Exhausted.

I cannot decide whether tonight's post will be about my time in Grant Park last night, how full I have been feeling all day, or something totally different.

This morning, my city-walking-face morphed into my I-am-so-happy-that-America-wants-change face. There was absolutely nothing I could do to stop it from happening. And there was nothing that I wanted to do to stop it either.

As if it were not significant enough to me before, I find myself more and more invested in my research.  I know that this is a young love, but it feels so real. A friend of mine, a first-year graduate student at Yale, sent me a message with a subject line asking, "did you ever read this?" This is one of my most favorite subjects to read in my inbox, after "dude!" and "really?" Messages like those usually promise to reveal something cool.

This particular message led me to Frederick Douglass's short and simple, yet loaded, speech "What I Would Do If I Were President,"  which rocked me on at least two levels. 

The first level is all about my research. A couple of days ago, I finally decided to use Frederick Douglass's narratives in my research, along with Henson's narratives. This was a huge decision for me. It means that many pages that are already written may not find their way into the final draft at all, which is something I expected, but in a far different way. And although I have been reading all of these narratives with a more suspicious eye, after reading articles on and by the "masters of the hermeneutics of suspicion" in this seminar, I do my best to keep in mind my subjects' humanity and the more simple reasons that they tell their stories. I am just trying to treat their texts the way that I feel they deserve to be treated.

I am all about authorship, audience, memory, and trauma (though trauma may turn into body soon). These themes and all of their theories have me wrapped around their metaphorical fingers until (at least) 8 December at midnight.

For now, I am taking a *very* short break from my research and taking part in this Obama-mania!

 

 

Last night's historic election results made me susceptible to being rocked on the second level. I think that it should go without saying that we, as a country, have been needing the kind of change that President-elect Obama promises for a while now. That we might finally be able to address and conquer concerns leaders had over a century and a half ago makes my heart all the more happy.

The countdown to the California polls started at 7 seconds. As soon as the countdown ended, CNN projected an Obama victory. The crowd went absolutely wild with excitement. But just as soon as the excitement and noise started, it stopped. The wave of silence was unreal to me. There was not a face around me that was not stained with tears of joy. Everyone hugged everyone. No matter the race, gender, height, age--nothing stopped everyone in Grant Park from showing one another how important that moment was! It was like a huge love-fest, full of people that were just excited for change.

YES WE DID.