Cultural Autobiography:

Phase 1

“On my honor, as an Aggie, I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid on this academic work.”

Abstract

In this reflection, I consider the experiences that made me the racial, ethnic, cultural and

spiritual being I am today. I share stories and describe the impressions that early events had on

the formation of my identity. I discuss the challenges that led to my past beliefs and how I broke

free from them to discover the truth of my heart.

 I grew up in a small town in central Alabama and my parents used to say that we were

just a few generations removed from a white sheet. In fact, my lineage can be traced back to a

Ku Klux Klan grandmaster. Growing up, a feeling of superiority to people of color was inherent

in my family. It never stood out as something offensive or harmful to me, it was just a fact. My

father used to say, “Asians are better at math. Mexicans are hard workers. Blacks are good at

music and sports. Every group has their own talents.” It made sense to me, but he never said

what whites were good at. It left me to think that the answer must be “everything else”.

One of the first indications of my parents’ disdain for racial integration happened when I

was in second grade. I remember coming home and telling about a little boy I had met that I

wanted to be friends with. I told them that I had sat next to him in an assembly and he had

scratched my back when I asked him to. My mother was appalled. “Don’t make friends with that

boy, and certainly do not let him touch you.” My father agreed, adding, “You don’t see monkeys

being friends with hippos in the natural world. We keep company with our kind.” The message

was clear, and it set the stage for my upbringing in an insular, monocultural world.

It was easy enough not to “mix” with others, since we attended an all-white church and a

mostly white school. I had a twin sister, my best friend and constant companion, and a younger

sister and we spent most of our free time with each other. Being a twin impacted my

relationships profoundly. I didn’t bond especially strongly with my mom or dad because I had a

perfect friend built-in and we were inseparable. We went together to the same classes at school,

played basketball together, both played trumpet in the band, and shared an apartment in college

at Louisiana State University. When we went off to college, my parents had just gotten divorced

and it was a real period of fracture in my life. My father had been outed as a gay man, shocking

everyone. All my life, he made the same jokes about gays that all his adult friends did. It had
never been much of an issue because that was something “other” people did and there was never

a possibility that anyone we were close with could have had such an affliction. And if they did,

our pastor and elders would lay hands on them and rebuke the demon of homosexuality like they

did after youth group one night over a woman who cried and convulsed as she was ‘healed’ and

the demon was banished. I believe these sorts of events account for my distaste for religion as a

formal practice.

Dad quickly rejected his newly revealed lifestyle, hoping to reconcile with my mom. He

claimed it had all been a mistake and a confusion, but I suspected differently, and my suspicions

were confirmed when I discovered relationships and communications he had later on, but we

would never talk about it and it was clear that he felt deep shame.

My twin sister, Diana, and I had different majors in college and moved into our own

apartments after that first year. For the first time in my life, I began to date and be social, and

found myself attracted to a full spectrum of people. This led to many screaming fights with my

mother and our already thin relationship started to decline until we barely spoke. Diana and

Monica also vocally disapproved and it became the single topic of conversation whenever we

were together. In my third year of college, under great pressure, and without an adequate social

support network, I married a man whom I didn’t love in an attempt to appease my family and set

myself on what I saw as the correct path of husband, white picket fence, two children and a dog.

We divorced two years later, when I could no longer reconcile the person I was with the person I

was pretending to be.

That summer, my father offered for me to stay on his houseboat on my break from

college. Unbeknownst to me, he had enrolled me in “finishing” classes where a very socially

acceptable woman attempted to teach me things like applying make-up, getting in and out of a
car gracefully, and how to sit, eat and walk like a “lady”. I went exactly once. What I felt in that

moment from my father was utter rejection. His actions said, “You are not acceptable to me as

you are, and I wish you were someone different so I could feel proud of you.”

I returned immediately to Baton Rouge and immersed myself in a society that accepted

me for who and what I was, even as that continued to change. A defining moment for me came

one Halloween night, when I improvised a lumberjack costume with Doc Marten boots, a flannel

shirt and jeans and my long hair tucked up under a baseball cap. I felt invincible. My girlfriend

went with me to a hair salon the next day to cut it short and I left that place feeling like I’d

stepped into my power - like I left behind an old, outgrown shell and became a new, phoenix-

fired version of myself. To this day, I still feel this way when I leave the barber.

My family has come a long way toward cultural sensitivity since I grew up. My younger

sister will marry her fiancé, an African American man, in October and my nieces and nephews

think nothing of it as he and their friends join us for family events. My mother has mellowed out

and has nothing negative to say about others, even if I know she prefers my traditional

relationships to my alternative partnerships. My father also found a great degree of tolerance,

before he passed away, although I don’t believe he ever came to self-acceptance.

I have long believed that there was a missing ingredient in the school experience of my

students of cultural difference. I watched many of them struggle to learn and show their learning

in expected ways, while teachers, including myself, failed to reach them. Collectively, we

blamed transiency or poor parenting skills or unstable home environments or attendance issues,

which provided a sense of security that whatever was wrong was beyond our control. After

several frustrating years trying a myriad of popular techniques, both new and old, I had an

experience that would change my practice forever. I stopped by the home of a particularly
challenging student to return a jacket he left at school on a cold day. An older sibling opened the

door and thanked me, saying “God bless you” as she retrieved it. Through the slightly open door,

I could see religious icons and art prominently displayed in the small living room. I also

glimpsed a home full of many ages of children and adults, vibrating with energy, loud and

chaotic and cluttered, and angry. No wonder he wrote so often about God and church. No

wonder the relative quiet of my classroom made him uncomfortable. I could easily understand

why he bounced around my room and spoke louder than he needed to and had trouble keeping

his desk tidy. It was an eye-opening moment and something clicked for me.

After that, I began to experiment with my approach to instruction and discipline for the

students in my class. I imagined myself as an extension of each child’s family. I began to ask

families to share photographs and important objects from home and I studied them to understand

where my children came from and what was important to their family. I used language with them

that evoked their family values, telling one child, “This neat work would make Gammy so

proud!” and another one, “Wow! You’re working hard like Daddy taught you!” or asking,

“Would it help you feel calm and ready to work if we said a little prayer first?”

This year, I got an email from a former student I’d taught in 4th grade five years ago. He

was different, and I supported that, and encouraged him to be himself. I showed his classmates

how to appreciate what made him unique and taught them that everyone has something cool

about them and we are all worthy of admiration. He wrote a long letter about how I was a breath

of fresh air in a really difficult time and my class was his respite from the emotional abuse he

suffered at home. He told me he came out to his friends two years ago and was living his best life

and thriving and remembered the lessons I had taught him about being himself and would never

forget me. He told me that I had truly changed his life. It was better than a paycheck.
 Teachers and administrators always remark about that “something special” that I have

with my students, and I think it’s the magic that happens when you love them exactly as they are

and with all your heart, the way I always wished to be loved. I will always love the children in

my school – the ones that are easy and the ones that are hard. Don’t they need it the most?