By Madelyn Perry
After my scheduled course registration period this past summer, which I was embarrassingly late to, I browsed through English courses hoping to find something of more interest to me than the classes my advisor or whatever responsible department automatically enrolled me in. I knew that I was not in a position to be picky about my options, but at the time, I could not help feeling like as long as I reached out in earnest to a few folks, I would be able to arrange a schedule I really wanted, and that is exactly what I did. I recall reading the GEN ENG 111: Lit: Expulsion and Housing Crisis course description and being interested because it described a way of learning (reading) that I am good at to understand issues about which I can never know enough of. That is to say, one of my biggest qualms in coming to college, as well as coming into adulthood, is the repulsion to defining myself by just one study for the rest of my life. I wholeheartedly enjoy studying English and I believe it is what I am supposed to do. However, in feeling drawn towards a specific study, I cannot help also feeling like this is secretly because I would be unfit to do anything else. I am familiar with the term Imposter Syndrome which is often thrown around college campuses specifically at incoming and overwhelmed students and refers to the feeling of being less qualified or less deserving than one’s peers. Coming to Geneseo, I did not feel that this term applied to me. I love to read, I love being in a classroom, and I know that I care deeply about the quality of work I produce. I know that I belong in an academic environment. Although I have this armor, I am still not immune to the short end of the stick that English majors sometimes get when put next to STEM folks. This is in no way meant to incite competition amongst the two, but the disregard for the value of English has power over me nonetheless. All of this is to say that I figured, in good faith, that a course so outside of my realm of knowledge would surely make me a more well-rounded student, and in this process, prove that I am fit enough to engage in dense and complex discussions about topics that are important enough to warrant national attention.
Little did I know, learning about why the Global Housing Crisis of 2008 exploded to the severity that it did would lead right back the values I hold dear. In all the works throughout the semester, from Shakespeare’s King Lear to Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, there lies a common denominator of undervaluing the power of word, written and spoken. And in every work, this proves to be a condition that invites a war of good faith and bad faith that ultimately results in expulsion. In Lear, the King’s abundant trust puts him at odds with his daughters who have a knack for using it to their advantage. In Michael Lewis’s The Big Short, the real-life CEOs who are best known for their roles in the 2008 financial crisis also failed to see the human lives behind the Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs), products that were comprised of mortgage loans which were destined to be defaulted on, although when mixed with more secure loans, seemed like low risk and high reward opportunities for investment. In the disastrous wake of the housing crisis and recession, it is clear that to the big bankers and CEOs of Wallstreet, CDOs had a label that read Get Rich Quick but had a fine print that said *At the expense of ordinary Americans and countries all around the world. In Toni Morrison’s A Mercy, an enslaved girl Florens is skilled in interpreting signs and some written words, yet she cannot read the character of the Blacksmith, her older and non-enslaved lover, and thus she fails to see that the value she imbues in him is not equal to that which he places in her. And although the consequences of not reading are restated repeatedly in these works, I cannot escape the irony of taking this course at a college that is inevitably full of students, myself included, that take these skills for granted.
Seeing this firsthand every day, Parable of the Sower’s own Lauren Olamina’s frustration with her community’s indifference to becoming observant resonates with me deeply. But perhaps Lauren’s interaction with her good friend Joanne, in which Joanne resists the idea of preparing against disaster should it strike the community, is better described not as indifference but as fearful distancing. While certainly some folks in Butler’s not so dystopian California are indifferent to its horrors because they capitalize on them, such as the Paints (the havoc wreaking, fire-setting, drug addicted arsonists and anarchists), most are concerned with their survival amid dangers like drought, poverty, starvation, and crime. For those like Lauren and Joanne who have only ever known a life such as this, these threats are very real yet very normalized. From inside their wall and safer than most, it is not so easy to see the definite shift towards worse times. And, because of the human tendency to become accustomed to one’s conditions, whether privileged or deprived, it is difficult to remove oneself and view those conditions with objectivity. Naturally, Joanne cannot do this without first acknowledging that her quality of life is reaching a point of no return, and that she risks death or enslavement if she does not adapt. To Lauren, adapting means becoming educated and self-sufficient to shape the future. But to Joanne, this means reckoning with issues that are too large for her to conceive, thereby making them real and imperative to her, which naturally she does not want to do, as this brings a state of fear and anxiety that no one would wish to live in. Whereas Lauren sees this as a character flaw, by Earthseed, a religion of Lauren’s own creation in which “God is Change” (Butler, 3), Joanne and the rest of the community are God fearing people.
So, in looking at the ways in which the fictional Parable of the Sower can be examined in light of the 2008 financial crisis, it becomes easier to see how a repulsion to reading is not necessarily equivalent to a lack of intelligence, but rather as a way to remove oneself from reality. This, however, weakens the ability to, as previously mentioned, view circumstances objectively. In The Big Short, the CEOs and big bankers had thought they discovered an infinite money hack in trading bad loans like a game of hot potato to ever consider that there would be a recession, just as Joanne and much of Lauren’s community felt far more secure behind their neighborhood wall than the rest of the world to ever consider that it might come down. But it is Lauren, Mike Burry, and Steve Eisman who prevail, not Joanne who is never heard from again, and not the CEOs who lost billions on bad trades. What these characters have in common is the skill of observing all that can be read around them. While this does not necessarily make them ethical people, it means they survive the chaos. For a lot of students here at Geneseo, reading is a skill that is left uncultivated because it has already been learned. Florens’ opening question in A Mercy, “Can you read?” (Morrison, 1) at first seems rhetorical when linked to the second question, “Who is responsible?” (Morrison 1) as if these two things- knowing how to read and assigning accountability- are inextricably linked. But, in a story of colonial America where folks are only literate enough to get by, if at all, it is not so easy to place blame or find the point of origin, thus illustrating that basic functional literacy is not sufficient enough to understand the world as well as it could be. Reading is not the same as understanding, and while it takes time and energy to narrow this gap, it is something that this course has done well to draw attention to.
Ultimately, while I joined this course for the good faith reason of wanting to broaden my horizons, I admittedly did so believing that the information covered would be of more value than that of my other classes. I am now proudly well versed in the topic of the 2008 housing crisis, but this would not be the case had I not understood the importance of reading. In this way, this course has taught me that I do not need to abandon one set of knowledge in favor of another, but instead that is my background of English study which makes me more than qualified to have meaningful discussion with folks and topics outside of my major.