Racism in the Time Traveler’s Wife
Oct 30, 2008 Race
When I was a teenager and first getting my feminism on, I used to have a test for movies and books. Where am I? Where am I in this story? Who could I get to be? Asking myself this helped me identify why reading some books (Philip Roth, Jerzy Kosinski) left me feeling so … empty/scared/lonely/depressed/angry. Because very often the who I could be (the woman or women in the book) were empty stereotypes. Those stereotypes left me feeling worse than if I hadn’t been there at all. In other words, having women’s roles limited by sexist stereotyping felt worse to me than reading a book where women didn’t even appear. Because I could read a book, say, The Chocolate War and know that the lack of women was about the focus of the book and not about the unimportance of me and women like me in all of our technicolor detail.
It’s not that I’m arguing for a complete lack of representation but I am saying that token representation can feel just as bad if not worse. Because I would read those books and think, “Is this all I am to men? Is this all they see of me? Is all the scope I’m allowed to be?”
I sometimes still use this tool to point sexism out to, say, Brett who doesn’t have a lifetime of evaluating media under his belt. For me, understanding the limited range of my imaginary role-models helped me not to take that subtext on as my own. Seeing that my empty feelings after one of those books or movies had to do with the limited imagination of the artist let me reject it.
Let me say right off that as a writer, I didn’t like The Time Traveler’s Wife. I thought it was a lumpy story full of unnecessary detail that detracted from the narrative. I felt that the complex structure of the plot didn’t make up for the unfinished main characters, stilted dialogue or self-indulgent trivialities. I wanted to like it but I didn’t. I felt about it the same way I felt about Mr. Holland’s Opus; I cried at the sad parts even while cursing the master manipulation at work. I knew I was being strung along but gave into my base emotions anyway.
Still, you can’t argue with numbers and the sales attest to the skill of the author. People loved this book. Writers whose opinions I admire loved this book. Readers who read with a discerning eye loved this book. Besides which, Becca has done a good job in reminding me always that to sit down and write a book is an endeavor worthy of admiration in and of itself. So there’s that.
Thing is, The Time Traveler’s Wife is also really racist and that I can’t forgive.
Let’s dip in, shall we? (after the cut)
Tags: Becca, boyfriend, Erica, Julia, literature, niffennegger, Race, racism, racist, the time traveler's wife
Heather asked a good question
So this happened before the time when Madison overheard the mom talking about slippery feet in dance class, right? Do you think it factored into the strong reaction she had in the dance class?
from Heather
Yup, that did happen after. The Incident happened at the beginning of February and then dance class was in April. Madison had already been talking a lot about wanting her skin to match ours months before February and for me one of the sad ironies of this whole thing is that the family in question was one of our social examples of families who don’t match and how that’s ok. I grieve the loss of the friendship with the wife in part because early in our relationship she was part of my support system around this stuff. (Didn’t I tell you that this was ironic?) Not that we agreed on everything about race or adoption but we agreed on enough that the differences were details.
Anyway. Yes, this may have played a part in her strong reaction at dance class. Then again, she had been talking a lot about race and differences and not matching so while The Incident surely didn’t help, she was already struggling. And that’s one reason I just felt so unglued about it all — the wife in question had been witness and support during those particular struggles and so to have her husband be so hurtful and at their home where my daughter had always felt safe — well, it just made it that much MORE. Again, I don’t hold the wife responsible for his behavior and she didn’t witness the event. I just want to make it clear that there’s a whole lot going on here and the password protected stuff is about my friendship with her but I feel pretty darn comfortable publicly condemning him.
I also wonder — and this is pure conjecture — if some surrounding circumstances of that class made Madison feel extra-sensitive going in. Because that class was bookended with socializing with various families including the family in question (without the husband/perpetrator of said deed). Given that she has expressed concern for the kids, I kinda wonder if seeing them might not have pushed The Incident to the forefront of her mind just before heading into ballet. But I don’t know. And I guess truly it doesn’t matter because all that matters now is coping with the fall out.
Tags: Adoption, adoptive-parenting, friendship, friendships, Madison, Race, racism
Why blog it now?
The incident I’ve been blogging about happened months ago and the fall-out happened weeks ago. So why blog it now? Well, because Madison brought it up and frankly it’s been on my mind (like crazy) since it happened.
She misses the wife in question and she misses the kids. She wanted to know why she didn’t see them anymore. I told her because we didn’t want to be around [husband] and that [wife] & [husband] were a package deal. (I think she knows that [wife] is angry with me, too, because lord knows we’ve talked about it often enough around here — poor Brett helping me process the thing to death.) I said, “Do you remember why I’m upset with [husband]?” And she said, “Yes, because he said…”
Me: Do your remember what he said?
Madison: You say it.
And you know, I didn’t want to say it. I wanted her to say, “I have no recollection and would rather skip over here and play with my dollhouse and smile all the live long day!” I wasn’t sure if she wanted me to say it because she couldn’t remember and wanted a reminder or if she couldn’t bring herself to say it. And I was hoping it was the former and that I could find a way to wriggle out of it. Like, “Oh! She doesn’t even remember! I’ll change the subject!”
This is where the goodness of blogs come in. I thought about Susan Ito and John Raible and Jae Ran Kim and Sang-Shil Kim and all the other transracially adopted adults who have shared their stories. If I changed the subject, she would take on the shame and there’s no way that I want my daughter taking on any shame from this. I knew I had to be the one to say it so I did, I repeated what he said and my daughter screwed up her face, shoved her forehead into my arm and started to chew on my shirt.
“He doesn’t like me because of my brown skin,” she said. “Does he not like [his child]? What about [his child]?” Then later, “YOU like brown-skinned babies!”
For the next 24-hours she’d bring it up randomly. She’d talk about how mean [husband] is because of what he said. Mommy, remember what he said? And why did he say it? Why was he mean? Then we’d list all of the grown-ups we knew who are nice and NOT mean. Because, I told her, most people are nice but some people are mean. It’s how the world is. We are lucky to have so many nice people around us and the mean people? Well, once we find out they’re mean, that’s the end of that!
I understand why parents don’t want to address this stuff because I don’t want to address this stuff. I want to pretend that she’s over it, totally forgot it, has moved on with her life and that it’s not even a blip on her radar. But I agree with you all that our reaction is the only thing I can control and that she needs us to say it out loud and react in no uncertain terms. She needs to know that we have a zero-tolerance rule about this and that there are no do-overs for racism and that we are always unequivocally on her side.
One of the first people I talked to about it was Pennie. For one thing, she knows these people and even if it hadn’t involved Madison I likely would have told her ‘cuz, you know, we talk about my friends and her friends and our dealings with them. But I also told her because she’s Madison’s first mom and because she’s an African American woman and so I doubly value her input. Being naive, what surprised me was how not surprised she was. Sad, disappointed, angry — yes but surprised? No.
My white world (myself included) had this “but she’s so young! why does she have to deal with this now?” sad reaction but my of-color world had this “ahh the inevitable has happened” resignation and sadness reaction. So when Madison asked me to say it, I channeled the mothers of color who I know (online and off) and knew they wouldn’t try to get out of it. They wouldn’t squirm and try to pretend it didn’t happen or try to distract her, they’d say it and face up to the truth, which is that it was said, my daughter heard it and yes, she still thinks about it.
(What prompted this was having a fall-out with a park friend — someone she barely knew — who said something 4-year old mean, which made her remember every mean thing anyone ever said to her finally landing on this one and focusing on it like crazy. This is the first time she’s brought up her concerns about the other kids in the family.)
(One more thing — the reason I password-protected the other post and not these latest ones is because the password-protected post got into other family members reactions and I wanted to keep that un-googled.)
Tags: adoptees, Adoption, Erica, Madison, racism, raising adopted kids, transcultural adoption, transracial adoption, wordpress
