#but now its my paternal grandmother where like you know. she gave me my birth name and maybe she wasnt the best at times

[paralien]

This is the first family funeral I've been part of, and man if I'm not tired of crying on the phone

[sansacherie]

First Kiss

I.

The Third Month of The Year 298

“You look lovely, Rhaenys.” Aegon smiles at her as Rhaenys enters the Hall of Lamps, accompanied by her three bridesmaids and their escort of guards.

“Only lovely?” Rhaenys wrinkles her nose. “You disappoint me terribly, Aegon. You should not describe a bride as anything less than exquisite. At least, that is what my bridesmaids tell me.”

Arianne winks at her while Sansa and Daenerys giggle. In the Faith, it is often the custom for a bride such as Rhaenys to choose three bridesmaids to honour three of the seven gods- the Maiden who bring bless the marriage with lasting love, the Mother with children, and the Crone with wisdom to survive the years together. Rhaenys had agonized over who to pick among her ladies, not wanting to cause hurt, but thankfully her mother had guided her into selecting Arianne, Daenerys, and Sansa. No one can fault her for choosing family, or soon to be family in Sansa’s case, Elia reasoned.

“Your sister is playing with you, Your Grace.” Arianne drawled. He does. Aegon laughs and offers Rhaenys his arms, before lowering his voice. “You look beautiful as always, Nee-Nee. I suppose I’m just used to it.” Rhaenys smiles sadly at this resurrection of his babyhood nickname for her.

Rhaenys does feel beautiful, however. Of course, although she is not vain enough to deem herself the Maiden’s rival, she also does not find any value in lying to herself when she sees her reflection.

But this is different. The dressmakers have done well, truly. Rhaenys’ gown is a glory, a creation of red silk with long flowing sleeves that felt inviting as sin when she was helped into it earlier. Her bodice glimmers with golden thread. Resting on her black curls is a golden diadem with red rubies and an inscription in Rhoynese at the bottom.

On her wedding cloak, is a dragon whose open mouth reveals no crackling flames but instead a large golden sun that overwhelms the creature in size. The other dress that Rhaenys will change into for today is also just as beautiful, with Sansa gasping in delight upon seeing it. Although it is not demanded, it is not unusual for a bride to wear a gown favouring her new husband’s colours at their reception as if their vows were not enough to demonstrate that she was now his. But Rhaenys has no wish to offend her river lord or make him feel uncertain, so her gown is silver satin and sleeves consisting of myrish lace. Adorning the outfit is a belt made of deep red velvet with blue sapphires.

Aegon signals that they are ready, and from inside the sept proper music begins to play. Arianne lifts up Rhaenys’ cloak from the ground, while Sansa and Daenerys pick up the hems of the gown; the former looking painfully excited while Dany almost looks as nervous as Rhaenys feels.

Arianne nods at her and proudly smiles at Rhaenys in the way that Aegon did, and Rhaenys wills herself to breathe.

As a princess born, her entire life was the realm’s, shaped and nurtured with it in mind. It was the offering demanded for her birth and rank being predetermined by the Seven. It was a truth familiar to Rhaenys as a favoured story might be for a child who delights still in its thousand telling.

However, unlike that small child, Rhaenys could never be allowed to want other stories. Rhaenys is not friendless in this either, she remembers.

Her life belonged to the seven kingdoms, and so it appeared, did her first kiss.

Their kiss does not make Rhaenys forget to stand, or forget the crowd that had gathered in the royal sept to witness Lord Edmure Tully take her for his lady wife.

The number of guests is not as many as the wedding of Aegon to Lady- Queen Cassandra Baratheon, but Rhaenys’ wedding is still the first of a blood princess since that of her paternal grandmother forty years ago. Their noses bump, and his beard tickles Rhaenys chin. Nobody dares laugh to break the spell of the solemnity of the occasion, but Edmure reddens all the same.

When they turn to face the cheering crowd, Rhaenys cannot squeeze his hand- there will be a hundred times during the wedding there will be time for contact, but she gives him a bright smile, to put him at ease. “My lord, I must confess. You’ve rather exceeded the expectations of a maiden’s first kiss.”

Edmure’s eyes widen, then his generous mouth curves into a boyish grin. There is a kindness in it, and Rhaenys’ heart twists suddenly. Did her father smile at her mother on their wedding day? Despite the betrayals that he rained down on her, did he at least do that?

There is no way of knowing. Rhaenys cannot ask her father this, or a thousand other questions since she was old enough to understand how the crown prince almost brought them all to ruin. She does not want to dig up the past for her mother, who now basked in the warm present; with her adoring husband. Elia Martell paid Rhaegar Targaryen little attention in death, just as he paid her little respect and dignity in life.

II.

The Third Month of The Year

Two weeks pass before they enjoy their first misunderstanding.

“Have I done something to upset you?” Edmure asks her, in Rhaenys’ bedchamber.  They have been given adjoining rooms here in the castle.  They will not leave the Red Keep until the end of the month.  Rhaenys is glad of it.  She is not afraid to leave, but she is not necessarily anxious to either.

Rhaenys shakes her head, her sketchbook lying forgotten in her lap.  “Of course not, my lord.”

Edmure frowns.  “In public, whenever I try to kiss you, or take your hand- it’s almost as if I am some stranger and not your husband.  You look uncomfortable.”

Rhaenys feels a flush of shame. She’d not meant to sail down this river.  However, she smiles at him.  “Give me your trust in this, Edmure.”  Edmure’s eyes widen.  Until now Rhaenys has called him Lord Edmure or my lord, while he has alternated between Princess Rhaenys or my lady, or my princess, for Rhaenys will be a princess long after she is Lady of Riverrun.  “If you were a stranger kissing the king’s sister, you would know it.”

“That still does not answer my question.”  It is almost an accusation.

That still does not answer my question.”

Rhaenys sighs.  She must be truthful with him. “It is not because of you, I promise.  It is because of me, and well- Lord Tywin.”

“Lord Tywin?” Edmure echoes her, like the sound of the ocean in one of the seashells that could be found along the beach of Dragonstone.  Then he looks a little ill.  “You mean to tell me that you love Tywin Lannister?” Edmure splutters.

Rhaenys cannot help but laugh; the notion is so ridiculous.   Love is wasted on a man like that.

“No, my lord.”  Rhaenys says gently. “It is because I cannot forget who I am, and who Tywin is.  Or Mace Tyrell. You know the line of succession to the Crown, I trust.  I am my brother’s heir, after any children he might have.  My sons will inherit first over any sons that Viserys might give his Cersei.  May the Seven permit that we have a future where Aegon lives long and has many children.  I want that for him.  But you and I are not foolish to think that Tywin is equally satisfied.

So, I have always been- careful. Careful with my behaviour, with how I am perceived.  I told you that you were my first kiss. I- I had no wish to give Tywin palace gossip that he could use to his advantage.”

Edmure crinkles his forehead.  “Surely nobody would think badly of a child for having kissing games.  Cat and Lysa-,”

Rhaenys now tosses her sketchbook aside. “Forgive me my lord, but your sisters’ experience cannot be compared to mine.  Their mother is not Dornish.”

Edmure looks lost.  “What has that got to do with this?”

“Everything.”  Rhaenys hisses, standing up now.

“People will take innocent kisses and think it proof of a Dornish woman’s wanton ways, as if there isn’t plenty in the Reach or Westerlands who were no maidens when they were married! Or men who have a dozen mistresses!  I know the rumours of Ashara Dayne, my mother’s lost friend.  Everyone assumes that Ashara slept with Brandon Stark, but she never did! She was younger than me when she died, and yet people simply assume that she gave him anything more than a smile.  And Dany-,” Rhaenys wipes away her tears.  “We were only children at the time. I don’t think Dany was any older than five.       We were calling each other stupid things as children do, and my mother had entered the room when Dany called me a Dornish slut.  To this day, I still don’t know where the hell she got that from.   And the look on my mother’s face-,” Rhaenys stares at the floor.  “My darling grandfather called her that, a few times.”

“So, because of this, I have always been careful. My mother has taught me so.  Since I was a maiden flowered, being alone is not something I am used to.  There has always been either my family or my ladies or my guards.  I will not let myself be vulnerable to any rumours that would paint me unsuitable to be a queen; rumours that the lion and rose will try to use for their own ends.”   Rhaenys is surprised by the vehemence in her voice.

She takes a deep breath, before continuing. “Secondly, it is just my nature. I appreciate that you are my husband, but I have never been comfortable with physical affection in public, specifically hugs and kisses.  I endure it for proprietary’s sake.  If truth be told, I am not entirely fond of being embraced.”

Edmure’s forehead creases.  “Even your own kin?”

“No, that’s different.”  Rhaenys corrects him.  “My family is close to me.  My ladies are close to me, so I obviously did not mind when we slept in the same bed, our legs tangled together like branches or held their hands as we danced or played games.   And you and I will become close too, I hope.”  She adds, shyly.

Edmure nods.  “Thank you Rhaenys, for telling me this. I will keep that in mind.”  Rhaenys’ smiles at the use of her name.

He grins.  “Speaking of kisses has made me want to kiss you still, however.   So – may I kiss you?” He asks tentatively. His voice makes Rhaenys remember their wedding night, and how he asked her the same thing in the dark.  Their first coupling was well- it was nice, she supposes.  She does not have anything to score it by.  Still afterwards, she had slipped a hand between her legs, for there was nothing in scripture that forbade such things.  

But a kiss is different.  She nods, and Edmure gingerly brushes a curl from her face. “I hope we have a girl with hair like yours.”

His kiss is long and sweet; as sweet as the smell of rain after a month’s drought.

III.

The Sixth Month of The Year 298

“Rhaenys?”

Edmure’s worried face is illuminated in the candlelight, as he sits down on the bed beside her.  Rhaenys is clutching her knees, her eyes downcast.

They have not yet reached Riverrun, thanks to the river lords who insisted on guesting them for a few days.   Stars have risen in the sky for the third time here at Stone Hedge.   No doubt the Brackens insisted on the third night to beat the Blackwood’s two.  “By the time you do reach Riverrun, you’ll need a new wardrobe.”  Desmera Redwyne had predicted, giggling.

There had been no giggling when Desmera had gone to fetch Edmure after Rhaenys had bolted up in bed, tears streaming down her face.

“Desmera need not have woken you.”  Rhaenys mumbled.

“I’m not sorry she did.”  Edmure counters.   “My lady, you are trembling.”

Rhaenys fiddled with the end of her braid.  “It was a bad dream, that’s all.”

For a heartbeat, silence rested between them.  Then, Edmure spoke.  “When I was a boy, my sister Catelyn once told me that you always feel better after talking about a bad dream.”

Well, what has she got to lose then?  He will not leave her.  “It’s a dream I’ve had before.”  She confesses softly.  “I’ve had it on and off since I was twelve or thirteen.  In it, I’m trying to get away.  But I can never far enough.  They-They never change how they kill me.  With a knife.”

Edmure sucks in his breath.  “Rhaenys-,”

Rhaenys bites her lip.   “And the strange thing is, I’m never the age that I am.  In it, I wasn’t eight-and-ten.  Instead, I’m a little girl.  I might be four, I think.”   Tears well in her eyes.  “Tell me, what chance does a girl of four have against a man who wants to kill her?”

“Very little, I would judge.” Edmure softly replies.  “I’m sorry.  Maybe I shouldn’t have pressed you to tell me.”

“No.” Rhaenys corrects him.  “Don’t be sorry.  I-I do feel a little better now, as you predicted.”  It is not a lie.   She has never spoken about the dream to anyone else, before.  

It feels freeing.

She turns and wraps her arms around Edmure, kissing him.  This kiss feels different somehow.  It is not as though she hasn’t been vulnerable with Lord Edmure before.  She gave her maidenhood to him.  She will feel a little vulnerable in Riverrun she thinks, until she can gain the respect of Edmure’s household.

But this kiss – it is a comfort.  Of course, Rhaenys has been comforted before.  But the solace of a mother or brother is different from that of a husband.  This- the feeling of his lips against hers- is like being told a secret.  But it’s not a secret designed to hurt.  It’s not one where the longer it is kept hidden from the open, the worse the fallout is.  

Instead, it is like being given something small, fragile.  That is a precious thing, Rhaenys concludes.  It is a precious thing to be given such trust.

IV.

The Eighth Month of the Year 298

“I’ve had a thought,”  Edmure says, as Rhaenys massages his aching shoulders; courtesy of his sparring session.

Rhaenys had enjoyed watching that, very much.

“Oh?”  Rhaenys smirks.  Removing her hands from his shoulders, she cocks her head at him.  “Is that unusual for you, my lord?”

To her husband’s credit, he only grins at her.  Other men like Stannis Baratheon or Tywin Lannister were not so kind to such silly little japes.  

“I was thinking that perhaps we could write to some of our vassals’ families and ask for some girls.  For you, I mean.  I know you’ve brought some from Kingslanding.  But the Riverlands can’t be their home forever, while you- I think it would be good for you.  Not that I don’t think you’re not doing well in your duties so far.”  He adds quickly.

Rhaenys smiles warmly.  “That is a wonderful idea.  We should ask Maester Vyman for his counsel on who to choose.  Three seems a good number, I feel. In time, perhaps we can ask for some wards.  Companions for any younger sons or daughters we may have."

Edmure answers her with a kiss to the neck.   Rhaenys gasps. He has never kissed her there before.   Always on the lips or cheek.

She loves it.

“I hope we have a girl with hair like yours, my lady.”

Somehow, she knows that it will not be a wasteful thing to hope in this marriage.

[melodysilverknight]

Activity 1: Autobiography

My name is (fullname), I'm currently (age) years old and will soon be turning (to be age) this (day/month of birth) of 2020. I am currently living with my maternal grandparents, Mrs. (Maternal grandmother's full name) and Mr. (Maternal grandfather's full name), in (complete current address) along with my, soon to be (to be age) year old, younger brother, ( younger brother's full name). We moved to Batangas 7 years ago but before that we used to live in Quezon City.

We live in (previous address) which intersected with the highway. Our house, or rather apartment, was within distance of the church, marketplace, and the mall, which made a lot of things, especially shopping, very convenient. I lived there with my father, Mr. (Father's full name), my mother, Mrs. (Mother's full name), my paternal grandmothers, (Paternal grandmother's full name) and her sister (Paternal grandmother's name) and, whenever she was around, my paternal aunt, (paternal aunt's name). For the most part of me and my brother's living there, we didn't get to spend too much time with our parents since they both worked, our mother at (occupation), and our father at the (occupation), meaning they were never home a lot and we mostly only got to see them on the weekends, so it was mostly our grandmothers who took care of us and we spent time with, even as toddlers, however, whenever we did get to spend time with them it was always a lot of fun. One of our main family activities back then was to head out to the mall parking lot behind the church in the morning, during those times the parking lot would be close to or completely empty, so we would take the car and head to the parking lot to either jog or play frisbee. There was even one time, while my father was off on his own jogging while me and my mother and brother were playing with the frisbee, I decided I wanted to go and join my father, so I did the most sensible thing I could think of, and ran after him, little did I know, something was going on behind me. Some people had come to the parking lot to jog as well and brought their dog with them, for some reason it got loose and started going after me, my mother and brother noticed and were yelling at me then I noticed my father had already stopped his jog and was gesturing behind me which is when I finally noticed the dog on my tail. I ran for dear life, as much as I loved dogs and still do, at the time I still didn't know how to handle myself around dogs other than the ones we owned so I was scared silly. By the time the dog's owners finally caught it I was already out of breath. While I was taking a breather my folks had a small chat with the dog owners then headed over to me where we talked and eventually ended up laughing about the whole incident. After the jog we would head to the market to do the regular weekend shopping. During this, while mother would finish up her shopping I would partake in my little tradition of buying and eating my casava cake.

One of the other things I did with my family was visiting wildlife institutions. We used to visit Manila zoo and the nature park of the Quezon city branch of the World Wildlife Fund. As you could probably tell I have a thing for animals, they're my passion and I love them with every fiber of my being, from the biggest animal in the world, the Blue whale, to the smallest and most resilient creature in existence, the Tardigrade, and even the one animal that terrifies me completely, the spider, I have never once tired of the creatures of this planet and even to this day they still intrigue me. My love for animals was inspired by Steve Irwin, the man known around the world as the "Crocodile Hunter", he was a world renowned wildlife conservationist from Queensland, Australia and a biologist and zoologist who specialized in reptiles. I've watched Steve work with and save animals all over the world alongside his wife, Terri, and his daughter, Bindi, and because of this they became my life idols and have taught me so many things about animals and the beauty of nature and its creatures. Whenever we would visit the zoo or nature park one of my favorite things to do was to feed the animals, I'd head to the gazelle or impala enclosure with my family and I'd feed them fallen leaves through the metal barriers and whenever I did I felt as if the Irwins were with me and whenever I did I always wondered, is this what it was like for them everyday at Australia zoo, getting to be with those animals everyday of their lives. Me and my father also used to play spotting games at the zoo, whenever we would get to an enclosure that had a water hole or thick brush we would try our best to find the animals in the enclosure, of course my father would always win but it's always fun regardless.

In the years I had spent living in Quezon city, I attended 2 different elementary schools. For my first grade up to third grade I went to (name of school), a private school then for fourth and fifth grade I attended (name of school) then finally I moved to Batangas where I spent my last year in elementary school at (name of school). Looking back on my more pre-mature school years, I can say for certain now that my school life, in comparison to my private life, was not what I would call the most pleasing experience. Growing I had always been very socially challenged, although I would make the effort to introduce myself and try to make friends with my other classmates, I was never really able to maintain the bonds I had made and just ended up becoming estranged again but worse because I already knew them and they already knew me so I drew and came to the conclusion that even though they knew me, they never approached me, so I won't try to bother them anymore. And so, I kept up with my pattern over and over and over again, I thought it was a good thing, that I just gave them their space, but it wasn't. I ended up more socially awkward and estranged than before, I didn't know how to properly handle myself around people and I just got more and more shy. Things then took a turn for the worst when I started getting bullied, being the already shy character I was was bad enough but getting looked down on and picked on made it several times worse, the feeling of awkwardness I had before was intensified by intimidation and loneliness which made me even more timid. Looking past all the bullying one of the only things about school were the yearly field trips, something not only I, but all of my classmates would look forward to. It was during a field trip I took that I had my first visit to Ocean Adventure a marine facility that rivaled Ocean Park to me at the time,and my first trip to Enchanted Kingdom. My school bullying experience didn't stop until after I had graduated and reached their peak in 5th grade when it was my group's turn to clean the classroom after classes that day and my classmates thought it would be fun to pull a prank on me so they trapped me in the classroom holding the door closed while I tried to get out. Now I know it's been my flaw to take things seriously a bit too much but that was a bad time to pick on me and a poor choice of action, 1: I was shy and timid and didn't know how to respond well to others; 2: the school creeped me out so I wasn't comfortable getting left alone or locked in; and 3: the ones who pulled the prank were my classmates I considered very obnoxious and loud the kind of people who really intimidated me at the time. I went home crying that day, when my folks found out they went to my school with me the next day and complained about it but it never did completely stop.

High school was a turning point in my life, after six whole years of getting bullied and nearly experiencing depression I would finally be able to get away from it all, the city and bullies. At first I was very reluctant to attend junior high school in a school I wasn't all that familiar with but then my folks mentioned there weren't any lower grades in the school so we would all be new to the experience so I agreed to go in the end. My junior high school were all spent attending, what was formerly referred to as, (name of school), it was here that I had made my first real friends. I started my time at my new school in the same way I did at my previous schools, with introductions, but as the days went by I started seeing the pattern again. I honestly thought that things would end up the same, don't get me wrong, I'm happy about the fact that no one bullied me sure but I was still socially awkward, then things changed when I met, them. Halfway through the first quarter I got to know 5 other girls from my class. First was Ms. Berry, she was also a quiet girl in class so I was able to relate with her, she was also cheerful and nice, I even met her at church once, turns out she goes to the same church. Next there was Yshie, she became my bestfriend, she was quiet, stern looking and at first slightly gloomy, but when I got to know her it turns out we had a lot in common. We both had a love for anime and sketching, and turns out our birthdays were really close together mine was on (month and day of birth) and her's was was on the (day of birth). Chuchay was next, now compared to the first two, she was much more outgoing, she was bubbly, hyper, cheerful and overall very musically talented. She was a great singer and could even play guitar, she was awesome, and to tell you the truth, she became one of my music idols along with Taylor Swift, not that she ever knew that. Another musically talented one was Jingjing, let me tell you, those hands of her's did magic on guitar and keyboard. Like Chuchay, she was outgoing and cheerful but much calmer than Chuchay at te time, she used ro play guitar in the classroom whenever we had no classes and my other friends including the next one usually sang along to her accompaniment while I'd stay quiet. Last but not the least there was ate A, she was the most mature out of all of them in my opinion, she was the big sister of the group and had an attitude to match meaning she was sassy, but in a good way. Together the six of us founded our own friends group called (name of friends group), we all did so many things together but the rest of the story will have to be for a different time.

[tachyonpub]

PETER WATTS IS AN ANGRY SENTIENT TUMOR preview: “Everything I Needed to Know About Christmas I Learned From My Grandma”

In celebration for the release of the irreverent, self-depreciating, profane, and funny PETER WATTS IS AN ANGRY SENTIENT TUMOR, Tachyon presents glimpses from the essay collection.

Everything I Needed to Know About Christmas I Learned From My Grandma

by

Peter Watts

Blog Dec 25 2011

Christmas in a household of professional Baptists has always been a time to think about the joys of giving. In my particular case this has proven to be a double-edged sword, the flip side being that it is not a time to think about “getting”. Devoting any neurons to the contemplation of what one might get for Christmas, you see, is unChristian; we are supposed to be concerned entirely with the selflessness of giving unto others, not whether you’re going to get that Captain Scarlet SPV Dinky toy you covet. (I was never entirely sure how to reconcile this virtue of selflessness riff with the fact that the whole point of being charitable was to get into heaven while the Rosenbergs down the street ended up in The Other Place, but there you go.)

It was considered bad form in the Watts household to show any interest at all in whatever swag you might accumulate on the 25th. On the off-chance that someone asked you what you wanted for Christmas, you were honor-bound to keep silent—or at the very least to shrug off the question with a disclaimer along the lines of I haven’t thought about it, really. By the time I hit adolescence I’d figured out how to game this system (just give everyone a hand-made card telling them that “In honor of Christ’s birth I have made a donation to Unicef in your name”—nobody was ever crass enough to ask for a receipt). But even that conceptual breakthrough didn’t stop Christmas mornings from being generally grim affairs in which people sat around with fixed and glassy smiles, thanking each other for gifts they obviously hated, but which they could hardly complain about because after all, they’d never told anyone what they wanted. The gifts bestowed upon me during my childhood included pyjamas, an economy-sized roll of pink serrated hair tape, and a set of TV tables (which, as you all know, is the absolute fucking dream of every 11-year-old boy).

But the best gift I ever got was at the hands of my paternal grandmother, Avis Watts, may Ceiling Cat devour her soul.

Avis was an absolute master at economy. For example, since my birthday falls within a month of Christmas, she would frequently send me a single gift intended to cover both occasions. On the occasion of which I speak—my thirteenth birthday, I think it was—she even economized on the card. I didn’t notice that at first: I tore the wrapping off the box and extracted a flat leather billfold from within, and—thinking that perhaps there might be some money inside (what else would you put in a billfold, hmmm?)—I spread its flaps wide enough for a little card to fall out of the spot where a more generous soul might have stuck a twenty. It was not a Christmas card. It was not a birthday card. It was an  invitation to a cocktail party: at least, it was festooned with cartoon pink elephants and martini glasses beneath the cheery inscription

HOPE YOU CAN MAKE IT!

Immediately beneath this, Grandma had added in ball-point

pen:

To Christmas and your birthday!

I opened the card and read the note within:

Dear Peter,

Somebody gave me this billfold, but I already have a

billfold so I thought you might like it for Christmas and

your birthday. Happy birthday!

Love, Grandma

P.S. Please tell your father that Uncle Ernie has died.

I had already learned a great deal about Christmas during the preceding twelve years. What Avis taught me was a valuable lesson about family, and it was this: they suck.

It was a lesson that has stood the test of time across all the decades between then and now. Many have been the relationships I’ve co-piloted from blast-off to burn-out; many the collateral families thrust upon me like disapproving and destabilizing ballast mid-flight, my coerced attendance at their interminable Christmas and Thanksgiving get-togethers only serving to reinforce my conviction

to never have one of my own (and, doubtless, their own conviction that their daughter could do so much better). The lesson I learned at my grandmother’s knee has always stood me in good stead.

Until now.

Now, oddly, I have encountered a family that actually, well, doesn’t exactly suck. In fact, it doesn’t suck at all. It took a while to figure that out. They had to patiently lure me close in small stages,

as though bribing a feral and skittish cat with small helpings of tuna. Suddenly I was curled up at the hearth and there wasn’t a fundamentalist Catholic or a Burlington banker or a weaponized 9-iron anywhere in sight. So, reluctantly, it is time to put my grandmother’s lesson away, to set it free, to bequeath it to others who might still find it useful.

I bequeath it to you. Treat it well. Heed its wisdom; it is right so much more often than wrong. In fact, it may be truer now than ever, since I might just have snatched up the last available kick-ass family on the planet.

Most families suck. Especially this time of year. It is okay to admit that; it is okay to tell them to their faces. Have a couple of drinks first: that’ll make it easier.

Merry Christmas.

For more info about PETER WATTS IS AN ANGRY SENTIENT TUMOR, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story Icon by John Coulthart

[literearyinpink]

What Makes a Man: Gender Construction in Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex

Calliope Stephanides is what he calls “a living experiment,” the most prime example of the influences of nature versus nurture (408). Self described as a pseudohermaphrodite, Calliope, or Cal as he prefers to be called, was raised as a girl, his vagina being the primary external genitalia until he hit puberty, but is genetically male, XY chromosomes, predominant testosterone production, even the budding of a penis during the onset of puberty.  Throughout the novel, Cal struggles to find his identity; is he a man or is he a woman?  During the latter years of his life, he lives as a male because that is what genetics tell him he is, while his early life was spent as a girl because that is what his parents told him he was.  Essentially, Cal is neither a man nor a woman, yet both at the same time. But society does not leave room for intersexual individuals in its culture: if one does not fit into the category of male or female they are labeled as freaks. To fit into society, Cal is forced into adopting a lifestyle of gender performance, it is there that he finds his identity in the end: society thinks he is a man therefore that is what he is.

Cal’s condition is referred to as 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, essentially his body does not respond to dihydrotestosterone (DHT), which caused him to follow a primarily female line of development in utero, especially in terms of external genitalia.  It wasn’t until he hit puberty that the other androgen, testosterone, started to take effect. When describing his conception, he states “arrayed in their regiments, my genes carry out their orders.  All except two, a pair of miscreants—or revolutionaries, depending on your view—hiding out on chromosome number 5. Together they siphon off an enzyme, which stops the production of a certain hormone, which complicates my life” (16).  Cal attributes this abnormality to a gene that was passed down through his family tree, a recessive mutation on the fifth chromosome stemming from the rampant intermingling of family members in small towns such as the Turkish village his family escaped from. His family’s history becomes just as central to the story as his actual upbringing is; in fact, half of the book takes place before he is even born.  

Cal clearly places a lot of stock into this gene mutation and family history. In one passage he dramatically calls upon his mutation, stating:

Sing now, O Muse, of the recessive mutation on my fifth chromosome! Sing how it bloomed two and a half centuries ago on the slopes of Mount Olympus, while the goats bleated and the olives dropped.  Sing how it passed down through nine generations, gathering invisibly within the polluted pool of the Stephanides family. And sing how Providence, in the guise of massacre, sent the gene flying again; how it blew like a seed across the sea to America, where it drifted through our industrial rains until it fell to earth in the fertile soil of my mother’s own mid-western womb. (4)

Eugenides, at the start of the novel, sets up the reader for this very essentialist reading of the texts: that Cal is what he is because of his genetics, or the very nature of his being.  As the book progresses however it becomes clear that this family history does more than determine the genes that will soon pass to Cal, it also works to set up the gender norms that will be projected onto him as well.  The Stephanides clan represents the typical gender ideologies held in the early parts of the 20th century, and their devout Greek Orthodox faith further accentuates their adherence to these roles.  The women are portrayed as nurturers, remaining solely in the kitchen, cooking for their husbands and families, keeping house, and conversing with other women about “womanly things.” The men are kept separate always, conversing in the parlor or working to provide for their families.  These men are a presence within the novel, but at a distance, so much of Cal’s knowledge of the world comes from the females of his family, as they would have it.  

From both his paternal grandmother, Desdemona, and his mother, Theodora, the importance of the history of their family is passed down, along with other secret wisdoms of the female gender.  Cal recalls “didn’t my mother quiz me on uncles and aunts and cousins too? She never quizzed my brother, because he oversaw snow shovels and tractors, whereas I was supposed to provide the feminine glue that keeps families together, writing thank-you notes and remembering everybody’s birthdays and name days” (72). This idea of the importance of family history is one that is clearly important to Cal, as is demonstrated by the fact that half of a tale about his life takes place before he is even conceived.  This retelling of the family background instills in Cal more than just the knowledge of names of various family members, but also a very feminine way of storytelling.  In the beginning of the novel, Cal lists the various tests he was put through to determine his actual gender, including an analysis of his prose style to see whether he “wrote in a linear, masculine way, or in a circular, feminine one” (20). Cal points out that “despite my androgenized brain, there’s an innate feminine circularity in the story I have to tell” (20), this innateness stemming of course from the environment he was raised in.  Eugenides takes the narrative one step further by writing it in the style of “hysterical fiction,” as Stephanie Hsu points out in her article “Ethnicity and the Biopolitics of Intersex in Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex.”  The word “hysterical” naturally has feminine connotations, not only due to society’s views on women, but also based on the “word’s Greek root: hustera, or womb” (Hsu 92).  His lack of an actual womb and life as a male during the latter part of his life seems to contrasts this feminine narrative, but in actuality it backs up Dr. Luce’s theory that “chromosomal status has been completely overridden by rearing” (421).

Cal’s feminine knowledge stems much farther than his ability to tell a good story. The women in his life are continuously teaching him new things, steadily shaping him into the her his parents wanted since before he was even conceived. Milton and Theodora Stephanides already had a boy who “liked shooting things, hammering things, smashing things, and wrestling;” they longed for something sweeter and softer, “an irresistibly sweet, dark-eyed little girl” (6).  Thanks to an oblivious doctor and their own blind desires, this is exactly what they got.  As a girl, Cal is very sweet-tempered and sociable, and is described as being very beautiful:

The beauty I possessed as a baby only increased as I grew into a girl…Elderly waitresses bent close to take my order.  Red-faced boys appeared at my desk, stammering, “Y-y-you dropped your eraser.” Even Tessie, angry about something would look down at me—at my Cleopatra eyes—and forget what she was mad about. (248)

This beauty sticks with Cal even after the on-set of puberty, and even aids in his “passing” as a girl.  By the time he reached his teen years, Cal had been interpolated to be a full-fledged female based on his upbringing.  In his report, Dr. Luce states that:

She is feminine in her movements and is in keeping with females of her generation.  Though due to her height some people may find the subject’s gender at first glance somewhat indeterminate, any prolonged observation would result in a decision that she was indeed a girl. Her voice, in fact, has a soft breathy quality.  She inclines her head to listen when another person speaks and does not hold forth or assert her opinions in a bullying manner characteristic of males. (436).  

Cal does not notice these specific examples, as they come naturally to him; he instead attributes his passing to his skinniness.  He says “many genetic males raised as girls don’t blend in so easily. From an early age they look different, move differently, they can’t find shoes or gloves that fit.  Other kids call them tomboys, or worse: ape-women, gorillas. My skinniness disguised me.  The early seventies were a good time to be flat-chested. Androgyny was in. My rickety height and foal’s legs gave me the posture of a fashion model” (304).

Of course, while being tall and lanky and flat-chested may have worked in Cal’s favor at first, soon his lack of boobs became something fearful, along with his lack of menstruation.  He had heard rumor of the latter, but was not quite sure what to make of it: “from hints Aunt Zo let slip in the kitchen I was aware that something happened to women every so often, something they didn’t like, something men didn’t have to put up with (like everything else).  Whatever it was, it seemed safely far off, like getting married or giving birth” (284).  When he sees a girl at camp embarrass herself in front of everybody due to the onset of her period, it hits a little closer to home.  However, when all the other girls his age get their periods and he does not, that fear begins to shift: “You couldn’t control it. You never knew. It could happen anytime. Except, with me, it didn’t.  Gradually, as most other girls in my grade began to undergo their own transformations, I began to worry less about possible accidents and more about being left behind, left out” (285).  This fear climaxes when his mom begins to worry as well; at fourteen, being a “late bloomer” seems to lose its credibility.  With “Nixonian cunning,” as he puts it, he began to fake his periods. These extreme measures taken to pass as a female (though he did not know that was exactly what he was doing at the time), and to fit into society speaks to Halberstam’s theory of adolescence. She states that “for girls, adolescence is a lesson in restraint, punishment, and repression.  It is in the context of female adolescence that the tomboy instincts of millions of girls are remodeled into compliant forms of femininity” (Halberstam 1738).  However, in this context, those “tomboy instincts” are actually his innate male being, repressed due to the gender requirements enforced within his childhood environment.

It is unclear, however, how far this constructed identity differs from his actual gender.  Essentialism cannot be ruled out entirely; constructivism wins out merely because society does not have a name for the intersexual.  In the article “Intersex Practice, Theory, and Activism: A Roundtable Discussion,” Del LaGrace Volcano states that “the main problem for both the intersex and the intergendered is societal insistence that bodies always and without fail conform to the either/or, male/female paradigm” (Creighton 252); research would argue that female seems to be the predominant paradigm. Within the article, Volcano gives her own personal account as a member of the intersex population.  She recounts how, when she hit puberty only one of her breasts developed, a size double-D cup, while the other remained completely flat. When her mother took her to see a doctor never once did he give her the option of removing the developed breast, he instead insisted she get an implant in the under-developed one.  She states “I was devastated. I wanted so much to be flat chested! Like my mother… But the die was cast; I became a woman with largish breasts.  I fit the stereotype and so continued to pluck my facial hair in secret for the next twenty years” (250).  This raises interesting questions about the exclusivity of masculinity; like Cal’s doctor, Dr. Luce, Volcano’s doctor would see her reassigned into a woman rather than a man.  This reflects the belief that genetics, or appearance, or even performance alone do not make a man.  Though she may possess certain qualities of a man, she is abnormal, less than a man; therefore, she must become a woman.  Halberstam argues that “the continued refusal in Western society to admit ambiguously gendered bodies into functional social relations…is, I will claim, sustained by a conservative and protectionist attitude by men in general towards masculinity” (Halberstam 1743).  Likened to colonial times when only white, landholding man could vote: only straight, penis holding men can be truly masculine.  

So where does Cal stand?  He can do what Volcano could not do, break away from what society would expect him to do. He refused the corrective surgery, ran away, and became what he felt he really was inside: a man. For him, the question is mute, it does not matter because he passes as a man.  He says “I am not androgynous in the least. 5-alpha-reductase deficiency syndrome allows for a normal biosynthesis and peripheral action testosterone, in utero, noenatally, and at puberty.  In other words, I operate in society as a man.  I use the men’s room.  Never the urinals, always the stalls.  In the men’s locker room at my gym I even shower, albeit discreetly” (41).  To him this is his innate being, who he is.  His female self is like a distant dream, or a bad habit, the result of years of conditioning: “when Calliope surfaces, she does so like a childhood speech impediment.  Suddenly there she is again, doing a hair flip, or checking her nails. It’s a little like being possessed” (41).  But after being a girl for the most pivotal years of his life, learning to be a man is not as natural as Cal might have thought; indeed, just as a child he learned how to be a girl, he again learns to be a man through imitation.  He claims, “like a stroke victim, I was having to relearn all the simple motor skills” (441).  “Somewhere near Gay, Indiana, I adopted a swagger.  I rarely smiled.  My expression throughout Illinois was the Clint Eastwood squint.  It was all a bluff, but so was it on most men.  We were all walking around squinting at each other. My swagger wasn’t that different from what lots of adolescent boys put on, trying to be manly.  For that reason, it was convincing” (449).  Here Cal demonstrates Halberstam’s theory that “although we seem to have a difficult time defining masculinity, as a society we have no trouble in recognizing it” (Halberstam 1735).  Halberstam would have probably applauded Cal for breaking out on his own and rejecting the surgery, but this outright conformity to another constructed ideal defeats the purpose. Paraphrasing Gertrude Stein, he says “what’s the point of being a rebel boy if you are going to grow up to be a man?” (Halberstam 1737).  

Unlike Halberstam herself, Cal can pass when he begins using the men’s bathroom (Halberstam argues that this is because women are more concerned with gender codes); unlike the other men around him, it is Cal himself who has to adjust to this new environment.  He says:

This was perhaps the hardest adjustment.  I was scandalized by the filth of men’s rooms. The rank smells and the pig sounds, the grunting and huffing from the stalls.  Urine was forever puddled on the floors.  Scraps of soiled toilet paper adhered to commodes. When you entered a stall, more often than not a plumbing emergency greeted you, a brown tide, a soup of dead frogs.  To think that a toilet stall had once been a haven for me!  That was all over now.  I could see that men’s room, unlike the ladies’, provided no comfort. (451)

 Halberstam also speaks to this domestic feeling of the ladies’ room, describing it as a “sanctuary of enhanced femininity, a “little girl’s room” to which one retreats to powder one’s nose, or fix one’s hair” (Halberstam 1749).  Of course, Cal has no need to fix his hair; his first act as a male (after purchasing new clothes) was to cut his hair short into a man’s style.  With his hair gone, the new changes as an effect from the onset of puberty were now more evident: his square jaw, thicker neck, Adam’s apple.  This was his first view of himself as a man, but the girl inside of him was still evident: “To cut off your hair after a breakup was a feminine reaction.  It was a way to start over, to renounce vanity, to spite love” (445).  In an attempt to become manlier, he inadvertently slips into his feminine role yet again.  To prevent himself from slipping again, Cal adopts a few overtly masculine traits; “the cigars, the double breasted suits—they’re a little too much.  I’m well aware of that.  But I need them.  They make me feel better. After what I’ve been through, some overcompensation is to be expected” (41).  

           Despite his self-assuredness, Cal knew from a young age that he could not be accepted for what he was, hence the overcompensation.  Choosing not to have corrective surgery was a brave move against society, but for him it was like taking a life-long vow of celibacy. Several times throughout the novel Cal describes his apprehensions about dating, rarely having the nerve to get too close without the aid of alcohol, and never stepping out of his boxers. “Instead I leave, making excuses” he says, “I leave and never call them again.  Just like a guy” (107).  Cal does not condone his shame in what he is, and he supports the intersex movement…from afar.  He asks himself, “is it really my apolitical temperament that makes me keep my distance from the intersexual rights movement? Couldn’t it also be fear? Of standing up.  Of becoming one of them” (319).  Cal has been influenced by society as much as anyone else; there is a scene early on in his childhood of his dad taking him to see the Minotaur, a creature young Cal describes as being “born a monster…a thing to be hidden away” (123).  Years later, he would encounter the term monster again, as a synonym in the Webster’s Dictionary under the word “hermaphrodite.”

           The one person who helps Cal think better of himself in the end is Julie, an American girl of Asian descent who Cal falls for.  We are only given three specific relationships Cal has with other girls.  The first was an asexual bathtub romp that literally gave his grandfather a stroke; the second with the “Obscure Object” where, even in a semi-lesbian relationship, Cal begins to assert himself into the masculine role.  Judith Butler speaks to the “importance of recognizing the ways in which heterosexual norms reappear within gay identities” (Butler 1714); Cal’s relationship with Julie seems to be the culmination of this. Early on in the novel, Cal refers to Julie as a “last stop,” referring to the fact that Asian women are often the last stop for homosexual men before they come out. At the end of the book the two are still together, thus reaffirming his hetero-normative status.

           Volcano states that “the key issue facing the intersexed is actually a key issue facing humanity in general: fear of difference and compulsory heterosexuality as well as gender normativity” (Creighton 253). This fear of difference is something that any “othered” individual can relate to, whether it be due to race, gender, sexuality, or physical disability; all do the best that they can to pass in a world that does not fully accept them.  In Cal’s case, he is innately both man and woman, but society views him as neither; he is forced to imitate the world around him.  The novel ends with Cal back at home, once again adhering to old family customs, this time as a man: “so it was I who, upholding an old Greek custom no one remembered anymore, stayed behind on Middlesex, blocking the door, so that Milton’s spirit wouldn’t reenter the house.  It was always a man who did this, and now I qualified” (529). Conforming to Butler’s “copy with no original” idea, the world continues to follow the norms of the generation that came before.  

Works Cited:

Butler, Judith. “Imitation and Gender Insubordination.” The Critical Tradition: Classic

Texts and Contemporary Trends. Third Ed. David H. Richter. New York:

Bedford/St Martin’s, 2007. 1707-1718. Print.

Creighton, Sarah M. Greenberg, Julie A. Roen, Katrina. Volcano, Del LaGrace. “Intersex

Practice, Theory, and Activism A Roundtable Discussion.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Volume 15, Number 2, 2009. 249-260. Article.

Eugenides, Jeffrey. Middlesex. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2002.

Halberstam, Judith. Introduction. “Female Masculinity” The Critical Tradition: Classic

Texts and Contemporary Trends. Third Ed. David H. Richter. New York:

Bedford/St Martin’s, 2007. 1707-1718. Print.

Hsu, Stephanie. “Ethnicity and the Biopolitics of Intersex in Jeffrey Eugenides's

Middlesex.” MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S., Volume 36, Number 3 (Fall 2011). 87-110. Article.

[allthingsberena]

An interview with the Independent 2013

The last time Jemma Redgrave gave a proper, full-on newspaper interview was in July 2010, just a couple of months after the deaths of her aunt Lynn Redgrave and her father Corin Redgrave and just over a year after the skiing accident that killed her cousin, Natasha Richardson – an awful succession of loss that the interviewer described as giving her face "the look that grief gives, as if a layer has been washed away". Three years later, and Redgrave appears outwardly restored – friendly, warm and unpretentious, with an unexpectedly hearty laugh that wouldn't disgrace Basil Brush. If she remains huddled under her coat in the well-heated bowels of the Soho Hotel in London, then it's because today she is sniffing her way through a cold. "It was a couple of months after he [Corin] died, so I was quite raw," she says of that 2010 interview. "I still feel the same now, just not with the same intensity." We talk more about her father and other relatives later, and not altogether mellifluously when I reveal that some of my research came by way of a biography of the Redgraves despised by her family. First and more happily, however, we discuss her work. Since leaving drama school, Redgrave has been a regular on television, most prominently as the titular Victorian doctor in ITV's Bramwell. Thanks to its huge global fanbase, however, her role in Doctor Who, in which she debuted last year as Kate Stewart (the daughter of the much-loved Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, played by the late Nicholas Courtney from 1968 to 1989) is set to eclipse all that has gone before, when she returns in the 50th- anniversary episode "The Day of the Doctor". So far we know that this "love letter to the fans" has been filmed in both 2D and 3D, and will see the return of David Tennant and Billie Piper alongside Matt Smith and Jenna Coleman, as well as John Hurt as a previously unknown incarnation of the Doctor, plus Daleks, Zygons and a visit to Elizabethan England. Otherwise, a strict omerta prevails around the 75-minute episode that will be shown simultaneously around the world as well as in cinemas. That's next Saturday – quite the event. "What can I tell you about the 50th anniversary? Practically nothing," she says, giving me a first taste of her pleasingly full-throttle laugh. "When the job offer came in my agent said, 'You mustn't tell anybody about this,' and I thought, 'What am I going to tell the kids?' It's like joining M15." The cat finally exited the bag when scenes were filmed in Trafalgar Square. "The news hit the Twittersphere and within half-an-hour of our being there, there were people with Tom Baker scarves on… people with Tardis safety covers on their iPhones," she says. "It was a huge relief to be able to tell people." Redgrave's peak Doctor Who-viewing years were the early 1970s, when, classically, she'd watch from behind the sofa. "I would then have terrible nightmares," she says. "My dad said he would take me to the BBC studios so I could see the Daleks – and that frightened me even more." Does she meet one in the anniversary special? "Can I tell?" she asks the publicist sitting in on the interview, who signals her assent. "In that case, yes, I come across a Dalek. There was no acting required. It was a scarifying moment." Anything else she can tell? "I work with more than one Doctor… oh, and I worked with more than one Tardis as well." Intriguing, or at least it will be to Whovians. "The community of Who fans have been very kind to me," she says. "Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart was such a loved character and I think people were very open to his daughter making an appearance and, hopefully, touch wood, making more appearances in the future." So, she'll be back? "I think Peter Capaldi is a very exciting prospect as the new Doctor, so that would be wonderful." Born in January 1965, Redgrave is five days younger than her cousin Joely Richardson, whose parents are Vanessa Redgrave and the film and play director Tony Richardson; Joely's sister, Natasha Richardson, was born two years earlier. In the flesh, she bears a far more striking resemblance to her late cousin than she does when photographed – or, at least, I'd never noticed such similarity before. Her paternal grandparents were the actors Sir Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson, an acting dynasty, if you like… although Aunt Vanessa doesn't like, insisting that "dynasty implies power – we're a family of professional actors. It's like coming from a family of carpenters or plumbers." "I think that's about right," agrees Jemma (née Jemima). "I associate dynasties with huge corporations… the Murdochs… it feels like a family and quite a few of us are actors." When did she first become aware that she belonged to this extraordinary clan? "I remember one of my teachers at primary school used to call me Vanessa by mistake, and I couldn't understand why and then, of course, later it became clear," she says. "It just seemed very normal to me – like everybody's family seems normal until you realise no one else's family is like that." Was it inevitable that she would follow in the family profession? "No, not at all. None of my brothers are actors – I've got three brothers – Luke is a cameraman, Harvey is a civil servant and Arden is training to be a primary-school teacher. A mixed bag. "I remember once on my grandmother's birthday, my dad was filming In the Name of the Father (the 1993 Daniel Day-Lewis film about the Guildford Four) in Ireland and my aunt and my brothers… a big lot of family… were driving round from here to there in a minibus, having a lovely time and breaking into songs, and my brother Luke heard Harvey mutter to himself, 'I was born into the wrong family.'" Her own sons with barrister husband Tim Owen, Gabriel and Alfie, are aged 19 and 13; Gabriel has just started an English degree at Sussex University. Are there any signs of a new generation of thespians? "There are going to be one or two more… possibly… but I think it's important that they speak for themselves," she says – a statement in stark contrast to Laurence's Olivier's very public announcement of the birth of Vanessa Redgrave, after a performance of Hamlet at the Old Vic, that "Laertes [played by Michael Redgrave] has a daughter." Vanessa could hardly grow up to be an accountant after that. It was Jemma Redgrave's grandmother, Rachel Kempson, who took her – aged five – to her first play, Peter Brook's RSC production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, followed by more Shakespeare, watching her father in Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra. "Complicated theatre really… not Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which I took my children to see." Her parents, Corin and former fashion model Deidre Hamilton-Hill, divorced when Redgrave was nine, by which time her father, like her aunt Vanessa, was deeply involved in far-left politics in the shape of the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP). "We'd been taken to demonstrations when I was very young," she recalls. "This was the late 1960s, early 1970s, and everybody was demonstrating about something. "It's difficult to explain it now… you know the whole Ed Miliband thing with the Daily Mail and 'it's very important to know where he comes from… very, very left-wing views were expressed round his breakfast table'… well, they were discussed round the breakfast tables of a lot of people who grew up at that time. The children of those people weren't brainwashed." Certainly this child isn't without her own political causes: Redgrave was a prominent member of the Stop the War movement protesting at Blair and Bush's 2003 invasion of Iraq. ("There's no joy in being proved right.") She also helps at a Red Cross refugee centre in Islington, north London. What she can't stand is that any political movement would espouse a cause to the detriment of family life. "I resented the WRP, because my dad was unavailable to me and to my brother because there were such extreme demands made on everybody who became a member of that party," she says. In her book, To Be a Redgrave, her mother recalls Jemma and her cousins Natasha and Joely sitting round the kitchen table discussing how much they hated the WRP. "Vanessa was involved in the WRP for a while so we did have a similar experience, yeah," she says. I add that I'm surprised that she has stated that she has never read her mother's autobiography. "My mum was very angry with my dad for a very long time and I didn't really want to divide my loyalty," she explains. "The least complicated path through that particular difficulty was not to read it." Another contentious book is one that I had blithely borrowed from my local library, The House of Redgrave by Tim Adler, unaware that it had been lambasted by the family for an outrageous false claim that Vanessa Redgrave had once come home to find her husband, Tony Richardson (director of the original Royal Court production of Look Back in Anger and Oscar-winning British New Wave film-maker), in bed with her father, Sir Michael Redgrave. "You can't libel the dead so [Adler] can make up what he likes… I don't even want to comment on it," she says, before adding: "That book was written by a man who got in touch with my cousin Tasha and said that he wanted to write a book about her dad and that he was a huge fan. She did a bit of investigating and she said that she wasn't going to help him. He wasn't a huge fan of Tony's. This is a man whose work was groundbreaking and changed the landscape of theatrical and cinematic culture in this country. And to reduce him to his sexuality… it's… yeah." A long silence follows and we talk about other things to get the conversation flowing again – of her recent house move across north London, her cottage in Wales and her pet Labrador. And then our time is up and she is whisked off for a photo-session with the marvellous Dan, who soon has her booming with laughter again. After the shoot, I tell her that I will return the despised book to the library forthwith. "Or burn it," she says. "No we can't start burning books. Oh, all right – perhaps just this once."

[foxcroft-rpg-blog]

Congratulations, Janelle! Wow it’s almost like you’ve already been playing Willa ??? Wow how did you do that? Oh, yeah, you’re the admin. 

Thanks again for applying! Please create your account and send in the link, track the right tags, and follow everyone on the masterlist as soon as you can. Welcome to Foxcroft!

OUT OF CHARACTER

Name: Janelle

Age: 21

Preferred pronouns: she/her

Time zone: PST

Activity: I mean I run this… so I’m on as much as I can be. Getting off early in the mornings means I have a lot of free time.

Anything else?: N/A

IN CHARACTER

Full name: Willa Lorraine Potter

There was a time when Willa’s mother hadn’t settled for the life of the housewife. Her hair was long and untamed. She was the kind of girl who followed her favorite band up the coast, the kind of girl whose smile was welcoming and warm and made her seem like she was within your grasp, but in reality she was oh so unattainable. The only traces left of that girl lie in her daughter’s name. She wanted to name her Willow, but Willa’s father wouldn’t allow it. Finally, the settled on Willa. It was respectable, but still a nod at her mother’s carefree past.

Her middle name was her father’s doing. Lorraine. It’s the name of her paternal great grandmother. Willa never met her. She died just before she Willa was born. Named after a woman she never met, it was her father’s way of honoring the woman, but not knowing her herself, Willa didn’t put much weight in it.

Date of birth: 11/24/1992

How long have they been in Foxcroft:

Endless white picket fences, cars pouring in and out of the suburbs just before 9 a.m. and just after 5 p.m. every Monday through Friday, tupperware parties. Foxcroft’s suburbs have played like old black and white television reruns over and over again, day after day, ever since Willa was born. The episodes change, but still everything seems the same, like a played out catch phrase or a tired show opening – Willa hated it. At the young age of fourteen Willa found herself jaded with conversations of whether to paint the cabinets eggshell or cream, and predictable played-out routines. From that point forward, Willa vowed her life would be interesting, damn it. She’d lose her mind if she ended up like her mother.

Sexuality:

DEMI-ROMANTIC PANSEXUAL. She was the girl who fell in love with your mind, with the way you smiled at her, with the words you spoke. Gender didn’t matter. It was about the way you made her feel. But opening her heart was a challenge. She wasn’t cold, just closed off, too caught up in herself, in her thoughts and feelings — like the way vodka burned her throat as she drank until she couldn’t drink anymore. Or the way the fire warmed her fingertips when she struck a match. No, Willa felt everything. Loved everyone. She was just too scared to show it. Sex, on the other hand, was just another way to feel something without giving up too much of herself. It didn’t mean anything, but god did it make her feel alive.

FC change: lol no thx i basically have a shrine to phoebe tonkin she’s my tru god

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How do you interpret this character’s personality? How will you portray them? Include two weaknesses and two strengths.

For Willa, there is before and there is after Adam’s death. The one constant is how tired she feels about her life. Adam and Neil made things feel easy. They howled at the moon, they stole six packs and chips from the local supermarket for kicks. Time stood still when the three of them together and it was as if they’d live forever. Immortals weren’t supposed to die — but Adam did.

When Willa found out about his death, time didn’t start again, it continued to stand still, but instead of feeling free, Willa felt trapped. It was as if the metaphorical walls of Foxcroft were closing in on her and she wasn’t strong enough to push back anymore. The free spirit that once was hadn’t died, but had been buried along with her friend’s corpse. Still, Willa endures, and her free spirit manifests in impulses. It comes when she jumps off the top of the ladder on the water tower, not entirely sure if she’ll make it to the ground alive. It comes when she picks fights with drunken patrons at Absinthe Minded who are much bigger and stronger than she is – but they don’t know Willa’s lost her last reason to give a damn. It comes in screams and broken mirrors and empty bottles of vodka. When Adam died, Willa lost her best friend, and when Neil went missing she lost the only person who could have anchored her, but he left, and she went off the rails.

Behind the impulses is a girl who’s terrified. She’s terrified of this town, terrified of losing the friend she’s pushed so far away, terrified of her own life. She could tear the skin from her bones if it meant escaping this prison. All she wants is to get out, but she doesn’t have a clue how. Willa lived for the interesting, to be free, but despite that philosophy she still had no idea what she actually wanted.

POSITIVE: free spirited, loyal, lively, protective

NEGATIVE: impulsive, uncertain, stubborn, immature

How did this character react to the death of Hazel Abrams? Adam Foxcroft? (1+ paragraphs)

Willa would never admit it, but she wasn’t really affected by Hazel’s death. She wishes she cared more, wishes she cried for her best friend’s lost lover, wishes she felt an absence in the group, but she just didn’t. For Willa, it was Adam, Neil and her against the world. Willa never felt like Hazel was truly a part of their little group, she was never really a Bad Kid. She was tacked on, and trailed along because of Neil. They were her boys, not Hazel’s.

Adam’s death, on the other hand, completely changed her. Every smoke she lit up, every glass of whiskey, every firework, every full moon, every star – it was all tainted. Everywhere she looked in the tiny town reminded her of Adam. Absinthe Minded, where they’d drink and sing along to The Clash until they wouldn’t remember it the next day. Rudford’s, where they ended up after a late night of setting fireworks off from the top of the water tower. Foxcroft was their little kingdom, but the king fell, and now all Willa sees is an empty throne.

How do they see the town and its people? Think about the different groups of people and prejudices the town holds about them. (1+ paragraphs)

Socially, Willa is free of many of the prejudices held by the people of Foxcroft. She grew up in the suburbs with a painfully middle class family. They weren’t religious, so Willa didn’t feel the stares that many people in Foxcroft felt as they drove down Sweetwater Road to Sunday service. Willa could have slid by unnoticed, but she was friends with a Foxcroft, and the town loved to gossip about the founding family.

Stealing from liquor stores and grocery stores didn’t help her case much. Willa became a bad example, a criminal. Unlike most people, she reveled in it. Being a delinquent, being a member of the bad kids club gave her something to be. She wasn’t the daughter of suburbia, she was the kind of kid your parents warned you about. In the light of the bonfires they put on at Foxcroft Cemetery, in the bottom of a bottle and the butt of a cigarette, Willa found herself. She didn’t care what anyone in Foxcroft thought of her. She never did.

For non-human characters: What does this character know about what they’ve become? Have they had any experiences that made them aware that weren’t exactly human? Elaborate. (2+ paragraphs)

The night Adam died changed everything for Willa, not just in how she felt, but who she was. Willa was with them, and then she wasn’t, the world in front of her disappeared into nothingness. Was she dead? Was she dreaming? Willa still doesn’t know. All she knows is she woke up in the middle of the swamps the next morning and that’s when they found Adam’s body. The headlines all said Neil did it, but Willa couldn’t help but feel some sort of guilt for what she’d seen. Had she been responsible?

Willa tries not to think about that night, tries not to relive the night her best friend died, but she knows that something changed that night inside her. She’s just too terrified to seek it out.

Please include 1-2 possible plots your see for this character (1 paragraph brief explanation for each)

WRITING SAMPLE

There are two options here, and you only need to complete one.

Sample #1:  This is a starter for Marlene McKinnon in an AU Harry Potter roleplay.

Sample #2: This is a self para for my character, Matthew Quinn, a thirty-year-old werebear who was infected with the lycanthropy strain. Here he’s visiting his ex-girlfriend’s grave, who he killed when they both shifted and he discovered she was a weredeer. Basically he ate her.

EXTRA [THIS SECTION WILL NOT INFLUENCE ACCEPTANCE]

How would you feel about this character dying?: She’s trying real hard to live, but ironically that puts her closer to death. She’s scared of what she thinks she can do right now, but I could see her maybe getting into things too deep eventually and it backfiring on her. Death is definitely a possibility for Willa.

Why did you choose this character?: Phoebe Tonkin. DREAMS. Lost babe trying to feel something and live an interesting life. PAIN. Sign me up.

Extras: pinterest board.

How did you find us?: I run this shit.

[thandisizwemgudlwa]

A Journey Toward Reviving the African Humanism for a 'New World'

01 August 2017, 12:34    NEWS24

THANDISIZWE MGUDLWA        

So much of African literary work remains suppressed through this day.

The time has come for Africans from all walks of life to play their meaningful role. In the restoration on constructive African values, systems and philosophies. This is to be done in the name reviving the humanness the continent and the world desperately lacks.

Either through colonial oppression. Or Satanist arrangements. Through to the lost of the African soul.

Africa must find place. Africa must rise. Africa must shine the light to the rest of the universe.

Through his work as a writer, educationist, artist and activist, South Africa, Africa and the world need to re-vibrate Mphahlele's message and the spirit of Afrikan Humanism, back into our daily actions.

In marking Africa Day on May 25, this year. António Guterres, You know him? His the United Nations Secretary-General. He said all of humanity will benefit by listening, learning and working with the people of Africa.

Yes, you read that right.

“Africa Day 2017 comes at an important moment in the continent’s endeavours towards peace, inclusive economic growth and sustainable development," he said.

Guterres, further said. The international community has entered the second year of implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

He said this was an all-out effort to tackle global poverty, inequality, instability and injustice.

Africa has adopted its own complementary and ambitious plan, Agenda 2063.

"For the people of Africa to fully benefit from these important efforts, these two agendas need to be strategically aligned.

But can Africa reach its full potential when the continent's greatness is still a stranger to the African majority?

As Billy Selekane, Africa's #No1 Speaker. That one. Recently said on his Monday inspirational talk on 'Leadership' on Radio2000. Which is one of South Africa's fastest growing radio stations, with the tendency to play a lot of African music. A good one. Selekane remarked, "We live in times when the abnormal is being normalized." Selekane didn't necessarily mention Prof. Mphahlele by name. But he certainly was talking about his kind when he noted that one of the qualities of a true leader was love for what he does and love for the people. Prof. Mphahlele was born on the 17th of December 1919 in Pretoria, South Africa. And he left this world on the 27th October in 2008. He was born Ezekiel Mphahlele. But the genius in him pushed him to change his name to Es’kia. This was in 1977. Goodness. Prof. Mphahlele. The clever one. Is celebrated as the Father of Afrikan Humanism. By the clever ones. Accepted. Ubuntu/Botho or Humanity sounds like Afrikan Humanism. Alright. We'll call it that.

Es'kia life’s work embraces his philosophy of Afrikan Humanism. It offers over 50 years of profound insights on Afrikan Humanism, Social Consciousness, Education, Arts, Cultural development and African Literature. A great man. The critical thoughts expressed in his writing. They show the deep vision of a man who challenges us to: "Know our Afrika intimately, even while we tune into the world at large," as Es'kia once put it. From the age of five. He lived with his paternal grandmother in Maupaneng village, in Limpopo. Here they made sure he herded cattle and goats like the boys. His mother, Eva. Had taken him and his two siblings to go live with her in Marabastad (2nd Avenue) when he was 12 years old. He married Rebecca Nnana Mochedibane (Mphahlele). Whose family was victim of forced removals in Vrededorp, in 1945 (the same year his mother died). Sad. Rebecca was another clever one. She was a qualified Social Worker. With a Diploma from Jan Hofmeyer School, in Johannesburg. Together with his wife, Mphahlele had five children. When he left South Africa going for exile. First in Nigeria. He even left behind his family but wife and children. Understandable. He once tried taking advantage of a British passport before Nigeria’s independence. He applied for a visa through the consulate in Nairobi. He needed to get home to visit Bassie (Solomon), his younger brother, who was ill with throat cancer. Sadly, his application was turned down. And earlier. At the age of 15. He began attending school regularly. He enrolled at St Peters Secondary School, in Rosettenville in Johannesburg. Johannesburg once a city of gold. But now more a city of drugs. So where's the gold? Some say, it has been converted to cash and is gaining interest in the Swiss Bank accounts.

The young Mphahlele finished high school by private study. That became his learning method until his PhD qualification. The brainy Mphahlele obtained a First Class Pass (Junior Certificate). He received his Joint Matriculation Board Certificate from the University of South Africa in 1943. While teaching at Orlando High School. Mphahlele obtained his B.A. in 1949 from the University of South Africa. Majoring in English, Psychology and African Administration. Still in 1949. He received his Honours degree in English from the same institution. While working for the black magazine, DRUM.  Mphahlele made history by becoming the first person to graduate M.A. with distinction at UNISA. His thesis was titled : The Non-European Character in South African English Fiction. He achieved this remarkable milestone in 1957. From 1966-1968.  Under the sponsorship of the Farfield Foundation.Mphahlele became a Teaching Fellow in the Department of English at the University of Denver, in Colorado. This is when he read for and completed his PhD in Creative Writing. Legend has it. In lieu of a thesis. he wrote a novel titled The Wanderers. He was subsequently awarded First Prize for the best African novel (1968-69) by the African Arts magazine at the University of California, in Los Angeles. Mphahlele had obtained his Teacher’s Certificate at Adams College in 1940. He served at Ezenzeleni Blind Institute as a teacher and a shorthand-typist from 1941 to 1945. He and his wife moved their family to Orlando East. Near the historic Orlando High School, in Soweto.  As he joined the school in 1945 as an English and Afrikaans teacher. He protested against the introduction of Bantu Education (inferior education system which was meant for Black South Africans by the Apartheid regime). And a result of revolutionary actions.  His teaching career was cut short. And he was banned from teaching in South Africa by the Apartheid government. Mphahlele left South Africa. And went into exile. First stopping in Nigeria. He taught in a high school for 15 months. For the rest of the stay, he taught at the University of Ibadan, in their extension programme. Mphahlele also worked at the C.M.S. Grammar School, in Lagos. He worked in the Department of Extra-Mural Studies at the University of Ibadan. Travelling to various outlying districts to teach adults. Each day. He taught a class from 5pm-7pm.

While based in Paris, he became a visiting lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also lectured in Sweden, France, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Senegal and Nigeria. Mphahlele spent twenty years in exile. He spent four years in Nigeria with his family. “It was a fruitful experience. The people of Nigeria were generous. The condition of being an outsider was not burdensome. I had time to write and engage in the arts” Mphahlele had said of his exile experience. He was working with the best in Nigerian; playwright, poet and novelist Wole Sonyika; poets Gabriel Okara and Mabel Segun; Amos Tutuola, a novelist; sculpture Ben Enwonnwu; and painters Demas Nwoko and Uche Okeke, and so on. But Africans mostly are deprived of the works of things legends. Even now at liberation. Or is western controlled liberation? His visits to Ghana became frequent.With each trip adding more literary giants to his list of networks and colleagues. The University of Ghana would also invite him to conduct extramural writers’ workshops. That is where he got to meet Kofi Anwoor (then George Awoonor Williams), playwright Efua Sutherland, poet Frank Kobina Parks, musicologist Professor Kwabena Nketia, historian Dr. Danquah, poet Adail-Mortty and sculptor Vincent Kofi. Mphahlele attended the All African People’s Conference organised by Kwame Nkrumah in Accra, Ghana, in December 1958.

“Ghana was the only African country that had been freed from the European colonialism that had swept over the continent in the 19th century. Most of the countries represented at Accra were still colonies,” remembered Mphahlele. In Afrika My Music. Mphahlele recalled meeting with the late Patrick Duncan and Jordan Ngubane who were representing the South African liberal view.

It was at this conference where he met Kenneth Kaunda. And listened to Franz Fanon deliver a fiery speech against colonialism. Rebecca. His wife returned to South Africa towards the end of 1959, to give birth to their last born, Chabi. They returned in February 1960. They were in Nigeria when they heard about the Sharpeville Massacre. “Yes, Nigeria and Ghana gave Afrika back to me. We had just celebrated Ghana’s independence,” Mphahlele had noted then. Mphahlele moved his family to France in August 1961. Their second major move. And then he was appointed as the Director of the African Program of The Congress for Cultural Freedom. And went to Paris for this. They lived on Boulevard du Montparnasse, just off St. Michel. Their apartment was soon to become a kind of crossroads for writers and artists. Ethiopian artist Skunder Borghossian, Wole Sonyika, Gambian poet Lenrie Peters, South African poet in exile Mazisi Kunene, Ghanaian poet and his beloved friend J.P. Clark; and Gerard Sekoto. It was during his stay in France. When Mphahlele was invited by Ulli Beier and other Nigerian writers to help form the Mbari Writers and Artists Club in Ibadan. They raised money from Merrill Foundation in New York to finance the Mbari Publications. A venture the club had undertaken. Work by Wole Sonyika, Lenrie Peters and others were first published by Mbari Publishers before finding its way to commercial houses. He edited and contributed to the Black Orpheus. The literary journal in Ibadan. He toured and worked in major African cities like Kampala, Brazzaville, Yaounde, Accra, Abidjan, Freetown and Dakar. Mphahlele also attended seminars connected with work in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, West Germany, Italy, and the US. He then went on to set up an Mbari Centre in Enugu, in Nigeria. Under the directorship of John Enekwe.

In 1962.At Makerere University, in Kampla, Uganda. tThey organised the first Africa Writers’ Conference. The only South African who were able to attend were himself. Bob Leshoai who was on tour. And Neville Rubin who was editing a journal of political comment in South Africa. Two conferences. One in Dakar and another in Freetown were organised in 1963. Their aim was to throw into open the debate of the place of African literature in the university curriculum. They wanted to drum up support for the inclusion of African literature as a substantive area of study at university. Where traditionally it was being pushed into extramural departments and institutes of African Studies. Mphahlele had only planned to stay in Paris for two years. After which he would return to teaching. As those experiences had made him yearn for the classroom again. John Hunt. The Executive Director of the Congress for Cultural Freedom suggested that Mphahlele establish a centre like the Nigerian Mbari in Nairobi. Mphahlele arrived in Nairobi in August 1963. And October had been set for Kenya’s independence. By the time Rebecca and the children arrived. He had already bought a house. Prior to that. He had been housed by Elimo Njau, a Tanzanian painter. Njau suggested a name everyone liked- Chemchemi, kiSwahili for “fountain”. Within a few months. They had converted a warehouse into offices. A small auditorium for experimental theatre and intimate music performances. And an art gallery. Njau ran the art gallery on voluntary basis. He mounted successful exhibitions of Ugandan artists Kyeyune and Msango, and of his own work. “My soul was in the job. I was in charge of writing and theatre,” Mphahlele said on Africa My Music. Their participants were from the townships and locations that were a colonial heritage. Mphahlele would travel to outside districts to run writers’ workshops in schools that invited him. Accompanied by the centre’s drama group. Their traveling was well captured in Busara. Edited by Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Zuka, edited by Kariara. When the Alliance High School for Girls (just outside Nairobi) asked him to write a play for its annual drama festival, in the pace of the routine Shakespeare. Mphahlele adapted one of Grace Ogot’s The Rain Came, a short story, and called it Oganda’s Journey.

“The most enchanting element in the play was the use of traditional musical idioms from a variety of ethnic groups on Kenya. A most refreshing performance, which exploited the girl’s natural and untutored acting,” remarked Mphahlele. After serving for two years. He felt he had done what he had come for. As he had indicated before taking the job. That he would not stay for more than two years. He turned down a lecturing post at the University College of Nairobi as they could only offer him a one year contract which he could not take. Mphahlele moved his family to Colorado in May 1966. Here. They rented a house. Fixed schooling for the children. And prepared for the plunge. Mphahlele was joining the University of Denver’s English Department. He was granted a tuition waver by the university. For the course work he had to do before he could be admitted for the PhD dissertation. Notably. He paid for the Afrikan Literature and Freshman Composition himself. It was during his primary school days (as he recalls in his second autobiography Africa My Music). When he started rooting everywhere for newsprint to read. He recalled always looking for any old scrap of paper to read. He further recalled a small one-room tin shack. The then municipality called a reading room. On the western edge of Marbastad. Prof. Mphahlele. Remembered it being stacked with dilapidated books and journals. Junked by some bored ladies in the suburbs. He dug out of the pile Cervantes’s Don Quixote. And went through the whole lot like a termite. Elated by the sense of discovery. Recognition of the printed word. And by the mere practice of the skill of reading. Cervantes stood out in his mind, forever. Another teacher that fired his imagination. Was the silent movies of the 1930s. He enjoyed a combination of Don Quixote. And Sancho Panza. Together with Laurel and Hardy, with Buster Keaton. Mphahlele would read the subtitles aloud to his friends. Who could not read as fast or at all. Amid the yells. and foot stamping and bouncing on chairs to the rhythm of the action. While still based in Paris in the early 1960s. He published his second collection of short stories, The Living and Dead and Other Stories. In 1962. The year he called “The Year of My African Tour”. Mphahlele published The African Image, in Nigeria, Bulgarian, Swedish, Czech,  Hebrew and Japanese, and Portuguese were to follow. His first autobiography. Down Second Avenue was doing so well such that it was translated to French, German, Serbo-Croa. And in 1964. He published The African Image. In December of 1978, South African Minister of Justice took Mphahlele’s name off the list of writers who may not be quoted, and whose works may not be circulated in the country. Only ‘’Down Second Avenue’’, ‘’Voices in the Whirlwind’’ and ‘’Modern African Stories’’ which he had co-edited could then be read in the country. Other publications remained banned. The first comprehensive collection of his critical writing was published under the title ES’KIA, in 2002. The same year that the Es’kia Institute was founded. Es’kia Mphahlele’s life and work is currently found in the efforts of The Es’kia Institute.This a non-governmental, non-profit organisation based in Johannesburg. Mphahlele had set foot on South African soil again on the 3rd of July, 1976, at the Jan Smuts Airport (now called the O.R.Tambo International Airport). He had been invited by the Black Studies Institute in Johannesburg to read a paper at its inaugural conference. “I was emerging on to the concourse when I was startled by a tremendous shout. And they were on top of me – some one hundred Africans, screaming and jostling to embrace me, kiss me. Relatives, friends and pressmen from my two home cities – Johannesburg and Pretoria. I was bounced hither and thither and would most probably not have noticed if an arm or leg were torn off of me, or my neck was being wrung. Such an overwhelming ecstasy of that reunion. The police had to come and disperse the crowd as it had now taken over the concourse,” Mphahlele remembered. Prof. Mphahlele officially returned to South Africa in 1977, on Rebecca’s birthday (August 17). “When I came back, things were much worse. People were resisting what had become a more and more oppressive government. We came back at a dangerous time. It was a time when we knew we would not be alone, and that we would be among our people,” Mphahlele said in 2002. He waited for six months for the University of the North to inform him whether he would get the post of English professor which was still vacant. The answer was ‘no’. The government service of Lebowa offered him a job as an inspector of schools for English teaching. While, Rebecca had found a job as a social worker. In his autobiography Afrika My Music, he describes how the ten months of being an inspector was like. “I had the opportunity of travelling the length and breadth of the territory visiting schools and demonstrating aspects of English teaching. I saw for myself the damage of Bantu Education had wrought in our schooling system over the last twenty-five years. Some teachers could not even express themselves fluently or correctly in front of a class, and others spelled words wrongly on the blackboard”. Then in 1979, he joined the University of the Witwatersrand as a Senior Research Fellow at the African Studies Institute. He founded the Council for Black Education and Research, an independent project for alternative education involving young adults. In 1983. he established the African Literature Division within the Department of Comparative Literature, at the University of the Witwatersrand. Where he became the institution’s first black professor. He was permitted to honour an invitation from the then Institute for Study of English in Africa at Rhodes University. This was a two months research fellowship where his proposal of finishing his memoir Afrika My Music, which he had began in Philadelphia was accepted. After his retirement from Wits University in 1987, Mphahlele was appointed as the Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors at Funda Centre for Community Education. He continued visiting other universities as a visiting professor teaching mostly African Literature. He spent two months at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education teaching a module on secondary-school education in South Africa. His Professional Experience include, 1992 University of the North, Sovenga Honorary Professor of Literature attached to the Department of English; 1992 Community College in Lebowakgomo, Limpopo. Initiated a steering committee for the college’s establishment; 1992 Graduate School of Education, at Harvard University he spent two months teaching a module on secondary education in South Africa; 1989 University of South Carolina (from 1988) Visiting Professor in the Department of English; 1989 Funda Centre for Community Education Executive Chairman until 1995. Others include, 1987 University of the Witwatersrand Retired and awarded designation: Professor Emeritus; 1985 University of Pennsylvania (from 1984) Visiting Professor in the Department of English; 1983 University of the Witwatersrand Established the division of African Literature within the Department of Comparative Literature, becoming its first Professor and Chairman. 1982 University of Denver (from 1981) Visiting Professor in the Department of English; 1980 Council for Black Education and Research, Johannesburg Founding Chairperson and contributing editor to the Council’s journal Capricon; 1979 African Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand Senior Research Fellow; 1979 Institute for the Study of English in Africa, Grahamstown Research Fellow (He also completed his second autobiography, Afrika My Music) Earlier engagements include, the 1978 Government Service of Lebowa Inspector of Education as advisor in English teaching at secondary-school level;  1977 University of Pennsylvania (from 1974) Full Professor of English; 1974 University of Denver, Colorado (from 1970) Associate Professor in English; 1970 University of Zambia (from 1968) Senior Lecturer in the Department of English; 1968 University of Denver, Colorado (from 1966) Teaching Fellow in the Department of English. He also read for and completed the PhD in the Creative Writing Programme during that time. 1966 University College, Nairobi (1965) Senior Lecturer in English; 1965 Chemchemi Creative Centre, Nairobi (from 1963) Director; 1961 Centre for Internatioal Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge Visiting Lecturer on African Studies; 1963 Congress for Cultural Freedom (Now International Association for Cultural Freedom)(from 1961) Director of Programmes; 1961 University College Ibadan, Nigeria (from 1957) Lecturer in English; 1957 Drum magazine (from 1955) Fiction editor. Also, the 1954 St Peter’s Secondary School English teacher (paid by the school as a private teacher), 1953 Blind Institute, Roodepoort (from 1952) Secretary (He had been banned from teaching in any State-controlled school in South Africa as a result of campaigning against the Bantu Education Act); 1952 Orlando High School, Soweto (from 1945) English and Afrikaans teacher; 1945 Ezenzeleni Blind Institute, (from 1941) Teacher and shorthand-typist. Other publications include, the 1947 Man Must Live and Other Stories, African Bookman, Cape Town; 1959 Down Second Avenue (autobiography), Faber & Faber (London) Seven Seas, A Journey Toward Reviving the African Humanism for a 'New World'1962 (Berlin); Doubleday, 1971 (New York It was translated into ten European languages, Japanese and Hebrew. It was also banned in South Africa under the Internal Security Act 1962 The African Image, Faber & Faber (London) Praeger, 1964 New York (1964); Revised edition by Faber &Faber (1974); Praega (1974) It was banned in South Africa under the 1966 under the Internal Security Act 1966 A Guide to Creative Writing (pamphlet),East African Literature Bureau. And the 1967 In Corner B & Other Stories East African Publishing House, Nairobi It was banned in South Africa from 1966-1978 under the Internal Security Act; 1971 The Wanderers, Macmillan Co., New York Fontana/Collins (pb), London (1973); David Phillip (1984) It was banned in South Africa under the Internal Security Act 1971 Voices in the Whirlwind and Other Essays, Macmillan, London Hill &Wang, New York (1972); Fontana/Collins (pb), London (1973) It was banned in South Africa under the Internal Security Act from 1971-1978; 1980 Chirundu, Ravan Press (Johanesburg) Thomas Nelson, 1980 (London); Lawrence Hill, 1981 (New York). Further, in 1981 The Unbroken Song: Selected Writings (Poems and Short Stories), Ravan Press (Johannesburg); 1981 Let’s Write a Novel: A Guide”, Maskew Miller (Cape Town); 1984 Afrika My Music (second autobiography), Ravan Press (Johannesburg); 1984 Father Come Home (novel), Ravan Press (Johannesburg); 1988 Renewal Time (short stories), Readers International (New York); 1987 Let’s Talk Writing:Prose (A guide for writers), Skotaville Publishers (Johannesburg); 1987 Let’s Talk Writing:Poetry (A guide for writers), Skotaville Publishers (Johannesburg); 2001 Es’kia, Kwela Books with Stainbank & Associates Shortlisted for the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award for Non-Fiction; 2004 Es’kia Continued, Stainbank & Associates (Johannesburg). Selected papers include, 1997, March The Function of Literature at the Present Time University of Fort Hare; 1992 The Disinherited Imagination University of Limpopo (then The University of the North) 1991, April Notes on African Value Systems in relation to Education and Development” Institute for African Alternatives; Johannesburg 1991,Feb The State of Well-being in Traditional Africa(Seminar Theme: ‘Social Work and the Politics of Dispossession Council for Black Education and Research. Soweto 1990, November Educating the Imagination (Published in the College English, Boston, MA National Council for Teachers of English Conference; Atlanta 1990, May Education as Community Development (Published by the Witwatersrand University Press in 1991) Centre for Continuing Education, University of the Witwatersrand (Dennis Etheredge Commemoration Lecture). 1990, March From Interdependence towards Nation Building University of Limpopo 1987; May The Role of Education in Society Education Opportunities Council Conference; Johannesburg 1984, June Poetry and Humanism: Oral Beginnings Institute for the Study of Man in Africa, University of the Witwatersrand (Raymond Dart Lecture: Published as Lecture 22 of the Raymond Dart Lectures, Witwatersrand University Press) 1984, May The Crisis of Black Leadership Funda Centre. Soweto 1981, Feb Philosophical Perspectives for a Programme of Educational Change Council for Black Education and Research, Durban 1980, June Multicultural Imperatives in the Planning of Education for a future South Africa Teachers’ Association of South Africa, Durban (Asian) Awards and Research Fellowships. A Journey Toward Reviving the African Humanism for a 'New World' He has been the recipient of other numerous international awards that have sought to pay tribute to the efforts of his tireless scholarly work. In 1969. Mphahlele was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature. And in 1984. He was awarded the Order of the Palm by the French Government for his contribution to French Language and Culture. Prof. Mphahlele was also the recipient of the 1998 World Economic Forum’s Crystal Award for Outstanding Service to the Arts and Education. And a year later he was awarded the Order of the Southern Cross by former President Nelson Mandela.

The African voice and word remains silenced or unheard. African literature, arts, science, technology, history and cultural development mostly are neglected and somewhat abandoned.

In schools, colleges, universities, books stores,libraries, mainstream media, theatre and film the African perspecrtives is still over shadowed by foreign cultures and programmes.

Just like the generations before them. The current and future generations will suffer the same of fate of growing to taught that if it is foreign then it is best.

How our Africa and the world need to restore the wisdom of Afrikan Humanism rather than suppress it, at these times of great uncertainty and confusion.

Prof Mphahlele's work does at least provide us with guideposts to build on and let the African word and wisdom water and nourish the tree of a better and more humane 'New World'.

Awards/Fellowships

2005 Lifetime Achievement Award, National Research Foundation, South Africa 2004 Honorary Doctorate, University of Pretoria 2003 Sunday Times Alan Paton Literary Award Finalist 2003 Honorary Doctorate of Literature, University of Cape Town 2002 Founding the Es’kia Institute 2000 Titan Prize in Literature as the Writer of the Century 1999 National Silver Award of the Southern Cross, South Africa 1999 Honorary Doctor of Human Letters, University of Denver, USA 1998 Crystal Award for distinguished service in the Arts from the World Economic Forum, Switzerland 1995 Honorary Doctor of Literature, University of Limpopo (former University of the North) 1994 Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, University of Coldorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA 1989 Professor Peter Thuynsa of African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand published a Festschrift in honour of Es’kia Mphahlele entitled Footprints Along the way 1986 Honorary Doctorate of Literature, Rhodes University, South Africa 1986 Awarded the ‘Orders des Palmes’ by the French Ambassador to South Africa for his contribution to French Language & Culture 1983 Honorary Doctorate of Literature, University fo Natal, South Africa 1982 Honorary degree of Doctor for Humane Letters, University of Pennsylvania, USA 1981 Research Award by Ford Foundation (from 1979), New York (Recording an oral poetry in seSotho, Tsonga and Vhenda, and having it translated into English) 1969 Nominated for Nobel Prize in Literature 1969 Elected to Phi Beta by the University of Denver, USA 1969 Awarded First Prize for the novel ‘The Wanderers’ by the African Arts/Arts d’Afrique at the University of Californis, Los Angeles (The book was judged as the best African novel in 1969) 1968 Scholarship by the Farfield Foundation of New York to read for the PhD in English at the University of Denver, USA (from 1966).

Some of Prof. Mphahlele's best quotes include:

“It is not right for us today to write off our past generations and pretend that history began when we were born.” Es’kia Mphahlele, 1986

“School knowledge & activity should reinforce our need for one another; it should reconfirm our traditional compassion & impulse to share.” Es’kia Mphahlele, 1982

“We need to know our Afrika intimately, even while we tune into the world at large.” Es'kia Mphahlele

“It is no use talking in the abstract about an Afrikan worldview based on traditional values, if at the same time we are content to live in a physical and human landscape created or determined by a European worldview.” Es'kia Mphahlele 1975

"Early on the last day the ANC shows clear signs of winning. Euphoria overtakes the country, mounts steadily and rises to a crescendo in the evening: sheer ecstasy... I feel the same tingling sensation down my spine, tears welling in my eyes, that I experienced when we watched President Nujoma taking over power and the white ruler's flag lowered and the new Namibia flag hoisted."

Es'kia Mphahlele in SO SOON, SO LATE-NATION TIME (1994) - published in A Lasting Tribute

"When the events of the next two days unfold and the voting figures roll up or stand still, I can sense the pulse of a nation being born. Gradually a shaft of warm light shoots through my being. So this is it, I tell myself, as if the chemistry of my heaviness were getting the juices to course through my being."

Es'kia Mphahlele in SO SOON, SO LATE-NATION TIME (1994) - published in A Lasting Tribute

"I must, without rejecting historical inevitability and the bigness of this chapter of it, internalise the event, store it for the near future. For the likes of me, it is more than the actual experience of an event... It is the resonance it will create."

Es'kia Mphahlele in SO SOON, SO LATE-NATION TIME (1994) - published in A Lasting Tribute

As South Africa commemorated 20 years since her first Democratic elections, shared extracts from SO SOON, SO LATE-NATION TIME (1994),  in which Ntate Es’kia Mphahlele speaks on his personal voting experience and the resonance created by South Africa’s first real election.

"We wake up on Tuesday am April 26. Today the country goes to the polls, the black majority for the first time in our lives... I should feel elated, but I am my calm, brooding self. My wife Rebecca, she's her usual exuberant, demonstrative self. She is already in front of the television box to catch the first news bulletin of the day. "I want to soak it all up," she declares. "If I live to be able to relate this to my grandchildren these moments will have been worth observing."

[Source: A Lasting Tribute]

"Literature has seldom been taught as a social cultural act, an act of language, an act of self-knowledge. It has been, and is still being, taught as a specialized body of knowledge far removed from the doings and vocabulary of human beings in a familiar environment in contemporary times. Under the circumstances, learners are not inspired, cannot feel the story they are reading – prose or poetry or drama or essay." Es'kia Mphahlele, 2002

"Voters create politicians and then the latter run all our lives, up or down, over the cliff – as in the folktale about the nation of frogs who wanted a king. They asked stork to be King and he was happy to oblige: he began to gobble his subjects one by one." Es'kia Mphahlele, 1977

“Should we not forever be trying to create literature, discover philosophic constructs, rediscover the essence of religious truths as we experience them in Afrika, cultural practices that shape the paradigms we want, in short that express us.” Es'kia Mphahlele

“I consider everyone born in Africa, who regards no other place as his home, as an African.” Es’kia Mphahlele, 1962

"One hopes that the NEW Education helps free us from the dominant white images that make up both our dreams and nightmares."

ES'KIA MPHAHLELE, 1993

NEWS24

[mochaout]

heartsong (pt 4)

The two weeks leading up to that weekend came as if only a day had passed. My nerves were all over the place. Lena was on her way to put the finishing touches on my hair and makeup since Caleb requested I dress nice. We spoke on the phone everyday since our first conversation. His outlook on life was refreshing. He believed that life should be lived daily and on purpose. I learned he became a single parent because the mother of his son was killed shortly after his son was born. He had lived on his own since he was 18 and received the rest of an inheritance his father left him at 25. Caleb was an interesting man to me and although younger than me he was established in his life. I was still trying to find my niche and the consulting job I had paid the bills. There were times I found myself wanting to know more about him and missing his voice. My thoughts about him were becoming a distraction. However, the thing I struggled with the most was if and how I would tell him.

My heart was growing weaker day by day. Dr. Gupta told me almost a month ago that if I didn’t receive a transplant soon I would die. He gave me six months. I was more frustrated than sad. I had managed to dodge the remnants of my mother’s irresponsibility when pregnant with me for the last five years. The technical term for what I was born with is Tetralogy of Fallot which is an encompassing diagnosis for about three or four heart defects present at birth. My mother, who had battle alcoholism most of her adult life, didn’t take a break when pregnant with me. Her alcoholism caused my birth defects. My paternal grandmother always called me a miracle. Born prematurely with multiple heart surgeries made it anybody’s guess if I would survive. 32 years later I’m still here. My childhood was as normal as it could be with me not being able to play sports, the frequent doctor visits, and surgeries throughout. I battled depression, PTSD, and anxiety for years and have been in therapy most of my adult life. My constant daily reminder is the scar down my chest letting me know I’m on borrowed time. Children were removed from my dreams when I began to understand my heart could fail on any given day. The surgery bought me more time. The pacemaker was only a temporary fix. A transplant was the only way to give me my best chance of survival. With no relatives that were matches and falling at some place on a list with hundreds of others, my optimism fizzled out. I had come to terms as best I could with what lie ahead. My life is good. I’m pretty successful in my own right. My goal has always been to enjoy anything that I do to the fullest. I want to stay in the new bubble of ‘what ifs’ Caleb presented. But I’m aware there’s no escape from my reality.

The sound of the phone ringing pulled me from my thoughts. Wiping the tears from my face I placed the towel down on my bathroom counter and picked up the phone without looking.

“Hello.”

“How are you today Reign?” It was Caleb. This man literally made my heart palpitate. All this and I had only saw him once and not even in a way where you really get to see a person. The image of him in my head is probably so much different than how he really looked.

“Oh, Hi Caleb. I’m doing pretty good today. You?” He chuckled before responding to me.

“Preparing for tonight when I will have the most beautiful woman next to me. I’m thinking about how your brown eyes will look when the light touches them.” As per usual I was my speechless self. He was snatching my responses before I had a chance to formulate them.

“You still there? You ok?”, he inquired like he wasn’t aware of the affect his words had on me. It was exciting. Listening to his voice and the way he seemed to always find a way to flatter.

“Yes. I’m ok. Getting my clothes together and waiting on my friend Kaleena to come over to help with my hair.”

“That’s well Reign. Kaleena is your best friend, right?”

“Yes she’s the one I told you about that fought that boy who tried to hurt me when we were younger.”

Seemingly distracted and mumbling on the other side of the phone he took a few seconds before responding “Yes. I remember. She sounds like quite the personality.” I was thinking he didn’t even know the half.

“She is. Is there anything I need to bring tonight or I should have?” My question had been to change the subject back to us and our meeting tonight. He started to speak but then took a long pause and deep breath. I pictured him sitting down with his head tilted slightly forward, eyes closed, smile playing at the corner of his lips. His response came shortly after my mental fantasy.

“Just bring your brown eyes.” Do I even have to say it? My mind was like, Oh hunny I will bring you whatever you want. But I simply gave an “Ok”.

“Thank you for allowing me to interrupt you momentarily. I will let you get back to what you have to do. See you at your door at 8:00pm.”

“Ok. See you then.” I held the phone for a few minutes after he disconnected and looked at myself in the mirror. My body and its hourglass figure with a few handles stood naked. I didn’t think I was ugly but I’ve never felt pretty either. He kept talking about my eyes and they were just eyes to me. I mean they are the part I like the most about myself too. But there’s nothing spectacular there. Round and almond shaped with medium brown tinted pupils. The way he called me brown eyes was so affectionate. What if he didn’t like the rest of my body? I questioned in my mind while tracing my hand over the scar. This was the ugly reminder. This is why I limited the relationships I had. I never wanted anyone to get too attached. The dilemma now was what would I do if the feeling blossoming inside me grew.

“Rey? I’m coming in so I hope you not doing anything you don’t want me to see.” My Lena had made it. I gathered myself so we could get me dressed. She even relaxed to the idea that Caleb would be accompanying us to the body painting expo as well the next day. Guess I committed to Caleb but had already committed to Lena months before.

-MochaOut