Exposure Dread

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Nothing whatever was done. After Black Monday, Charlotte begged for "time": and what she did with this time was work out legal stratagems designed to get the least possible integration over the longest possible period. In August of 1955, Governor Hodges, a mod- NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME 20 3 erate, went on the air with the suggestion that Negroes seg regate themselves voluntarily-for the good, as he put it, of both races. Negroes seeming to be unmoved by this moderate proposal, the Klan reappeared in the counties and was still active there when I left. So, no doubt, are the boys on the chain gang. But "Charlotte," I was told, "is not the South." I was told, "You haven't seen the South yet." Charlotte seemed quite Southern enough tor me, but, in fact, the people in Charlotte were right. One of the reasons for this is that the South is not the monolithic structure which, trom the North, it appears to be, but a most various and divided region. It clings to the myth of its past but it is being inexorably changed, meanwhile, by an entirely unmythical present: its habits and its self-interest are at war. Everyone in the South feels this and this is why there is such panic on the bottom and such impotence on the top. It must also be said that the racial setup in the South is not, for a Negro, very different fr om the racial setup in the North. It is the etiquette which is baffling, not the spirit. Segregation is unofficial in the North and official in the South, a crucial difference that does nothing, nevertheless, to alleviate the lot of most Northern Negroes. But we will return to this question when we discuss the relationship between the Southern cities and states. Atlanta, however, is the South. It is the South in this re spect, that it has a very bitter interracial history. This is written in the faces of the people and one feels it in the air. It was on the outskirts of Atlanta that I first felt how the Southern land scape-the trees, the silence, the liquid heat, and the fact that one always seems to be traveling great distances-seems de signed for violence, seems, almost, to demand it. What pas sions cannot be unleashed on a dark road in a Southern night! Everything seems so sensual, so languid, and so private. Desire can be acted out here; over this fence, behind that tree, in the darkness, there; and no one will see, no one will ever know. Only the night is watching and the night was made t(:>r desire. Protestantism is the wrong religion tor people in such cli mates; America is perhaps the last nation in which such a climate belongs.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  My dusky tribe had the same troubles, without the tremendous pause. Nevertheless, London was still tar from being as hysterical and dangerous as New York. Eventually, of course, black En glishmen, Indians, students, conscientious objectors, and CIA infiltrators-no doubt-tracked me down, as we had known was inevitable. Dick Gregory came to town and we shared a 408 NO NAME IN THE STR EE T pla tf orm before part of London's black community. A British columnist told his readers before or during this time that he wished I would either "drop dead or shut up"; and on King's Road, near our house, British hippies paraded one day, car rying banners, one of which read, "K eep Britain Black." I felt myself in London on borrowed time, for sometime before, the Home Otlice, as I learned when I landed at Heathrow Airport, had declared me persona non grata in Britain. They had let me land, finally, but it took awhile. (They had thrown Stokely out about a week before.) I thought of the late Lorraine Ha nsberry's statement (to me) concerning the solidarity of the Western powers, and the impossibility, for such as we, of hoping for political asyl um anywhere in the West. I thought of Robert Williams, who had not intended and almost surely never desired, to go East. And I thought of Malcolm. Alex Haley wrote The Au tobiography of Malcolm X. Months bef ore the foregoing, in New York, he and Elia Kazan and I had agreed to do it as a pl ay-and I still wish we had. We were vaguely aware that Hol lywood was nibbling for a book, but, as Ho lly wood is always nibbling, it occurred to no one, certainly not to me, to take these nibbles seriously. It simply was not a subject which Hol lywood could manage, and I didn't see any point in talking to them about it. But the book was sold to an independent producer, named Marvin Worth, who would produce it for Columbia Pictures. By this time, I was already in London; and I was also on the spot.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Nitrogen gas will begin to flow into the mask. Under these conditions Mr. Smith’s undisputed posttraumatic stress disorder, which no one contests is causing him to persistently vomit, will be at its absolute peak. At the same time, he will experience oxygen deprivation, a known effect of which is vomiting. If Mr. Smith vomits, his executioners will not intervene—they have told us so—even as vomit fills the mask and flows into Mr. Smith’s nose and mouth. Then, at last, Mr. Smith’s body will succumb to the effects of oxygen deprivation, asphyxiation, or both. He will die. The cost, I fear, will be Mr. Smith’s human dignity, and ours. Despite these concerns, the United States Supreme Court once again allowed the execution to proceed. As feared, multiple witnesses to Mr. Smith’s second execution reported that he appeared to suffer terribly. When nitrogen started flowing into the mask, Mr. Smith began to writhe in pain, his body thrashing against the straps that bound him to the gurney. Some media witnesses observed “his whole body and head violently jerking back and forth for several minutes,” followed by “heaving and retching inside the mask.” Mr. Smith clenched his fists and his legs shook. As Mr. Smith gasped for air, his body lifted against the restraints, shaking the gurney several times. Witnesses observed saliva or tears on the inside of the mask. The execution lasted more than thirty minutes; Mr. Smith showed visible signs of distress and pain during much of that time. After he was declared dead, state officials announced that Mr. Smith’s execution was “flawless” and had gone “exactly as planned.” This was contradicted by witnesses and advocates who described it as horrific torture. The execution drew international condemnation from the United Nations, the European Union, faith leaders, and human rights groups. But Alabama almost immediately sought to execute more people using this new method and offered its assistance to other states to do the same. — Since the release of Just Mercy ten years ago, I’ve often been asked whether the administration of justice has improved in America. Mr. Smith’s distressing execution would strongly suggest it has not. But it’s a more complicated question than this tragic event reveals. Over the last ten years, there has been a dramatic decline in the number of executions in the United States and a similar decline in the number of death sentences imposed. Washington, Colorado, New Hampshire, Delaware, and Virginia have all abolished the death penalty in the last decade. Oregon’s governor has commuted the death sentences of everyone on death row in that state.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Because of his mental illness and incompetency, George was never retried or prosecuted. He has been at a mental institution ever since. But there are likely hundreds of other people imprisoned after an evaluation by “Dr. Seger” whose convictions have never been reviewed. — A lot of my clients on death row have had serious mental illnesses, but it wasn’t always obvious that their history of mental illness predated their time in prison, since symptoms of their disabilities could be episodic and were frequently stress-induced. But Avery Jenkins’s letters, handwritten in print so small I needed a magnifying glass to read them, convinced me that he had been very ill for a long time. I looked up his case and began to piece together his story. It turned out he’d been convicted of the very disturbing and brutal murder of an older man. The multiple stab wounds inflicted on the victim strongly suggested mental illness, but the court records and files never referenced anything about Jenkins suffering from a disability. I thought I’d find out more by meeting him in person. When I pulled into the prison parking lot, I noticed a pickup truck there that looked like a shrine to the Old South: It was completely covered with disturbing bumper stickers, Confederate flag decals, and other troubling images. Confederate flag license plates are everywhere in the South, but some of the bumper stickers were new to me. A lot were about guns and Southern identity. One read, IF I’D KNOWN IT WAS GOING TO BE LIKE THIS, I’D HAVE PICKED MY OWN DAMN COTTON. Despite growing up around images of the Confederate South and working in the Deep South for many years, I was pretty shaken by the symbols. I’d always been especially interested in the post-Reconstruction era of American history. My grandmother was the daughter of people who were enslaved. She was born in Virginia in the 1880s, after federal troops had been withdrawn and a reign of violence and terror had begun, designed to deny any political or social rights for African Americans. Her father told her stories of how the recently emancipated black people were essentially re-enslaved by former Confederate officers and soldiers, who used violence, intimidation, lynching, and peonage to keep African Americans subordinate and marginalized. My grandmother’s parents were deeply embittered by how the promise of freedom and equality following slavery ended when white Southern Democrats reclaimed political power through violence. Terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan cloaked themselves in the symbols of the Confederate South to intimidate and victimize thousands of black people.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  While we feasted on ham and grits and eggs, Mr. Bolger spread a map on the table and marked our route to Seattle. Without actually saying so, he gave us to understand that this trip was a new chance to prove ourselves. We were to drive directly to Seattle and directly home. No sidetrips. No hitchhikers. No drinking. Mr. Bolger tried to be stem as he gave us our marching orders, but it was clear that he enjoyed sending us off on what he considered to be a business of some pith and moment, which it was, if not exactly in the way he imagined. I met Mr. Howard at Ivar’s Acres of Clams down on the wharf. His wife was with him, a tall fine-boned woman with black hair just beginning to gray—a few strands that made the rest of her hair seem even blacker. She had deep-set, watchful dark eyes. Even when she smiled I felt her taking my measure, felt the force of her curiosity. It wasn’t an arrogant curiosity: she wanted to know who I was. To be looked at that way is unsettling when you feel in danger of being seen through and exposed. I kept my eyes on Mr. Howard, who, under the pretext of warning me about the pitfalls of life at Hill, was happily reminiscing about his own years there—the friends he’d had and the stunts they’d pulled, like flooding the dormitory floor with water, opening the windows so it would freeze, then playing hockey through the rooms. I could see that he considered some of his memories too hot to handle. He would smile at them, then shake his head and pass on to something else. His speech turned peppery. A silly grin stole over his face. He seemed to get younger and younger, as if talking about being a boy had changed him into one. Mrs. Howard relaxed her scrutiny. When I got lost in the menu she helped me decide what to order. We talked about Julius Caesar , which I was reading in English, and she mentioned that she did fund-raising for the Seattle Repertory Theater. She was a damned fine actress in her own right, Mr. Howard said. She made a face. “Well, it’s true,” he said. I could see that he admired her and expected me to admire her too. There was an air of partnership about them that I felt warmed by. We were sitting in a corner table overlooking the water. Gulls strutted on the railing outside, shaking their feathers and turning their heads at us. The air was rich with the smell of chowder. Sunlight gleamed on the silver, lit up the ice cubes in our glasses, made the tablecloth bright as a snowfield.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  As in movies I had seen, I was placed against a wal l, f. ·King an old-f ashioned camera, behind which stood one of the most completely cruel and inditlcrent faces I had ever seen, while someone next to me and, therefore, just out side my line ofvision, read off in a voice from which all human EQ UAL IN PARIS 109 feeling, even feeling of the most base description, had long since fled, what must be called my public characteristics which, at that time and in that place, seemed anything but that. He might have been roaring to the hostile world secrets which I could barely, in the privacy of midnight, utter to my self But he was only reading off my height, my features, my approximate weight, my color-that color which, in the United States, had often, odd as it may sound, been my sal vation-the color of my hair, my age, my nationality. A light then flashed, the photographer and I staring at each other as though there was murder in our hearts, and then it was over. Handcuff ed again, I was led downstairs to the bottom of the building, into a great enclosed shed in which had been gath ered the very scrapings off the Paris streets. Old, old men, so ruined and old that lif e in them seemed really to prove the miracle of the quickening power of the Holy Ghost-f or clea rly their lif e was no longer their affair, it was no longer even their burden, they were simply the clay which had once been touched. And men not so old, with faces the color of lead and the consistency of oatmeal, eyes that made me think of stale caje-au -lait spiked with arsenic, bodies which could take in food and water-any food and water-and pass it out, but which could not do anything more, except possibly, at midnight, along the riverbank where rats scurried, rape. And young men, harder and crueler than the Paris stones, older by far than I, their chronological senior by some fi,·e to seven years. And North Africans, old and young, who seemed the only living people in this place because they yet retained the grace to be bewildered. But they were not bewildered by be ing in this shed: they were simply bewildered because they were no longer in North Africa. There was a great hole in the center of this shed, which was the common toilet. Near it, though it was impossible to get very far from it, stood an old man with white hair, eating a piece of camembert. It was at this point, probably, that thought, for me, stopped, that phys iology, if one may say so, took over.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  “Hi,” she said, bobbing her head. She turned to Bernard and rolled her eyes as she walked him to the door, knowing that he would enjoy this open display of contempt. “See you soon,” he said. He held her against him for a second, and she experienced a disorienting sense of comfort and safety that made walking back into the invading stares of her prospective boyfriends almost voluptuously exposing. She stood before them, and the canned laughter sounded once more. — That night she went to a group show at a small gallery in Soho that included work by her friend Sandra. As usual, she was one of the few non-artists there. Sandra, nervous and carefully chic in a bright blue pillbox hat and a long black velvet skirt, introduced her as “my friend Stephanie, who writes for The Village Voice.” This impressed people, even when Stephanie said, “I just wrote one thing for the Voice and that was a year and a half ago.” “Yes, but you look like a writer for The Village Voice,” said a painter. “That sounds like an insult to me.” “It’s not an insult, but it’s not a compliment either.” He barked out a laugh. Stephanie attached herself to another conversation about the embarrassing failure of an art gallery that she had never heard of, which, after a rapid shift of participants, became a discussion about somebody’s review in the Times versus somebody’s review in the Voice. Sandra rapidly crossed and recrossed the floor, darting in and out of conversations with apparent pleasure and animation. “Nobody’s here,” she hissed finally, near the hors d’oeuvres, even though there were dozens of people present. Stephanie wandered from conversation to conversation, having an almost panicky feeling that although there were nice, interesting people in the room, the situation, for all its seeming friendliness and ease, precluded her from connecting with the nice and interesting aspects of them. She tried to figure out why this was and could not, beyond the sense that the conversations around her were opening and closing according to the subtle but definite rules that no one had told her about. Then she saw Dara, Sandra’s other non-artist friend, standing regally alone. Dara was trying to become a fashion designer, and she looked unusually beautiful that night in a strapless satin dress that was dramatically faded in the middle where someone had probably spilled something on it a long time ago. Stephanie had always admired Dara, even though she was not friendly and had once been very rude to Stephanie on the phone. But Dara seemed pleased to see her and hung on to her presence throughout a shockingly dull conversation that stumbled awkwardly through Sandra’s work, Sandra’s husband’s work, a writer Stephanie liked and a movie. Still, Stephanie resolutely held on to her idea of Dara as an interesting person. She said, “You seem like someone who is at home in the world.”

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  People think that O’Rourke goes around snooping and spying, that he derives a special pleasure in performing this dirty work for the company. Not so. O’Rourke is a born student of human nature. He picks things up without effort, due, to be sure, to his peculiar way of looking at the world. Now about you . . . I have no doubt that he knows everything about you. I never asked him, I admit, but I imagine so from the questions he poses now and then. Perhaps he’s just giving you plenty of rope. Some night he’ll run into you accidentally and perhaps he’ll ask you to stop off somewhere and have a bite to eat with him. And out of a clear sky he’ll suddenly say—you remember, Curley, when you were working up in SA office, the time that little Jewish clerk was fired for tapping the till? I think you were working overtime that night, weren’t you? An interesting case, that. You know, they never discovered whether the clerk stole the money or not. They had to fire him, of course, for negligence, but we can’t say for certain that he really stole the money. I’ve been thinking about that little affair now for quite some time. I have a hunch as to who took that money, but I’m not absolutely sure. . . . And then he’ll probably give you a beady eye and abruptly change the conversation to something else. He’ll probably tell you a little story about a crook he knew who thought he was very smart and getting away with it. He’ll draw that story out for you until you feel as though you were sitting on hot coals. By that time you’ll be wanting to beat it, but just when you’re ready to go he’ll suddenly be reminded of another very interesting little case and hell ask you to wait just a little longer while he orders another dessert. And hell go on like that for three or four hours at a stretch, never making the least overt insinuation, but studying you closely all the time, and finally, when you think you’re free, just when you’re shaking hands with him and breathing a sigh of relief, he’ll step in front of you and, planting his big square feet between your legs, he’ll grab you by the lapel and, looking straight through you, he’ll say in a soft, winsome voice—now look here, my lad, don’t you think you had better come clean? And if you think he’s only trying to browbeat you and that you can pretend innocence and walk away, you’re mistaken. Because at that point, when he asks you to come clean, he means business and nothing on earth is going to stop him. When it gets to that point I’d recommend you to make a clean sweep of it, down to the last penny.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  Slowly, holding me like a difficult drunk, she brought me towards the parapet. I wanted to do it, but had already the sense of scrabbling for existence on the edge of a cliff. I couldn't have done it with anyone but her. Well, Luc, perhaps could have beckoned me on. The long hexagonal apertures opened at diaphragm height and one could grip the stone on either side. I did give her a perfunctory pointer to the Cathedral and St John's; and there was the lantern of St Narcissus, of course, the school with its two hidden courtyards beyond, and that must be the steep old roof of my own room, with the front dormer just visible: Edie looked along my trembling finger to find it. If I tilted my view too steeply down I panicked and drew back. "Gosh, look at the docks," I said. The sea-canal was bright and empty, and in the distance were raised cranes and beyond them the glimmering line of the coast. I saw the derelict industrial suburbs, roads swinging out across the flat farmlands, and far-off masses of poplar and beech. On the other side there were the shadows of cities towards the horizon, there was the station, and the modest outskirts of the town, and then a beautiful golden wood. It took me a moment to recognise it as the Hermitage. Seeing it all at a glance inside its high wall I could hardly believe how I had wandered in it that night for so long. There was the tea-house; and that long break in the trees must hide the endless, misty pond. And where was the clearing with the yew-niches? Somewhere there, among the autumn magnificence. I wanted to look for Luc's house, but it was too close: I felt faint as I traced the far end of Long Street and had to step back and sit down. I lay out flat for a while and closed my eyes while Edie bounded about. As well as the animal fear I felt a kind of humiliation at seeing the quaint labyrinth of the city contracted below me, and my futile little circuits laid bare. When I opened my eyes it was worse—swinging blue vacancy, the tip of the flagpole with its oxidised lightning-spike. It was like being on top of a mast. Then, with annihilating loudness, eleven o'clock began to strike. "Now you must do something for me," I said. I was stamping and lurching about on the lovely flat ground, giddy like someone who has just been robbed of his autonomy on a scary ride at a fair. Surely passers-by could tell that I had left their dimension for a while and had come back to it with a vow never to leave it again. The warmth! The sensible calm! We went into the Golden Calf and had a settling gin.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  So who is left to help the children who deep down know what they witnessed and are thoroughly confused, distressed, and lost? They have no say in proceedings that presumably center on their best interests. Who speaks for the child or to the child? The courts have a window of opportunity to help children deal with issues of morality and controlling aggression, yet, incredibly, they turn away from what may be their most important task. 4 There is no mechanism for bringing domestic violence to light except in a custody battle. How many judges instruct violent fathers to help their vulnerable children? How many magistrates tell women how important it is to advise their daughters how to avoid the perils of abusive relationships? A small number of courts require perpetrators of abuse who sue for custody or unsupervised visitation to complete classes in curbing violent impulses, but such courses rarely address how parents should or could help their children. The children, alas, are lost in the shadows. I’m not suggesting that children should be barred from visiting fathers who were violent in their marriages. We know this kind of ruling can boomerang. A father who is a forbidden figure can become, in the child’s heart and mind, an epic hero or martyr. But I am suggesting that we should undertake programs to counsel children and parents in these issues before the visits are allowed. When violence occurs behind closed doors, as we know it does, it is very difficult to reach these families. But when a divorce occurs, violent families including these children can and should be given help. (I’ll discuss providing help to violent families further in the conclusions.) The Mother’s Role I N LEAVING VIOLENT marriages, many women manage to escape. Unfortunately, their children continue to be trapped by internal images and memories of violence. Direct intervention with such children is critical. Here a mother has a very important responsibility in helping her children understand why she is leaving the abusive relationship. Her tender loving feelings will go far in soothing the trauma that they have witnessed. But even this is not enough. After she musters the courage to leave and faces the rigors of reconstructing her life, she owes her children the story of what really happened. It is their history as well as hers. Through telling it, she needs to convey the moral message of why violence is not acceptable. Most of all, she needs to help her children understand what love between a man and a woman is about and how it can go awry, how it can lead to hurt and eventually to destruction. Hard as it is, she needs to explain to her daughters, when they are old enough to understand, how she was misled. Many women who marry violent men are aware of the behavior during courtship. One of the wives in our study was beaten with a whip during her engagement and married the man anyway.

• From Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

  Immediately, the woman began asking why I would scream at my mother and storm off, why I didn’t recognize that she was my mother and that I had to live with her by law. The therapist chronicled “outbursts” that I’d allegedly had, some going back to a time I couldn’t remember—the time I threw a tantrum in a department store as a five-year-old, my fight with another child in school (the school bully, whom I didn’t want to punch but did so at Mamaw’s encouragement), the times I’d run from home to my grandparents’ house because of Mom’s “discipline.” Clearly this woman had developed an impression of me based solely on what Mom had told her. If I didn’t have an anger problem before, I did now. “Do you have any idea what you’re talking about?” I asked. At fourteen, I knew at least a little about professional ethics. “Aren’t you supposed to ask me what I think about things and not just criticize me?” I launched into an hour-long summary of my life to that point. I didn’t tell the whole story, since I knew I had to choose my words carefully: During Mom’s domestic violence case a couple of years earlier, Lindsay and I had let slip some unsavory details about Mom’s parenting, and because it counted as a new revelation of abuse, the family counselor was required to report it to child services. So I didn’t miss the irony of lying to a therapist (to protect Mom) lest I ignite another intervention by the county children’s services. I explained the situation well enough: After an hour, she said simply, “Perhaps we should meet alone.” I saw this woman as an obstacle to overcome—an obstacle placed by Mom—not as someone who might help. I explained only half of my feelings: that I had no interest in putting a forty-five-minute barrier between me and everyone I had ever depended on so I could replant myself with a man I knew would be sent packing. The therapist obviously understood. What I didn’t tell her is that for the first time in my life, I felt trapped. There was no Papaw, and Mamaw—a longtime smoker with the emphysema to prove it—seemed too frail and exhausted to care for a fourteen-year-old boy. My aunt and uncle had two young kids. Lindsay was newly married and had a child of her own. I had nowhere to go. I’d seen chaos and fighting, violence, drugs, and a great deal of instability. But I’d never felt like I had no way out. When the therapist asked me what I’d do, I replied that I would probably go live with my dad. She said that this sounded like a good idea. When I walked out of her office, I thanked her for her time and knew that I’d never see her again. Mom had a massive blind spot in the way that she perceived the world.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  But I have rarely met a child who felt protected by this system. On the contrary, most children would be very surprised to hear that any judge, attorney, mediator, or anyone else had their interests at heart when setting up court-ordered visiting. Many do not feel protected by their own parents in the planning of visiting or custody. Instead, they feel silenced. The visiting schedule, which the children deem arbitrary and oppressive, is made without their interests and wishes in mind. When they were preschoolers, how the time was parsed out was less of an issue. But as they grew up, went to new schools, made new friends, took up sports and other organized activities with their peers, the court-ordered visiting that worked when they were little became a major burden. The children in this study whose lives were governed by court orders or mediated parental agreements all told me that they felt like second-class citizens who had lost the freedoms their peers took for granted. They say that as they grew older and craved independence, they had even less say, less control over their schedules, and less power to determine when and where they would spend their time—especially precious vacation time. Joan, like all teenagers, valued her weekends, her yackety-yak time on the telephone, parties, and other social events. Paula adored her pet rabbit and worried about it every weekend she was away. Would the order of the world have changed if each of these children had been consulted about what they wanted? Our court system is strangely at odds with what we experience in our own families. Most households welcome input from children. Although the home is not governed by the child’s wishes, Americans tend to listen to their children and value their opinions. They are seen and heard and consulted. But the “court-created child” is a passive vessel—like a rag doll that stays put in whatever position it is placed. Children are regarded by the legal system almost as nonpersons, strangely lacking in preferences or opinions based on their own observations and experiences. They’re expected to go along contentedly and silently with whatever arrangements have been made by respective attorneys or their parents or the court. They are given zero opportunity to express their preferences among plans made for them, and if there is a court battle, their development is expected to come to a complete halt. A visiting schedule established for a six-year-old is expected to meet the needs of a thirteen-year-old. Why not issue flexible orders that could be reopened for assessment and increasing input from the growing child as she reaches each new developmental stage? The real children in this study did not remain silent about the system’s unfairness. They complained that they were being bullied by the courts or by a parent backed by the court.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  I wondered if I was about to go down on him. "Look at this," he said. Mounted on a ledge at the side was a small black-and-white TV set, a security monitor for the shop. It showed the central area in an odd convex perspective, a customer passing beneath looming with enormous cranium and dwindling curved body ending in tiny shoes. It made me instantly suspicious, the distortion seemed to challenge you to notice the thief s shifty recce or his smooth concealment of some small pricey item. The lack of sound enhanced the sense of stealth. Alejo turned a knob and the scene changed to the front vestibule, if anything even more sinister for its emptiness. In the bottom corner little Rudi was lolling at the desk, staring at nothing, unaware he was being spied on. He looked at his watch. "Now let's see what's up in number three," said Alejo and switched again. We had a steep-down view on to the row of changing-cubicles. "It's amazing what you catch on this camera—I don't mean sex, just the things people do." I knew uneasily that he must be right—those crises of contemplation, envisaging the changed future some garment seems for a moment to guarantee. Over to the left the naked upper part of my rival could be seen, pale and powerful, clouding his underarms with talc. "What the hell's he doing?" I demanded. "You have to do that for the rubber vests, you know, or you never get them off." Alejo kept watching professionally, like a policeman waiting for a hesitation to turn into a crime. "We've had a lot of trouble with him." "I'm not surprised." "He's weird, he keeps trying things on but he never buys." "Why don't you ban him?" I said, though my indignation was sapped by the view of the cubicle immediately below. It was clear that Cherif could not be less interested in the chi-chi underwear he was being tricked into trying; he hadn't even opened the packets. I was pleased and somewhat possessive. My friend was simply sitting on the narrow bench and turning a piece of paper over in his hands. Then I knew, despite the plunging perspective, that the paper was a letter I had written to him, in our very first week, full of unguarded declarations, and marked by me in various shamefully personal ways. The two of us frowned into the little screen as he tilted his head back and ran the letter contentedly under his nose.

• From Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

  The light from her office illuminated a few spiderwebs suspended between the building and the makeshift sun blocker that seemed primed to collapse on top of me. On each web was at least one giant spider, and I thought that if I looked away from them for too long, one of those ghastly creatures would jump on my face and suck my blood. I’m not even afraid of spiders, but these things were big . I wasn’t supposed to be here. I’d structured my entire life to avoid just these types of places. When I thought of leaving my hometown, of “getting out,” it was from this sort of place that I wanted to escape. It was past midnight. The streetlight revealed the silhouette of a man sitting halfway in his truck—the door open, his feet dangling to the side—with the unmistakable form of a hypodermic needle sticking from his arm. I should have been shocked, but this was Middletown, after all. Just a few weeks earlier, the police had discovered a woman passed out at the local car wash, a bag of heroin and a spoon in the passenger seat, the needle still protruding from her arm. The woman running the hotel that night was the most pitiful sight of all. She might have been forty, but everything about her—from the long, gray, greasy hair, the mouth empty of teeth, and the frown that she wore like a millstone—screamed old age. This woman had lived a hard life. Her voice sounded like a small child’s, even a toddler’s. It was meek, barely audible, and very sad. I gave the woman my credit card, and she was clearly unprepared. “Normally, people pay cash,” she explained. I told her, “Yeah, but like I said on the phone, I’m going to pay with a credit card. I can run to an ATM if you’d prefer.” “Oh, I’m sorry, I guess I forgot. But it’s okay, we’ve got one of those machines around here somewhere.” So she retrieved one of those ancient card-swiping machines—the kind that imprints the card’s information on a yellow slip of paper. When I handed her the card, her eyes seemed to plead with me, as if she were a prisoner in her own life. “Enjoy your stay,” she said, which struck me as an odd instruction. I had told her on the phone not an hour earlier that the room wasn’t for me, it was for my homeless mother. “Okay,” I said. “Thanks.” I was a recent graduate of Yale Law School, a former editor of the prestigious Yale Law Journal , and a member of the bar in good standing. Just two months earlier, Usha and I were married on a beautiful day in Eastern Kentucky. My entire family showed up for the occasion, and we both changed our name to Vance—giving me, finally, the same name as the family to which I belonged.

• From Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

  There was something bizarre about Yale’s social rituals: the cocktail receptions and banquets that served as both professional networking and personal matchmaking events. I lived among newly christened members of what folks back home pejoratively call the “elites,” and by every outward appearance, I was one of them: I am a tall, white, straight male. I have never felt out of place in my entire life. But I did at Yale. Part of it has to do with social class. A student survey found that over 95 percent of Yale Law’s students qualified as upper-middle-class or higher, and most of them qualified as outright wealthy. Obviously, I was neither upper-middle-class nor wealthy. Very few people at Yale Law School are like me. They may look like me, but for all of the Ivy League’s obsession with diversity, virtually everyone—black, white, Jewish, Muslim, whatever—comes from intact families who never worry about money. Early during my first year, after a late night of drinking with my classmates, we all decided to stop at a New Haven chicken joint. Our large group left an awful mess: dirty plates, chicken bones, ranch dressing and soda splattered on the tables, and so on. I couldn’t imagine leaving it all for some poor guy to clean up, so I stayed behind. Of a dozen classmates, only one person helped me: my buddy Jamil, who also came from a poorer background. Afterward, I told Jamil that we were probably the only people in the school who’d ever had to clean up someone else’s mess. He just nodded his head in silent agreement. Even though my experiences were unique, I never felt like a foreigner in Middletown. Most people’s parents had never gone to college. My closest friends had all seen some kind of domestic strife in their life—divorces, remarriages, legal separations, or fathers who spent some time in jail. A few parents worked as lawyers, engineers, or teachers. They were “rich people” to Mamaw, but they were never so rich that I thought of them as fundamentally different. They still lived within walking distance of my house, sent their kids to the same high school, and generally did the same things the rest of us did. It never occurred to me that I didn’t belong, even in the homes of some of my relatively wealthy friends. At Yale Law School, I felt like my spaceship had crashed in Oz. People would say with a straight face that a surgeon mother and engineer father were middle-class. In Middletown, $160,000 is an unfathomable salary; at Yale Law School, students expect to earn that amount in the first year after law school. Many of them are already worried that it won’t be enough. It wasn’t just about the money or my relative lack of it. It was about people’s perceptions. Yale made me feel, for the first time in my life, that others viewed my life with intrigue.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  Sex functions as a primary symbolic code in the world of Christian legend, but in a radically reformulated sense. Chris- tian romances not only preach a new model of proper sexual conduct, they also discovered a way of expressing a strikingly original romance of the eternal soul, in which this world of fl ux and regeneration is a façade and the reunion with God, through purity and death, is the ultimate consumma- tion. “Nothing of yours endures, but all things, right down to human con- ventions, are transient.”  As in the pagan romances, the Acts reveal deep generic similarities in the treatment of sex, so that there is a sense in which the genre speaks collec- tively, or at least uses a shared syntax of conventions and symbols. Even in the apostolic traditions that rely least on the manipulation of sexual proto- cols, certain formulas recur. Th e Acts of Peter focus principally on the ri- valry between the apostle Peter and the mountebank ur- heretic, Simon Ma- gus. Sexual tropes are not, in the Petrine legends as we have them, a dominant thread. But they do suddenly play a commanding role when the story turns abruptly from the rivalry with Simon Magus toward the death of Peter. Th e fatal sequence begins when four concubines of the prefect Agrippa hear the “teaching about purity, and all the teachings of the Lord” and withdraw their sexual favors from the powerful offi cial. Peter’s next triumph is a “a superlative beauty,” X anthippe, the wife of a powerful man. Finally, “many other women” left their husbands, and husbands their wives, in the name of sexual purity. With so many marriage beds abandoned, Peter has put Rome in an epic stir of erotic frustration. Peter sneaks out of the city in disguise but, i n a touc h i ng sc ene, enc ou nters Ch rist a nd f a mou sly a sk s h i m, “ W h it her  FROM SHAME TO SIN goest thou?” Peter marches back through the gates to his certain death. Th e apostle’s preaching on sexual chastity is the proximate cause of the most famous scene in apocryphal literature and the most hallowed martyrdom in Christian history (save one).  In the Acts of Peter, the “word of purity” that leads to the apostle’s death is abrupt and almost mechanical in its exaggerated predictability. In the Acts of Th omas, the pattern of events is identical, although the drama is more elaborately developed. To the fi gure of Th omas stuck the most exotic legends of the early church. His Acts describe his mission to India, where he converts an aristocratic woman, Mygdonia, to the gospel.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  They’re not as strong as they used to be and Gavin tries to teach me to laugh them away.” Her serious expression had not faded. “It works some of the time.” Karen’s story is fascinating because it illustrates how even a happy marriage carries a residue of the past that can ricochet into the present at any time. Such triggers can be an unexpected absence, a moderate disagreement, or a flash of anger. The child of divorce thinks, “This is the other shoe dropping. Here it comes. I always knew it couldn’t last. The man is gone. The marriage is over. I am alone and abandoned, just like I always knew I would be.” Karen’s logic is impeccable: if you’re afraid of loss, you’re safe only if you have nothing to lose. But if you have a happy marriage, a loving man, a beautiful child, then you’re in danger. One young woman stated it plainly: “No matter how much I love someone, no matter how much I trust him, no matter how good and trustworthy he is, there is a tiny corner of me that does not believe he will stay. I will never believe it.” Many grown children of divorce ask me: Why do I feel the way I do? Why am I having so much trouble finding someone to love me and someone I can trust? What’s wrong with me? Why am I so afraid of change? Why am I so afraid of loss? If my wife is thirty minutes late, I wonder who she’s with. Why, if my husband is delayed, do I panic and think I’ll never see him again? Why does getting close to someone I love and having sex seem so scary? I get anguished letters from all over the country every week that pose the same questions, asking for advice. One that came yesterday is typical. “Dear Dr. Wallerstein, I am a child of divorce. I’m thirty-nine and have a loving husband and two wonderful sons. Yet I go to bed every night worried that when I wake up, they’ll be gone. Can you help me?” I think I can. The key phrase they all use is, “I am a child of divorce.” I hear it repeatedly when I talk to people in their thirties, forties, or even sixties. What exactly does it mean? Divorce in childhood creates an enduring identity. Because it typically occurs when a child is young and impressionable and the effects last throughout her growing up years, divorce leaves a permanent stamp. That identity is made up of the childhood fears that you can’t shake despite all the successes and achievements you’ve made as an adult. These are the consequences of the broken template I talked about earlier.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  They may consider these accusations vengeful or manipulative strategies to withhold the child. So who is left to help the children who deep down know what they witnessed and are thoroughly confused, distressed, and lost? They have no say in proceedings that presumably center on their best interests. Who speaks for the child or to the child? The courts have a window of opportunity to help children deal with issues of morality and controlling aggression, yet, incredibly, they turn away from what may be their most important task. 4 There is no mechanism for bringing domestic violence to light except in a custody battle. How many judges instruct violent fathers to help their vulnerable children? How many magistrates tell women how important it is to advise their daughters how to avoid the perils of abusive relationships? A small number of courts require perpetrators of abuse who sue for custody or unsupervised visitation to complete classes in curbing violent impulses, but such courses rarely address how parents should or could help their children. The children, alas, are lost in the shadows. I’m not suggesting that children should be barred from visiting fathers who were violent in their marriages. We know this kind of ruling can boomerang. A father who is a forbidden figure can become, in the child’s heart and mind, an epic hero or martyr. But I am suggesting that we should undertake programs to counsel children and parents in these issues before the visits are allowed. When violence occurs behind closed doors, as we know it does, it is very difficult to reach these families. But when a divorce occurs, violent families including these children can and should be given help. (I’ll discuss providing help to violent families further in the conclusions.) The Mother’s Role IN LEAVING VIOLENT marriages, many women manage to escape. Unfortunately, their children continue to be trapped by internal images and memories of violence. Direct intervention with such children is critical. Here a mother has a very important responsibility in helping her children understand why she is leaving the abusive relationship. Her tender loving feelings will go far in soothing the trauma that they have witnessed. But even this is not enough. After she musters the courage to leave and faces the rigors of reconstructing her life, she owes her children the story of what really happened. It is their history as well as hers. Through telling it, she needs to convey the moral message of why violence is not acceptable. Most of all, she needs to help her children understand what love between a man and a woman is about and how it can go awry, how it can lead to hurt and eventually to destruction. Hard as it is, she needs to explain to her daughters, when they are old enough to understand, how she was misled. Many women who marry violent men are aware of the behavior during courtship.

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  I try to breathe through my mouth but I can’t. I’m trapped. I have to watch, I have to smell. I think the war has made me a little mad—the dead corporal from Georgia, the old man that was shot in the village with his brains hanging out. But it is the living deaths I am breathing and smelling now, the living deaths, the bodies broken in the same war that I have come from. I am outside now in the narrow hallway. The young black woman is pushing my frame past all the other steel contraptions. I look at her face for a moment, at her eyes, as she pushes my frame up against another. I can hear the splashing of water next door in the shower room. The sun has come up in the Bronx and people are walking through the hallways. They can look into all the rooms and see the men through the curtains that never close. It is as if we are a bunch of cattle, as if we do not really count anymore. They push me into the shower. The black woman takes a green plastic container and squirts it, making a long thin white line from my head to my legs. She is turning on the water, and after making sure it is not too hot she hoses me down. It’s like a car wash, I think, it’s just like a big car wash, and I am being pushed and shoved through with the rest of them. I am being checked out by Tommy and hosed off by the woman. It is all such a neat, quick process. It is an incredible thing to run twenty men through a place like this, to clean out the bodies of twenty paralyzed men, twenty bloated twisted men. It is an incredible feat, a stupendous accomplishment, and Tommy is a master. Now the black woman is drying me off with a big white towel and shoving me back into the hallway. Oh get me back into the room, get me back away from these people who are walking by me and making believe like all the rest that they don’t know what’s happening here, that they can’t figure out that this whole thing is crazy. Oh God, oh God help me, help me understand this place. There goes the nurse and she’s running down the hall, hitting the rubber mat that throws open the big green metal door with the little windows with the wire in them. Oh nurse please help me nurse, my stomach is beginning to hurt again like it does every time I come out of this place and my head is throbbing, pounding like a drum. I want to get out of this hall where all of you are walking past me. I want to get back into my bed where I can make believe this never happened. I want to go to sleep and forget I ever got up this morning.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  Who is this kid?” “I don’t know.” “You don’t recognize him at all?” “No.” “Teddy never mentioned him to you?” “Never.” At a certain point Mrs. Vorster just started running through a list of all the white kids she thought it could be. “Is it David?” “No.” “Rian?” “No.” “Frederik?” “No.” I kept waiting for it to be a trick, for them to turn and say, “It’s you!” They didn’t. At a certain point, I felt so invisible I almost wanted to take credit. I wanted to jump up and point at the TV and say, “Are you people blind?! That’s me! Can you not see that that’s me?!” But of course I didn’t. And they couldn’t. These people had been so fucked by their own construct of race that they could not see that the white person they were looking for was sitting right in front of them. Eventually they sent me back to class. I spent the rest of the day and the next couple of weeks waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for my mom to get the call. “We’ve got him! We figured it out!” But the call never came. South Africa has eleven official languages. After democracy came, people said, “Okay, how do we create order without having different groups feel like they’ve been left out of power again?” English is the international language and the language of money and of the media, so we had to keep that. Most people were forced to learn at least some Afrikaans, so it’s useful to keep that, too. Plus we didn’t want the white minority to feel ostracized in the new South Africa, or else they’d take all their money and leave. Of the African languages, Zulu has the largest number of native speakers, but we couldn’t keep that without also having Xhosa and Tswana and Ndebele. Then there’s Swazi, Tsonga, Venda, Sotho, and Pedi. We tried to keep all the major groups happy, so the next thing we knew we’d made eleven languages official languages. And those are just the languages big enough to demand recognition; there are dozens more. It’s the Tower of Babel in South Africa. Every single day. Every day you see people completely lost, trying to have conversations and having no idea what the other person is saying. Zulu and Tswana are fairly common. Tsonga and Pedi are pretty fringe. The more common your tongue, the less likely you are to learn others. The more fringe, the more likely you are to pick up two or three.