Sula – dis/lit 20

Mary Lennox’s Mother:

Disappointment

How can she be mine?

I don’t see myself in her eyes.

My beauty, my spirit, my status, it

becomes lost in her dull expression.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this

for mother and her daughter.

She’s sad, she’s difficult, she’s ill,

and I can’t hide my disappointment.

I wasn’t meant for a life like this.

I was expecting a life of ease.

She requires so much attention,

And I just don’t have the patience.

I’ll find somone capable, of course,

to watch her as she grows.

She’ll have eveything a child could want

I’m sure she’ll be just fine.

George:

Protection

I had you and you had me,

we had our futures set.

But it was a dream, just a fantasy,

I’m not sure where you fit.

I love you I really do,

we’ve been partners this whole time.

But I know what’s best for you,

and you don’t know where to draw the line.

It couldn’t be like this forever,

maybe it’s better me than them.

Close your eyes and look ahead,

and I’ll relieve you from this pain.

Eva Peace:

Liberation

To my shadow of a son,

It’s time for you to go.

If you can’t live like a man,

Then you’ll die like one.

That is my last act of love.

You wouldn’t leave and

you wouldn’t grow.

My womb has no more space,

so, this is where I say goodbye.

I’ll hold you and I’ll rock you here,

I’ll let you be my child.

But then I’ll keep my tears away,

And I’ll do what must be done.

Mr. Radley:

Self-preservation

The community whispers

outside our door.

Please just stay inside

where you can’t cause us more pain.

Joanne Madsen:

Concern

Who cares for you?

Who makes sure your safe?

Who listens to your worries?

Who asks what you want?

Who will be your advocate,

when you can’t speak for yourself?

Who knows what makes you happy?

Who tells you that it’s okay to be you?

Ricky Hernandez:

Sympathy

He looks at me with those sad eyes as I hold him in this room.

Just a driver, now in charge of discipline.

I want to show them kindness, respect, consistency.

These kids don’t see that often,

But my job is to to show up when I get the call,

to constrain and remove.

One day, probably soon, I’ll leave this place,

but I find myself hesitant.

I didn’t think it would be so hard.

I didn’t expect to love them so much…

Jimmie Kenrick:

Acceptance

Just can just call me Jimmie.

You don’t have to call me mom,

you don’t have to call me anything.

We have our own rhythm,

we have a special click,

we have an understanding.

You don’t have to call me mom,

you don’t have to call me anything.

You can just call me Jimmie.

I have created poems based on the point of view of various characters from novels we have read throughout the semester. These are characters that have found themselves in some sort of caregiver position. These characters include Eva Peace from Toni Morrison’s Sula, Ricky Hernandez, Jimmie Kenrick and Joanne Madsen from Susan Nussbaum’s Good Kings, Bad Kings, Mr. Radley in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Mary Lennox’s mother in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, and George from John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. These characters, whether parents, paid professionals, or friends, are put into the role of having to take care of someone with a perceived disability. All of these characters were chosen to represent a range of different types of caregivers and how successful they are in fulfilling their role. The first-person narratives allow for the exploration of the motivations behind these characters’ actions and the corresponding pieces reflect the character’s motivating emotion. Eva Peace was overwhelmed as her role of a mother of a child with a mental disability. Her son did not fit the expectations she had for him and that ultimately led her to orchestrate his death. This could be comapred to George killing Lennie in the end of Of Mice and Men. George was a friend but also a protector to Lennie. Throughout the novel they say they look out for each other, but it is never truly an equal partnership. George often acts according to what he feels is best for Lennie, but perhaps sometimes his actions are for selfish reasons. This raises the question of whether or not his killing of Lennie was really to protect his friend or to relieve himself from the stress of a caregiver position. Either way, he makes the decisions about what happens in Lennie’s life. Other caregivers, such as Mr. Radley and Mary Lennox’s mother, will keep their children at a distance. Maybe they can never accept their child’s differences or maybe they are unwilling to make the necessary adjustments to their own lifestyles in order to care for their children, either keeping them locked away in the house, as Mr. Radley does, or giving the responsibility to a paid worker, as Mary Lennox’s mother does.

There are positive examples of caregivers, too. Joanne Madsen, Ricky Hernandez, and Jimmie Kendrick from Good Kings, Bad Kings all behave more appropriately in their interactions with those they care for. Joanne, while not specifically a paid caregiver in the nursing home, offers the children guidence in accepting their identities as people with disabilities. She also looks after the best interest of all of the residence of the home. She treats the children as individuals and gives them room to grow and express themselves. Ricky, while he struggles with the ethics of his job, also tries to treat the children as individuals. He cares for them on a more emotional and personal level than many of the other paid professionals in the home. Lastly, Jimmie’s personal connection with Yessenia Lopez influences her decision to become her foster parent. All of these positive representations are similar in the way that they allow the other person to be an individual, not defined solely by disability. In cases where caregivers are unsucccessful in their roles, it is because they cannot accept the individual, whether that takes the form of making decisions about what happens to that person or releasing themselves from the caregiver role altogether.

I have neither given nor received unauthorized help on this work

Word count: 564

In “Introducing White Disability Studiesː A Modest Proposal”, Bell lays out the ways in which Disability Studies have, “a tendency to whitewash disability history, ontology and phenomenology,” and that they would be more aptly namedː White Disability Studies (Bell 275). While the entire piece was thought provoking and well written, one point stood out more than any other for me – Bell points out that disability studies often focus on the disability without discussing the intersection of that disability and the subjects of race and ethnicity. This point made me pause and re-read Sula through a different lens. Within the community of Medallion, Ohio there are several characters who are disabled in one way or another, and each of their experiences both within, and outside of, their community is further shaped by their race and ethnicity. Shadrack’s treatment within the military hospital, and his treatment in the white town show not only the blatant racism of the time, but also a disparity in the treatment of African Americans with disabilities of the time, and through that disparity an entirely different experience of disability.

Obviously, racism is rampant in Sula, and when reading a story of a segregated mid-western American town around the first World War, this is not shocking.But this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t point out the obvious, and make it a conversation – we should heed Bell’s advice and talk about what isn’t being talked about, even when it does seem obvious. And when reading of Shadrack’s experience in a wartime hospital, it is impossible to not question if his race played a part in his treatment by his attending doctor. Would the doctor have told a white man with the same actions “Nobody is going to feed you forever,” or “pick it up, I said. There’s no point to this…” (Morrison 9)? While doctors certainly saw an unprecented number of young men experiencing shell-shock during World War One, and were undoubtedly at a loss for how to help them, one must wonder if there would be more preferential treatment towards a white male over an African American male with the same symptoms. Would a white man have at least been shown a mirror, or told his name or maybe some basic directions home?

Another obvious example of a difference in experience and treatment is in the vaguely named “Midwestern town” which he comes to after leaving the hospital. As Shadrack breaks down, eyes closed, simultaneously untying and knotting his shoelaces, no one stops to help. No one asks if he’s alright. Instead the police arrive and arrest him for “vagrancy and intoxication” and lock him up in jail (Morrison 13). Had a white man been having the same non-violent break down while sitting on the curb, we have to ask ourselves – would he have had the same experience? Likely not. The charge of vagrancy has roots in the Civil War, and was aimed specifically at African Americans who appeared to be homeless (or even sometimes just appeared at all) within white communities (Tarter).

Shadrack’s examples represent just one character’s experiences within the intersectionality of race, ethnicity and disability in Sula, a book which is ripe with characters who each have their own unique experiences of the same intersectionality. His treatment within the military hospital, and his experience in the white town are evidence of the obvious racism of the time and place of the story, but are also evidence of a disparity in the treatment and experiences of African Americans with disabilities and their white neighbors.

Additional Work Cited:

Tarter, Brent. “Vagrancy Act of 1866.” Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, 25 Aug. 2015. Web. 5 Feb. 2020

Word Count: 608

I hereby declare upon my word of honor that I have neither given nor received unauthorized help on this work.

Tag: Sula

Mackenzie’s MMP. Poetry: The Motivations of a Caregiver

Meg’s Response to Toni Morrison’s Sula and Chris Bell’s “Introducing White Disability Studiesː A Modest Proposal”