Beneath the Walls that Divide
By Caroline Kenney
Writing 111: Writing Seminar
A tower of Hostess® donuts, Twinkies, and cupcakes stacked from the kitchen table to the ceiling. Orange Fanta® and Mountain Dew®, paper towels, and untouched cleaning supplies lining either side of a narrow hallway. Brownish-gray residue climbing up the base of the walls and sink. An eight-foot- by ten-foot living room transformed into a two-person bedroom. A rifle suspended on the wall. The clattering of rain against a tin roof. Beaten, torn, oversized T-shirts hanging where a shower curtain once draped. Stone garden statues growing old on the front porch, weathered by the mountain storms, exhausted by the West Virginia sun. A chair cushion covered in pale, fraying fabric. The constant hum of hornets. The stale odor of tobacco, urine, and dampness.
I had never been exposed to poverty until I was 17 years old. I grew up in a wealthy suburban town, a bubble of middle class liberals, an environment that made me ignorantly oblivious to the privilege under which I was raised. I rarely gave it a second thought when I clicked the seat buckle of my push start Mazda, when I printed my report card from one of the top ranking high schools in Massachusetts for my mom to hang on our refrigerator, when I ate the recommended daily five servings of fruits and vegetables, when I pulled back the comforter of my bed and crawled into to crisp, clean sheets. How could I have? This was all that I knew. I was aware that poverty was an issue across the country, and that families in my own town suffered. But, to me, at that time, these kids were “the poor” for whom I had collected food pantry donations in elementary school. They were part of a statistic; a group separate from my own. This “us” versus “them” perspective of the middle class on those living below the poverty line dominates our opinions on the issue of poverty in the United States. It is a perspective that I, too, ignorantly possessed until the summer of 2016.
Poverty is one of the most prevalent social issues in our nation today, yet is approached with remarkably little push for change. One in every 11 children in the United States lives below the poverty line (Ben-Meir, par 3). One in every 11 children do not receive the nutrition, education, medical treatment, and social exposure that 10 other children do. In the United States, these children are systematically selected against on the basis of their upbringing, solely because they do not have the means to integrate into society in the way that the wealthy do. Born into a “mentally, emotionally, and physically oppressive system,” children experience economically and socially disadvantaged childhoods that isolate them from middle-class society (Ben-Meir, par 6). The middle class often attributes this disadvantage to a fault in the character of the poor, and consequently dismisses the lower class as a separate, lesser group on the basis of achievement. Underprivileged children become buried beneath the stigma of ineptness and laziness assigned to them by the wealthy, and, despite any strength of character, demonstration of creativity, or academic potential, encounter physical and emotional barriers to their development. These children struggle to overcome the cycle of poverty in which they were raised because society tells them they are unwanted. So, the cycle perpetuates, and our impoverished children and families are left with no other option but to endure.
As a white, middle-class American, I was able to count on one hand the number of times that I felt I had been disadvantaged in society when I loaded my duffel bag into the trunk of an 11-person van parked in my church parking lot and waved goodbye to my parents as we began our two-day road trip down the east coast. I chose to participate in the Appalachia Service Project the summer following my junior year of high school because it is what most of the kids my age in my church did. I knew that those who went on the trip in previous years had incredibly positive, even life-changing experiences, but still I did not have high expectations for my mission trip to rural West Virginia. Community service and leadership were important parts of my life at the time, yet I had reservations as to whether or not the time I would put into this trip would be worth it in the long run.
The Appalachian region of West Virginia is one of the most poverty-stricken areas in the United States. Hinton, West Virginia, located in Summers County, looks like any other spot on the map within a 300-mile radius. With a population of just under 3,000, its main attractions include Family Dollar, Magic Mart, and variety stores of the like on every other block, the Hinton City Railroad Museum, an ice cream shop where a waffle cone could be substituted for a pancake, and a view of New River as it peacefully cuts through the mountainside. Two years ago, I entered Hinton, West Virginia, with the intention of fulfilling the goals of the Appalachia Service Project which I had so earnestly prepared to accomplish: to make the homes of low-income families living in the Appalachian region warmer, safer, and drier. I had gone through numerous tool trainings, received countless packing lists, and sat through discussions regarding proper etiquette in order to be sensitive to the circumstances of the families we would be meeting. Still, I had reservations about my upcoming experience as our van passed a dilapidated sign welcoming us to Hinton.
Miss Josephine sat on the front porch, the edge of her nightgown falling over the side of her chair as she leaned over to sort through the squares of patterned fabrics she had collected. She was the woman of the house, the grandmother of two 14-year-old twin boys whose mother worked long days at the local Dairy Queen to earn the only source of income for the family, and the wife of an uninvolved Grandpa Earle. Though a stranger at first, Miss Josephine would soon become my close companion. The sun struck the side of her face, illuminating her pale, fragile skin as she picked up a square showing the upper half of Bugs Bunny. She moved the needle and thread through the fabric in a smooth fashion, a motion committed to memory from decades of practice. I marveled at the intent with which she selected each piece of fabric. And her unwavering focus, undisturbed by the thunk of the hammer and scream of the circular saw, lifting her head only to scold the bickering of her grandsons, Noah and Billy, in the backyard.
“Now don’t you go causin’ trouble, boys! Come have a seat over here next to me, outta the way of our comp’ny,” she scolded. The boys dragged their feet up the steps of the front porch, and slumped, with their sunburnt arms folded in front of them, into the couch next to their grandmother, who immediately regained focus on stitching the fabric.
Occasionally, I would look up to see her leaning against the door frame to the kitchen, watching, for the fourth time that summer, a group of strangers with shiny hammers in their tool belts stomp around her property in steel-tow boots, scrambling to complete one of several repair jobs on her home. Though she spoke few words, I could tell that Miss Josephine was proud of the quilts she produced, and the boys she had raised.
One afternoon, I sat down next to Miss Josephine on the front porch as she gently folded a quilt she had just finished stitching and placed it into a plastic bag at her feet. I thought about what I could say to her. What could we possibly have in common? Was I being a bother by starting conversation? I decided to ask about her quilts. She explained to me the process of choosing the fabric, of planning out a design, lining up each square perfectly against the next, and selling her products to her neighbors. Within minutes we were sharing verses of our favorite hymns, laughing about stories of her adventurous grandsons, and asking each other about our families. I found myself listening, nodding, as she told me about the rain storm that had flooded the town three months ago, and the numerous volunteers before me that summer who had worked to repair her home. The connection I had with Miss Josephine went beyond normal companionship, each of us demonstrating a genuine interest in the life of the other, and enjoying pure contentedness in the moment.
The loudest noise in the four-room home would have been the low hum of the cartoons playing in the living room had it not been for the playful yells and laughter that came from the young boys, Noah and Billy. In the relentless West Virginia heat, beads of sweat collected on the hairline between their beet red faces and bleach blonde buzz cuts. Noah gathered a fist of red-turned-auburn T-shirt from his chest and blotted his face. He rested an elbow on the base of the clamshell digger, which for the past ten minutes had been forcefully thrusted into the soil where the base of a deck would soon be installed. Inside, Billy sat on an exposed beam of the kitchen floor, his legs dangling just above the dirt foundation upon which his home was built. He offered advice on the reinstallation of the joists and patiently waited for an invitation to knock the nails in place. Noah could throw and catch a football for hours on end, and Billy could draw cartoons and superheroes until the crayons ran out. These boys were two of the most well-mannered, kind, curious, and good-humored kids I had ever met. While I believed it was my role to serve them, they, in turn, inspired me every day with their ability to seek joy or adventure in every moment.
One afternoon, the boys’ mother had to return early from work at the local Dairy Queen in order to take Noah to the hospital after he had missed the hole in the ground and accidentally slammed the digging bar into his big toe, at the same time that his tonsils had inexplicably swollen to the size of golf balls. Her red pick-up truck rattled up the gravel road, pausing at the top of the yard only long enough for her to step out and corral her son into the back seat, with a nod and a wave in my direction as she slammed the door and drove away in a cloud of dust.
The family I came to know and love struggled with the same challenges that the majority of Americans living in poverty face every day. Lack of education, absence of one or more parents, state unemployment rate, and the quality of services provided by state welfare programs are major factors that influence child poverty rates (Rodgers and Payne, 13). Children living in families with low levels of education and in areas without access to strong school systems often do not reach high levels of academic achievement and lack an understanding of the value and benefits of receiving an education. Though the graduation rate from Summers County High School is 70%, state test scores show that only “12% of students are at least proficient in math and 32% in reading” (Niche). Students like Noah and Billy are receiving an education, but are not reaching the level of achievement necessary to put them in the position to apply themselves to society. Additionally, children like Noah and Billy, living with one or neither parent, are disadvantaged by the absence of a strong emotional support system, and high achieving role models to encourage education. Studies show that children living in these broken homes lack role models to guide their social and emotional development, and, as a result, often struggle with developmental issues that put them at a disadvantage to achieve higher socioeconomic status than that in which they were raised (Ben-Meir, par. 6). Though welfare programs in highly impoverished states such as West Virginia provide low-income citizens with temporary health and economic assistance, these programs lack the substantiality to have an enduring positive impact on the lives of the impoverished.
Stereotypes regarding the character and disposition of the underprivileged population dominate our judgements of those living in poverty and create barriers that prevent desire for change. A common stereotype of the lower class is that its members do not have the motivation to overcome the struggles that they face in order to make new lives for themselves and their families. For example, it has been argued that the tendency of those subject to the cycle of poverty to remain unemployed is a result of “their inability to advance their own self-interest,” and that the underclass struggles with “an inability to commit steadily to any task” (Churchin, 234). Negative stereotypes regarding the character of the lower class exist not only among middle-class American citizens, but also in the opinions of upper-level government officials who hold positions of social and political influence in our nation. United States Senator for Iowa, Chuck Grassley, referred to lower-class Americans as “those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies,” implying that the poor are not only lazy and foolish, but also wasteful with their money (Rosenberg, par. 2). I challenge the American people to evaluate the rationality of this “us” versus “them” mindset; to consider whether our lower-class citizens truly differ from us in character, in integrity, and intelligence, or if the environment in which they were raised denies them the opportunity to develop these qualities in the way that the upper class accepts as the norm. I challenge the American people to walk a day in the shoes of our neighbors living in poverty, to meaningfully engage with those who we so immediately reject as undesirable, to listen to their stories, and to see ourselves in them.
Cackles of laughter erupted from the backyard as an airborne object high in the trees caught the glare of the sun and bounced back and forth between the branches before landing with a thunk among the cucumber vines. Noah and Billy hauled their bodies through the vegetable patch to collect their projectile milk jug before Miss Josephine could scold them. Billy strategically balanced the jug at the end of the wood plank as Noah stood hunched over with his knees bent, fists clenched behind him, ready for a second attempt. Upon Billy’s command, Noah launched himself into the air and landed with all his might on the opposite end of the board, sending the jug higher into the trees than before, met with the same eruption of laughter, only this time to be caught by Billy before hitting the ground. I watched as the boys manipulated their experiment: changing the length of the launch board, the direction of the launch, the item of projection. I marveled at their inventiveness, and their ability to find an infinite amount of pleasure and thrill in such a simple contraption.
On our final day at the site, we packed up the van one last time before saying our goodbyes to the family who had been strangers to us just four days earlier. Looking for the rest of my team, I stepped through the front door into the living room where a twin bed and a couch were pushed against either wall facing the television, leaving only just enough space for a walking path. I stood in the doorway and found myself alone in the room with Grandpa Earle, who had not shifted from his position propped up in bed with his eyes glued to the screen for the past five days. He broke his gaze only to release a thick brown substance from his mouth into the large bucket next to him. Miss Josephine had explained to me earlier in the week that Earle had been suffering from chronic back pain for months and had since been in bed rest for most of the day. Though we had exchanged only as much as a “good morning” or two in passing, I felt a desire to wish him well as the stranger whom he had welcomed into his home for the past week.
“Bye, Grandpa Earle! It was a pleasure getting to know you this week, and I hope your back feels better soon,” I said to him, expecting nothing more than a tight-lipped smile and a head nod in response.
He looked up from the TV with a sigh, and muttered, “Well, it sure does feel a whole lot better when you folks are around.”
This moment defined for me the meaning and purpose of my experience as part of the Appalachia Service Project and has shaped my understanding of the value of empathy as a young adult. Though I came on the trip prepared to serve this family according to their needs of physical repair to their home, through this simple interaction with Grandpa Earle I realized that the acknowledgement and care that I had shown these individuals throughout the week had satisfied their needs beyond the work that any hammer and nail could accomplish. By taking the time to get to know Noah, Billy, Josephine, and even Earle, as individuals, I provided them with the genuine recognition and value of their lives that they had desired, but that for so long had gone unacknowledged. In just five days, I developed an understanding of the lives of our impoverished neighbors by choosing to engage with a family of four kind, curious, grateful people who I, at one time, had viewed as so different from myself. It occurred to me that the negative perceptions that devalue the lives of those living in poverty are rooted not in rational beliefs and opinions, but rather stem from a lack of desire to recognize the common humanity of all people despite our differences.
The exclusion of one group from another based on stereotypes is a practice of human nature that plays a significant role in the dynamic of groups in American society. People are constantly looking for reasons to categorize others based on irrational assumptions and ignorant conclusions. However, my experience in Summer’s County, West Virginia, demonstrated to me the impact of meaningfully engaging with others who I view as different from myself. As Sarah Smarsh claims, “It can be useful to acknowledge the cultural forces that carve us… but true distinctions of character, intelligence, talent and skill exist at the level of the individual, not of the class – or the ethnicity, the gender, the sexual orientation, the religion and so on” (par. 44). Today, our citizens and law makers do not always see the benefit of providing support for those in need because they view the impoverished American population as a group so different and separate from their own. However, by choosing to recognize the individuals behind the stereotypes of the underprivileged population, we are more able to understand the hardships that these people face and thus are more apt to make changes to reduce systemic poverty in the United States.
Works Cited
Ben-Meir, Alon. “Child Poverty In America Is Indefensible.” Huffington Post, 26 Oct. 2017, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/child-poverty-in-america-is-indefensible_us_59f21fabe4b06acda25f485c.
CURCHIN, KATHERINE. “Using Behavioural Insights to Argue for a Stronger Social Safety Net: Beyond Libertarian Paternalism.” Journal of Social Policy; Cambridge, vol. 46, no. 2, Apr. 2017, pp. 231–49. ProQuest, doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0047279416000672.
“Explore Summers County High School.” Niche, https://www.niche.com/k12/summers-county-high-school-hinton-wv/. Accessed 5 May 2018.
Rodgers, Harrell R., and Lee Payne. “Child Poverty in the American States: The Impact of Welfare Reform, Economics, and Demographics.” Policy Studies Journal; Washington, vol. 35, no. 1, Feb. 2007, pp. 1–21.
Rosenberg, Alyssa. “Opinion | Chuck Grassley Just Made the Case for Class War.” Washington Post, 4 Dec. 2017. www.washingtonpost.com, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2017/12/04/chuck-grassley-thinks-poor-people-shouldnt-go-to-the-movies-hes-wrong/.
“There Is No Shame Worse than Poor Teeth in a Rich World – Sarah Smarsh | Aeon Essays.” Aeon, https://aeon.co/essays/there-is-no-shame-worse-than-poor-teeth-in-a-rich-world. Accessed 23 Apr. 2018.
A Word from Caroline
I felt both excited and apprehensive when Professor Whitehead assigned Major Essay #3 to my Writing 111 class: a persuasive narrative in which the writer would use a personal experience to express their opinion on a controversial topic. The last personal narrative I could recall writing was that of my family vacation to the beach in my fourth grade writing class. Though I had always enjoyed creative writing, my middle school and high school English courses did not provide me with an opportunity to develop my personal narrative skills. I had no trouble coming up with an experience that I felt had significant influence on my life, but lacked confidence in my ability to convey a personal story on paper. However, Professor Whitehead provided me with just the right amount of guidance I needed in order to format a piece in which I could successfully allow the reader to put his or herself in my shoes through the illustration of my time in West Virginia, and, at the same time, develop an argument around my opinion on the issue of poverty.
Composing “Beneath the Walls that Divide” was one of the most tedious and rewarding process of my writing career. At times, I struggled to balance details about my personal experience with information from outside sources to support my opinion. I enjoyed the challenge of figuring out where to introduce each piece of my argument so that the information complimented each scene that I described in the narrative, and I feel as though I grew as a writer through the process of revising my work into a cohesive essay. Thanks to Professor Whitehead’s guidance, I believe that I was able to successfully both inform my audience on the issue of poverty in the United States and encourage them to change their perspective on the underprivileged population. I am now confident in my narrative writing skills and feel inspired to continue to write for advocacy of topics that I feel passionate about.
From Professor Elisabeth Whitehead
Assignment
Major Essay 3: Narrative Advocacy
Writing the truth is a political act…If you write the truth you will change the world. If you write privately, you change your own inner world, and that changes the outer world. If you write publically, you give voice to what is, and that assists what is becoming.
–Pat Schneider
For your third paper, develop an argument built on the foundation of personal narrative on an issue of concern to you.
Narrative arguments make it possible for writers to illustrate a point by appealing to their audience, invoking experience, and creating a sense of identification with the controversy at hand. Key to creating an effective narrative argument is establishing credibility (your audience must believe you and trust your presentation) and establishing representativeness (the audience needs to understand that your narrative reflects a larger problem beyond the scope of its events).
Choose a subject that is tightly focused. You will want to keep your work balanced rhetorically by accompanying the emotional appeal of your story with strong credibility and with logical evidence (both anecdotal and researched) to support your claims.
Think in terms of an experience that made you realize that something was wrong or that something needed to be changed, and from which you gained essential knowledge about yourself and about the workings of the world around you. Tell a story that allows you to establish your position on the controversy and provide support for your claims. A well-told story often engages in vivid description. Create presence in your details. Your readers should really feel that they too, by reading your account, are there beside you, and can hear, see, smell, and touch those surroundings. Clean and vivid details can help set scene and tone. Therefore, be specific, descriptive, and engaging.
Successful papers will provide a rhetorically balanced narrative argument and will be clearly and engagingly written. You should conduct enough research to provide relevant, external support for your position. Your paper should include at least three sources (books, magazines, journals, newspapers, interviews, films, and/or texts from the academic databases), but use as many sources as you need. One of your sources can be from a credible website. At least one of your sources must be from the databases. If you choose to use more than three sources, you can use additional website sources.
Using MLA style, incorporate in-text parenthetical citations and include a works cited page. Papers should be 5-7 pages long. In your folders include: final paper, two drafts with your changes marked, and a copy of your sources with your annotations. (Or you can include a copy/paste document with the source material you used, rather than printing out all of your sources. But I want to see all of your source information in its original form.) Your final grade for the paper will be reduced one step for each element that is missing.
Professor Commentary
In each of her papers over the semester, rather than hovering on the surface, Caroline committed to finding depth in her ideas and precision in her expression. It certainly is easier to relax on the surface: write a punchy introduction, choose a few main points, throw in a couple of examples from the text to back up your claim. It’s safe, thin, easy, and not at all memorable. As you begin to widen the possibilities, pushing through the surface and searching for complexity, you might face more challenges as a writer. You might discover more complications, more routes of exploration. You might struggle to pull together the threads of your ideas, struggle to decide what to cut, what to develop, or even how to find the center of your argument. But if successful, a writer who is not content to rest safely has the potential to produce a piece of writing that can actually move us, make us think, and possibly affect positive change.
This essay is a careful balancing act. Caroline is exploring numerous connected themes, including systemic poverty, education in low-income areas, us versus them mindset, the dangers of stereotyping, and the value of empathy. She has to consider organization, how to integrate research into her narrative, working to make each part feel connected, organic, necessary, and inevitable. What strikes me as I read her essay again is how effortless it feels. But having watched the process of the developing essay, I know how much care Caroline put into her work. I know how she searched to find the center of this essay, as she allowed herself to explore, experiment, consider, reconsider, redefine, and finally find its heart. The end result is a thoughtful, alive, seamless meditation. She is a careful observer and listener. This quality of depth and observation allows her to step out wide and give us a larger picture through research, while also allowing us to connect with her specific experience, by bringing us sharply to individual moments through precise images and sensory details. This results in beautiful moments of language and the ability to create real presence in the narrative scenes.