Moving On

i love patti smith. don't know if you knew that, but i do. i thought my lack of attention for gilbert's book was due to the fact that it leads in no way to my own work in a tough, heavy reading and writing semester. but it turns out i just wasn't relating to it. and i don't have the ability to read something i can't relate to right now...maybe i'll finish it early summer. last night i was browsing the bookstore next door (did i tell you an indy bookstore opened next door to us?), and i decided to splurge for my birthday and buy patti smith's just published memoir, just kids. i had been yearning for it. reading the reviews and listening to interviews. i always listen to her music on my walks.

it snowed today and i curled up and began to devour the story of her youth. it's wonderful--at least to me and no doubt to those who relish her music and art. it makes me nostalgic for the days when i lived with friends in downtown knoxville when it was a shell of a city. it felt like we were the only people there--and we kind of were, especially at night. those experiences and couple of years were tiny compared to the scale of new york city that p.s. lived in the 70s. but what makes her book so beautiful is that she taps into the existence of marginalized youth: those of us who didn't quite fit in--politically, intellectually, or religiously--and found little underground worlds of acceptance. she captures the biggest, most glamorous of the satellite worlds that many youth would later attempt to emulate. i among them.

Chapter One

Okay, I finally received Committed in the mail, sat down with it last night, and read the intro and first chapter. First impression: disappointment. To be fair, I had just spent the day reading about critical metageography, which will be abundantly clear by the time you've finished reading this post. Nonetheless, I think Gilbert made a tragic and, to me, frustrating mistake by starting off this story with an East-West, Occidental-Oriental comparison. Gilbert obviously realized she was treading on delicate ground; as she asserts, she is not an anthropologist and actually knows very little about the community she entered for an afternoon of questioning. Why then, does she dive right in to describing the Hmong women, analyzing and measuring their conceptions of marriage against a "modern Western" (whatever that's supposed to mean) idea of marriage? I find it more than a little insulting that she "observes" Hmong women for an afternoon and then makes sweeping generalizations about their approach to marriage. Gilbert is right when she says that she is operating way above her pay-grade. Even the platitudes about "modern Western" women struck me as unexamined. Isn't she speaking from a very particular place--in terms of profession, class status, consumption habits, region? I know that Gilbert is not writing an "intellectual" book per se, but I'd like to hold her to higher standards. She is a smart woman whose book will be read by many an American woman. Why, then, perpetuate some very deductive ideas about women, marriage, and geographical location? Why use this visit with Hmong women as her "a-ha" moment about marriage? Maybe it really was--though something strikes me as insincere about it. I hope that in following chapters Gilbert examines her own, very personal conceptions of marriage, and the process of coming to those conceptions, instead of relying on cultural platitudes.