Reading about Writing

I just finished The Situation and The Story: The Art of the Personal Narrative by Vivian Gornick. It's one of the many books on writing stacked up in my new Los Angeles "office." And what a read, it was more than a little overwhelming. By critiquing a number of great writers, Gornick attempts to convey what good personal narrative is made of and what it isn't. I say attempts because even though she succeeds, I haven't had a chance to chew on it all and fully grasp all the deeper meanings. Also, reading such good writing, even bad personal narrative that's good writing, gave me insecurity issues. Maybe I should get an MFA before I write this book. Am I qualified to write a book about my own life? Could my book be the ultimate way of humiliating myself? Anyway!

So, I'm at that point where I can't exactly tell you what Gornick's book is about but I have lots of ideas churning in my head. It made me think of my own writing in a different way. I now understand that the situation of my book is "Latina converts to Orthodox Judaism" but the story, the internal story, is the story of soul's survival against all odds. Wheew. I must have learned something, right?

Gornick's book is one of those books that I'm going to have to read, reread and come back to over longer periods of time and with some absences in-between. I've been trying to slog straight through it ever since my friend gave it to me earlier this month for my birthday (one month early because of my Los Angeles trip). I tried taking notes but soon enough I didn't know what to underline or how to fit all my little comments in the margins. The book is just so intense. I feel like I just finished a graduate course in literature! And G-d bless the lovely people who came up with the questions in the back (a study guide) that will help guide me when I use the book as a reference guide while doing my own personal narrative writing.

Next up? Reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (no relation) and some other book (Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott) on writing while I reread Julius Lester's Lovesong and listen to When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris. I like to seem ambitious. Or maybe I just don't know how to relax?

Reacting to Reader Responses

Just an update to let everyone know that The Jewish Planet has published my response to reader reactions towards my editorial on RCA conversion policy. I responded specifically to a particularly passionate letter from one convert. You can view both the reader's letter and my response here: Response to Reader Reaction to Conversion Editorial.

Unfortunately, space did not permit this positive response to be published:

"Hi Aliza,

I don't know if you remember me...we met at Aish a couple of months ago. I just wanted to let you know that I read your editorial in the Jewish [Planet] and I thought it was wonderful. Actually, someone at Ohab Zedek photocopied it and handed it out to my whole conversion class. We are all so upset about what is going on with this ruling, and it was comforting to see you address the topic so eloquently and with much emotion. Thank you for writing it, and for giving a voice to all of our concerns.

B."

Outside the box

The latest newsletter from Bechol Lashon (In Every Tongue), an organization that asks us to "imagine a new global Judaism that transcends differences in geography, ethnicity, class, race, ritual practice, and beliefs," introduced me to Lacey Schwartz.

Lacey's parents were good at keeping secrets. They didn't reveal that her biological father was black until Lacey was eighteen years old. Her story is the spark behind a documentary that her MySpace page claims will allows us to join "Lacey on her journey to confront her mother and two fathers about her mixed-race identity, and uncover the traditions, heroes, heritage, roots, and identity of the larger American Black Jewish community."

I love the title of the documentary, "Outside the Box." It encompasses in such few words the struggles of those of us with multiethnic, multicultural, multiracial identities and how those little boxes people try to force us into can't truly express our lifestyles.

Getting my money's worth

Here are some more of my "masterpieces" from my Figure Drawing class.

My patience was wearing a little thin this week with beginning every work with contour drawing (ie, outlining the figure). Plus, the teacher kept trying to coerce me to make up fantastical landscapes in the back of the figure instead of leaving the background empty. I actually listened to her (despite totally wanting to throw a tantrum: "I AM HERE TO LEARN TO DRAW THE FIGURE NOT FAKE BACKGROUNDS!!!"). And I'll admit the results are startling. These pieces look like almost finished pieces despite only about 20-30 minutes of work on each.

The beach background for the third piece came from my AM/PM Yoga DVD, ever the source of inspiration.

Representing...

Bess Greenberg/New York Times
Yosef Abrahamson, 16, right, with his mother, Dinah, and his sister, Sarah, near their home in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

An recent article, "A Young Man From Omaha, Who May Perfectly Represent Brooklyn," by Susan Dominus for the New York Times Big City section portrays an interesting picture of some Jews of Color in Brooklyn. The article follows 16-year-old Yosef Abrahamson and his family. They are new Hasidic transplants to Crown Heights Brooklyn. There are also Jews of Color of mixed German Jewish and more notably, the article points out of African (Egyptian) and Panamian descent. They find acceptance from both the Jewish and African-American communities that have always been at odds in that are of Brooklyn. An African-American passerby proclaimed, "Now, I've seen everything" after watching the family walk home from shul.

If Yosef represents Brooklyn, then perhaps, I, as a Dominican Jewess, represent Washington Heights?

Naked People

I’m taking a Figure Drawing class out here in what my rabbi calls, “La la land.” I’ll admit that it’s strange to be classmates with George Clooney’s landscaper. Plus, I learned in my writing class that when people say they’re “in the industry,” they mean Hollywood.

The class, which is held at a local community college, is a lot of fun. Three hours, one night a week, for six sessions. I figured as long as I’m trying to get my creative juices going here, I meant as well let all of them working so aside from writing, I’ll be drawing here and there.

I’m not a big fan of my teacher, though she’s nice enough. She’s one of those “Fine Arts” buffs. She thinks that anyone who does art in any other way should be deprogrammed. She thinks starting a figure drawing with the top of the head is insane. She's having us do "contour" drawings of the figure, which basically means doing an outline of the entire figure (from the feet up to the head). Basically, it’s like the chalk outline police officers draw around a dead body. Then we're allowed to start our pieces. In fact, she used some colorful expletives to describe her feelings on commercial artwork. That was just a tad too intense for me. But I figure since I am paying her to teach me something, I might as well try to learn something from her without gritting my teeth too hard.

By the end of the three hours, my arms were in excruciating pain. Drawing is really taxing on my arms and back muscles. My little infusion of pain medication didn’t cut it at all. The teacher looked at me like I was totally crazy when I told her I was having a hard time rubbing in the charcoal with my hands to shade the figure. I tried to explain vaguely that it was because of a disability and she finally tried to help me figure out a different way of doing things. It still hurt. By that point, I couldn’t even tell if it hurt less to do things her way.

My husband almost had a heart attack when I told him about the class after we met up after his Spanish class, which he takes on the same nights I take Figuring Drawing. Apparently, I hadn’t mentioned earlier that in Figure Drawing class, we basically spend three hours drawing a nude model. He recovered eventually, though not too quickly. My in-laws, who heard about my class from my husband, apparently think the whole “drawing naked people thing” is uproarious. My mother-in-law asked if the model covered his “thing” with something and when I told her that he was totally naked, her eyes nearly crossed as she started laughing again.

Here are two pieces I created in my first class:

And here's a link to an article I wrote, Ugly Naked Guy, about my first Figure Drawing class in college: A personal essay about a modest girl's foray into Figure Drawing and the illuminating results.

Where Does Your Garden Grow

I was whisked away to a garden in a Beverly Hills backyard yesterday. It's part of my Los Angeles education program, which so far includes writing classes, art classes, driving lessons and garden-hopping. Above is a collage of the photos that nearly took out my Blackberry when I tried to email them to friends!

The pictures are a motley assortment of the vegetation growing all over the extensive gardens, which I was told were 25 years in the making and are maintained by a full-time staff that includes a UCLA professor. Along with tomato trees, I photographed some fresh basil, grapes, flowers, oranges, lemons and yummy scallions.

This is a long, long way from asphalt backyards in the Bronx. And the fruit picked from the various trees by our gracious hosts, which included oranges, plums, pears, peaches, nectarines and more, was infinitely more delicious than the raspberries we used to pick off a wild tree on Ft. George Hill in Washington Heights.

Making a baby?

Inspired by a line from Juno where the main character, a pregnant teen, refers to herself as a "cautionary whale."

Available at http://teewit.com.

Motherhood is hard. And I don’t just mean raising the babies. I mean having them. I mean trying to have them. And yes, raising them is hard, too.

After finishing up a recent Shabbat meal, I was enthralled by a pregnant friend who started to vent about her frustrations with being pregnant and motherhood. After we’d all done the requisite “oohhing” and “ahhing” and thanking G-d for everything, we began to discuss the anxieties that come with impending motherhood.

My friend talked about feeling nauseous all the time and losing weight from being unable to keep anything down. She also ranted about fears she was having for the pregnancy as well as fears for after the baby’s born. The other women, who rounded out the conversation, included a recent mother and a woman who had recently endured a miscarriage.

I mostly listened. But it was refreshing to hear the women talk about their anxiety openly, knowing that I have my own mixed feelings about growing a big belly, becoming someone’s mom and being able to afford it…not just financially, but mentally and emotionally. But no one ever seemed to talk to want to discuss these issues. Perhaps, they worry that talking about any negative aspects will “jinx” their current or future pregnancies. Or maybe it’s that as women, we know that we’re expected to cope with motherhood and we try to do it as gracefully as possible.

But there’s just so much pressure in the Jewish community to have babies. The first year we were married, people (men and women) would ask whether or not I was trying to get pregnant or whether or not I was pregnant. And if the answer was “no” and “no,” then people hummed around me with sympathy and well wishes for a baby. It got to the point where I said flat out that I wasn’t interested in having babies before my thirtieth birthday. Some people responded with looks of dismay or words of condescension: “But, of course, you want to have a baby!” After all, why didn’t I want to be part of the box they wanted me to fit in, that they thought I should fit in? Now that I’d finally checked off the married box, why didn’t I want to work on putting a checkmark next to “married with children”?

When I asked other Jewish women if they felt pressured, their eyes would grow wide before it would all pour out. They would tell me that they were under constant interrogation from the community, having heard “Are you pregnant?” often from relative strangers and close relatives. They talked about money trouble keeping them from taking the next step. They wanted to finish their Master’s degrees (sometimes, Bachelor’s degrees) or establish their careers. They wanted to work on their marriages. They just couldn’t imagine juggling anything else. But everywhere, someone was lurking, ready to pressure them to “have it all.”

But our husbands lived in a bubble in the meantime. “Honey, did anyone ask you if we were pregnant?” the wives would ask after a Shabbos meal or Jewish family function. Their husbands would wrinkle their noses in disgust. “Who would ask that?” “Well, everyone,” the wives would respond with a sigh after realizing they’d lost count (on both hands) of the amount of times someone had asked them such intrusive questions.

No one (except for his father) asked my husband if we were trying to get pregnant. And he was sure that I had exaggerating the amount of times someone had inquired about the state of my reproductive system. Without his sympathy, I began to seethe.

It struck me as…well, impolite, that people would ask about such a personal subject. I was coming from a Latino culture where there wasn’t too much that was considered “TMI” (too much information) and it seemed like there was an endless list of things that weren’t appropriate for Jewish discussions. I didn’t understand why pregnancy wasn’t an off limits topic, too.

Finally, I wrote about it, posting an update to my blog on my website, entitled “Don’t ask me about my uterus…please.” The final straw had been someone suggesting that because I was out on disability and unemployed that I should be working on getting pregnant. Because what with not being able to take care of myself, beginning eighteen or so years of taking care of someone else would be a breeze, I wondered angrily. I wrote in exclamations: “Did you hear that, people? It's my uterus and it's VIP. You're not invited!”

A married woman whispered in my ear conspiratorially that people would stop asking about my womb once my husband and I made it to our first anniversary.

“Why?” I asked with confusion. “Why would they stop asking after the first year?”
“Because they’ll think you’re having problems.”
“Problems?”
“Getting pregnant.”

And she was right.

After we reached the first year mark, the questions stopped abruptly. But only to be replaced by questioning glances. If I gained a little weight or wore an unflattering dress, people would stare down at my stomach and cock their heads to the side inquisitively.

I would respond with an exasperated shake of the head: “No, I’m not pregnant.”

And now and then, a sad look would overtake my interrogators and they would talk sympathetically about how hard it was to “get pregnant.”

It seemed that suddenly, without any help from me, people had started to believe we might be having trouble. And though I wasn’t, I suddenly realized that I was surrounded by a world of women that were.

One out of four women miscarries, I learned, after a whisper told me that a woman in the community delivered a stillborn baby. Suddenly, there were whispers everywhere about miscarriages that closer friends had had. Women began talking behind closed doors about “trying for months” and falling into deep depressions after miscarriages. I had never imagined that so many women around me might be suffering silently around me.

And when I imagined what it might be like to be asked in the midst of their suffering if they were pregnant, I was horrified for them.

The suffering was everywhere. A NY Times article on women who had battled infertility and lost only compounded my horror further. People were still asking them questions. Only this time, people were asking these women when they were going to adopt. I found myself wincing as I paged through an article in a women’s magazine written by a man who detailed the painful process and expense of fertility treatments.



I think that people ask because they think it’s a safe subject. Somewhere along the line, asking someone who’s married about pregnancy became no more socially incongruous than asking what one does for a living (another subject which may become taboo given the current economy). But it’s not a safe subject when we think about all the couples everywhere who are struggling silently with the subject. Then we realize that questions born out of natural curiosity can be hurtful, even traumatic. And so, I offer that it’s time we make asking about pregnancy and talking about having children off limits in polite conversation. We shouldn’t make people share any more about the subject than they would feel comfortable doing so. We should tiptoe around it like we would any other loaded topic.





I guess, I’m saying that perhaps, it’s time to start asking about the weather again.

Deaf need not apply?

An article published on YNET, a couple of weeks ago, disclosed that a rabbi on the Chief Rabbinical court once ruled that deaf people are ineligible for conversion to Judaism. No matter what the rabbi's views may be, the whole matter comes off as a matter of discrimination against those with disabilities. And worst, this isn't a hypothetical situation, a young deaf woman was turned away years ago based on that ruling.

The article came to mind this weekend when interestingly enough, I discovered an article about the deaf in this week's Jewish Week. In Hear, O Israel, Carolyn Slutsky writes about how two newly ordained deaf rabbis might signal the acceptance of diversity within the Jewish community. But what both articles, in fact, seem to point out is that it's hard out there for people for disabilities, though in some circles better than it has been in the past. (I have my own problems dealing with fibromylagia in the Jewish community and beyond.) Still, both articles together seem to point towards the need to ensure that we're making the world a more accessible place for everyone...

Circumcise me

Circumcise Me: The Comedy of Yisrael Cambpell will make its debut this month on The Jewish Channel. The film features ultra-Orthodox Jewish comedian Yisrael Campbell, formerly Chris Campbell, doing his hilarious stand-up comedy routine and discussing his journey to Judaism as well as his life in Israel since converting to Judaism (three times no less).

I had the pleasure of catching one of Yisrael's shows at an event at Columbia Universitity in New York, sponsored by Darchei Noam, after having missed him as a part of The Jewish Palestinian Comedy Tour at another Jewish event, LimmudLA 2007, in Costa Mesa, California. After that hysterical night, of course, I made him my Facebook buddy. Reviews of the film can be found in The Economist, and The Jerusalem Post.

Getting my virginity back

Red Canna by Georgia O'Keeffe

An article in today's New York Times, In Europe, Debate Over Islam and Virginity, explores a debate over Islam and virginity that has broken out in Europe recently. In France, a Muslim man asked to have his marriage annulled when it came to light on his wedding night that his bride was not a virgin. A 23-year-old in the article is dropping close to three thousand dollars to have hymenoplasty, a surgery that will restore her hymen, giving anyone who's curious the illusion of virginity. And Europeans (and now Americans) are up in arms about what this all says about religion and culture.


Strangely enough, this is not the first time I had heard of this new development in plastic surgery. Watching a Spanish-language network news broadcast, several years ago, women in Latin America discussed undergoing similar procedures before their wedding night (to "keep up appearances") or after having given birth (to reinvigorate their vaginas). Some Latin American men, though often a lapsed Catholic bunch, would also like their brides-to-be to be virgins. As a doctor in the article mentions, he tries not to judge anyone, including the women he knows are using vaginal plastic surgery as Valentine's Day presents.


Sadly, as the article points out, the hymens that are being touted as ultimate proof of virginity can often be broken during childhood in any number of ways, including horseback riding. So even true virgins with "bad luck" might have to save up towards a down-payment on a hymenoplasty. And in the end, this whole debacle says quite a lot about religion and culture, especially what both expect from women (and often, do not from men). In the Latino culture I grew up in, women had to be saints like Mother Mary while men could be deplorable lascivious brutes, that, of course, the same women prayed for every day. I don't remember any of my male cousins being told that their virginities were a "precious gift." In my adopted Orthodox Jewish culture, both men and women are socialized to be remain virgins until marriage by being "shomer negia," refraining from touching the opposite sex (except for their spouses and close relatives).


Perhaps, it would be easier to hand out chastity belts? And if this is going to be an equal opportunity situation, just how would they work on men? Don't get me wrong, I don't think anything's funny about this situation in Europe. My heart goes out to the bride whose wedding night not only ended in much misery, but whose reputation has been tarnished unforgivably. But my heart also goes out to women everywhere who still suffer needlessly for just being women.

The Wrong Place @ the Wrong Time

My husband's yeshiva is studying "The Rabbi and People with Disabilities" in various different lectures throughout the week. The topic of people with disabilities obviously interests us because I struggle daily with fibromyalgia and all the wonders of living with chronic pain and the ensuing ferocious battle against depression.

To say that I am a different person since fibromyalgia would be an understatement. I don't think that the healthier me of old would recognize the disabled me of today. My mind and my body have both suffered, grown and changed. It's hard to explain it to other people. My disability is mostly invisible and so it is very difficult for people to understand the toll it has taken on my life. I think the following poem, written by a mother with a disabled child, really encapsulates how fibromyalgia and depression have changed my life.


***********
WELCOME TO HOLLAND
byEmily Perl Kingsley.
c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

**********

I haven't gotten used to "Holland." In many ways, I've taken inventory and I can see the good things that this change in destinations has brought to my life. There are many beautiful things, deeply touching things, that I would never have experienced had I not become disabled.

And yet, unfortunately, I miss "Italy" deeply. I miss the life I thought I would have had in "Italy," in a healthier life. I haven't been able to let go. Instead, I feel like I'm still in shock. Still disbelieving. This can't be my life. You must have gotten me confused with someone else because this can't be my life. And I'm not strong enough to be in this much physical pain for the rest of my life. My heart and mind have suffered so much trauma, an entire childhood of abuse, an early adulthood of constant struggle, all in the past twenty seven years. And it feels sometimes like I'm at the edge of a cliff, and either close or beyond my breaking point.

I am in mourning. And as I mourn, I am surrounded by people who talk about "Italy," who take "Italy" for granted, who can't imagine what "Holland" is like. As they chatter away about their lives and their plans, I feel like a caged animal trying to reach for something too far from my cafe. I have no plan. Because no one plans for "Holland. " "Holland" just happens. And so I cry about "Italy," for the life that should have been and for all the unearthed, long buried pain and the new pain that "Holland" has been etched into my soul.

It's just that even though I seemed to be living without a plan for so long, I had one. After so many years of struggling and surviving, I wanted to live, to thrive. I didn't imagine myself losing my place, thrown back into survival mode. And I don't feel free. I feel trapped. Hiding, shaking with fear, in a little corner. "Holland" is terrifying. And worst, I'm worried that there are worst places than "Holland" and that I'll have to visit them someday, too.