Getting My Consciousness Raised
I know I've been on a social class and status rant lately. I blame Alfred Lubrano's fabulous book Limbo for getting me going (not to mention my Motorcycle Diaries experience).
Lubrano's book chronicles the Straddler phenomenon. Straddlers are those of us who have (or are) breaking from the working to middle class, and the crap, both internal and external, that we have to put up with. I am reading stories that echo the experiences I have had and what I have had to put up with in my fight to have get an education and have a Literary Life.
I think, though, that I'm stuck in what Lubrano calls "imposter syndrome"--that feeling that they'll find out you are NOT one of THEM...even if you really *are* that smart and really *do* belong.
"Your perceptions of yourself and your abilities are not always accurate....you sell yourself short far too often," Lucky Bastard told me this morning. Good-looking in an Abercrombie & Fitch WASPy way, extraordinarily cocky, and upper-crusty, Lucky Bastard tends to get the brunt of my anger and frustration on the subject of Why I Don't Fit In and What Is Wrong With Me and Why I Might Not Get Far Because Of My Social Class. He knows all the angles and justifications and fury.
He doesn't have to put up with it. He can very easily walk out.
Never does though. And I'm not sure why.
Maybe he's seeing something I'm not at the moment--and maybe for once I'm actually believing him. I think, for a change, he was not doling out a platitude to get me to shut up. The words just felt different.
Lubrano's book chronicles the Straddler phenomenon. Straddlers are those of us who have (or are) breaking from the working to middle class, and the crap, both internal and external, that we have to put up with. I am reading stories that echo the experiences I have had and what I have had to put up with in my fight to have get an education and have a Literary Life.
I think, though, that I'm stuck in what Lubrano calls "imposter syndrome"--that feeling that they'll find out you are NOT one of THEM...even if you really *are* that smart and really *do* belong.
"Your perceptions of yourself and your abilities are not always accurate....you sell yourself short far too often," Lucky Bastard told me this morning. Good-looking in an Abercrombie & Fitch WASPy way, extraordinarily cocky, and upper-crusty, Lucky Bastard tends to get the brunt of my anger and frustration on the subject of Why I Don't Fit In and What Is Wrong With Me and Why I Might Not Get Far Because Of My Social Class. He knows all the angles and justifications and fury.
He doesn't have to put up with it. He can very easily walk out.
Never does though. And I'm not sure why.
Maybe he's seeing something I'm not at the moment--and maybe for once I'm actually believing him. I think, for a change, he was not doling out a platitude to get me to shut up. The words just felt different.
posted by Tish Grier at 9:20 PM
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