Monday, November 10, 2008

Where do I begin? Ulmer has given us so much to think about. I'll begin by confessing that every time I sit down to read EM and consider the ramifications of MEmorials, I am forced to think about a tragedy that occurred in my family just over two years ago. It was the Friday before Labor Day and time for the annual family reunion on my mother's side in celebration of the Roseboro clan. My four year old cousin, Assadi (Arabic for Isaiah) was playing around in the driveway as my mom's nephew, Assadi's dad, Isey (as we call him) was cleaning out his car and getting ready for the drive from Roanoke, VA to Baltimore, MD where the family reunion was being hosted that year. Somehow, Assadi found my cousin Isey's loaded gun under the driver side seat and shot himself in the head. He was killed instantly. The whole situation was tragic and pointless. Everyone was sickened by the news. Why did Isey have a loaded pistol in his car? How did Assadi get to it so quickly? Suddenly, my grandmother's house, where the shooting took place, was the site of breaking action news. Family and friends forwarded online newspaper articles for details. It was surreal. Because Assadi's mom is a Muslim, he was buried within 48 hours of his death, so no one from our side of the family had a chance to say goodbye. We were all so shocked and trying to pull it together. Before we knew it, it was done. That weekend the family reunion went on as planned in Baltimore without those family members immediately touched by the tragedy. To this day, I'm not even sure if there was an official mention of it at the actual reunion that year.

The following year, another family reunion was held in Charlotte, NC and I decided to attend. Strangely, eerily there was no mention of little Assadi. Not one. I mentioned the omission to my mother, but that was it. It was like it had never even happened. I wondered about this to myself and believe I might have a clue as to why our family could not bare to utter a word about the tragedy. That year, the reunion committee produced a play about the origins of the Roseboros, which is traced back to Rubin Roseboro. While Rubin was not the first Roseboro out of slavery in our family, he was the first to own land. For that reason, he's noted as the founding patriarch. It is that piece of paper signifying Rubin Roseboro's ownership of land which makes him memor[i]able. Rubin's father, on the other hand, was the first member of the family to be emancipated, though he remained landless his entire life. As a result, Rubin's father has been deleted from the official family narrative. I think this connection to Rubin's landless father and Assadi is significant.

Like Ulmer, I see an opportunity for interface between these two forgotten Roseboros and believe their ultimate obscurity is connected. I think the [black] family [reunion], if it is to survive as an institution has to move away from the old Y formation of the "family tree" and toward a risomatic structure that can systematically situate these "sporadic" figures like Assadi and Rubin's father as entities that are lasting and consequential in their own right. Annual conventions, will no longer do the work needed to keep large extended families together. Shameful episodes, such as the senseless death of Assadi or the obscuring disenfranchisement of Rubin's father cannot be fully developed, and therefore adequately assigned meaning, through the old mapping structures associated with familial connections. How many times have you looked at a family tree to see boxes filled with the names of those prematurely dead family members who never lived fully enough to reproduce (either through sex or acreage)? Think of how the eye lingers on those stunted branches. What will future generations make of the Bradly McGee box that never branched out?

The vantage point of the screen allows a space for us to make sense of this lingering look. Through the electronic sphere we can construct the worlds that might have been inhabited by Assadi, Bradly, and Rubin Rosboro's father and, as a result, possibly make this one better.

2 comments:

Cynthia Haynes said...

Sublimely put, and of course poignant and tragic. Thank you for sharing these stories and connections, Nicole. This is exactly what Ulmer's work DOES to us...it exposes our 'situation' of being 'without why/Y.'

nsnell said...

"Like Ulmer, I see an opportunity for interface between these two forgotten Roseboros and believe their ultimate obscurity is connected. I think the [black] family [reunion], if it is to survive as an institution has to move away from the old Y formation of the "family tree" and toward a risomatic structure that can systematically situate these "sporadic" figures like Assadi and Rubin's father as entities that are lasting and consequential in their own right"

Here I see a generalization being made that I can't/won't quite agree with. I believe that there are in fact "[black] family [reunion[s]]"
that do not work within the limited scope of the "old Y formation" I would even posit that in being denied accurate family lineage for so long, many families make a explicit attempt to act within a rhizomatic space so as to account for themselves and their progeny (future and past) in a way that cannot be erased. I am sure in looking to the "[black]family [reunion]" there is more than meets the eye...in that it is necessarily a marker of the "y" and simataneously an agent of the "I" and "we" that goes far beyond "boxes" as places to hide unfortunate secrets and/or to advertise Western notions of lineage.