Jose, bell hooks, My Life as Interpreted by Dreams and Ideology

Rhetoric. What funny business. I've always enjoyed a good discussion on what it really is and why it matters. bell hooks has a funny way of making rhetoric matter for the small, but not the small minded. She speaks of all kinds of whys and hows, and what's more, she has solutions in her writing. So it's not bullshit like so much other rhetoric is -- this ain't empty speech.

bell talks about the disadvantaged and how they can make themselves seen -- but first they must have the gusto and the desire to step out of the fear of standing up to whomever their oppressors are. In the case of some, the oppressor is the parent. When discussing physical abuse and emotional warfare on the child soul, hooks writes, "Certainly, when I reflect on the trials of my growing-up years, the many punishments, I can see now that in resistance I learned to be vigilant in the nourishment of my spirit, to be tough, to courageously protect that spirit from forces that would break it."

And so on to Jose. Here is a man who is not meant for the classroom, a child whose youthful education was stolen by those who needed him to feed the horses, milk the cows, feed the chickens, cut firewood, fetch water, and on and on. School was not an option. Not a victim's bone in his body about it -- that's just the way it was.

And so his graduation from plumbing school was to him -- to us -- like a graduation from Harvard Law. bell hooks speaks about how students of any color suffer from not fitting into a classroom for a variety of reasons, and even when they do, suffering from the malady of non-communication for fear they will be judged. A student that hooks quotes in Talking Back writes:

"My voice is not fit to be heard by 120 people. To produce such a voice, my temperature increases and my hands shake... I am not relieved by voicing my opinions. Placing my opinion up to be judged by the public is a form of opening myself to criticism and pain. Those who do not share my eyes cannot see where to tred lightly upon me... my fear is that I will not be understood... I will be misunderstood; I will not be respected as a speaker; they will name me Stupid in their minds; they will disregard me. I am afraid."

Jose has always felt this way, which is why we had to find a school where he would be able to speak with action, a place where he could show what he could do with his mind by using his hands. And he did, and it was a glorious victory. The first in his family to receive any degree of any kind from any institution.

My life I can currently interpret and dream for through the words of bell hooks and the action Jose took. I look at my dreams as a highly educated person and know that I have in spades what Jose does in education -- but what have I in terms of desire, in terms of reaching for something better? He beats me in spades.

So what's my dream? My dream is to live up to what I ought to know I am good at by now: To be heard, and as bell hooks discusses in her book, to know my audience when I write. You cannot write for everyone. That's what I have learned from bell. She says to actively choose your audience or you will lose them all; and she says to start with who you are. So my dream is to figure out where I fit so I can write from there. It wasn't hard for bell to find her audience once she had the epiphany: she was a strong black woman in particular place at a particular time when being as such was not tolerated. So she knew that and learned to speak in that voice. But what am I? I cannot rest on my heritage or where I was raised -- both are radical mish-mashes of cultures and countries and ways of thinking and being.

While I dream my dream I have a special something that helps me remember that the disenfranchised have ways of making it happen, and so then should I. Thank you bell hooks, and thank you Jose for setting the bar for my new dreams of me.