hillary ferguson | blog

Of all the normal things I’m scared of—Donald Trump, Climate Change, my health insurance bill—getting shot while in one of my safe spaces shouldn’t be one of them. But it is. I was in high school and living in Virginia when the mass shooting at Virginia Tech took place. Yes, I had heard of Columbine. Yes, I had watched 9/11 unfold on live television. And yes, I remember watching CBS footage of tanks descending into Baghdad. Violence wasn’t foreign to me.

Still, it was farther away from where I was sitting. Not in my periphery. But, suddenly, there it was. Here it is. Getting closer and closer and closer to me. In the (almost) decade since the Virginia Tech massacre, every-day spaces have been invaded by tragedy. Safe spaces. Quiet spaces. Not warzones, but schools, movie theaters, restaurants. When I’m sitting in a public place and I hear a loud door slam, or a laugh that could resemble a scream, I automatically scan the room looking for a way to escape. I look for possible barricades and places to duck for cover.

VICE ran an article about a woman appearing on the $10 bill. Some men on Facebook simply couldn’t deal with such injustice. Meanwhile, all I’m going to do is wave the bill around and shout, “SHAWTY IS A TEN.” 

    hmmmmmmm.....

  PRIORITIES......

  I sense a ton of political activism in their futures....

 Ok yes, you caught me -- I do love to cook.....

 Joey wants everybody to know he’s performing his stand-up at the neighborhood dive tonight.....

 This guy really needs some Xanax......

I doubt Gus would appreciate my IBS, then....

 . . . Oh, Markie Mark, what would your mother say?

 . . . I feel like this is maybe the only action Tom gets

  . . . He ain’t sayin she a gold-digger

 . . .because naturally

the lineup would look like this:

Slate recently published an article* discussing student protests against graduation commencement speakers. The rhetoric of the article provides a generally negative light—at least in regards to millennial age college students. It is an opinionated expository at best, one where she relates her own commencement memory and where she chastises both the students of the protests, and the Institutions they reside, believing that such responses reflect a deep flaw in the system. The deep flaw of course being in “the value proposition that elite colleges sell to their students.”

According to Hess, the proposed value and millennial self-entitlement are linked, and perhaps she is right. Are we an entitled bunch? Sure. Is it a good thing? Yes and no. In the case of graduation commencement speakers, though, perhaps we have a right to be entitled. We are paying for a product. And that product is an education, an experience, and a piece of paper that tells the world we have been stamped for approval by the Academy. But, what happens when you buy a product from the store, and that product is not what the label promised? Are you then exhibiting displays of self-entitlement when you call the company, and either report the malfunction or demand a refund? No.

So, why then, does it fall under the category of entitlement to request an alternative commencement speaker? Or to protest a speaker whom you believe does not accurately represent the social and political positions you have been led to identify with in college?

For the past three years, I have sat in the audience at graduation. I have listened to three upper class, white males deliver the commencement address. While each address was kind and insightful, I could not (and still cannot) help but wonder: where is the diversity, Roanoke College?

I did some digging around, checking the available online archives of the last ten graduation ceremonies. Of those ten, only one speaker deviates from the status quo. Only one: Dr. William Coleman Jr, an African-American. Of the nine left were three businessmen (though one was an entertainment producer), three higher education professionals, two politicians, two theologians, and one extreme sports trainer. All fine choices. Really. I should clarify that I am not criticizing the actual speakers, as each I’m sure delivered a wonderful address. What I am criticizing, though, is the institution that feels we need to hear from a white man ninety-percent of the time. I’m criticizing the fact that there are missing variables in our commencement addresses—the variables of additional and global perspectives.

By continuously presenting us the thoughts and perspectives of upper class, white, male professionals–and I think a decade is a decent enough sample size to warrant the word “continuously”–are you not then defying the basic fundamentals that our liberal arts education has grounded us in? Are you not ignoring the ideas of diversity and breadth that you’ve instilled in us since day one?

To that, I say: Where are the women? Where are the artists? Where is the poet, the engineer, the Think Tank founder?

Where is the international and the vibrancy? The Asian? The Hispanic? The African-American? The LGBT?

I cannot speak from any knowledge of institutional funding, or of what we might have at our disposal in terms of affordability, but I do not think it would be hard to reach into the bag and pull out a new face: Nikki Giovanni perhaps, or Sam Rasoul or Nancy Mulheren, even, if we want to continue the tradition of staying within the Roanoke College family. Diversity is not hard to find.

It is not millennial-entitlement to question a decade’s worth of similarity. It is not millennial-entitlement to want something different. Inside of this bubble, we have been encouraged to take classes that challenge us to think globally, openly, to question the norm and shake the tradition. Our professors have pushed us to look critically at the confines of society and the various social constructions within. And our administration has implemented a curriculum that does not just ask us questions, but forces us to ask questions in return, expects us to delve within the self to seek and demand alternative answers, pushes us to collaborate with others and expand our local and global perspectives. It demands that we communicate effectively our ideas about the world in which we live.

That, above all else, is a liberal arts education. That is what the protests were about. That is what this article is about. If our motto is indeed “Classic for Tomorrow,” shouldn’t our last exercise, indeed our commencement, reflect that line? Because the new classic—the classic for tomorrow—is not white male privilege. It is diversity, and it is life manifested in all forms. And at an institution where we are constantly being prepared to enter a world with greater economic and social equality, and diversity than ever before, wouldn’t it be appropriate to see that expectation fulfilled at graduation?

Having had several months to reflect and remember, I feel as if I can finally write about this. My time at NYU last summer was a time of significant life change. I was thrown into a literary circle for which I was unprepared, but I fully accepted being immersed in it. I was in constant exposure to the best literature in the world, in (what I consider to be) the greatest city in the world. To say that this experience changed my life is not enough. The very fundamentals that ground me changed. The experience changed the way I operate in the world: with my writing, with my reading, in my relations to people (both the people in my stories and the real people outside of them).

When I arrived in New York City I was struck with a hand of humility. I thought I knew the place; I had spent many visits hopping around the island, being a tourist. What I came to find was that living (being alive?) there was different—a kind of drug which I found entirely addictive. As a tourist, one encounters the city at face value: Time Square, Broadway, lights, the stream of consciousness that is every crowded block—the sky rises, black coats, hot dog stands, subway grates. But beneath the surface of this city are unromantic grit and determination, art and the withdrawal of art, a sense of the self and at the same time a complete loss of self. What better place to have concentrated on my writing? I can think of no other.

I was forced willingly out of my comfort zone—to write of the things I was most scared by, to write of the things that I was most embarrassed by, to explore the darkness around me and especially buried within me. Every aspect of my being became ammo. Was writing a form of self-expression? That sentiment rings with sentimentality. Writing as a form of self-exploration? Maybe. What I was surrounded with, and what seemed to be the general consensus in this circle of literary greats was this: writing as a form of divulging the self, of divesting the self of erroneous words, sentiments, ideas.

Learning this and reading literature from this perspective saved me, and my future as a writer. I wasn’t just encountering great literature and great writing, I was challenged to integrate within myself the work presented to me: stories like ‘Goodbye, My Brother’ by John Cheever, poems like ‘Menstruation at Forty’ by Anne Sexton follow me with every line I write.

            A professor and poet friend of mine, Mary Crockett Hill, asked if I would contribute to a poetry blog hop, whereby I answered one of her questions and asked myself two of my own. I figured this would be a fun way to answer the questions I always ask writers whenever I go to a reading. So, here goes:

  Can Poetry Matter?   (via Mary)

            Sometimes when I listen to my boyfriend (who has a Masters in Physics) talk about his work, or his findings and theories, I wonder if poetry and fiction—in the long run—really matter. In Mary’s post, she noted that writers seemingly love to ask themselves this question. Perhaps that is because, inherently, we are a tad narcissistic and daydream of a world where what we have to say on the page means something. But I recently read a more academic text by Marjorie Garber (The Use and Abuse of Literature) wherein she discusses the importance of both the arts and science, and how writing, no matter what kind, can maintain contemporary and help change the world we live in. To this regard, I can’t help but think about the writers who use their ability to comment on the political nature of the world we live in. Poets use language and words and semantics to understand change and heartbreak and controversy in a perhaps more relative way than social scientists do. They dig deeper at truth in feelings rather than fact in data, and take empathetic approaches to figuring out what is meant by the phrase “to live.” And that is an aspect where I think poetry really matters.

See Mary’s blog for her answer: http://marycrockett.com/2013/11/22/poetry-hop/

  Who Gave You Permission?

            Whenever I go to a reading and there is a Q&A afterwards, I like to ask the writer who their favorites are and who gave them the inspiration to write. In other words, who gave you permission to put your words on the page? I guess for me, it all starts with a poet named Rachel Zucker. I first heard her give a reading of the poem “Paying Down A Debt: Happiness,” from her brilliant collection Museum of Accidents. It is a long poem, prose-like, and I remember as she made her way to the podium, she said something like, “Some people like to question whether this is actually a poem, or if it’s prose, but I don’t really care if it’s either so I will let you guys decide.” She read and I sat, enraptured, finding myself having a very strong physical reaction—the first ever—to poetry. My heart raced, I laughed, I nodded my head, I related—despite the poem being about the woes of motherhood—and I fell in love instantly with poetry, and more specifically, Rachel’s poetry. I scoured the internet for her work, ordered a few books, and read them earnestly. From there, I followed her influences—Alice Notley, Frank O’Hara, Adrienne Rich—and found my own: Anne Sexton, Allen Ginsberg, Kim Addonizio. By reading all of those poets, and reading Rachel’s work and her influences, I was given permission of sorts, through their bravery and “fuck all” attitude, to write about whatever I wanted to. If I want to write about my own sexual dalliance, or mental health issues, or perhaps about things that many people normally wouldn’t write about, it is thanks to them that I do so without apologizing.

  What is your writing process?

           I haven’t had the overwhelming desire or urge to write about my feelings or the world around me lately. Perhaps that is because I’ve been complacent in practicing other forms of writing with the exception of fiction, or perhaps because I just haven’t seen the need to write about current life. There is a feeling that comes with writing non-fiction and writing about your own life. It’s slightly different than the feeling one gets when a character pops into your head and a storyboard forms. That comes with a sense of excitement, of urgency. But with non-fiction, some days, your heart aches in a way that tells you that you need to write to piece together the world around you; that you need to write to understand.

            It seems crazy that in two days, it will be the 12th anniversary of September 11. I didn’t realize it until I opened an email that indicated a group meeting time: Wednesday, September 11. I opened my planner and penciled in the date, not even thinking about it until a brief pause in the entry when I thought, “Oh.” What an odd feeling to jot down an insignificant meeting in a wildly significant box of time, without even initially remembering. And now this week, with people’s cover photos on Facebook highlighting a digital memorial to the day, I can’t help but think about it deeply.

            On September 11, 2001, I sat in Mrs. Scholettes fifth-grade class, my cumulonimbus cloud diorama abandoned at my desk as my eyes, and all the eyes around me, fixated on the horrifying images forming on the television. We didn’t know what it meant. We didn’t know why it was happening. We didn’t know who was doing it. Then, right in front of us, a second plane hit the second tower. And I knew, we knew, everybody knew: it was bad.

            America was plunged into a dark cloud, ashes rising high above two of our most influential cities. For a short period of time, we stood above the hatred, held hands with our fellow neighbors. Then, two years later, I found myself standing beside my mothers elbow as we watched tanks slowly curve over a taupe desert mountain and descend into war. I can remember watching Afghani children wave American Flags that brimmed with golden orange, lit with fire. I read the sub-titles below the images of marching, chanting people that said, “Death to America!” And I looked up at my mother, confused, and asked, “Mom, why do they hate us so much?”

            “Because they are terrorists,” she said.

            But I frowned and looked back at the television, into the faces of kids and I thought: that can’t be right.

            “The children aren’t terrorists, Mom,” I said. “They’re the same age as me.”

            “It doesn’t matter, Hillary,” she said. “They are all the same over there.” 

            My mother wasn’t the only person who said this or felt this way. My teachers would echo the same sentence in different forms. Innocent American children were suddenly not so innocent, tearing hijabs off of the heads of female Muslim classmates, taunting boys and calling them “Bin Laden.” My seventh grade teacher turned his head and continued walking when three boys had a Muslim boy cornered, fingers in his face, his eyes darting around, looking for help where no help came. I ducked my head and kept walking but I was ashamed, because I knew it wasn’t ok.

            Occasionally I would speak up, and say, “Just because one person wanted so much hurt, doesn’t mean they all do.” This was always silenced with, “you’re just a child, you couldn’t understand.” But I did understand. I understood better than the adults around me. I wasn’t looking at the world through such a narrow lens. I was trying to understand why everything was happening.

            I would sit and listen to the videos and slide shows presented at my school’s weekly “News Days.” Some slides showed soldiers driving tanks with the stars and striped perched at the top. Other slides would show images of men patrolling the sandy Middle East, with their digi-camo uniforms and black guns strapped across their body, each intending to bring us comfort. Comfort, though, was never a feeling I experienced. I felt uneasy. I felt uneasy for the men in the pictures, for the person behind the camera. I wondered about the mothers not pictured, trying to shield their children from war.

            I remember a man in a white-collared shirt with a cartooned tie who half-jogged, half-sauntered into our classroom. He put his head to my teacher’s ear, his large glasses brushing against the silver wisps of her hair, cupping his hand between his mouth and her cheek. I remember how her eyes grew wide and she rushed out with him, only to rush back inside to tell us to head to the “News Day” room. I remember her yanking down the projection screen and tinkering with the remote, flipping the channel to CNN. I remember staring on as hundreds of men, Iraqi and American, roped down a giant bronze statue and I remember George W Bush entering the screen and letting us know that, “United States military forces have captured Saddam Hussein alive.” The people around me clapped and cheered. My teacher wipe a tear out of her eye and clutched the breast lapel of her blue-jean vest, repeating, “What a relief, what a relief.”

            Death, illness, and hospitals—I’ve never dealt with any of the three particularly well. My grandfather is eighty-seven and has dementia and cancer, and yesterday, he fell down the stairs. I had just purchased a few books from Barnes and Noble when I walked over to meet my mom at the grocery store. I was excited, the heavy bag of books weighing on my mind, the urge to dive into them too much. I wanted to show her what I picked out. I walked right past her, through the double doors, where the coolness of the produce section greeted me.

            “Hang on Mom…Hillary, let’s go,” she said, speaking to the phone, shoving her cart away and waving a hand.

            I tensed up inside, knowing, anticipating something to be wrong. My mother had that “there is something serious going on” demeanor. We sat in the car, no sound escaping either of us. My grandmother was crying through the speaker, trying to calm herself and piece together what to do next.

            “Just breathe, Mom, we will meet you at the hospital,” my mother said, hanging up the phone.

            “What’s going on?” I asked.

            “It’s Poppy,” she said. “He’s fallen down the steps, and he might have broken his neck. The rescue squad is taking him to the ER.”

            I didn’t think about it much, just hoped for the best. I’m not good with this stuff—I block emotion out of my heart, my mind. I concentrate on everything but what needs to be concentrated on.            

            “I got the new JK Rowling book,” I told my mom.

            “That’s nice,” she said. “What’s it about?”

            “I don’t know,” I said. “Some kind of mystery about a super model and suicide.”

              We rushed into the ER. Or, my mother rushed, I dragged behind. I could already smell the hospital smell outside. That overly sanitized sickly smell.  I scoffed at the Sebastian Bach that was echoing out of the speakers around the halls, an odd combination with constant, or not so constant, monitor beeps. Curtains were pulled shut, the faded pink fabric separating me from each stall, each life potentially ebbing away, each monitor beeping at a faster or slower or even slower pace. We sat for minutes, then hours, and then hours ticked into the next morning. I decided to take a walk, an attempt to find a quiet place, away from nurses running around, away from radio calls, away from beds rolling by, the people on top with faraway expressions.

            I followed the signs hanging from the ceiling, a hot blanket clutched beneath my arms, looking for something—anything.

            “ <-- Chapel.”

            I stopped and stared at the sign. Did I want to rest in a chapel? Was that appropriate, if I wasn’t there to worship? I looked behind me, the narrow hallway mocking my situation. There was nobody around, no beeping, no radio, no clutter. I took a left, and entered the Chapel. It wasn’t what I expected. Perhaps I was expecting what I had seen on TV, dark brown pews, a podium, and some stained glass, perhaps a priest holding a rosary. Instead I found an empty room with twelve standard office chairs, a praying bench, and one stained glass window. But it was dark, and it was quiet, and it was….empty. I took a seat, leaned my head back and welcomed the respite.

            “Oh, sorry,” a man said, walking in, just as I had accepted my quiet place. “Were you praying?”

            I was torn between wanting to get up and walk away, uncomfortable being in the room with a stranger, and wanting to stay in the peaceful quiet.

            “No, you’re fine,” I said, not moving. The man pulled a chair up, across the room, and propped his legs on a second chair, reclining his head against his crossed arms.

            “Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I prayed,” I said, unsure of why I was admitting this.

            “Do you believe?” the man questioned.            

            He didn’t seem to pressure the question, he was just curious. I was curious, too.

            “I—I’m not sure,” I said. “I don’t know.”

            I expected a backlash, cursing myself for saying that.

            “Whatever works for you,” he said, “Personally, I believe in god myself, but I don’t care for pressuring others to do so. There are already too many bad Christians in this world.”

            I wasn’t sure what to say, but I felt like I needed to say something.

            “I know what you mean,” is what I decided on.

            “I came in here earlier to pray for my cousin, he is on life support,” he said. “There was a woman sitting right there, about where you are. She was holding a bible, and praying. I sat down, and she looked up at me. She looked at my clothes, and my tattoos, and she sneered at me. She got up and left. She didn’t want to pray in the same room as me. Funny thing is, I am on leave from Afghanistan. I defend her country, yet I’m not good enough to be in the same room while she prays. I feel sorry for her, but I forgive her. She doesn’t know.”