"In My Place" - Chapter 11 - Chapter 15

And so we have entered the desegregation era at UGA.  We get a much greater glimpse of Charlayne as a student and as an individual in these chapters.  For example, after her high school counselor discourages her from pursuing a career in journalism, Charlayne decides to venture on despite warnings that she could face oppression in doing so (pg. 109).

We also read more description about Hamilton Holmes, whom we now know went on to become the first African American male enrolled at UGA.  Hamp (as Charlayne referred to him) was a fellow high achieving student.

Charlayne also introduces the notion that school (at least Turner High School) was a place of protection for her and her friends (pg. 114).  The segregation they experienced served as a way of shielding them from many societal wrongs, though Charlayne and her mother did experience some oppression in some of the most every day occurrences, like shopping at Rich’s (pg. 114).  The Emmett Till murder was another reminder that segregated safety was only relative (pg. 115).

As Charlayne goes on to college at Wayne State, we see her first experience with desegregation in the form of her residence hall living experience (pg. 133).  However, a “racial divide” was still present in the form of dining hall patterns and Greek life (pg. 138).  The Black students at Wayne State found community in their shared racial identity within a desegregated environment.  What impact do you think this concept of self-segregation (through dining hall patterns and Greek life) rather than forced segregation had on Charlayne?  

Another important aspect of these chapters is the student movement (pg. 139).  This was a time in history when we saw students starting to take more responsibility for self-advocacy; they had reached a point where they “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me roun’” (pg. 144).  That motto obviously came to be something Charlayne enacted through her involvement  with UGA.  What are some other aspects of the student movement that could have contributed to Charlayne’s perspectives and future decisions?

We later read that Charlayne’s involvement in her sorority further served as inspiration.  Ceremonies “validated and affirmed the history and struggle of Black women to take their rightful place in the leadership ranks of the campus, the community, the nation, and the world” (pg. 151).  For Charlayne, the recognition and honoring of these women served as a “stiffening [of her] backbone and adding yet another coat of armor for what lay ahead” (pg. 151).  This was a very powerful passage for me – to see inspiration igniting action.  Have any of you ever experience this type of inspiration?  

Finally, in the last chapter of this week, we see the title of this book taking form in the shape of UGA.  Charlayne says of her first morning at UGA, “this was the morning when I thought about how I was going to take my first steps onto the campus as if I knew my place, only this time, for the first time, it would be I who would be defining my place on my terms, on territory that was their pride but was now mine, too” (pg. 172).  Charlayne is no longer letting other people define her place, but rather defining it for herself.  Has anyone else had an experience in which someone else tried to define your place?

I apologize for getting off of our reading schedule a bit.  Next week will be our last installment of In My Place, but I hope we are all taking the time to reflect on the story Charlayne has shared so far.  I don’t know about you, but I am looking forward to seeing how she wraps it all up.

Please cast your vote for our March read, which will be in honor of Women’s History Month.  I think we have three really great choices, so I hope you can all find one that resonates with you.

Ellen

Time to Vote for the March Book Club Read!

In celebration of Women's History Month, the following the choices are up for vote:

One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd
By Jim Fergus

An American western with a most unusual twist, this is an imaginative fictional account of the participation of May Dodd and others in the controversial "Brides for Indians" program, a clandestine U.S. government-sponsored program intended to instruct "savages" in the ways of civilization and to assimilate the Indians into white culture through the offspring of these unions. May's personal journals, loaded with humor and intelligent reflection, describe the adventures of some very colorful white brides (including one black one), their marriages to Cheyenne warriors, and the natural abundance of life on the prairie before the final press of the white man's civilization. Fergus is gifted in his ability to portray the perceptions and emotions of women. He writes with tremendous insight and sensitivity about the individual community and the political and religious issues of the time, many of which are still relevant today. This book is artistically rendered with meticulous attention to small details that bring to life the daily concerns of a group of hardy souls at a pivotal time in U.S. history. (www.amazon.com)

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia
By Elizabeth Gilbert

Gilbert (The Last American Man) grafts the structure of romantic fiction upon the inquiries of reporting in this sprawling yet methodical travelogue of soul-searching and self-discovery. Plagued with despair after a nasty divorce, the author, in her early 30s, divides a year equally among three dissimilar countries, exploring her competing urges for earthly delights and divine transcendence. First, pleasure: savoring Italy's buffet of delights--the world's best pizza, free-flowing wine and dashing conversation partners--Gilbert consumes la dolce vita as spiritual succor. "I came to Italy pinched and thin," she writes, but soon fills out in waist and soul. Then, prayer and ascetic rigor: seeking communion with the divine at a sacred ashram in India, Gilbert emulates the ways of yogis in grueling hours of meditation, struggling to still her churning mind. Finally, a balancing act in Bali, where Gilbert tries for equipoise "betwixt and between" realms, studies with a merry medicine man and plunges into a charged love affair. Sustaining a chatty, conspiratorial tone, Gilbert fully engages readers in the year's cultural and emotional tapestry--conveying rapture with infectious brio, recalling anguish with touching candor--as she details her exotic tableau with history, anecdote and impression.(www.amazon.com)

Juliet
By Anne Fortier

Our story begins when Julie’s beloved Aunt Rose dies, leaving Julie and her twisted sister, Janice orphaned. (Their parents died years earlier in Tuscany). But while Aunt Rose leaves the family estate to Janice, Julie is bequeathed next to nothing, just a passport, a key, and a secret--that her real name is Giulietta Tolomei, a descendant of the Tolomeis and the Salembenis, the real families that inspired Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet—and that the "Curse upon both your houses," is alive and well, 600 years later. With exquisite detail and flawless pacing, Juliet is a multi-layered tapestry of Julie’s present and Giulietta’s 14th-century past, where families, generations apart, are still at each other’s throats. Betwixt tragedy and epic romance, Juliet will stir your heart and quicken your pulse. After all, if Julie is Giulietta, then where art thou, Romeo?
(www.amazon.com)

Cast your vote no later than 5:00 on Friday, February 25.  The reading schedule will begin on Monday, February 28 and will be posted once a book is selected.  Happy voting!

"In My Place" - Chapter 6 - Chapter 10

These chapters revealed further emphasis Charlayne Hunter0Gault’s family placed on education.  We see on page 61, that Charlyane was taught education would be her salvation. More specifically, her family placed high value on words, telling her “If you master words, you will walk with kings and queens.”  This perhaps gives insight on Charlayne’s chosen profession as a journalist.

Charlayne provides a glimpse into her school curriculum on page 75 and the way Black identity was infused in the formal education Black  children received: 

“We learned Black history routinely, taught by people who understood that while It was not within their power to confer first-class citizenship legally, they could prepare us through the power they knew no one could deny them: the transmission of a heritage that we could be proud of and inspired by.” 

What a powerful education that must have been for Charlayne and her classmates – to have an education that went much deeper than any textbook learning could, especially since they were not given appropriate textbooks by the public school system.

These chapters also begin the build up to desegregation at UGA as Charlayne begins to mention sense of place and difference.  When she speaks of going to the white school in Atlanta, she mentions the experience of “sitting down in one of ‘their’ seats for the first time” (p. 83) and how different that was  for her.  

She later goes on to her describe her experience in Alaska being the only Black student in the school (p. 93).  Charlayne talks about her revelation of how she had always assumed that “white education was superior, and it wasn’t too much of a leap to conclude that so were white people” (p. 93), but realizes through experiences that “White people were not superior; they were just different” (p. 94).

What impact do you think this realization had on Charlayne’s future?  How do you think the instilled value of education influenced Charlyane’s experiences with the University of Georgia?

What other thoughts have you had in reading this book so far?

"In My Place" - Prologue - Chapter 5

Charlayne Hunter Gault’s  memoir is providing such a great glimpse into life in the South during the 1940s and 50s and the Jim Crow era.  One of the things that stood out to me was how strong sense of place Charlayne had as a young girl.  She was proud of where she came from and a knowledge beyond her years of how life was different for her because of where she lived, even though she couldn’t always put those exact words to it.

We know that Charlayne would become the first African American female to register for classes at UGA, and this memoir and snapshot of her childhood and adolescent years give us some information as to how that came to be.  We see in the early chapters that Charlayne had a very strong mother figure (see the story of Charlayne’s birth on page 15 for some proof of this woman’s physical strength).

Perhaps even more significant to the story of the woman who would lead the desegregation at UGA  is that Charlayne came from a racially integrated family, or as she says it, a family where the “roots were equally tangled” (P. 24). The issues of appearance and white or black colored skin were not foreign ones to Charlayne; they were sources of identity with which she was constantly faced throughout her childhood years.  Charlyane and her family portrayed a strong sense of black identity, seen through examples like the one on page 29: “As light as they all were, they always identified themselves proudly as Black, even when they could have easily passed as white in some other location.”

Towards the end of the readings for this week, Chralyane also touches on the breaking of barriers that people like Jackie Robinson  were doing (p. 49).  Perhaps her trip to Harlem was part of her inspiration to continue to pursue her dreams of being a journalist through the formal education her family valued (p.27).

Through these early chapters, what personal factors did you notice in Charlayne that contributed to her role in UGA’s history?  How did you see race affecting Charlayne as a child?