What’s good family,
I hope this finds you well and rested. As I write we’re winding down on this Decoration Day holiday. I prefer calling Memorial Day by its original name because I like history and because I think the initial spirit of the holiday is one worth preserving and remembering. You can read more here but the original celebration took place in Charleston, SC and included emancipated folks properly and honorably burying the Union dead. This history, much like those Union dead, has been well buried over the years. But what is buried is not erased.
This is a transitory time for me. Just yesterday on Sunday my beloved graduated from Brown University with her MFA in Literary Arts. I am immensely proud of the work she’s done in her two years at Brown. It wasn’t a simple decision for her to go back to school especially after already having a Masters and already being a working published writer. It also hasn’t been easy to manage living across the country from each other and in this time also managing to get married and move from Colorado to Wisconsin and countless other life moments and complications. Grad school isn’t easy even when things are relatively ideal and simple and our journey hasn’t been that by a long shot but she has done admirable work. Next year she’ll be a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University. Luckily I have a fellowship year through my employer so we’ll be able to be together full time, which is a blessing after the last two years of expensive and exhausting flights.
A week before Alison’s commencement I had my own commencement. I was awarded an honorary doctorate from the School of The Art Institute of Chicago alongside visual artist Sonya Clark and fashion designer Cynthia Rowley. It was a cool experience and admittedly one I feel sort of bashful about. I think part of my discomfort is because I work as a professor I know a ton of people with *actual* doctorates and so I don’t want to be out here false flagging like a real doctor. I think also, because an honorary doctorate is sort of given as a kind of career achievement recognition it feels weird to get one and be… so young and hopefully early in the career.
These feelings are true and it’s also true that I just… never anticipated or imagined having the kind of life where I get these kinds of awards. At one point during the luncheon before commencement my dad and I were talking to one of the workers about the fact that the arena we were in sits in a neighborhood that… didn’t really exist until a few years ago.
In a lot of ways I sort of feel similar to that arena. Not that I’m the benefit of corporate partnerships and misspent tax funds (though maybe I am ha…) but that I sometimes exist as this gussied up cleaned up version of a corner that 20 years ago was down the street from the damn projects. I don’t mean to be self-deprecating. I just mean to try to place myself in my own strange life.
Today I listened to this podcast about poverty. The author being interviewed spoke about how so many of us benefit from the machinery that makes poverty possible in a country that is so wealthy. It was an interesting conversation that’s worth your time and I’m excited to check out the book soon. When I was in graduate school I took a course in the School of Public Policy called Poverty and Inequality. In that class I felt like an alien who crash landed in a class about aliens. Literally most of the class texts were rooted in studying the impact of poverty and inequality in Chicago specifically, which was helpful because I was writing my first book Wild Hundreds but it was surprising and felt a bit on the nose. I was the only person in the class who wasn’t a policy or social work or law student and I was the only one who had spent any meaningful time in poor neighborhoods in Chicago. Some Friday mornings in class I felt like I was as much a class text as I was a class participant. Class is funny that way…
I do think though that some of my own life experience is what makes me feel strange about an honorary doctorate. Some of the people most invested in the American mythos of merit are those of us who have been far closer to the bottom for most of our lives. For us sometimes we tend to undermine or undervalue our own work and contributions, sometimes most especially when they are recognized by others. I write the things I write and do the work I do because I find it meaningful and because it helps me process. I hoped it would find an audience but I never expect anything from it.
But it was cool to get an honorary doctorate. Please don’t actually call me doctor in any serious context. I’m glad my parents and my eldest sister and my aunt and my nephew and my wife could be there. I’m glad to be back living with my wife who is very lovely and whose degrees I am happy to celebrate in the most full-throated way. Not too many dudes from my hood been able to wear a doctoral hood of any kind. Shoutout to the hood. In the words of my favorite fictional Chicago poet, Preach from Cooley High…"to the dudes who ain’t here.”
Peace,
Nate
Really enjoyed this reflection Nate. Thanks for sharing and congratulations!