Showcase of Teacher Writing
Jose de la Garza
Our Paths
Relocation troubles the homesick soul. There is such a permanent taste to moving, going somewhere new. Resistant to change, he often compares the present to the past, and torments his inability to accept the place and time that now surround him, craving and coveting the place and time that is gone, no longer his, and out of reach. He points at it on a map. There. Not here, but there. Not north. Not green. Not here. Forced to be a nomad, he wanders his new home—it’s so weird to call it home. He seeks the places that tell him they are familiar, but they lie. Home is not stale chips and store-bought salsa. Wait, now it is. His time and place have been purchased, and he is now lost at home. He sees his culture reduced to a deep-fried flour tortilla, stuffed with seasoned ground beef and on the menu’s lunch specials for $4.99 between eleven and three. He remembers something he read recently, “[W]e cannot understand our own cultural degradation because we are living it. As colonized people, we are unaware of our oppression” (Trask 267), but is he being oppressed? Yes, a “chimichanga” is foreign to him, but he is foreign to them, the others, those who have lived here, those who can legitimately call this home. Maybe it’s not them. Maybe it’s him. He is the outsider. He wants to be alone, away from the fiesta. So he walks away and finds himself at the gates of time, the Bishop Gates, meeting those who like him have been outside but who have passed that entrance and find themselves now in the woods, alone, and looking. In two hundred years there have been many who have been lost, who have been the others.
Woods are woods. It is hard to feel alienated by trees. Though man-made trails seem to dictate where you go, or where people want you to go. Life must be simple that way. People telling you where you can go. The paths mark the paths that people have taken. But who has taken this path? The marked trails allow for an interesting, view. No, not a view ahead. Looking ahead is cliché. That is where the want you to look—ahead. It is the best way to make things seem familiar. If you follow the outlined path, you know where you are going. It must lead somewhere. And that “somewhere,” though as unidentified as any place not on the trail, is comforting. The fact that many before you have walked to whatever destination this path leads to makes you feel reassured that the place must be good. “They,” whomever they may be, would not lead you astray, would they? Who are they? Are they like you? How? Quite honestly, I don’t feel I can trust them any more than I trust anyone to pinpoint a good Mexican restaurant here. What is comforting about the trail is that you feel that somehow this person is similar to you in some way. Someone has walked that path before, and that person was very similar to you. No not to me. Don’t you remember? I am alone here.
I am standing here, amidst greenery on a path outlined by others that have come before me. My path is supposed to be different. People like me have not treaded this path before. No, I am not talking about the literal path. I am sure plenty of people, different people have walked on this very trail. I am speaking of the metaphorical path. I know, that cliché path that everybody talks of. I wonder if that imaginary trail of difference that everyone speaks of is actually the same metaphorical path everyone walks. The path is lonesome, though. The literal one. I am not sure if I prefer solitude to exclusion. In the woods I am alone, one with the trees, ignored and imposed upon. But eventually they will make me a part of the scenic view, or chop me off to make another path. There is no path for me. Where is my path? Have Others walked my path as well? I am lost, in solitude, looking for the path that people of difference have walked. I am lost even in a place where a path is clearly marked.
1887. Fannie McFarland and Daisy McCullough are admitted into Miami University. McFarland and McCullough are the first women to be students at Miami University, previously and all-men’s school. Ushering the new coeducational status of Miami, these women were the few, the outsiders. They were the first to walk the path. They were the first steps to carve into the ground the presence of the outsider. They were not just residents of Oxford, Ohio. McFarland and McCullough were students, one with the student body in purpose, yet different. By the late 19th century, less than ten percent of Miami University’s population was female. They used to be outside, but they claimed a place. Their enrollment was a testimony of change and evolution. Dr. Andrew D. Hepburn, professor of English, was the main dissenter, scrutinizing the new beginnings Miami sought as a coeducational facility. They were among them. They have walked the trail. These women were not them. These students embody an early change in acceptance, tolerance, and redefinition where differences begin to marble the composition of Miami. (Shriver letter-online).
He is not alone. The path has been walked before. 121 years later, he stands there questioning the paths defined by the triumph of difference. He does not see their steps; he only sees the confinement of the outlined trail. Fannie McFarland and Daisy McCullough walked his walk themselves out of place in what they called home. Oxford was home for them. They had been part of the Oxford community for years, and even they were excluded. Even at home they were outsiders. He came from the outside. He not only came, but he was brought to the community. Fannie and Daisy faced the pathless woods. They ventured into a space they were told was not their own. They were not lost. They were not told where to go, but they found their place. They carved their own space in a foreign community housed within the community that was to them familiar. That same space is carved for him. He does not have to break into the woods past challenging opinions. Hepburn is not keeping him out. Yet, he does not want to walk the beaten path. Whose paths are these? Can he claim them as his own? He is afraid to step on a ground that is not his, a land that might be theirs. No, not Fannie and Daisy’s. Theirs.
1903. At the turn of the century, Miami University, then the Ohio State Normal School, grants admission to Nellie Craig, the school’s first African American student. She too was an outsider. Not only was she part of the schools small female student population, but she was also different from those that were different. Difference². Twice the difference. She prevailed. She graduated in 1905, and thus, as cliché as it may sound, paved the way for others. 94 years after the school’s foundation and 59 years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the institution demonstrates its dedication to the diversification of its academic community.
The trails are theirs. But “they” are not the insiders. “They” the people who have walked those delineated paths are the agents of difference that have faced the woods on their own. They did not have concrete paths. They had concrete objectives. He stands there as a benefactor, the blessed. He chooses to stand alone in the woods in fear of exclusion when Fannie, Daisy, and Nellie didn’t just enter, but went through the uncut woods to become a part of a community that did not see their academic worth. Today, he can hide in the Bishop Woods, but in doing so he crosses the open gates, gates that are not only unlocked but not even there. The gates read 1959. In 2008, he faces the same intimidation that encouraged McFarland, McCullough, and Craig to create their own academic spaces. Now it is his turn to embrace the paths that lead across the tribulation that he does not have to face. He can choose to hide amongst the trees, becoming a brown shadow in a well treat land, but the legacy of difference will not allow him to remain unseen. He will be seen, he cannot hide. His shadow can be cast on the path forever or for a few moments while he follows the steps of his predecessors in difference to the other side of the woods. The trails are not theirs. They are ours.
Works Cited
“African-American Timeline.” African Americans at Miami. n.d. Miami University Libs., Miami U. 9 August 2008. http://www.lib.muohio.edu/afamhist/timeline.php.
Shriver, Phillip. “History of Women at Miami.” History of Women at Miami University. 5 March 1996. Miami University Libs., Miami U. 9 August 2008. http://www.lib.muohio.edu/epub/shriver/.
Trask, Haunani-kay. “‘Lovely Hula Hands’: Corporate Tourism and the Prostitution of Hawaiian Culture.” Writing and Place: Critical Spaces for Composing. 4th Ed. Oxford: Miami U Department of English, 2008. 259-68.