Mother is Not Brown

Passing

“I use the term cultural currency as Pierre Bourdieu referred to the concept of cultural capital, suggesting ‘that different forms of cultural knowledge—such as language, modes of social interaction and meaning, are valued hierarchically in society’ (McCarthy, 1996, p. 155)” (Alexander, 2003, p. 106).

The body as a site for the cultural currency. The hair that darkens the brown skin provoking the inability to be

White

In all, it is a simple thing

Keep your “hair straight”

And Mother always does it with elegance. Arms moving in synchrony; the brush straightens the frizz with a mix of force and gentleness; Curls that were not seem in the first place, will never be able to appear. Those are my memories, that I watched in a morning ritual in the few spells when we, Mother and I, inhabit the same space.

As a grad student, from top of my privilege, I confronted Mother many times . . .

“Mother, Francisco is white like me and Analua is brown like you.”

“Son—with anger—I am not brown!”

Or the time that Mother went to live with Sister, and she told me

“Claudio, I am not racist. Brasil is not like USA. Almost every afternoon, I walk Gabriel (Sister’s son) to the favela nearby. I drink coffee with, inside the house of, the black woman who lives in the first shack, close to the bridge.”

“Mother—I say with a disgust—what is the woman’s name?”

The Black woman has no name

Mother is not Brown

***

In Absence

Of race, of parents, of social structures that dictates the hegemonic performances available to all

All of us

Antonia died when Mother was 5 and uncle Paulo 3. Both of them went to live with Antonia’s brother Venancio, the master of the big farm. Geraldo was never present. He would show up from time to time, mostly drunk, threatening Venacio that he would take his children with him, unless of course, he gets paid.

Sometimes, Venancio would give Geraldo some money. Sometimes, Venancio would provide Geraldo a beating.

Mother used to tell these stories. She said that the most heartbreaking part was uncle Paulo craving to be with his father Geraldo. How Paulo, crying, would hold on Geraldo’s legs, begging to be taken way with him. Paulo was the direct line, the leverage, Geraldo had to get money from Venacio.

Paulo loved his father.

Mother never did.

15 years later or so, Venancio lost his farm, his money, his power. Mother and Paulo did not see Geraldo for years after Venancio became poor.

25 years later or so, Paulo, an alcoholic father himself, committed suicide. Paulo’s body was found by his twin daughters, aged 9, hanging from the front porch, in the small house they rent in an impoverished neighborhood.

Mother never forgave Geraldo already dead by then. Mother was never able to separate her untamed hair from his. Mother was never able to dissociate her own hair from the dominante and cruel narrative of brown bodies like her father Geraldo. How could she?

Geraldo was never a good father.

***

My Hair

The autoethnographer, who may certainly carry the privilege into research context, must be acutely aware of the power dynamics involved in representation; she must be able to engage in reflexive critique of her own social positioning, must be “dedicated to playing,” dedicated to doing reflexivity even, and specially, when her own choices may be the subject of critique (Spry, 2011, p. 37).

But what about my hair? What story(ies) it tells?

A hair that was so blonde in my childhood years

That was thin and would fly in the wind with such

Grace

A hair that grandma described as good to touch as a rich piece of silk

A hair that in one of the genetic twist in our biologic shell has a surprise in his hat

A hair that with puberty lost the yellow

Betraying my beauty with

Thickness

Dryness

And for God’s sake

Curls

A hair that to this days needs tons of creams to control the

Frizz

Because you see

In my impoverished, racialized, “hood,” I was not only one of the few White kids in the streets; I was the only blonde boy in the hood; I was the Little Prince.

How come I moved from Little Prince to the kid that had a Bombril-Brillo pad in my head?

Because you see

I did not want the curls,

The thick

The dry

I yearned for a soft, silklike hair, that would fly with such grace in the

Wind

And that hair was gone. And as a good White macho Brazilian, I just kept my hair short. Very short. Ironically, I did not have to

Keep my hair straight

No hairbrushes for me

I, who want so bad to be accepted by the White middle class in Brazil

I, who want so bad to leave the hood

I, who want so bad to put my life in a distorted rear mirror,

I, who until this day, am being hunted by real ghosts, in the messiness of shit, violence, blood, viscera, and piss; who knows how bad, bad can be, and could not/cannot quit the intrinsic embodiment of life, like a fly which could not escape the web, but being at the same the spider who created the mechanism that imprisons the fly.

A mutant fly/spider full of

Coagulated blood thick in my mouth that one feels like spiting but can’t, where I unable to move my tongue and say

Say that I refused to be unsaid and making utterances with an unmovable tongue, saying

Begging

Please

Please, kill them both, the fly and the spider but please, please don’t kill me. How wise is bell hooks?

“Telling the story of . . . .to kill the self . . . without wanting to die.” (hooks, 1989, p. 155)

How many nights, sleepless nights, wishing to have a uterus to give birth to myself

A rebirth, but in the end I am the fly/spider without any ashes to reborn from

No phoenix for this body

Only the mutant flyspider being or in the language of scholarshit, the masturbator/ing/torian the

Foucault ian Thing

But as I wrote is the past:

I am not a poor kid in Brasil anymore.

Poor Brazilian kids don’t read Denzin and don’t go to classes and don’t reflect upon their situation supported by the knowledge of history, theory, method, and philosophy. Moreira, 2008, p. 673)

Mother never attended such classes nor did she study such subjects.

I did.

How could Mother not want to be White? How could not Mother, associate the alcoholism and absence of her father Geraldo, with the hegemonic narratives of brown and black bodies as the violent, deviant, lazy, unintelligent so pervasive in Brazilian society? No, Mother could not really get in good terms with her brown skin, but she could pass. And passing was impossible with funk hair.

She was never able to love her Father.

***

Old Encounters

I did read Brother Bryant telling me about old encounters:

“The notion of racializing identity is an old human encounter with otherness.” (Alexander, 2012, p. 138)

Old encounters with Geraldo and Mother

The racialized others racializing my unmarked self

Five hundred of years of colonization, rape, and genocide in my family tree. Generations of the same history

Where alcoholism is always present

Both grandparents, Father, Uncle Paulo and Claudio

Where absent fathers are always present

Mother’s and Claudio’s

Where teen pregnancy is always present

My sister when she was 17 and Mother

Who at 19 was pregnant of Claudio

Where poverty and suffering are always present

And yes, I refused to be said as an ahistorical broken family existing in a vacuum as I learned from Tami

“Performative autoethnography is designed to address the kinds of pain that occur at our social/historical/political intersections with one another—the pain caused by our ‘social ills.’” (Spry, 2011, p. 36)

For most of the past decade to this day I wear my hair long with tons of

Garnier Fructis Sleek & Shine—intensely smooth leave-in conditioning cream for frizzy, dry, unmanageable

Hair

***

Pain

Performative autoethnography is seldom easy, but it is always possible, and hopefully, pedagogical. When I feel the possibilities “inside me, in my chest, in my lungs and throat” (Gale & Wyatt, 2008, p. 795), then I know, paradoxically, that I am in that liminal space, that I am onto/into something besides my own individual body. I know I am in a place possible for the doing of knowledge with others where “the stories that emerge in each case rise up against the norms that deny their integrity” (Pollock. 1999, p. 12). Hope resides in unruly bodies, articulate bodies, bodies performing theory from the edges and failures of coherence, heterogeneity, and autonomy (Spry, 2011, p. 210).

The second to last time I spoke with Mother via Skipe she told me

“Claudio, I cannot read anymore . . . I cannot understand it . . . ”

Last time I spoke with Mother, again via Skipe, she told me

“Claudio, I am not able to pray anymore. Son, what’s happening with me?”

Mother can’t read and pray no more

Mother dear Mother, will you remember to keep you hair straight?

Who will brush your hair?

Mother is 64 had been diagnosed with Alzheimer 5 years ago. The biological ill is progressing fast; the social ill has always been with us, all of us.

A well-intentioned friend told me that a past life in poverty echoes in our present even when we escape it (poverty). I respectfully disagree.

A past life in poverty is always present

I’ve been told that I lived with Mother and Father until I was 3

I’ve been told that I lived in and out with my parents until I was 5

I only remember living with my Grandma Alda and her sisters while growing up but for a period of 5 months, when I was 18, which I lived with Mother

Sister always wanted to live with Mother

I never remember of wanting to live with Mother

Grandma Alda was always sad with Sister’s suffering, yearning for Mother

Grandma Alda told me once that her only regret was that she was never able to be our Grandma

Grandma Alda died in 1992. I have felt orphan, without my mother, since.

When Sister was 15 she was really craving for Mother. Mother explained to us that she still could not afford to rent a house for us but that she did love us very much. I believe Mother loved us and yet that conversation took place in a hotel room; the most expensive hotel in my hometown back then. Mother lived in the most expensive hotel for more than year before she finally rented a small apartment for the relief and happiness of Sister. The three of us lived there for 5 months before Mother left us . . .

Sister always unconditionally loves Mother

I don’t hate Mother but

I am not sure if I truly can love her

Mother simply was never there

Grandma Alda was always present

Sister is resentful of me . . . we barely talk with each other these days

Sister takes care of Mother. Mother lives in Sister’s house. Sister has to lay down every night with Mother otherwise Mother does not sleep with fear. Mother is not able to take showers or go to the bathroom alone. There is no money to buy Mother’s meds. Sister always begs me to call at least once a week because—please do not miss irony here—Mother feels extremely happy to see me via Skipe. So every Sunday, I wake up, make coffee and smoke, sit in front of my laptop and

Can’t call Mother

While typing these words, it has been more than 4 months that Mother told that she wasn’t able to pray.

I respectfully disagree with my friend

A past life in poverty and suffering is, one way or another, is always present

“One cannot erase the oppression in the marked body” (Diversi & Moreira, 2009, p. 473).

***

Pain

Autoethnographically writing my history I always try to go after the structures of power that shapes oppression; with visceral knowledge of the social ills and yet it doesn’t seem real to me, it feels more like a Greek tragedy or better, a Brazilian telenovela . . . and yet it is a world

Where pain and suffering is always present

Where Brother Bryant’s words, resonating in my ears, are always present

“We become outsiders to our own pathologized images. The fact that we are sitting in the lap of the academy does not sanction our talk. Sentiments like diversity, multiculturalism, affirmative action, freedom of speech, and democracy do not freely create spaces to practice our voice.” (Alexander, 2012, p. 183)

***

Summer

June 2012, I am in Campinas Brazil. It is 11 in the morning. The phone rings. Martinho, my father-in-law, tells me that it is Sister wanting to talk with me.

My heart bumps fast inside my chest. Sister and I have not talked for ages. The few times I tried to call, she did not answer the phone. Mother illness really separated us but it is another story for another time.

“Hello.” I say.

“Claudio, Livio had two strokes in the last 2 weeks. He is in coma. Mother is all by herself in the apartment but for a few times Antonino drops by to bring her food. Antonino is very old and he can’t take care of her and Livio at the same time.”

20 years ago, Mother married Livio, an Italian man almost 20 years her senior, and moved to Italy. Livio is a good man; good for Mother and really loves her. Yet, it is still a part of this so common marriage in Brazil. European man comes to the country looking for wives that are poor and preferable Brown.

Sister is crying in the phone.

“Claudio, Mother doesn’t know where her documents are . . . passports anything. I need to bring her home. When I talk to her by phone, she just cries . . . She keeps asking me for cigarettes and toilet paper. Can you believe what she is going through? That’s all I ask you, bring her home. Bring her home to me. I don’t have the money. Bring her home to me and I will take care of her . . . You will never have to deal with her again. . . never again.”

A month and half later I am back in the States. Marcelo gave me the money to buy Mother’s airplane fare. It took a lot of phone calls to the Brazilian Embassy in Rome, to create a temporary documentation that would allow Mother to reenter her home country. The expectation is that it will take at least another year, in the Brazilian bureaucracy, to get Mother in welfare. Until then, we need to find money to provide for her medical needs. Mother’s airplane was due to land 2 hours ago.

Sister is calling…

“Claudio, when Mother came through the gates in the airport and I saw her, it took me a lot to just not start to cry. Claudio, her clothes were so dirty. She was so dirty and smelly. The first thing she asked was if now, she would have cigs and toilette paper. Oh Claudio, it was so sad . . . In her handbag, she had only three cigarettes and a matchbox . . . no money at all. Nobody was taking care of her. She also asked me what I was doing in Italy. I kept telling her that now she was finally home. But that was not the worse; can you imagine the state of her hair?”

***

Remembering

“In Body, Paper, Stage pain and autoethnography are viewed as a personal/political social praxis, a conflation of the ways in which selves/others interrupt, perpetuate, and are otherwise legislated by the dominant cultural systems” (Spry, 2011, p. 36).

Will Mother remember to straighten her hair?

Will I remember to rethink my own performance of Whiteness?

The underserved biological privilege of the color of my skin and penis between my legs?

Until when will mother and I remember?

In the meantime, you may or may not

Keep your hair straight