I sit down with a group of four other people to discuss Ruth Behar’s ethnographic memoir The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart. The people in my group are smart and funny. Everyone in the class, as far as I can tell, is smart and funny. We begin discussing the questions posed to us. I start to feel a nervous, fretful pang in my belly. Can I really leave this behind? This camaraderie? No one else I know will sit down with me and earnestly discuss an academic text/although certainly I could form a reading group composed of academic ex-patriots…
It is so comfortable, sitting and discussing. Sitting and discussing. Not doing anything; sitting and discussing. I only get worked up once, really. A record for me. I don’t feel that tense feeling either. I just sit, and discuss. The fretful feeling slowly subsides.
It disappears completely after a few minutes of large group discussion. Our professor, who is dynamic and caring, one of those professors is aware of her power, but also (seems to be) truly committed to her students and to working towards equality within and outside of the academy, points out mournfully that Behar is just so sad. She’s sad. This book is sad. She’s so freaking sad.
She is sad. And her sadness (and uncertainty; her vacillation) only serves to validate my decision to leave the academy behind, finally. Because I don’t want to be her.
In a chapter about a Mexican woman whose story Behar is attempting to “tell,” she writes, “As a Cuban immigrant kid, I grew up in a series of cramped apartments in New York, so when Marta tells me she loves to come to my house, that it is her dream house, I understand, but feel odd that the things I have acquired are inspiring wanting and longing in someone else” (91). That Behar would rather pose as the guilty successful than embrace her success exasperates me know. I am so interested in my own exasperation because all through undergrad, and even until a few years previous, I would understand her guilt, because I come from a working class family and never really lived in the lap of luxury when I was a child (obviously, though, my experience was not the same as or as severe as her own; I was an only child and had plenty of space, and although the food I ate wasn’t gourmet, there was enough of it, always, and I don‘t know it came quite that easily for Behar). But now I disavow such guilt. I wish not to be broke forevermore. I will not live in a dangerous neighborhood for sake of cheaper rent (In undergrad, I‘d never have lived in Shorewood. Never.) My god, I want there to be a day when I’m not renting. That was one of only reasons to go through this Ph.D program; for all the stress it creates, I would gladly receive a large salary, finally, to buy a home, and help my parents when they become elderly.
So for Behar, and so many other academics, to constantly force themselves to feel regretful, or to pose feeling regretful, for having some money and living relatively comfortably, just pisses me off now. I’m not going to be one of them. I have a nice apartment now, but I have no savings besides my 401K. I have no money for travel, for the occasional fancy dinner, for a night out at the theater, for the very occasional extravagance. I have no need to be rich, but I would not balk at earning $40K a year, or maybe even more (and that goal is so low compared to many Americans). Maybe what I'm saying is tad tangential, but damn. I would not feel bad that I no longer had to wonder where the rent money comes from.
In her last chapter, Behar recounts what I see as a courageous action she performs at an academic conference. But before she goes into it, she asks why she is there, at the conference. She clearly does not desire to be there, doing this academic work, again. But she “reminds” herself that she is there to take a stand. To me, these confessions are the most sad. Certainly we all have moments in our professional careers when we feel beleaguered, let down. It’s not rosy all of the time. But it seems to me that academics, especially those who come from working class backgrounds, are female and/or are “minorities,” (I hate that fucking word and I also hate “people of color;” both are patronizing) ask themselves more often than some other professionals why they remain in their profession. Where, at four-year-universities, there’s in-fighting all of the time. There’s hypocrisy that runs so deep. It wears people down. There is rare joy, rare pleasure. For me that joy comes from feeling that I am writing well. I do not need a Ph.D to write. I do not need to feel bad anymore.
No, I will not be. The academic who has to remind herself. Why she is there.
It is so comfortable, sitting and discussing. Sitting and discussing. Not doing anything; sitting and discussing. I only get worked up once, really. A record for me. I don’t feel that tense feeling either. I just sit, and discuss. The fretful feeling slowly subsides.
It disappears completely after a few minutes of large group discussion. Our professor, who is dynamic and caring, one of those professors is aware of her power, but also (seems to be) truly committed to her students and to working towards equality within and outside of the academy, points out mournfully that Behar is just so sad. She’s sad. This book is sad. She’s so freaking sad.
She is sad. And her sadness (and uncertainty; her vacillation) only serves to validate my decision to leave the academy behind, finally. Because I don’t want to be her.
In a chapter about a Mexican woman whose story Behar is attempting to “tell,” she writes, “As a Cuban immigrant kid, I grew up in a series of cramped apartments in New York, so when Marta tells me she loves to come to my house, that it is her dream house, I understand, but feel odd that the things I have acquired are inspiring wanting and longing in someone else” (91). That Behar would rather pose as the guilty successful than embrace her success exasperates me know. I am so interested in my own exasperation because all through undergrad, and even until a few years previous, I would understand her guilt, because I come from a working class family and never really lived in the lap of luxury when I was a child (obviously, though, my experience was not the same as or as severe as her own; I was an only child and had plenty of space, and although the food I ate wasn’t gourmet, there was enough of it, always, and I don‘t know it came quite that easily for Behar). But now I disavow such guilt. I wish not to be broke forevermore. I will not live in a dangerous neighborhood for sake of cheaper rent (In undergrad, I‘d never have lived in Shorewood. Never.) My god, I want there to be a day when I’m not renting. That was one of only reasons to go through this Ph.D program; for all the stress it creates, I would gladly receive a large salary, finally, to buy a home, and help my parents when they become elderly.
So for Behar, and so many other academics, to constantly force themselves to feel regretful, or to pose feeling regretful, for having some money and living relatively comfortably, just pisses me off now. I’m not going to be one of them. I have a nice apartment now, but I have no savings besides my 401K. I have no money for travel, for the occasional fancy dinner, for a night out at the theater, for the very occasional extravagance. I have no need to be rich, but I would not balk at earning $40K a year, or maybe even more (and that goal is so low compared to many Americans). Maybe what I'm saying is tad tangential, but damn. I would not feel bad that I no longer had to wonder where the rent money comes from.
In her last chapter, Behar recounts what I see as a courageous action she performs at an academic conference. But before she goes into it, she asks why she is there, at the conference. She clearly does not desire to be there, doing this academic work, again. But she “reminds” herself that she is there to take a stand. To me, these confessions are the most sad. Certainly we all have moments in our professional careers when we feel beleaguered, let down. It’s not rosy all of the time. But it seems to me that academics, especially those who come from working class backgrounds, are female and/or are “minorities,” (I hate that fucking word and I also hate “people of color;” both are patronizing) ask themselves more often than some other professionals why they remain in their profession. Where, at four-year-universities, there’s in-fighting all of the time. There’s hypocrisy that runs so deep. It wears people down. There is rare joy, rare pleasure. For me that joy comes from feeling that I am writing well. I do not need a Ph.D to write. I do not need to feel bad anymore.
No, I will not be. The academic who has to remind herself. Why she is there.
posted by Jen Threat at
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