on biases

Yesterday, when the David Gilmour "I don't teach women, or Chinese" thing exploded all over my social media feeds, I have to admit, I was enjoying it. The man was so clueless about his privilege, about his sexism, he was the talking embodiment of what's wrong with old white men (yes, old, Mr. Gilmour: 63 is not middle-aged). I found so much joy in watching him not understand why everyone was so mad. I mean, of course, he found absolutely nothing wrong with filling his course with "books he loved" that were only written by "guy-guys" and that he doesn't love any books written by women.

In the midst of my cackling and being snippy on twitter ("I'm going down the hall," I wrote and retweeted others like a crazy person), I was supposed to be going over my notes for my class that afternoon. I stopped as I reviewed the names of the poems I was teaching that day: all white. Yes, there were men and women (mostly women), and there were straight and queer (mostly straight) writers, but all white.

My stomach turned as flipped back over the previous three classes I taught. All white except two: Vikram Seth and Claude McKay. I flipped forward--a bit more diversity coming up: Natalie Diaz, Dionne Brand, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, anonymous Afghani women, Fred Wah, Rita Wong, Sachiko Murakami, LeRoi Jones (Amari Baraka). That's not many. That's not enough.

I'm frustrated with myself. I like to think of myself as not a racist, as an ally. But my bias is obvious: I favour white women. I mostly read white women poets. This has to change.

I'm in a very privileged position in exposing a dynamic, interesting group of young writers to "advanced forms and techniques of poetry"--I get to introduce writers they may haven't read yet. It's my duty to reflect a larger world to them than what's on their shelves and what's on mine.

They wanted so much, our mothers.

"They wanted so much, our mothers. I think about it sometimes. I don't know how they did it. They wanted their lives back but still felt responsible for ours.

I miss having her to talk to, there's so much I'd ask. She was a secretary in a private school and I think of the paperwork and the staples, the dry air and the paycheque and the feel of a day's work behind her and how much she must have wanted it. I don't think my father liked it. But men get as much without judgement. Or so it seems when you're not a man, and you watch them pass freely from the breakfast table to their cars in the morning. It look so easy. Of course it's not, it's not easy for anyone. But it's harder for a woman, the costs are physical. Men don't feel the pain of possibilities in the same way, the permanence of choice. At the end of her life, bed-bound by illness, my mother said to me, Don't let anyone tell you you can have everything. You can't. A woman has to choose."

from Into That Darkness by Steven Price

See my virility!

"I wore my fatigue with pride. At last I had earned the right to be grizzled unshaven dad picking up my caffe latte of a morning, my marsupial baby cradled in the sling, giving the wife a few minutes' rest. See my virility! I'd often envied these fellows at the local coffee shop, picking up a standing ovation along with their bag of almond croissants. Now it was my turn to share the glory, to feel the love."

from the brilliant Novel About My Wife by Emily Perkins

a lot of boys don't bother growing into men

"And the problem with being a boy in a man's body is that, basically, in this world, it isn't a problem. It's commonplace. There are lots of boys in men's bodies walking around--I work with a few of them. Some of them are my age, trembling on the precipice of the big four-oh, and some are even older. What I'm saying is, a lot of boys don't bother growing into men, because they don't have to--their bodies have already done it and it turns out that's all anybody requires."

from Lynn Coady's The Antagonist