For the purposes of this assignment, I had the privilege of interviewing an incredibly talented person by the name of Cynthia Jeanette Hyatt, who graciously granted me a last-minute interview after an incident with a previous interviewee rendered that interview borderline unusable.This is not to suggest that choosing her for an interview was merely a matter of convenience. While that did indeed play a role in her initial consideration, the opportunity to interview her was truly appreciated and ultimately enjoyable. Due to busy and conflicting schedules, the interview was conducted in the common area of the high school at which the interviewee works and the interviewer attends. There were a couple gaps throughout the interview, during which the conversation was turned to another person or became tangential, but overall the interview was fairly cohesive.
Born Cynthia Jeanette Weaver, she grew up in the middle of the city of Detroit, Michigan. Multiple times over the course of our interview, she referred to her neighborhood as one that was predominantly Jewish and incredibly diverse, and indeed, her experiences, not to mention her home life, seem to have reflected that claim. Her family, as well, was very diverse; her father was African-American, and her mother was part Cherokee indian. This in fact caused her some problems throughout her
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school years, bullying from those who ‘didn’t believe’ in mixed marriages and decided to make their beliefs known. The one wall that was hit with this interview was that of the events of the period. Beyond the passing of Doctor King while she was still in elementary school, Cynthia Hyatt did not seem aware of many of the major political happenings in the world during her childhood and teenage years. Honestly, the questions about the events of the period were a long shot to begin with. It’s a bit much to expect that a child, or even a teenager, would be particularly aware of the events in the world around them, especially before the invention of the computer and online news. There are simply too many other things competing for the typical teenager’s attention to allow much time for or interest in the daily goings on of the world. This being said, her descriptions of her childhood provided much insight into the culture and social going’s on of the period. Midway through our interview, she recalled an incident from her teen years. Throughout her life, she was made to feel somehow less than for the color of her skin. Even amongst the students of color, prejudice based on skin color was rampant. Cynthia was the victim of much of it, due to the fact that she wasn’t light enough to be considered white, but nor was she considered black enough to be accepted into their fold. She recalled that one summer, when she was thirteen or so, she was so tired of being bullied for her skin color that she decided that this would be the year that she would tan, and darken, and finally be accepted. I’ll never forget the day that I tried to turn myself into a dark crisp piece of chicken. I still have that burn on my back, where I tried to get back, and lay out, and get dark. My grandmother said I was the color of peanut butter, and I never should try to be something that I’m not.She coated herself head-to-toe in vegetable shortening, and laid out in the sun for hours in hopes of darkening her skin for the first day of school. However, instead of a perfect tan, she ended up being treated in the hospital for third-degree burns, and had to miss the first week of school entirely. This may seem extreme, but she recounted to me many instances where her skin tone caused her various problems. She was often subject to snide remarks and threatened- and this was just at school! Despite these experiences, she recalled her highschool years with nostalgia. She recalled weeks spent with her family on a farm in the country on the insistence of her father, who was insistent that his children not become ‘city’ and proud, and who brought them each November to a farm in the country to work, and live life away from modern conveniences. While many might have considered this a nuisance at best, she recalled these years with fondness, citing them as some of the best of her life. Very little of her childhood could be characterized as ‘typical’, for the simple reason that, looking back historically, the definition of a ‘typical’ childhood is usually understood to mean a typically white, typically suburban one.
Anything more is extravagance, anything less and you’re from the slums. Cynthia Hyatt grew up in the city of Detroit, Michigan, in an ethnically diverse and predominantly Jewish community. She had many of the ‘typical’ childhood experiences- family trips to the local Dairy Queen, and picnics, weekends out with her family and the like, but all of these experiences were flavoured by her
surroundings. Like many her age, young Cynthia harbored a crush on Michael Jackson, a pop star well-known even today. She wrote him love letters on pink stationery and daydreamed about the possibility that maybe, just maybe, he would write her back. In addition to the job that her father held at Sears, her family also owned a plumbing company. While plumbing might not be the first thing that pops into mind when thinking of socializing, everybody needs their toilets and sinks fixed sooner or later, and this fact of life led to her meeting several people of note of the day. I knew a few famous singers, as a young girl my father did a lot of plumbing business for Aretha Franklin,the Temptations, the four-tops, Anita Baker, I used to go bowling with Anita Baker, and if you don’t know who Anita Baker is ,you can just plug her in and you’ll find out but I went bowling with her. Cynthia and her friends would spend hours during the summer playing on the streets, rollerskating and playing games of basketball or baseball, often staying out into the early hours of the morning enjoying being kids. The overly-attentive and hovering parenting styles of the modern age were seldom to be found, and they would often find themselves out roller-skating well into the night. While kids today are often reluctant to walk the two or three blocks to the gas station, they would think nothing of walking twenty-two blocks or more in order to visit a friends house, or to go to the park. She considered herself very into ‘pop culture’ at her school. She and her friends sported bold prints and enormous afros in keeping with the disco craze. Things that these days would seem outlandish were all the rage. One of the very first things she told me about was the phenomenon known as goldfish shoes which have for some reason and despite their awesomeness, been largely forgotten by the majority of society. In the toes of each of these ‘platforms’, she explained, would be a live goldfish. Upon their death, they could be replaced, but seldom were. ‘When they died, we just knew it was time to throw them out, get another one”, she explained. Aside from culture, however, Cynthia Hyatt was involved in her studies at school as well. Graduating with honors, she immediately went to the University of Detroit in order to begin studying for her teaching license. She was the president of her senior class, and went out of her way to make others feel welcome, often standing up for and including those who would otherwise be excluded. She recalled one time, during the middle of her Sophomore year, when a girl called Emily transferred into the school district. Besides the distinct disadvantage of transferring in during the middle of the school year, Emily was also white in a school predominately populated by people of color. Modestly glossing over what could have been no easy feat even during the best of circumstances, Hyatt mentioned showing her around and protecting her in the first couple of weeks particularly, warning off those who might seek to harm the girl, telling them that they’d have her to deal with first. These actions eventually paid off, with Emily making other friends within the school, but they remain friends to this day. All in all, the life of Cynthia Hyatt made her an ideal interview for my paper; a better candidate could scarcely have been created. More than that, however, interviewing her was incredibly interesting and enjoyable as well. I learned some about my topic, firsthand from someone who was there to experience some of it.
Hodes, Martha. "The Mercurial Nature and Abiding Power of Race: A Transnational Family Story." The American Historical Review 108, no. 1 (February 2003): 84-118.
Anne Moody’s memoir, Coming of Age in Mississippi, is an influential insight into the existence of a young girl growing up in the South during the Civil-Rights Movement. Moody’s book records her coming of age as a woman, and possibly more significantly, it chronicles her coming of age as a politically active Negro woman. She is faced with countless problems dealing with the racism and threat of the South as a poor African American female. Her childhood and early years in school set up groundwork for her racial consciousness. Moody assembled that foundation as she went to college and scatter the seeds of political activism. During her later years in college, Moody became active in numerous organizations devoted to creating changes to the civil rights of her people. These actions ultimately led to her disillusionment with the success of the movement, despite her constant action. These factors have contributed in shaping her attitude towards race and her skepticism about fundamental change in society.
Anne Moody had thought about joining the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), but she never did until she found out one of her roommates at Tougaloo college was the secretary. Her roommate asked, “why don’t you become a member” (248), so Anne did. Once she went to a meeting, she became actively involved. She was always participating in various freedom marches, would go out into the community to get black people to register to vote. She always seemed to be working on getting support from the black community, sometimes to the point of exhaustion. Son after she joined the NAACP, she met a girl that was the secretary to the ...
Smith, J, & Phelps, S (1992). Notable Black American Women, (1st Ed). Detroit, MI: Gale
The history of racial and class stratification in Los Angeles has created tension amongst and within groups of people. Southland, by Nina Revoyr, reveals how stratification influences a young Asian woman to abandon her past in order to try and fully integrate herself into society. The group divisions are presented as being personal divisions through the portrayal of a generational gap between the protagonist, Jackie, and her grandfather. Jackie speaks of her relationship with Rebecca explaining her reasons why she could never go for her. Jackie claims that “she looked Asian enough to turn Jackie off” (Revoyr, 2003, p. 105). Unlike her grandfather who had a good sense of where he came from and embraced it, Jackie rejected her racial background completely. Jackie has been detached from her past and ethnicity. This is why she could never be with Rebecca, Jackie thought of her as a “mirror she didn’t want to look into”. Rebecca was everything Jackie was tr...
The Author of this book (On our own terms: race, class, and gender in the lives of African American Women) Leith Mullings seeks to explore the modern and historical lives of African American women on the issues of race, class and gender. Mullings does this in a very analytical way using a collection of essays written and collected over a twenty five year period. The author’s systematic format best explains her point of view. The book explores issues such as family, work and health comparing and contrasting between white and black women as well as between men and women of both races.
Growing up as the young child of sharecroppers in Mississippi, Essie Mae Moody experienced and observed the social and economic deprivation of Southern Blacks. As a young girl Essie Mae and her family struggled to survive, often by the table scraps of the white families her mother worked for. Knowing little other than the squalor of their living conditions, she realizes this disparity while living in a two-room house off the Johnson’s property, whom her mother worked for, watching the white children play, “Here they were playing in a house that was nicer than any house I could have dreamed of”(p. 33). Additionally, the segregated school she attends was a “one room rotten wood building.” (p. 14), but Essie Mae manages to get straight A’s while caring for her younger sibli...
She leaves behind her family in order to pursue what she believes is the greater good. She leaves behind a family of nine, living in extreme poverty, to live with her biological father—who runs out on her at a young age to satisfy his need to feel big and important, simply based on anxieties about the hardships around him. Moody comes from a highly difficult and stressful situation, but she stands as the only hope for her starving family and leaves them behind for a life of scholarship and opportunity. This memoir leaves the reader with a sense of guilt for Moody’s decisions, and one may even argue that these decisions happened in vain, as the movement never made a massive impact on race relations. Unfortunately for Moody, she would continue to witness atrocious hate crimes up until the year of her
Rebecca Walker is a Jewish African American young women, who experience a heart breaking childhood. Growing up she was shuffled from one side of the country to the other, switching form one world to the other. In Rebecca Walker’s famous book, Black, White, and Jewish, she struggled to choice what race she wanted to be acquainted with, struggled to build lasting relationships, and continued to fight for the love and attention she wanted.
Angela Yvonne Davis’ interest in social justice began during her youth when she was exposed firsthand to the hateful and violent consequences of racism. She was born on ...
The family member I interviewed is my mother, though she herself is not an immigrant, due to the circumstances of her upbringing, I thought she would relate more to Reyna Grande’s story than my father would. My mother has always shared stories of her upbringing with me and my siblings, she would often tell us stories of growing up in Hasidim from the ages of four to fifteen were like and how assimilating back into secular culture was like coming to a new country. Though I have heard the stories before and knew a majority of the answers to my questions I did find out some things I was not aware of. One of the major things I didn’t know before was that my mother had mostly spoken Yiddish in her childhood and coming back to secular culture a major challenge of that was overcoming a limited knowledge of the English language. And although she did come back to secular culture, knowing a fair amount of English due to the extreme censorship in Hasidim there was a large amount of words and concept she had never heard of before things like dinosaurs and science were completely foreign to her. I sat with my mother for well over and hour and we talked about these sort of things. In conclusion I came to terms with my own culture and feelings of disconnect with my Jewish heritage and
childhood was filled with thriving community as well as isolation from the hatred and racism that lurked outside of the confines of Eatonville. “[Zora’s] early childhood was so free from discrimination that it took a trip to Jacksonville, with its...
My interview with Ms. Chung was of moderate duration, lasting for about half an hour. While it occurred over the phone, it felt somewhat personal. Ms. Chung certainly has a knack for connecting with those she engages. Questions largely pertained to her career but some of her life and personal story shined through in her answers. It was a very revealing and thought provoking experience for m...
Adrienne Rich is a southern Jew who grew up during the forties. Rich lived in a gentle neighborhood and was never taught about her Jewish heritage. She eventually had to deal with conflicts between the religious and cultural heritage of her father’s Jewish background and her mother’s southern Protestantism (Pope). Rich’s father didn’t show any signs of ethnicity in any way. He did this to fit into a society that was against Jewish people. In many of her works, Adrienne Rich talks about being oppressed. In her poem, “1948: Jews,” Adrienne Rich refers to her college years. At Radcliffe University, she was to stay away from Jews. No matter how much she wanted, she could not unite with them as a group because socially it was less acceptable. She had to avoid her own ethnicity to survive in the American culture. “A Vision,” is another poem Rich wrote that discusses the issue of...
...However, this encouragement does not come without its own cost, as is illustrated in Walker’s “Everyday Use” as Dee, who has been well educated and achieved a standard of living comparable to that of the white urban middle class, loses some of her deep connection to her cultural heritage, a heritage that is an intrinsic part of her sister who lives in it every day. The constant struggle of the black community to better its condition at the same time as it retains a close connection with its cultural past is thus a constant theme throughout black literature.