CHRIS WELLS
  • Home
  • Testimonials
  • Upcoming Workshops
  • Writing Life
  • Purchase
  • BLOG
  • Contact
  • The Secret City

"...the highly structured format means that tons of writing gets done, so that when the workshop is over you can barely recognize your work, it's grown so much."

How Privileged Are You?

6/12/2020

0 Comments

 
HOW PRIVILEGED ARE YOU?

The other day I took a How Privileged Are You Test online. You start with100 points and then each question is yes or no and if you answer yes, you lose a point. Are you white? Are you male? Are you straight? Have you ever benefited from being the race you are? Did you go to summer camp? 

I did go to camp one summer when I was a kid. Camp Fox, hosted by the ymca, on Catalina island, Camp Fox sounds sexy like a camp for swingers with key parties and naughty party games like the one where you have to hold an orange under your chin and then pass it to someone with no hands, your necks meeting, thrusting. Cocktail music playing, drinks being spilled, dirty jokes being shared in the corner.

I could only dream that Camp Fox would be racy like that, but no. Camp Fox was a boys camp. I was 11 about to be 12. If there were any shenanigans going on, I missed them. 

But, my memories are mostly positive—making lanyards, learning to kayak, taking short hikes with the knowledge that there were wild boar in the hills and to not go too far. We had storytelling every night by an old guy named Stew, he wore sport slacks and white loafers, a short sleeve shirt with a collar. Stew looked like he was walking into the showroom to try to sell you a car and not the head of a boys camp on the scrubby back shore of an island 26 miles across the sea from civilization. The kids loved him, I always felt outside of his orbit, wary of him for some reason. It might have been that his stories always had a Christian overtone—they weren’t biblical, I don’t mean that, but they always had a wrap up at the end that was Christian in its message. It was a YMCA camp after all and we all know what the C stands for. I had gone to Sunday school when I was younger but we were not a religious family. We didn’t even attend Christmas service. That would begin the following year when I started attending a Episcopal church by myself—captivated by the music and pageantry, shared ritual and heightened language. For all of my love for that church which I would discover shortly after my camp years, I felt like an outsider there, too.

It’s when I found the theater that a door opened up on a new world. I walked through it with my arms above my head, singing loudly and ready for action. But for all of its magic and power, the theater is also outside of the center, you could say it’s a gathering spot for outsiders, a watering hole where the orphaned animals gather to drink of the deep waters. 

This seems to be a key to surviving, finding that place where you belong. I tell this to people all the time so you’ve probably heard me say it before, but on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Need, belonging comes 3rd. There’s food, then shelter, then belonging. Studies show that people who belong to clubs and churches live longer.

And you might be thinking, well, what about the loners? The iconoclasts? The rebels? Even they long to belong somewhere, maybe in the pages of Rimbaud, or the poems of Allan Ginsberg.

So we need these places of identification and mutual support, to feel like we are on the inside—of a culture, a set of ideas or rituals, maybe it’s your weekly poker night or your book club. So, how do we not then become exclusive to outsiders ourselves? 

I don’t know about you but I am terrified of certain parts of our population, I have built a life separate from them. Am I resisting making connections to others? Is my fear of violence or bullies or of being assaulted something I should hold on to and a position I should lead from, causing me to avoid certain interactions? Or is it that I’m wounded and I can heal and I can engage and confront those people who have scared and still scare me?

A few years ago, Bobby and our friend Laural and I were upstate, further upstate than here by about an hour and a half and we stopped at an outdoor antique barn spot with a bunch of stuff outside and an old red barn that was probably full of stuff, too. We got out of the car and within seconds the old guy who owned the place asked us to leave because he didn’t serve people like us. Bobby and Laural got back into the car but I got into a fight with him. He said terrible things, called me faggot this and faggot that. Finally, I got back in the car, shaking. We pulled out of the parking lot, onto the side of the road where I called the police. They came a little while later and I made a report. Did any of that help? My heated ness? Was there something I could have said or done to allow me entrance to his world, where I would be welcomed, safe?

Yesterday we had a troll on here commenting anti gay stuff. I’m not surprised by these people, I’m irritated by having to deal with them, to stop what I’m doing to address him. And, yet, I also wanted to welcome him. Not to let a wolf among the hens but to offer an opportunity to see how wonderful it is in here, to bring a poor stranger in from the outside.

​
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Chris Wells leads dynamic, life-changing writing workshops.

    Archives

    September 2020
    August 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    October 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    October 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014

    Categories

    All
    A Brief History Of Seven Killings
    Adam Zameenzad
    A Fine Balance
    Alexander Chee
    Alexander Dumas
    Alice Walker
    A Little Life
    Almanac Of The Dead
    Americannah
    Amy Tan
    Anatole Broyard
    Ancestor Stones
    Angela Fluornoy
    Another Country
    A Tale For The Time Being
    At The Bottom Of The River
    August Wilson
    Bad Feminist
    Balm In Gilead: Journey Of A Healer
    Barbarian Nurseries
    Beloved
    Ben Okri
    Between The World And Me
    Billie Holiday
    Blue Boy
    Book Of Salt
    Breath
    Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao
    Bright Lines
    Brontez Purnell
    Bryan Stevens
    Cane
    Castle Cross The Magnet Carter
    Caucasia
    Ceremony
    Chester Himes
    Chimamanda Ngosi Adache
    Citizen
    Claudine Rankine
    Collected Plays
    Colson Whitehead
    Danzy Senna
    Days Of Obligation
    Delicious Foods
    Edwidge Dandica
    Edwidge Dandicat
    Elizabeth Alexander
    Erasure
    Eyes
    Famished Road
    Fledgling
    Frederick Douglas
    Gabriel Garcia Marquez
    George Harriman
    Giovanni's Room
    Gorilla My Love
    Hanya Yanagihara
    Hector Tobar
    Hired Man
    Homegoing
    House Of The Spirits
    House On Mango Street
    Hunger
    If He Hollers Let Him Go
    I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
    Invisible Man
    Isabel Allende
    Isabel Wilkerson
    Ishmael Beah
    Jamaica Kincaid
    James Baldwin
    James Hanniham
    Jazz
    Jean Toomer
    Johnny Would You Love Me If My Dick Were Bigger?
    Joy Luck Club
    Jumpa Lahiri
    Jumpha Lahiri
    Jung Chang
    Junot Diaz
    Just Mercy
    Kafka Was All The Rage
    Kaitlyn Greenidge
    Kerri Hulme
    Kia Corthron
    Kindred
    Krazy Kat
    Krik? Krak!
    Lady Sings The Blues
    Last Report On The Miracles At Little No Horse
    Leslie Marmon Silko
    Leslie Marmon Silko.
    Lone Ranger And Tonto Fistfight In Heaven
    Louise Erdrich
    Love Bones And Water
    Love In The Time Of Cholera
    Love Medicine
    Margo Jefferson
    Marlon James
    Maxine Hong Kingston
    Maya Angelou
    Memory
    Memory Of Love
    Michael Eric Dyson
    Michael Twitty
    Michelle Alexander
    Monique Truong
    My Bondage And My Freedom
    My Year Of Meats
    Naomi Jackson
    Native Son
    Natsuo Kirino
    Negroland
    N. K. Jemisin
    Octavia Butler
    Olio
    On Beauty
    One-Bedroom Solo
    One Hundred Years Of Solitude
    Out
    Parable Of The Sower
    Paul Beatty
    Percival Everett
    Plague Of Doves
    Push
    Queen Of The Night
    Radiance Of Tomorrow
    Rakesh Satyal
    Ralph Ellison
    Richard Rodriguez
    Richard Wright
    Rohinton Mistry
    Roxane Gay
    Ruth Ozeki
    Samuel R. Delany
    Sandra Cisneros
    Sapphire
    Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot
    Sheila Maldonado
    Sherman Alexie
    Sula
    Suzan Lori Parks
    Swing Time
    Ta Nahesi Coates
    Tanwi Nandini Islam
    Tears We Cannot Stop
    The Absolutely True Story Of A Part Time Indian
    The Autobiography Of Malcolm X
    The Bluest Eye
    The Bone People
    The Color Purple
    The Cooking Gene
    The Count Of Monte Cristo
    The Fire Next Time
    The God Of Small Things
    The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
    Their Eyes Were Watching God
    The Light Of The World
    The Lowland
    The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness
    The New Jim Crow
    The Roundhouse
    The Sellout
    The Star Side Of Bird Hill
    The Sympathizer
    The Turner House
    The Underground Railroad
    The Warmth Of Other Suns
    Times Square Blue
    Times Square Red
    Toni Cade Bambara
    Toni Morrison
    Topdog Underdog
    Tyehimba Jess
    Venus
    Viet Thanh Nguyen
    Walkin' The Dog
    Walter Mosely
    We Love You Charlie Freeman
    White Teeth
    Wild Swans
    William Dufty
    Woman Warrior
    Yaa Gyasi
    You Don't Have To Say You Love Me-
    Zadie Smith
    Zora Neale Hurston

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • Testimonials
  • Upcoming Workshops
  • Writing Life
  • Purchase
  • BLOG
  • Contact
  • The Secret City