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Rebecca Blevis Faery uses the complicated differences in generational ages almost like a mathematical problem, a sort of algebraic function, to try to formulate the questions she asks at the start of the essay. As she lays out the relationships and their numerical values we start to see the patterns and facts, the givens and variables if you will of the situation. Even as she shows us the numerics of the familial relationships, she shows us how complicated the underlying human questions can be. In this case, she is seeking to uncover hidden knowledge about her great grand mother Ella who left and lived a life that included brothels and men.
Faery’s confusion is transmitted to us through the complicated information that she shares with the reader, which with so many richly described characters is hard to grasp. In this way she conveys her own anxiety and confusion well, while at the same time painting richly detailed images of the individual people concerned. We come to care about them through her descriptions and thus the question, what’s at stake is answered. these people, their dignity, their family and their feelings are all on the table. Her voice receded into the structure of questions and telling as she brings the characters to life so vividly.
Through her very intimate family narrative, she stages a essay which also probes social and feminist issues in the broader sphere. Ideas are tried out on herself and various family members to see how they might play out. In this way, Faery uses the micro to address the macro— a type of bottom up sociology as they say.
While Faery does speak to a history of abuse in the case of her grandfather, she does not consider whether that aspect also has been transmitted generationally. She doesn’t ask what he might have been like as a husband. He comments about the immaculate house and that he hadn’t noticed the work it took until after Ella was gone. It is clear that she is carefully controlling the direction of the essay to touch on issues of race. I did think however, that the other omissions that come to mind is those of control as abuse, or even incest or rape. I felt that in this profoundly mapped consideration of family secrets, it was one path that was not even discounted. Psychologically speaking, when looking at women who turn to sex work as a means of support, one might follow a track of questioning along those lines. This isn’t in the essay and so it is not really fair to allude to what’s not there, but I felt the steering towards one problem, race, may have avoided another issue. As skilled readers we are sensitive to our own concerns, to what we expect to see based on our education and I wonder when we are building our arguments, what our obligation to consider all possibilities might be and where we can say we have fulfilled that obligation. What do we owe our readers? How far do we concede our personal blind spots?
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