Sadness

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 The Folding Star (1994)

  "And what about your grandfather's château? Have you ever seen it?" "We all went when I was small, perhaps when I was . . . eight. No one had been there for a long time, and it wasn't all that safe. I think it wasn't built correctly." "Oh." "All I can remember well is a round room, do you say a rotunda, with paintings on the ceiling of my grandfather and all his rich friends, who were idlers in fact, dressed up for a fantasy. My grandfather Theo was dressed up like an Indian prince with a long sword." Luc looked at me openly. "I also remember I was very frightened of his picture." "And what's happened to it now?" He shrugged, denying his disappointment. "It's still there, with the windows all blocked up, and there is a metal roof over the top, because of the rain." I wanted to go there with him and help him get it back. It was just another strand of longing to know about the dereliction of what should one day be Luc's Little Trianon, and about a certain baffling shittiness in the last downward flight of the Altidore family history. At the same time I had the image of my own history like a locked and rotting pavilion too far off and too unsafe perhaps for Luc to want to visit it. These lessons were simulacra of conversations, my part pained and inquisitive, his merely reactive and polite. Once or twice I had mentioned my father's singing or my great-aunt's novels, both equally forgotten, or spoken reassuringly of my own schooldays and their various failures. His reaction was a tolerant blankness, a pause. Sometimes the pressure was almost too great, having him there in my sight, looking at me, moistening that fat lip with a hesitant tongue, pushing back his hair with the hand that later would undress him and make free with him. I got up abruptly and asked to be directed to the bathroom. It was on the floor below, next to the marmoreal spare bedroom. Luc showed me in and gestured at the various opulent appointments. After I locked the door I thought he might wait outside, as Mrs Vivier so patiently had at Paul's house once, and I listened until I heard the creak of the stairs as he went back up.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  She was always going into the refrigerator and eating the last piece of pie or cheesecake or whatever dessert was there. She’d say weird things, and when you’d ask her to explain what she meant, she’d say, “Oh, never mind.” She’d sit around looking as if somebody had been beating her with a stick. She’d droop on the wall. She was depressing. — In September, Lily would sit with her books on the floor of the den at night, reading and underlining sentences with fat turquoise lines. Virginia would be on the couch reading the paper, her square brown glasses on the end of her nose. The TV would be on, usually a talk show neither of them wanted to see. On the coffee table there’d be a fat economy-size jar of olives, which they both ate from. They’d talk intermittently, and Virginia liked to think that her silent presence was an encouragement to Lily’s studying. — In September, Lily got good grades on her quizzes. Her art teacher said nice things about her drawings. She got an A-plus on a humanities paper, and the teacher read it aloud to the class. Virginia called Anne and read it to her. During October, Lily stopped studying on the floor of the den. She left her broken-backed books on the couch and went upstairs to her room and shut the door. Virginia could hear the radio playing behind the door for hours. She wondered irritably what Lily was doing in there. On weekends her long-haired friends would come to the door and she’d disappear for the entire day. At night they’d hear the screen door slam, and Lily would pat through the den, her bell-bottoms swishing, her face distantly warm and airy. She’d float down the hall without a word. The second week in October, Mr. Shin, the school disciplinarian, called Virginia. He told her that Lily was rude in the classroom and that she used obscene language. Two weeks later he called again, this time to say that he thought Lily was taking drugs. Virginia thought Mr. Shin had a repulsive voice. She thought he was deliberately persecuting Lily for reasons having nothing to do with obscene language or drugs. Lily once said that Mr. Shin told her that her IQ was below normal, that she belonged in a mental hospital, and that he didn’t blame her parents for not wanting her. At first Virginia was angry. She thought of telling Jarold to call Mr. Shin and tell him to leave Lily alone. But then she realized that Jarold was in agreement with him. Then she felt embarrassed. After all, Mr. Shin was right, Lily did use obscene language, casually and often. She did take drugs. — It was Lily’s birthday.

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

  At age thirty-one, Lisa owned her own home, had a new car, and was swiftly climbing the corporate ladder. She had been sent west by her company on a business trip and took time out for our meeting. She spoke directly, just like her attorney mother. It wasn’t long before we were talking about her mom and Lisa’s expression turned serious. “I’d have to admit that my main worry right now is my mother.” “Why? Is she having health problems?” “Oh no, nothing like that,” Lisa said. “It’s just, well, I know this sounds strange, but I’d rather she got married than me. She’s going to retire in five years from her law firm and then what’ll she do? She’s sad and very lonely. I’m probably the only person who realizes it because she’s so attractive and she looks so capable. To take care of her, I’d need to live in Los Angeles, but I want to lead my own life in Columbus where I have a great job.” Lisa’s tone then changed from sadness to anguish. “You see, I have to protect her. Ultimately she has no one else in the world to take care of her but me. Ever since I was four years old, when my dad asked for the divorce, I’ve felt it was my job to make her happy.” Mother and Daughter Traps M OTHERS AND DAUGHTERS can become stuck in the relationships they have at the breakup. We see this most often when the mother cannot absorb the shock of the divorce and go on to rebuild her life in a different direction. Fully identified with their mothers’ pain, the daughters cannot break away emotionally to establish truly separate lives even if they live three thousand miles away. Problems begin when the adolescent girl, who for years may have been her mother’s most stalwart supporter, begins to move away from her mother’s orbit. She needs to try her own wings, to be proud of her femininity, to be independent and strong. For all children, the adolescent years involve moving out and away. Here the daughter’s dilemma becomes increasingly acute as she approaches young adulthood. Her problem is this: How can I leave my mother who has no one but me? Who will take care of her in her loneliness? Who will comfort her? The Old Testament tells the story of Ruth, a young woman who loses her spouse and devotes herself to her mother-in-law. The mother, Naomi, is griefstricken. Ruth captures the passionate relationship between the two women when she says, “Whither thou goest I will go.” This ancient story translates easily into the love and compassion that daughters of divorce feel for their mothers who are grieving and alone. They are bound by the golden strands of love and compassion. Negotiating the separation is a heroic task for the daughter when the mother is lonely.

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

  I decided after she was born to leave my job and to work part-time. I want to take care of her myself. I want to be home with my daughter. I’m not sure for how long, but definitely until she gets into elementary school. My career means a lot to me, but I felt I had to make a choice. The truth is, and I had to face it, that if I wanted to stay and play the game at the top, I would have had only six weeks leave after Maya was born and then I would have had to go back to work full-time. So I bit the bullet and got off the ladder. I’m working half-time.” “Will you be able to get back where you left off? I know how important that program was and how you built it yourself.” “No. Judy, there’s no returning for me. It’s a major life decision. I’ve decided to do it because of all that I want for Maya and for another child. I’m trying very hard to get pregnant again.” “It took a lot of courage to make that decision.” “Yes, it sure did. It was hard and it made me sad but it was right. Lots of my friends have held on to their jobs, and I respect that. But this is what I want for me. You might say I also remade my marriage decision. Working half-time means that I absolutely rely on my husband, and as you know, that’s not easy for me.” “And how did Gavin feel?” “Judy, I lucked out. He said, do whatever makes you happy.” Most children of divorce think long and hard about parenthood before taking the plunge. At the twenty-five-year mark, only one-third of the people in our study had children. 2 A small number said that they were planning to have children in the future once their careers were more established and they could afford it. Both men and women were extremely proud of their sons and daughters. They were grateful for the good fortune that had finally come their way. They spoke movingly about how a baby has the redemptive power to undo their past suffering. By having a child, they could erase old tapes and run new episodes in which the new child is protected. As if in unison, they said, “No child of mine is going to experience what I went through.” Their unanimity in saying this was probably the most telling statement about their past.

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

  She took a deep breath. “Well, I finally got rid of my oppressor. I’d love to tell you that I did it on my own but that’s not what happened. After three years of no contact, my mother sent me a check for enough money to cover my last two years of college and living expenses. She wrote that they were still angry at me and didn’t want to see me but that I was their daughter and they wanted me to finish my education. I still remember what a cold letter it was. She started it ‘Dear Carol’ and signed it ‘Mom,’ not ‘Love, Mom’ or ‘Sincerely, Mom’ but just plain ‘Mom.’ That’s all. It made me so sad, I just sat down and cried and cried. But having that money made a huge difference. I went back to U.C. and started taking classes. It felt like I was coming out of a black hole. I was meeting new people and really studying hard. I felt so much better and less passive. You see, all my life my parents had told me that I was stupid. I didn’t try hard in school because I believed them. But now that I was on my own, I wanted to get on with being an adult. I wanted a sense of control over my life.” There was very little that distinguished Carol’s adolescent behavior from what I saw in teenaged girls raised in chaotic divorced families. Carol was able to avoid promiscuous sexual activity in high school, but she more than made up for that after she left home. All these girls had to manage on their own from a very early age. They felt that their parents didn’t care what happened to them. For both groups, adolescence was a wild, desperate time dominated by hungers for nurturance and long-standing anger at parents, aggravated by powerful aggressive and sexual feelings. One subtle difference between the two groups is that girls raised in violent intact families are often trapped by their overwhelming need for parental love. It’s something they can’t relinquish, whereas girls from divorced families are more able as adults to walk away from destructive relationships once they recognize how dangerous they are. They have a model for how to exit their plight. Despite repeated rejection and disappointment, women like Carol do not give up hope that their parents will change, and so they maintain a passionate tie to their parents despite their suffering. Carol’s response to her mother’s check after three years of silence was to turn the letter over and over again, looking for “affectionately yours,” or even “sincerely yours.” Seeing no such words, she almost tore up the check, as though her whole life depended on a crumb of affection from her mother. She still couldn’t believe it. She continued to want what wasn’t there. She keeps hoping and she keeps getting disappointed.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  The French African comes from a region and a way of lif e which-at least from the American point of view-is exceedingly primitive, and where exploitation takes more naked forms. In Paris, the African Negro's status, con spicuous and subtly inconvenient, is that of a colonial; and he leads here the intangibly precarious lif e of someone abruptly and recently uprooted. His bitterness is unlike that of his American kinsman in that it is not so treacherously likely to be turned against himself. He has, not so very many miles away, a homeland to which his relationship, no less than his responsibility, is overwhelmingly clear: His country must be given-or it must seize-its freedom. This bitter ambition is shared by his fellow colonials, with whom he has a common language, and whom he has no wish whatever to avoid; with out whose sustenance, indeed, he would be almost altogether lost in Paris. They live in groups together, in the same neigh borhoods, in student hotels and under conditions which can not fail to impress the American as almost unend urable. Yet what the American is seeing is not simply the poverty of the student but the enormous gap between the European and American standards of living. All of the students in the Latin Quarter live in ageless, sinister-looking hotels; they are all forced continually to choose between cigarettes and cheese at lunch. It is true that the poverty and anger which the American Negro sees must be related to Europe and not to America. ENC OUNTER ON THE SEINE Yet, as he wishes for a moment that he were home again, where at least the terrain is familiar, there begins to race within him, like the despised beat of the tom-tom, echoes of a past which he has not yet been able to utilize, intimations of a responsibility which he has not yet been able to face. He be gins to conjecture how much he has gained and lost during his long sojourn in the American republic. The African before him has endured privation, injustice, medieval cruelty; but the African has not yet endured the utter alienation of himself from his people and his past. His mother did not sing "Some times I Feel Like a Motherless Child," and he has not, all his lif e long, ached for acceptance in a culture which pronounced straight hair and white skin the only acceptable beauty. They face each other, the Negro and the African, over a gulf of three hundred years-an alienation too vast to be con quered in an evening's good-will, too heavy and too double edged ever to be trapped in speech. This alienation causes the Negro to recognize that he is a hybrid. Not a physical hybrid merely: in every aspect of his living he betrays the memory of the auction block and the impact of the happy ending.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  The meaning of Europe for an American Negro was one of the things about which Richard Wright and I disagreed most vehemently. He was fond of referring to Paris as the "city of refuge"-which it certainly was, God knows, for the likes of us. Bu t it was not a city of refuge for the French, still less for anyone belonging to France; and it would not have been a city of refuge for us if we had not been armed with American passports. It did not seem worthwhile to me to have fled the native fantasy only to embrace a foreign one. (Someone, some day, should do a study in depth of the role of the American Negro in the mind and life of Europe, and the extraor dinary perils, different from those of America but not less grave, which the American Negro encou nters in the Old World.) But now that the storm ofWright's life is over, and politics is ended forever for him, along with the Negro problem and the fearful conundrum of Africa, it seems to have been the tough and int uitive, the genuine Ric hard Wright, who was being recorded all along. It now begins to seem, for example, 250 NOBODY KNOWS MY NAM E that Wright's unr elentingly bleak landscape was not merely that of the Deep South, or of Chicago, but that of the world, of the human heart. The landscape does not change in any of these stories. Even the most good-natured performance this book contains, good-natured by comparison only, "Bi g Black Good Man," takes place in Copenhagen in the winter, and in the vastly more chilling confines of a Danish hotel-keeper's fears. In "Man of All Work," a tight, raging, diamond-hard ex ercise in irony, a Negro male who cannot find a job dresses himself up in his wife's clothes and hires himself out as a cook. ("Who," he demands of his horrified, bedridden wife, "ever looks at us colored folks anyhow?") He gets the job, and Wright uses this incredible situation to reveal, with beautiful spite and accuracy, the private lives of the master race. The story is told entirely in dialogue, which perfectly accomplishes what it sets out to do, racing along like a locomotive and suggesting far more than it states. The story, without seeming to, goes very deeply into the demoralization of the Negro male and the resulti ng fragmen tization of the Negro family which occur s when the female is forced to play the male role of breadwinner.

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

  Gradually, Paula’s memory of having a mother who took joy in her children’s everyday ups and downs and who thoughtfully anticipated her children’s needs and gratified their wishes simply faded. In the hard times and strain of the postdivorce years, the image of her mother was recast and with it Paula’s image of herself. Again, it takes years for these transformations to be understood and to be voiced. All of the children in our study who experienced the divorce when they were preschoolers, except a few whose parents maintained two well-functioning households, felt abandoned and neglected as little children. They lost their mothers to full-time employment, her return to school, and the mother’s efforts to establish her social life. They also felt abandoned by their fathers, who worked full-time and similarly got caught up in dating. These years remain very painful memories. With divorce, preschool children lose the benefits of a structured childhood, which has serious consequences for their development. Children need regular routines—bedtimes, naptimes, mealtimes, playtimes. Even adolescents need household routines. Such stability gives teenagers the freedom to test their aggression and to learn self-control from observing that life has uniformity and rules. But after a divorce, households are typically disorganized. Mealtimes are helter-skelter, children make their own lunches, bedtime is haphazard. This is almost always true at the time of the breakup, but the chaos can continue for many years if, as in Paula’s case, the mother embarks on a new, demanding schedule and cannot restore the previous routines. The fallout has many faces. Without a regular bedtime, a child wakes up tired and cranky and won’t learn well at school. Older children given the task of caring for younger siblings feel angry and resentful. The responsible parent looks and feels exhausted, pressed to the limit of human endurance. Parents need to know that it’s extremely important to restore routines as quickly as possible after divorce. This structure helps children resume their regular school activities, learning, and friendships. These are the rungs of their developmental ladder. Actually, many divorced parents know this but are too pressured to put their knowledge to work. Also, as they soon find out, rules established in one home can be undone in the other. Routines and bedtimes vary in each parents’ home. In some parents’ homes the preschool child sleeps with the parent regularly whereas in others the child has her own room. So-called junk food and unlimited television are permitted in one home and forbidden in the other. Nudity is the mode in one household and frowned on in the other. (In one family the five-year-old child returned from a visit to her father’s home full of excitement about the tattoos on his new girlfriend’s upper thigh.) These seemingly small differences can become major issues that are never settled and contribute to the difficulty of stabilizing the life of the preschool child in the divorced family.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  I may not have realized this bef ore my first journey South . But, once I fimnd myself there, I recog nized that the South was a riddle which could be read only in the light, or the darkness, of the unbeli evable disasters which had overtaken the private lif e. I say, "riddle": not the riddle of what this unhappy people claim, madly enough, as their "fi>lk" ways. I had been a nigger t(>r a long time. I was not struck by their wickedness, for that wickedness was but the spirit and the history of America. What struck me was the unbelievable dimension of their sor row. I felt as though I had wandered into hell. But, it must TAKE ME TO TH E WA TER also be said that, if they were in hell, some among them were beginning to recognize what fuel, in themseh·es, fed the flames. Their sorrow placed them far be�·ond, exactly , as at that hour, it seemed to ha,·e placed them far beneath, their compatriots-\ \·ho did not yet know that sorrow existed, and who imagined that hell was a condition to which others " ·ere sentenced. For this reason, and I am not the only black man who "ill say this, I ha,·e more faith in Southerners than I "ill e\"er ha,·e in �ortherners: the mighty and pious ::\orth could ne,·er, after all, ha,·e acquired its wealth "ithout utilizing, bru tal ly, and consciously, those "f olk" ways, and locking the South within them. And when this country's absolutely in escapable disaster Je,·els it, it is in the South and not in the �orth that the rebirth "ill begin. I went, first, if memory sen·es, to Charlotte, �orth Caro lina, where I met, among others, Tl1e Carolina Ismelite. I "·ent to Little Rock, where I met, among others, ;\l r. and ;\irs. Bates. I went to Atlanta, where I met, among others, Re,·er end Martin Luther King, Jr. I went to Birmingham. I went to Montgomery. I \\·ent to Tuskegee. I don't know how long I was on the road. The cam ·as suitcase I had carried down was so full of contraband by the time I lugged it, on one shoulder, up, that it burst in the middle of Grand Ce ntral Station, scattering underground secrets all m·er the floor: no one, luck ily, exhibited the remotest curiosity. I managed to get it all together, tied the suitcase together with the belt from my trousers, and got up the stairs, into the city. I collapsed in the home of a friend who lh·ed in what was not \"et known as the East Village-when I had been a tenant, it was known as the Lower East Side-and, re-li,ing my trip, surrendered to my nightmares, and, as far as the city was concerned, ,·anished. I could not take it on, I could not mm·e out of that cold water flat. I kept meaning to, I kept putting it off: for fi'"e days.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  This bitter observation, which was uttered in sorrow, gained a great deal of force from the fact that so genial a man had felt compelled to make it. It made ,.i,id, unanswerable, in a way which rage could not ha,·e done, how little the West has respected its own ideals in dealing with subject peoples, and suggested that there was a price we would pay for this. He speculated a little on what African Christianity might become, and how it might contribute to the rebirth of Christianity e\·er ywhere; and left his audience to chew on this momentous speculation: Considering, he said, that what Ati·ica wishes to wrest from Europe is power, will it be necessary for Attica to take the same bloody road which Eur ope has followed? Or !60 NOBODY KN OWS MY NA ME will it be possible fo r her to work out some means of avoi ding this? M. Wahal , from the Sudan, spoke in the afternoon on the role of the law in culture, using as an ill ustration the role the law had played in the histor y of the American Negro. He spoke at length on the role of French law in Africa, pointing out that French law is simply not equipped to deal with the complexity of the African situation. And what is even worse, of course, is that it makes virtually no attempt to do so. The result is that French law, in Africa, is simply a legal means of administering injustice. It is not a solution, either, simply to revert to African tribal custom, which is also helpless before the complexities of present-day African life. Wahal spoke with a quiet matter-of-factness, which lent great fo rce to the ugly story he was telling, and he concluded by saying that the ques tion was ultimately a political one and that there was no hope of solving it within the framework of the present colonial syste m. He was fo llowed by George Lamming. Lamming is tall, raw-boned, untidy, and intense, and one of his real distinc tions is his refusal to be intimidated by the fact that he is a genuine writer. He proposed to raise certain questions per taining to the quality of life to be lived by black people in that hypothetical tomo rrow when they would no longer be ruled by whites. "The prof ession of letters is an untidy one," he began, looking as though he had dressed to prove it. He di rected his speech to Aime Cesaire and Jacques Alexis in par ticular, and quoted Djuna Barnes: "Too great a sense of identity makes a man feel he can do no wrong.

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

  As happens to so many children of divorce, life changed radically for Paula and her sister after the separation. Their mother had left college after her freshman year to elope and had spent her married life involved in child-centered activities around her home. She had been active in both children’s nursery schools and had ferried Joan and then Paula to friends’ houses, to swimming lessons, to the park to play, and out for ice cream afterward. After Joan started kindergarten, this at-home mom became involved in the PTA and was often at the elementary school, helping in the classroom and organizing school events. She drove for every field trip and was present at every class event and party. She fetched Joan and Paula to and from school and had snacks for them at home afterward. A teenaged girl who lived down the street always babysat on Saturday evenings when the parents went out. The only other times Paula and her sister were separated from their mother was once a year when their parents went away for a long weekend together and they were cared for by their paternal grandparents. For Paula, divorce meant that she lost the three things that had always anchored her—her mother, her father, and the comforting routines of her life. Only now, at age thirty-three, can Paula put the magnitude of these losses into words: “I don’t remember anything except living together and then not. I don’t remember anybody explaining anything to me. Suddenly, there was no one there. I spent so much time alone that I tried to become my own company. But how can you do that as a four-year-old child? I would go for days without saying a word.” No More Security BlanketAFTER THE SEPARATION Paula’s mother was in dire financial straits. The bankruptcy left both her and her ex-husband destitute. He could not afford to pay alimony or child support. For a while, the young mother’s only financial support came from her husband’s parents, who sympathized with her plight and sent money each month to help pay for food and health insurance. Without marketable skills, she went to work full-time at what was then minimum wage. At the end of each month, after she had paid the household expenses and the babysitter, she had sixty dollars left over. In the space of just a few months, this cheerful, chatty, always available young mother whom Paula and Joan had known and counted on was transformed into a strained, quiet, driven, desperately tired stranger who came home only to scream at her daughters and the babysitter for not cleaning up the mess in the house or to sit, silent and resentful, eating the TV dinners that had replaced home-cooked meals. Every night she stumbled directly to her bedroom after ordering her daughters to bed without the stories and cuddling they had always shared together.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Since she cannot work in New York, they end up on the Coast, with Piano Man . Eventually, Louis has to leave, on business, and to arrange her date in Carnegie Ha ll. Left alone with Piano Man, she decides that she wants to "cop," and sends him out to buy the junk. They are broke, and so she gives him a ring, which he is to pawn, to pay for it. Piano Man cops, all right, but doesn't pawn the ring, and doesn't pay for the stuff , and is, therefore, beaten to death sss THE DE VIL FINDS WO RK before her eyes. The patient and loving Louis comes to the Coast, and brings her back to New York, where she scores a triumph on the Carnegie Hall stage. As Billie is singing, God Bless the Child, and as thousands cheer, we learn, from blow ups of newspaper items behind her, of her subsequent mis adventures, and her death at the age of forty-four. And the film fades out, with a triumphant Billie, who is, already, how ever, unl uckily, dead, singing on-s tage before a delirious au dience-or, rather, two: one in the cinema Carnegie Hall, and one in the cinema where we are seated. It is not every day that a film crams so much cake down one's throat, and yet leaves one with so much more to swallow. Now, it is not enough to say that the film really has nothing to do with Billie Holiday, since the film's authority- and, therefore, its presumed authenticity-derives from the use of her name. It is not enough to say that the film does not re create her journey: the question is why the film presents itself as her journey. Most of the people who knew, or saw, or heard Billie Holiday will be dying shortly before, or shortly after, this century dies. (Billie would now be sixty years old .) This film cannot be all that is lef t of her torment and courage and beauty and grace. And the moments of truth smuggled into the film by the actors form a kind of Rosetta stone which the future will not be able to read, as, indeed, the present cannot. In the film, we meet Billie on the streets of New York. But we do not know that she was raped at ten, sentenced, as a result, to a "Catholic institution" where she beat her hands to "a bloody damn pulp" when she was locked in with the body of a dead girl.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  I am not, really, a stranger any longer for any American aliYe. One of the things that distin guishes Americans from other people is that no other people has eyer been so deeply inYolved in the lives of black men, and vice versa. This fact faced, with all its implications, it can be seen that the history of the American Negro problem is not merely shameful, it is also something of an achievement. For even when the worst has been said, it must also be added that the perpetual challenge posed by this problem was always, somehow, perpetually met. It is precisely this black-white ex perience which may proYe of indispensable value to us in the world we face today. This world is white no lons;er, and it will neYer be white again. NOBODY KNOWS MY NA ME More Notes of a Native Son for my brothers, George, Wilmer and David Contents Introduction . PART ONE Sitting in the House . 1. The Disco\'ery of What It Means To Be an 1 35 American. 1 37 2. Princes and Powers . 1 43 3. Fifth Avenue, Uptown : A Letter from Harlem . 170 4. East River, Downtown: Postscript to a Letter from Harlem 180 5· A Fly in Buttermilk . 187 6. Nobody Knows My Name: A Letter from the South 1 97 7. Faulkner and Desegregation . 209 8. In Search of a Majority . 21 5 PART TIVO ... With £yerythi ng on My Mind 9. Notes to r a Hypothetical Novel 222 10. The Male Prison . 231 n. The Northern Protestant . 236 12. Alas, Poor Richard 1. Eight Men 247 11. The Exile . 252 111. Alas, Poor Richard . 258 1 3. The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy 269 Introduction These essays were written over the last six years, in various places and in many states of mind. These years seemed, on the whole, rather sad and aimless to me. My life in Europe was ending, not because I had decided that it should, but because it became clearer and clearer-as I dealt with the streets, the climate, and the temperament of Paris, fled to Spain and Corsica and Scandinavia-that something had ended for me. I rather think now, to tell the sober truth, that it was merely my youth, first youth, anyway, that was ending and I hated to see it go. In the context of my life, the end of my youth was signaled by the reluctant realization that I had, indeed, become a writer; so far, so good: now I would have to go the distance. In America, the color of my skin had stood between myself and me; in Europe, that barrier was down.

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

  Being fed and put to bed is a tiny fraction of what they need. Parents must provide time and energy to talk, play, read, and pay attention to their young children. But where will the overwhelmed recently divorced parent find the time and the energy for this? In comparing the overall adjustment of young adults in our study with how old they were when their parents divorced, we found that the youngest looked the worst off and had the hardest time growing up. 5 Nearly all lost their mothers to the workplace and the stresses of single parenthood. Their feelings of loneliness and anger at both parents carried over into later school years and adolescence. At the twenty-five-year mark, now between twenty-eight and thirty-two years old, they are doing less well in the workplace and in relationships compared with children who were older at the time of the breakup. They have a lower level of confidence about their chances of marrying successfully and are more worried about being betrayed. Only one of the preschool girls in our study is now in a happy, stable marriage while one other is living happily with a man without plans to marry any time soon. Another, who seemed happily married, suddenly left her devoted husband to live with a former high school lover and took her own preschool daughter with her. Most of the girls in this group have not found good jobs or satisfying careers. Several operate small and rather chancy businesses out of their homes. A few are cleaning houses to support themselves. Those who had good educational support have found rewarding careers but are having trouble with men. The boys are in similar straits. Most of the men in our study who led lonely, isolated lives came out of this group. In looking over the records of these youngest children of divorce, I was mystified by the fact that good remarriages did not seem to help them overcome the trauma of divorce. Because their mothers were relatively young and found new husbands within a few years, many children soon regained the protection and financial advantages of an intact family. Several had loving stepfathers and stepmothers who cared for them tenderly and were central figures in the children’s lives from very early on. But I finally realized that, for most of these children, stepparents remained secondary figures compared to their attachment to their biological parents. Relationships with stepparents generally lack the passionate commitment that children feel about their parents. It was as if they had a slot in their minds for parents and another for stepparents and the two were kept permanently separate. They liked their “steps” a lot and appreciated their kindness and interest. Sometimes they loved them and clearly respected and admired their stepparent more than they respected their biological parent.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  A short way off I made out a couple talking about us in a way meant to be noticed, heads together, with long glances and point-weighing smiles and nods. I raised an eyebrow, recognising the boy, Archie, whom I’d taken home a few months before. He had one slightly sleepy eye, which gave him a lewd and experienced air, though he was only a kid, sixteen or seventeen, illicit and the more queenly for it. He had trashed up his appearance since he’d gone with me: hair slick with a jarload of gel, black lips queerly glossed with lilac lipstick. He said something to his companion, then got up and came over to us, surrendering himself confidentially to the seat beside me. ‘Hello, dear!’ ‘Hello, Archie.’ We looked at each other for a moment with that strange disbanded intimacy of people who have once briefly been lovers. ‘This is Phil.’ ‘Mm. I’m with Roger. He says he’s seen you in the gym. He was well jeal when I told him about you and me.’ I glanced over to where Roger was affecting an interest in some men in the other direction. He was someone I was half-aware of, a morose middle-aged fellow who appeared at the Corry in a suit on weekday evenings but on Saturdays and Sundays was transformed by heavy boots, jeans and biking jacket, the ensemble looking just a trifle too much for him. ‘I’m not sure that I’m not jealous of him,’ I said with arch courtesy. ‘Are you seeing a lot of him?’ ‘Yeah, last couple of months I’ve been stopping over at his place, Fulham, quite posh it is. He’s got a video and that.’ ‘I can imagine.’ ‘No, he’s really sweet though.’ ‘I think he’s perfectly hideous, but I suppose it’s nothing to do with me.’ He might have been hurt by this remark, but he seemed to quite admire me for it. ‘Yeah—still it’s nice having someone to look after you, know what I mean?’ He slid his hand between my legs, and I felt Phil go tense on the other side of me. I said nothing, but stared at Archie in an existential sort of way, my cock quickly thickening under the light pressure of his fingers. ‘Not today, dear,’ I murmured, shifting away and slipping my own hand onto Phil’s thigh. ‘P’raps you’re right,’ he said, with his typical experimenté air, and looked round to find out what had happened to Roger. Roger was smoking a cigarette and gazing at the ceiling, a model of tense insouciance. ‘Your mate looking for a friend, is he?’ Archie asked, as if it were the 1930s. ‘Phil you mean? No, no: he has a mate.’ Archie looked at me, expecting me to say something else as it sank in.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  It had been Harold, pushing in critically amid spouts of pipe-smoke, seeing me snatching this delicious kid away when only the other day he had been envying me Cherif. I settled on the desk-chair opposite and started to tell Luc his story; it presented itself as a subject. Harold lived with Andy, a Filipino boy, a boy in his early forties, that is, whom you hardly ever saw. It was a sad affair—Harold had rescued him from service in Brussels, where he worked without a visa for a sadistic businessman. He was trapped all day in a big apartment-block with alarms. The only times he went out were to drive the businessman in his Mercedes, sometimes to pick him up late at night, when the businessman would abuse him or be sick in the car. He forced himself on Andy and made him cry and spanked him for hours until he bled. I thought, why am I telling Luc this? But I'd never seen him pay such attention. Forget Wordsworth and the stolen boat. He swallowed more brandy. I went on to how Harold used to work in security on the building; he used to see Andy in the underground car-park vacking the sick out of the Merc. He took a shine to him. After a while Andy confided in him, and somehow they started to have an affair—they used the flat, it was all very easy. Harold was by all accounts a monstrous bore even then, but his kindness was a new thing for little Andy. Then one day the businessman found them together. It turned out he'd known about it for a long time. According to Harold he'd been videoing them at it for months. But he'd started to get jealous. He immediately arranged for Harold to be moved elsewhere, but that very night Harold and Andy eloped. "My god!" laughed Luc, with the rough cold-end catch in his voice. "The awful thing is that the whole situation has kind of reproduced itself. Andy stays at home while Harold goes out and smokes his pipe and eyes up young men. He says it's because Andy's still afraid to be caught, that the businessman is still after him. But that was years ago. I gather the truth is that Andy's kept home by force, he has to do the housework in the nude, he's actually tied up naked while Harold's out and about. But he's still devoted to Harold because he rescued him, and looks after him." I was inventing rather freely in the latter part of this. "Maybe it's time someone rescued him again," said Luc carelessly. "I don't think it's very likely." I remembered the one time I'd seen him—sallow and queeny, with a wandering rear-end. "Harold's at that time of life when he's terrified of not being young—he hasn't noticed young people don't have cravats or tuck their shirts into their underpants, he's always very pushy about not being pushed out."

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

  By now, Paula’s mother, by dint of heroic effort, had graduated from college with a degree in hotel management and had secured a much higher-paying job as an assistant manager at a downtown hotel. Her daily commute to the city meant that she had to leave by 7 A.M. and she often didn’t return until after 7 P.M. Her new job conferred higher status and vastly improved her self-esteem. The job also demanded more of her time and energy. To be considered for promotion to manager, Paula’s mother started working toward a master’s degree, which meant taking classes two evenings per week. Still an attractive and now poised and self-assured young woman, Paula’s mom started dating a man she met at work. Feeling desired and being treated romantically was intoxicating to her after so many years of strenuous, unrelenting work. She acquiesced to being whisked away overnight and for getaway weekends with her new lover. It is one of the cruel paradoxes of this and many divorces, especially for the preschool children, that the more the mother gained the more her children lost. The mother’s advances in education and in employment and her very human need for adult love and play all enhanced her life and took her more and more away from the lives of her children. While highly valuing education and strictly demanding that her daughters do well in school, Paula’s mother was rarely there to oversee or to help with schoolwork. She did not notice, and her daughters didn’t tell her, when they were having problems or difficulties. Notes from the school were left crumpled in backpacks. This mother was present so little at the school that several teachers reported that they barely knew who she was. Paula and Joan were not encouraged to participate in after-school activities, nor would their mom have been able to attend extracurricular events. While friends were driven to piano and ballet lessons, Paula and Joan continued to walk home to an empty house. Being bright children, they got passing grades in school and learned to get by without getting into trouble that would call the teacher’s attention to them. (A depressed child often goes unnoticed in school, especially if she is doing passing work.) What was missing was the feeling that their efforts were noticed and valued. Lost was a sense that their progress as children—learning to study, acquiring an excitement in learning, developing special talents and having talent appreciated and fostered—really mattered. They learned to comply with adult demands but without a growing inner sense of confidence and direction.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  I answer that, As stated in the foregoing Article, on account of their sin, our first parents were deprived of the Divine favor, whereby the integrity of human nature was maintained in them, and by the withdrawal of this favor human nature incurred penal defects. Hence they were punished in two ways. In the first place by being deprived of that which was befitting the state of integrity, namely the place of the earthly paradise: and this is indicated (Gn. 3:23) where it is stated that “God sent him out of the paradise of pleasure.” And since he was unable, of himself, to return to that state of original innocence, it was fitting that obstacles should be placed against his recovering those things that were befitting his original state, namely food (lest he should take of the tree of life) and place; for “God placed before . . . paradise . . . Cherubim, and a flaming sword.” Secondly, they were punished by having appointed to them things befitting a nature bereft of the aforesaid favor: and this as regards both the body and the soul. With regard to the body, to which pertains the distinction of sex, one punishment was appointed to the woman and another to the man. To the woman punishment was appointed in respect of two things on account of which she is united to the man; and these are the begetting of children, and community of works pertaining to family life. As regards the begetting of children, she was punished in two ways: first in the weariness to which she is subject while carrying the child after conception, and this is indicated in the words (Gn. 3:16), “I will multiply thy sorrows, and thy conceptions”; secondly, in the pain which she suffers in giving birth, and this is indicated by the words (Gn. 3:16), “In sorrow shalt thou bring forth.” As regards family life she was punished by being subjected to her husband’s authority, and this is conveyed in the words (Gn. 3:16), “Thou shalt be under thy husband’s power.” Now, just as it belongs to the woman to be subject to her husband in matters relating to the family life, so it belongs to the husband to provide the necessaries of that life. In this respect he was punished in three ways. First, by the barrenness of the earth, in the words (Gn. 3:17), “Cursed is the earth in thy work.” Secondly, by the cares of his toil, without which he does not win the fruits of the earth; hence the words (Gn. 3:17), “With labor and toil shalt thou eat thereof all the days of thy life.” Thirdly, by the obstacles encountered by the tillers of the soil, wherefore it is written (Gn. 3:18), “Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee.”

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  When I looked across from my menu I saw that his Lordship was staring at, or rather through, the reddening and nervous boy. ‘Derek, isn’t it?’ he said at last. ‘No, sir, I’m Raymond. Derek’s left, sir, in fact.’ ‘Raymond! Of course—forgive me, won’t you?’ begged Lord Nantwich, as if pleading with a society woman. ‘That’s all right, sir,’ said the boy, smoothing down his order pad, and Nantwich turned his attention briefly to the card. More silence followed, and Raymond felt moved to add: ‘I saw Derek this week, as a matter of fact, sir. He seems all right again now …’ but he trailed off as Nantwich was evidently not hearing him. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he added inconsequently. ‘Now what’s Abdul got for us today?’ Nantwich ruminated. ‘Pork’d be very nice, sir,’ said Raymond dispassionately. ‘I will have the pork, Raymond—with carrots, have you got? And the boiled potatoes—and I want a whole estuary of applesauce.’ ‘See what I can do, sir. And for your guest, sir. Any starter at all, sir?’ My mind recoiled from Brown Windsor soup to prawn cocktail to melon. ‘No, I think I’ll just have the trout—with peas and potatoes.’ ‘Bring a bottle of hock, too, Raymond,’ my host requested; ‘cheapest you’ve got.’ And the moment the boy turned away, added, ‘Delightful child, isn’t he. Quite a little Masaccio, wouldn’t you say? Nothing compared to Derek, mind you, but I like to see a nice little bumba when I’m eating.’ I smiled and felt oddly bashful; and the boy was pretty ordinary. I also felt a guest’s obligation to charm, and was aware that I was giving nothing. How loaded dirty talk is between strangers, seeming to imply some sexual rapport between them, removing barriers which in this case I was interested in preserving. ‘Do you live in London all the time?’ I asked him partyishly. He thought about this: ‘I do, though I’m often elsewhere—in my thoughts. At my age it doesn’t matter where you live. Passent les jours, passent les semaines, as the Frenchman said. I blank a lot, you know. Do you blank?’ ‘You mean, just let your mind go blank? Yes, I suppose I do. Or at least, I like letting my mind wander.’ ‘There you are. You see, I’ve had such an interesting life and now it’s so bloody dull and everyone’s dead and I can’t remember what I’m saying and all that sort of thing.’ He seemed to lose his thread. ‘What is it you think about mostly?’ ‘Ooh, you know …’ he muttered broodily. I crudely assumed he meant sex. ‘I’m eighty-three,’ he said, as if I had asked him. ‘And how old are you?’ ‘Twenty-five,’ I said with a laugh, but he looked sad.

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

  This lady’s grandson might be facing life imprisonment without parole, but given the overwhelming number of death penalty cases on our docket, I couldn’t rationalize taking on his case. As I considered how to answer this woman’s plea, she started speaking quickly, at a whisper: “Lord, please help us. Lead this man and protect us from any choice that is not yours. Help me find the words, Lord. Tell me what to say, Lord—” I didn’t want to interrupt her prayer, so I waited until she finished. “Ma’am, I can’t take the case, but I will drive down to the jail and see your grandson tomorrow. I’ll see what I can do. We likely won’t be able to represent him, but let me find out what’s going on, and perhaps we can help you find a lawyer who can assist you.” “Mr. Stevenson, I’m so grateful.” I was tired and already feeling overwhelmed with the cases I had. And cases with juveniles took an especially severe emotional toll on everyone who touched them. But I needed to go to a courthouse near the county where this boy was being held, so it wouldn’t be that big a deal to stop by and see the child. The next morning I drove for over an hour to the county. When I got to the courthouse, I checked the clerk’s file on the case and found a lengthy incident report. Because I was an attorney investigating the case on behalf of the family, the clerk let me read the file, although she wouldn’t make a copy or let me take it out of the office because it involved a minor. The clerk’s office was small, but it wasn’t especially busy, so I sat down on an uncomfortable metal chair in a cramped corner of the room to read the statement, which mostly confirmed everything the grandmother had told me. Charlie was fourteen years old. He weighed less than 100 pounds and was just five feet tall. He didn’t have any juvenile criminal history —no prior arrests, no misconduct in school, no delinquencies or prior court appearances. He was a good student who had earned several certificates for perfect attendance at his school. His mother described him as a “great kid” who always did what she asked. But Charlie had, by his own account, shot and killed a man named George. — George was Charlie’s mother’s boyfriend. She referred to their relationship as a “mistake.” George would often come home drunk and begin acting violently. There were three occasions in the year and a half leading up to the night of the shooting when George beat Charlie’s mother so mercilessly that she required medical treatment.