrong question. Educational
Researcher, 26(1), 5-17.

Greenwood, J. D. (1994). A sense of identity: Prolegomena to a social theory of personal
identity. Journal for the theory of social behaviour, 24(1), 25—46.

Grondin, J. (1994). Introduction to philosophical hermeneutics. New Haven: Yale
University Press.

Halliday, M. A. K., & Hasan, R. (1989). Language, context, and text: Aspects of
language in a social-semiotic perspective. (2nd ed.) Oxford: Oxford University
Press.

Halliday, M. A. K., & Martin, J. R. (1993). Writing science: Literacy and discursive
power. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Hawkins, D. (1974). The irjonned vision: Essays on learning and human nature. New
York: Agathon Press.

Harré, R. (1983). Personal being. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Harré, R. (1989). Language games and the texts of identity. In J. S. a. K. J. Gergen (Ed),
Texts of identity (pp. 20-35). London: Sage.

Harre', R., & Gillett, G. (1994). The discursive mind. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Harre’, R., & Van Langenhove, L. (1991). Varieties of positioning. Journal for the Theory
of Social Behavior, 21(4), 393-407..

Harré, R., & Van Langenhove, L. (Eds). (1998a). Positioning theory: Moral Contexts of
Intentional Action. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Hatre', R., & Van Langenhove, L. (1998b). Reflexive positioning: Autobiography. In R.

Harte & L. Van Langenhove (Eds), Positioning theory: Moral Contexts of
Intentional Action (pp. 60-73). Malden, MA: Blackwell

375

Heatherington, E., & Parke, R. (1986). Child psychology: A contemporary viewpoint.
(3rd ed.). New York: McGraw Hill.

Heaney, S. (1995). The redress of poetry. The Noonday Press: New York.

Heaton, J. M. (1979). Theory in psychotherapy. In N. Bolton (Ed), Philosophical
problems in psychology (pp. 176-198). New York: Methuen.

Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time (John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson, Trans.)
New York: Harper & Row.

Hemmings, A. (1998). The self-transformations of African American achievers. Youth
and Society, 29(3), 330-368.

Hermans, H. J. M., Kempen, H. J. G., & van Loon, R. J. P. (1992). The dialogical self:
Beyond individualism and rationalism. American Psychologist, 47(1), 23-33.

Hoffman, D. M. (1998). A therapeutic moment? Identity, self, and culture in the
anthropology of education. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 29(3), 324-
346.

Hoggart, R. (1957). The uses of literacy; aspects of working class life with special
reference to publications and entertainments. London: Chatto and Windus.

Holland, D., Lachicotte Jr, W., Skinner, D., & Cain, C. (1998). Identity and Agency in
Cultural Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Howard, D. V. (1983). Cognitive psychology. New York: Macmillan.

Jackson, P. W. (1983). The Daily Grind... In H. Girous & D. Purpel (Eds), The hidden
curriculum and moral education (pp. 28-60). Berkeley CA: McCutchan.

Jimenez, R. (2001). Literacy and the identity development of latina/o students. American
Educational Research Journal, 27(4), 971 - l 000.

Johnson, M. (1989). Personal practical knowledge Series: Embodied knowledge.
Curriculum Inquiry, 19(4), 361-37 7.

John-Steiner, V., Panofsky, C. P., & Smith, L. W. (1994). Sociocultural approaches to
language and literacy. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Jung, C. G. (1961). Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Richard and Clara Winston, Trans).
New York: Random House.

Ker Conway, J. (1989). The road fiom Coorain. New York: Knopf.
376

Ker Conway, J. (1994). True North. New York: Knopf.

Ker Conway, J . (1998). When memory speaks: Reflections on autobiography. New York:
Knopf.

Kozulin, S. (1986). Vygotsky in Context: Introduction to Vygotsky's Thought and
language (A. Kozulin, Trans). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Kvale, S. (1996). InterViews. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Lacan, J. (1968). The language of the self: The fimction of language in psychoanalysis
(Anthony Wiklen, Trans). New York: Dell.

Lave, J. (1996). Teaching, as learning, in practice. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 3(3), 149-
164.

Leinhardt, G. (1992). What research on learning tells us about teaching Educational
Leadership, 49(7), 20-25.

Lemke, J. L. (1989). Social semiotics: A new model for literacy education. In D. Bloome
(Ed), Classrooms and literacy (pp. 289-309). Norwood, N.J.: Ablex.

Lemmen, R. (1997). Non-Cartesian cognitive science (online document).
http://www. cogs. susx. ac. uk/users/ronaldl/noncartesian. html (Accessed
11/19/98).

Lerner, R. M. (1997). Concepts and theories of human development. Mahwah, N .J .:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Levinson, B., Foley, D., & Holland, D. (Eds). (1996). The cultural production of the
educated person. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Lightfoot, C., & Lyra, M. (2000). Culture, self and time: Prospects for the new
millennium. Culture & Psychology, 6(2), 99-104.

Luttrell, W. (1996). Becoming somebody in and against school: Toward a psychocultural
theory of gender and self-making. In B. Leninson, D. Foley, & D. Holland (Eds),
The cultural production of the educated person (pp. 93-117). Albany, NY: SUNY
Press.

Mach, 2. (1993 ). Symbols, corflict, and identity: Essays in political anthropology.
Albany: State University of New York Press.

Mandler, J. (1978). A code in the node: The use of a story schema in retrieval. Discourse
Processes, 1, 14-35.

377

Mandler, J ., Scribner, S., Cole, M., & DeForest, M. (1980). Cross-cultural invariance in
story recall. Child Development, 51, 19-26.

Mann, H. (1848). Twelfth Annual Report to the President of Antioch College.

Mascuch, M. (1996). Origins of the individual self: Autobiography and self-identity in
England, 1591-1 791. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.

McAdams, D. (1996). Narrating the self in adulthood. In J. Birren (Ed), Aging and
biography : explorations in adult development. New York: Springer.

McAdams, D. P. (1995). What do we know when we know a person? Journal of
Personality, 63(3), 365-396.

McAdams, D. P. (1992). Unity and purpose in human lives: The emergence of identity as
a life story. New York, NY, US: Springer Publishing Co.

McAdams, D. P. (1993). The stories we live by: Personal myths and the making of the
self. In A. I. R. Robert A. Zucker, Joel Aronoff, Susan J. Frank, Eds, (Ed),
Personality structure in the life course: Essays on personology in the Murray

tradition. Henry A. Murray lectures in personality. (pp. 323-3 75). New York, NY,
US: William Morrow & Co, Inc.

McCarthey, S. (1999). Identifying teacher practices that connect home and school.
Education and Urban Society, 32(1), 83-107.

McDermott, R. P. (1993). The acquisition of a child by a learning disability. In S. C. a. J.
Lave (Ed), Understanding practice: Perspectives on activity and context (pp.
269-305). New York: Cambridge.

McLaren, P. (1993). Schooling as a ritual performance: Toward a political economy of
educational symbols and gestures. New York: Routledge.

Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind self and society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Mehan, H. (1993). Beneath the skin and between the ears: A case study in the politics of
representation. In S. C. a. J. Lave (Ed), Understanding practice: Perspectives on
activity and context (pp. 241-268). New York: Cambridge.

Merriam-Webster. (2001). On-line Encyclopedia (online document).
http://www.Merriam- Webster. com (Accessed 01/21/01).

Miller, J. (1982). The sound of silence breaking: Feminist pegagogy and curriculum
theory. Journal of Curriculum Theory, 4(1), 5-11.

378

Miller, J. B. (1984). The development of women '5 sense of self. Wellesley College: Stone
Center Working Papers Series.

Miller, J. (1998). Biography, education, and questions of the private voice. In C. Kridel
(Ed), Writing educational biography (pp. 225-234). New York: Garland
Publishing Inc.

Miller, J. H. (1990). Narrative. In F. Lentricchia & McLaughlin (Eds), Critical terms for
literary study (pp. 66-79). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Miller, P. J., Potts, R., Fung, H., Hoogstra, L., & Mintz, J. (1990). Narrative practices and
the social construction of self in childhood. American Ethologist, 2(17), 292-311.

Minnis, M. (1994). Toward a definition of law school readiness. In V. John-Steiner, C. P.
Panofsky, & L. W. Smith (Eds), Sociocultural approaches to language and
literacy: An interactionist perSpective (pp. 347-3 90). Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

Miriam, D. (1993). Mothers and education: Inside out? Exploring family-education
policy and experience. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press.

Mitchell, S., & Rosen, M. (1983 ). The need for interpretation: contemporary conceptsion
of the philosopher's task. London: The Athlone Press, Ltd. (Published in USA by
Humanities Press, New Jersey).

Montague, M., Maddux, C. D., & Dereshiwsky, M. (1990). Story grammar and
comprehension and production of narrative prose by students with learning
disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 23(3), 190—197.

Morris, B. (1994). Anthropology of the self. Boulder, CO: Pluto Press.
Morrish, I. (1976). The Sociology of Education. London: Unwin.

Morrow, L. (1995). Family literacy: Connections in schools and communities. Newark,
DE: International Reading Association.

Mueller-Vollmer, K. (1985). Introduction: Language, Mind, and Artifact: An outline of
hermeneutic theory. In K. Mueller-Vollmer (Ed), The Hermeneutics Reader:
Texts of the German tradition fiom the enlightenment to the present . New York:
Continuum Publishing Company.

Neihardt, J. G. (1932). Black Elk Speaks. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska
Press.

379

Nistler, R., & Maiers, A. (1999). Exploring home-school connections: A family literacy
perspective on improving urban schools. Education and urban society, 32(1), 3-
17.

Oates, S. (1991). Biography as history. Waco, TX: Mankham Press Fund.

Ogbu, J. U. (1990). Cultural model, identity, and literacy. In R. A. S. a. G. H. J. W.
Stigler (Ed), Cultural psychology (pp. 520-541). Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

Olson, M. W., & Gee, T. C. (1988). Understanding narratives: A review of story
grammar research. Childhood Education, ?(?), 302-306.

Packer, M. (1995). Local ontology - cultural work in the classroom. Paper presented at
the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San
Francisco, CA. April 1995.

Packer, M., & Brooks, D. ( 1999). School as a Site for the Production of Persons Journal
of Constructivist Psychology, 12, 133- 1 5 l.

Penuel, W. R., & Wertsch, J. V. (1995). Vygotsky and identity formation: A sociocultural
approach. Educational Psychologist, 30(2), 83-92.

Pepper, S. (1942). World Hypotheses. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Pinar, W., & Pautz, A. (1998). Construction scars: Autobiographical voice in biography.
In C. Kridel (Ed), Writing educational biography: Explorations in qualitative
research (pp. 61-72). New York: Garland Publishing.

Polanyi, M. (1975). Meaning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Polkinghome, D. E. (1988). Narrative knowing and the human sciences. Albany: State
Univ. of New York Press.

Quindlen, A. (2001). The problem of the megaschool. Newsweek, March 26, 68.

Radnitzky, G. (1970). Contemporary schools of metascience. Gothenburg, Sweden:
Akademiforlaget.

Ricoeur, P. (1991). Life in quest of narrative. In D. Wood (Ed ), 0n Paul Ricouer:
Narrative and Interpretation (pp. 20—33). New York: Routledge.

Rodriguez, R. (1982). Hunger of memory: The education of Richard Rodriguez. Boston:
David R. Godine.

380

Rogoff, B. (1994). Developing understanding of the ideas of communities of learners.
Mind, Culture, and Activity, 1(4), 209-229.

Rosaldo, R. (1989). Culture and truth. Boston MA: Beacon.
Rose, M. (1989). Lives on the Boundary. New York: Penguin.

Rosenwald, G.-C., & Ochberg, R.-L. (Eds). (1992). Started lives: The cultural politics of
self-understanding. New Haven, CT, US: Yale University Press.

Rothstein, S. W. (1991). Identity and ideology: Sociocultural theories of schooling. New
York: Greenwood Press.

Rumelhart, D. E. (1975). Notes on a schema for stories. In D. G. B. a. A. Collins (Ed),
Representations and understanding: Studies in cognitive science . New York:
Academic Press.

Rutter, M., Maughan, B., Mortimore, P., & Ouston, J. (1979). Fifteen thousand hours:
Secondary schools and their eflect on children. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.

Sacks, O. (1998). The man who mistook his wife for a hat. New York, NY: Touchstone.

Sampson, E. E. (1993). Identity politics: Challenges to psychology's understanding.
American Psychologist, 48(12), 1219-1230.

Schank, R., & Abelson, R. P. (1977). Scripts, plans, goals, and understanding. Hillsdale,
NJ: Erlbaum.

Scholes, R. (1989). Protocols of reading. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Schwartz, G., & Merten, D. (1968). Social identity and expressive symbols: The meaning
of an initiation ritual. American Anthropologist, 70, 1117-1131.

Sennett, R., & Cobb, J. (1972). The hidden injuries of class. Cambridge MA: Cambridge
University Press.

Shaw, T. S. (1994). The semiotic mediation of identity. Ethos, 22(1), 83-119.
Sharp, D. (1995). Jung Lexicon. Toronto, Canada: InnerCity Books.
Shotter, J. (1993). Becoming someone: Identity and belonging. In N. Coupland & J.

Nussbaum (Eds), Discourse and lifespan identity (pp. 5-27). Newbury Park, CA:
SAGE.

381

Shotter, J. (1993). Vygotsky: The social negotiation of semiotic mediation. New Ideas in
Psychology, 11(1), 61-75.

Shotter, J. (1995). Conversational realities. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Shotter, J., & Gergen, K. J. (1989). Texts of identity. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Shweder, R. A., & Miller, J. G. (1985). The social construction of the person: How is it
possible? In K. J. G. a. K. E. Davis (Ed), The social construction of the person
(pp. 41-69). New York: Springer-Verlag.

Smith, J., & Harré, R (1995). Rethinking psychology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Snow, D., & Anderson, L. (1987). Identity work among the homeless: The verbal
construction and avowal of personal identities. American Journal of Sociology,
92(6), 1336-1371.

Snyder, M. (1987). Public appearances and private realities: The psychology of self
monitoring. New York: Freeman.

Stein, N., & Glenn, G. (1979). An analysis of story comprehension in elementary school
children. In R. F reedle (Ed), New directions in discourse processing (2nd ed, pp.
32-120). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Street, B. V. (1988). Literacy practices and literacy myths. In R. Saljo (Ed), The written
world: Studies in literate thought and action (pp. 59—72). New York: Springer-
Verlag.

.Surrey, J. (1985). The self-in-relation: A theory of women '5 development. Wellesley
College: Stone Center Working Papers Series.

Texas Kids Count Project (1999). Parental involvement in education Measuring up: The
State of Texas Education. A special report of the Texas Kids Count project.
Austin, TX: University of Austin. Center for the Public Policy Priorities.
Available online at http://www.cppp.org/kidscount.

Tharp, R. G., & Gallimore, R. (1988). Rousing minds to life: Teaching, learning, and
schooling in social context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Thomas, A., Chess, 8., & Birch, H. (1968). Temperament and behavior disorders in
children. New York: New York University Press.

Tierney, R., & Rogers, R. (1989). Exploring the cognitive consequences of variations in
the social fabric of classroom literacy events. In D. Bloome (Ed), Classrooms
and literacy (pp. 250-263). Norwood, N.J.: Ablex.

382

Valencia, R. R. (1997). The evolution of deficit thinking: Educational thought and
practice. Washington, DC: Palmer.

Van-Langenhove, L., & Harre', R. (1993). Positioning and autobiography: Telling your
life. In Nikolas Coupland & Jon F. Nussbaum (Eds), Discourse and lifespan
identity. Language and language behaviors, Vol. 4. (pp. 81-99). Newbury Park,
CA, US: Sage Publications.

Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The embodied mind. Cambridge, MA:
The MIT Press.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1986). Thought and language (A. Kozulin, Trans). Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.

Wald, P. (1995). Constituting Americans: Cultural anxiety and narrative form. Durham:
Duke University Press.

Walmsley, S. A. (1991). Literacy in the elementary classroom. In E. M. J. a. A. C. Purves
(Ed), Literate systems and individual lives (pp. 139-164). Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press.

Weigert, A. (1983). Identity: Its emergence within sociological psychology. Symbolic
Interation, 6(183-206).

Weiland, S. (1992). Psychoanalysis without words: Erik H. Erikson's American
apprenticeship. Michigan Quarterly Review, 31(1), 1-18.

Wells, G. (1994, September, 1994). Learning and teaching "scientific concepts: "
Vygotsky's ideas revisited. Paper presented at the Lev Vygotsky and the Human

Sciences Conference, Moscow.

Wells, G. (1999). Dialogic inquiry: Towards a sociocultural practice and theory of
education. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice : Learning, Meaning, and Identity.
Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

Wexler, P. (1992). Becoming somebody: Toward a social psychology of school. London:
Falmer Press.

Willis, P. (1977). Learning to labour. Westmead, UK: Saxon House.

Winograd, T., & Flores, F. (1986). Understanding computers and cognition: Reading,
Mass: Addison-Wesley.

383

Wise, T. (2001). School Shooting and White Denial (online document ).
http://www.minorities-jb. com/Article_Detail. asp ?A rticle_1D=3 606 (Accessed
April 2, 2001).

Wong, B. (1996). The ABCs of Ieaming disabilities. New York: Academic Press.

Zinsser, W. (Ed). (1995). Inventing the truth: The art and craft of memoir. Boston &
New York: Houghton Mifflin.

384

 

'-

21769488

1293 0