The End of an Awesome Semester

           Before taking this class, I knew very little about feminism, very little about Chicanas, and even less about Chicana feminism. When I told my dad I was taking this class, he laughed audibly and asked me why the hell I was doing that. To be honest, I joined him in laughing and said “I have no idea, it was all that was available and I need to graduate.” I think that the reason people have this kind of reaction and scoff at feminism is that in popular culture and media, feminists have been whittled down to a caricature of themselves. People see them as bra-burning, non-shaving, penis-hating, whiny, lesbian bitches.  This may be why one subject of our interviews threatened violence if anyone ever called her a feminist and why my own subject said she didn’t identify as a feminist.

            Now after reading that first paragraph, most of you reading probably hate me and are upset with what I said. However, this class has taught me that feminism is much more than that. Before this class, the idea that there were different branches of feminism and that feminism for women of color was different than it was for white women would never have even crossed my mind. I know now how ignorant this was and the fact that I would never have even thought about it is laughable now. Feminism is much more than that string of adjectives that I threw together in the first paragraph.

            One major thing that I have learned in this class is that feminists don’t all fit into one well-defined group with the same values and principles. It seems clear to me that Jane Garcia is indeed a feminist but simply does not want to identify with that preconceived notion of what a feminist is supposed to be.

What I learned about Chicana Feminism

            Everything that I know about Chicana feminism, I learned from this class. The most eye opening thing for me was that it even existed. I know that makes me sound ignorant and disrespectful, and maybe that’s true, but I honestly had no knowledge of the movement before taking this class. I had always just assumed that feminism was one movement by one group of people. However, just like feminism comes in many forms, Chicana feminism comes in many forms.

            Mine and Abraham’s subject, Jane Garcia, identified as a Republican. I would bet money that it would be nearly impossible to find another who would say the same. This just goes to show how it is irresponsible to group such a large amount of people into one category; as in, putting all women into one feminist movement. Chicana women had different problems than white women, black women, and all other women. Just like the individuals are unique, so are the problems.

            The point that was raised in our latest class about the three steps to feminism really stuck with me. Who is oppressing us?, How are they oppressing us?, and What do we do about it? It is that last question that really stuck with me. Too many times in my American Culture studies have I heard talk about everything that is wrong with society with no proposed solutions or ideas on how to improve the situation. This is simply not the case with these women. They didn’t stand around and complain about their situation, they got out there and did something. Jane Garcia didn’t bitch and moan about how she got the short end of the stick, she went out and made her stick longer. That is what I respect about these women.

            If this class taught me one thing, it is that these women bring meaning to the root of activist. They weren’t passive, they were active. They realized that they were being mistreated and went out and did something about it. Jane Garcia infiltrated the Republican Party (though she may not call it that) and exacted change from the inside. Jane Garcia took a different approach than many. Hers was a combination of “kill them with kindness” and annoy them until they give you what you want.

What I learned About Archiving and Oral History

            Although I have interviewed many subjects in the past, these oral histories were like nothing I have ever done. I thought that I had some sort of advantage going into this class but that proved to be more of a hindrance than anything. What I mean by this is that I got lazy and relied on my experience and almost didn’t leave myself enough time to recover. The thing that I most neglected originally, but turns out to be one of the most important things is the research that is needed before conducting your interview. Without the pre-interview research, you could find yourself wasting time asking superficial questions instead of getting down to the better, deeper stories.

            Researching before an interview allows you to skip over the mundane details of their life and allows you to ask questions about more specific topics. If you know something about your subject before the interview, you can specifically target the stories that you want more details about. Although I learned a lot about taking oral histories, I would say the thing that I learned about most in this class is about archiving and why it is important.

            I didn’t really know a whole a lot about archives before taking this class. I knew that they were a spot where you keep old documents. I guess I never really considered the importance of archives. I think it’s a bit harder for people of my generation to think about how these stories and documents could be lost if we don’t do something about it because almost everything we do has a digital record. It wasn’t until we did the interview with Jane Garcia that I really realized how important it is to keep an archive and to digitize hers. If you were to google Jane Garcia, one picture of her pops up and almost nothing else. If you look at Jane’s archive, this makes no sense. Jane has done everything. She has letters from presidents, she has won elections, she has served on the board of a major community outreach program in a major city for decades yet there is almost no record that she ever existed.

            If we were not doing this project, in 20 years, there might literally be no record that Jane Garcia ever existed. Think about that for a second. This awesome woman, who has lived through so much and been in the middle of revolutions, would just cease to exist. This woman who fought oppression and fought hard for the hardest city to fight for, would be some distant memory. If Jane didn’t get to tell her story, if we didn’t preserve her record, people in the future wouldn’t know whom to thank. That is crazy to think about.

            That, to me, is all you need to prove that what we are doing is important and that archives themselves are important. We are helping to preserve the memory of these amazing women who, for whatever reason, haven’t been acknowledged in the history books. These women helped lead a revolution and now they’re finally getting they’re stories down on record. These documents that we’ve all complained about scanning, cataloguing and uploading give a glimpse into these women’s past that is hugely important.

Applying What We Learned in the Real World

            There are three major things I’ve learned through “real world” implementation: archiving is painfully tedious and frustrating, interviews are never perfect, and no matter what you plan for, something will go wrong. I realize that that seems like a very negative outlook on the process, but once you learn to accept these things, you can more easily adapt, and make the process a success.

            First, I will discuss the archiving. By the end of our 5-hour scanathon, I was like a zombie. The repetitive task of putting a document in the scanner, pushing a button, taking the document out, stacking it neatly so they didn’t get out of order, and doing it all over again 85 or so times was tedious to say the least. However, the really exhausting part was going over all of the documents again and filling out each cell on our catalogue. It was a tedious task that required patience, attention to detail, patience, organization, patience, accuracy, and patience. However, as I discussed earlier, this was a very necessary evil. Although archiving is tedious, it is so important that it is impossible to overstate. While we all bitched and moaned, we knew that what we were doing had a purpose and a very important one at that.

            Interviews are never perfect. After spending about 20 minutes with Maria trying to get the perfect back drop and framing, we were ready to interview. However, the pre-set framing didn’t last long. Jane liked to rock back and forth and was very animated when she talked. This required constant micro-adjustments by the camera operator. The hard thing about that is that you want to panning to look smooth but don’t want to move too slowly and have her head cut off for too long. Jane also liked to clink her rings against her glass and cross her arms. The issue with the is that the microphone was at the same level as the glass and the clinking was loud and clear on the audio. Also, when crossing her arms, Jane would dislodge the microphone. This caused me to stop the interview several times to change her coffee cup to Styrofoam so you couldn’t here the rings and the readjust her mic after she crossed her arms.

            No matter what you plan for, something will go wrong. From what I’ve heard, each group either had to work with a different camera or had to scramble and fight to get the right one. This caused an issue because not all of us know our way around cameras and were counting on being able to use the ones that we were trained on. Like true Michigan students, though, we all seemed to be able to overcome that obstacle. Another issue was the uploading of the video files. Some of these files we so large that in order to upload them anywhere, you would either have to decrease to quality or break it up into tiny segments. A few groups had trouble with rescheduling, location changes, late arrivals, and one subject disappeared altogether. However, each group was able to overcome these obstacles and do a great job. (Go us!)

           

We were the first class to go through this and we were kind of the guinea pigs. There were things that went wrong, some things that had to be adjusted, but overall I think we succeeded in our mission and made this class a success. I have never been in a class with so much collaboration and teamwork between the students, the professor, the “assistants” and everyone involved. It was awesome seeing all of us come together, help each other out, give advice, and be a team.

            I think we all learned a lot from this class and we will all take away something different. This class was filled with people from very diverse backgrounds (an Australian in an AC class?) that came together to create and very enlightening and awesome experience and class. I still can’t say that I identify with the struggle and probably never will. However, I love learning about things like this (especially when they happened in my own area and I had no idea). It has opened my eyes to a struggle I never knew existed and, I think, made me a better person for it. Before deciding to be an AC major, I was an ignorant, conservative white kid from West Bloomfield. I am still a conservative white kid from West Bloomfield but classes like this are helping to make me less ignorant and helping me try to make the people I associate with less ignorant too.