Powerful People. by Patresa Hartman

Election night was a full evening. I taught in the writing lab where I worked with another "lost boy" from Sudan, T. One of my coworkers brought in an old voting machine used for the 1936 election during which Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Alf Landon for a second term as President. The drab green voting stand included pegs and levers enabling you to vote a straight party ticket using one large switch, or vote individually across parties using smaller gadgets. T fiddled with the pegs and asked me who I thought would win our presidential race that night.

I told him I thought Obama would win.

He nodded excitedly. I learned from T that he had earned his American citizenship and had already voted. He said he did not understand why so many people live here for such a long time and never vote. "In my country, no one gets to vote."

T, whose written English is surprisingly good, also told me that he had never been to school before he came to the U.S. He came here as a teenager, an unaccompanied minor like J, another "lost boy" I work with on Tuesday nights. "Imagine," he said, "never preschool or kindergarten or anything and then right away you go to high school."

Of course, I couldn't imagine. So many privileges we have here. This is a good country.

I left T and the writing lab past dark, drove home where my husband and I went together to our polling place. The parking lot was full; the voting booths were full; but the lines were passed. After our ballots were cast, we stopped for the exit poll from the media.

Two young black men with tattoos, one with a silver grill and pants sagging, stood in fretful discussion with one of the polling volunteers. The man with the grill left the woman and approached my husband. "My brother doesn't have a photo ID and they won't let him vote unless somebody says they know him and that he lives in this precinct. Would you just tell her you know him?"

Behind him, the volunteer said, "It has to be someone you actually know." The man left with his brother. We finished our exit polls and went back to the car, finding the two men on cell phones in the parking lot, clearly trying to find someone to come over and attest to identy and residence. I went home nervous that they wouldn't be allowed to vote. My husband reasoned it was their own fault; they weren't prepared. I said, "but it's such a confusing process. I don't understand it, either. I just happen to exist in a circle of people who do know what's going on and give me directions." The process, it seemed to me, was really designed for people who had access to particular resources. I wasn't sure if that was fair or not.

This morning in my reading labs, one of my students, a kind and outgoing young man -- a firefighter in a neighboring town -- immigrated from Mexico as a child. He is a citizen. He said that when he voted, they thought he was "an illegal." The police pulled him aside and questioned him for five minutes before he was finally allowed to vote. Another of my Latino students said the same thing happened to him on the south side of town. We chuckled half-heartedly that you would think they'd been trying to buy crack instead of cast a vote.

I also awoke to learn that Proposition 8 was likely passed in California, and my friend, K, who lives in San Francisco and married his partner of ten years, T, several weeks ago, may now feel invalidated and unsupported, his right to marry, taken just as quickly as it was granted.

Somewhere in the middle of my elation that things are turning up, that there is giant undeniable evidence of hope and progress, lingers the question: We are a powerful people; when will we learn to use our power more lovingly?

My gratitude today is a confused gratitude. I am so grateful for the opportunity to vote, to participate. I am so grateful to live in this country. I am so proud of the unity we exhibited yesterday, of how excited people are. I am so thankful that President-elect Obama has dared to take on the incredibly heavy weight of this country and its precarious state. I can't imagine the pressure and burden that comes with knowing millions of people believe you alone will deliver them.

But I am somber, too. I don't want us to stop here. I am eager for us to continue our evolution. I want us to be better. Don't you?

*I know this post is way beyond the 350 word count. I feel so full, I don't know how to prune.

A Good Book. by Patresa Hartman

I am reading a fantastic book, and I am so grateful for it. Have you read What is the What by Dave Eggers? It is a novelization of the true story of a Sudanese Lost Boy, Valentino Achak Deng. It is beautiful and heartbreaking and inspiring.

It is a shameful account of how cruel we can be to one another, the long stretch we have to collective enlightenment, and how hardship does not end for refugees when they reach "safe" soil. It is also miraculous testimony to strength of spirit and generosity.

I am excited about this book. I have tried to share this enthusiasm with my students. I want them to know how powerful a story can be, how exciting it is to get lost in someone else's tale. I want them so much to understand that a book can be life-sized even when it presents in a purse-sized paperback. I want them to know intimately the words do not end on the page.

The story of Deng is remarkable, unimaginable: To walk for years, cross-country, barely dressed, knowing at any point you could be plucked from your traveling pack and eaten by a lion in the bush; To understand intimately that death is real and waiting for everyone; To feel, in a way that most cannot, that you are hunted by multiple predators, some of your own species. When I was ten, I argued for Barbies in the pink bedroom I shared with my sister. I never doubted my safety.

I am grateful for a childhood of Barbies and minor squabbles. I am equally grateful for the stories others tell so that I understand better that my experiences are not universal and that the world consists of far more texture. It is a painful and complicated texture, but it is better to know than not know. There is value in knowing of painful things.

Do you know what I mean by that?

When I read stories such as Deng's, my own trials are knocked into perspective. We are made of the same stuff, you, me, and Deng. And so, I know that what is in Deng is in me as well; I have the same capacity for resilience. I am inspired and encouraged by that, and I am grateful for Deng's survival and his willingness to share himself with me, his anonymous reader.