Ross's idea re writing theme

[Hyman Kempler]

Ross
You've suggested a fascinating idea. Will you give one example of what
you mean?
Hy

[Ross Neisuler]

At one point, several HILR members wrote brief autobiographies with
emphasis on personal experiences that impacted their perceptions and
feelings about race, ethnicity, culture, identity.
The results were remarkable.

They included a childhoood in a mixed neighborhood of Mexican
American, Japanese, and Native American, black and white.
They involve personal family backgrounds scrambled up among European,
Asian, African, Latino people.
They include involvement in iracially-mixed protest movements:
solidarity and rejection, exposure to abuse, intense love and feelings
of alienation.
They involved Catholic - Protestant tensions, immigrant and
acculturalization issues, assimilation and determination to maintain a
distinct identity.
They involve the marriage of children and the adoption of children and
grandchildren from very different worlds of culture, race, and
experience.

Other HILR members have stories to tell - stories I have heard from
them in the Common Room or in class, writing groups, committee
meetings:

They involve children who have come out as gay.
They involve songs of solidarity in jail, enforced separation from
children, violence or the threat of violence.
They involve a family in peasant villages in the "old country" and
urban life here.

The remarkable thing is that none of us had guessed any of this
history within the others. Our current appearance showed nothing of
where we had been or what we had experienced.

Ross