"Romantic and Practical: Cowboy Sam, Queers, and Learning to Read in Montana"
Rhodes, Jacqueline (2009-03-19)
>>JACQUELINE RHODES: Sibilance. Sibilance. Sibilance. Hi again! 
[Laughs]
>>JACQUELINE RHODES: I am Jackie Rhodes and I live in southern California. I am originally from Montana, as I said. That might be relevant or it might not. A s I was also saying, take one, usually when I tell stories it is for pedagogical purposes like teaching other people, you know "I have stories too; let's all share our stories." When we are in this situation when I am supposed to tell it for my own sake, it is like "Oh, I am not quite sure what story I am going to tell."
>>INTERVIEWER: Tell both of them. 
>>JACQUELINE RHODES: I have so many. This morning I asked somebody "Well what is the first thing you read?" The first thing I remember reading, the first word -- I remember the first word I was conscious of reading: emergency. 
[Laughs]
>>INTERVIEWER: That is weird. How did you do that?
>>JACQUELINE RHODES: It was the old TV show, Emergency. Remember this? There was like an old paramedic show or something. I remember I was sitting -- this is in, you know, the single-wide trailer in western Montana watching TV with my family. I saw on the screen this word. It was like "Emergency". Suddenly, you know, the Helen Keller moment: water, water, water! Mine was like emergency, emergency! Emergency was the first word I remember reading. I think I was probably reading before that but that was the first time I was conscious of "Oh, I am reading something." My family is a bunch of readers. My mother used to make jokes about "The kids are used to seeing me with books so much they probably think a book grows at the end of my arm." So there were books everywhere and we grew up very poor, very poor. My father was disabled, my mother was supporting us and we were at yard sales all the time to get stuff. So we didn't have much of anything extra but my mother would always let us buy books at these garage sales. You could pick up boxes of books so we always had books. I was reading all sorts of stuff. I remember being a great fan of Cowboy Sam novels. 
[Laughs]
 >>JACQUELINE RHODES: It's true; it's true, Cowboy Sam novels. I remember checking out Cowboy Sam novels, as a first grader, from the school library. I also remember writing- it would be now fan fiction -- writing my own Cowboy Sam novel and submitting it to a writing contest which I didn't win. But the thing that stuck with me is I remember I was very happy with myself for using the word "mourning", like being sad, mourning about things. It sounds much sadder than it was. My first word was "emergency" and I remember this writing contest because I used "mourning" correctly. But it was my Cowboy Sam novel where the cowboy died and, you know what happened.  My mother has a copy still of an epic poem I wrote in second grade called Professor Snot. It is illustrated.
[Laughs]
>>JACQUELINE RHODES: It is illustrated, you know, Professor Snot is really obnoxious and they end up throwing him in a garbage can. So, there is just weird stuff. I was writing creatively from fairly early on, and reading all the time. As I said, my mother is a voracious reader, always books around her; we were reading comic books, we were reading novels. At some point when I was a teenager I decided I was going to read all of the classics as a part of -- you know, because my mother had said "You will go to college. I did not go to college. You will go to college." I thought, okay, since I am going to college I had better read all of these books. At some rummage sale or another I got a book of preparing for college. It had a list, a very canonical list, like you should read all of these Shakespeare things, and this stuff. I did, I went through all of them diligently so I would be prepared to go to college. 
>>INTERVIEWER: Man, were you prepared. 
>>JACQUELINE RHODES: I was so prepared. I think it is very much a clichˇ but clichˇs are often true, that reading was very much attached to "You will go to college." My mother's mother went through eighth grade. I think my mother's father went through fifth grade. This is a very poor farming family. My mother graduated from high school and got a scholarship to go to college but her parents wouldn't let her go because it was the fifties and girls didn't do that. So my mother was "You will go to college." She told that to all of her kids and it only really took with her daughter. My youngest brother now has a master's degree but the others, nothing. I just kept going and at some point when I got my PhD. I said "Mom, can I stop now? Can I stop going to school?" Because it was very much this "You can get out of this, you don't have to be the person who lives in western Montana. You can know something." 
>>INTERVIEWER: So how does that carry over to your literacy and identity worth now?
>>JACQUELINE RHODES: Interesting question. You know, in one way I have a very capital R Romantic view of literacy education, that this will make a difference, that you can know things. Because it did for me even though I think there are other things that were going on, but certainly the ability to read stuff and make sense of it and to be rewarded for reading and making sense of it, got me out of -- if I hadn't done that I am sure I would be happily hanging out serving on the volunteer Fire Department or something in western Montana. But I think, first there is the capital R Romantic view of reading and writing. Then there is the other idea of, not necessarily a subversion, but there is the idea of if you know language you can work it, you can do things with it, you can be as good as anyone else. Right? The other point is just to play. I am not sure if that works with my literacy and identity worth, but I have a very strong sense of language as playful because of my family's long history of crossword puzzles and cryptograms and playing with the actual material of language. So I think that in terms of working with technology and multimedia, that is part of it too. I have always seen that sort of material connection of language. So between thinking of language as this thing that can get you out of whatever roots you came out of, it also, because of my specific background that you can't escape and in fact is responsible for who I am, I think it works. It can help, it is empowering, but you have to see it as play. You have to be able to -- I talk with my students now about it. If you can see this as this plastic thing. I think it is also related to my being a typesetter for so long. That is another sort of -- you take words and move them around. They make sense visually, you know, if they do this. So, I have this very materialistic sense of language itself that goes with that Romantic idea of writing and reading as escape and empowerment. 
>>INTERVIEWER: So how does this tie into queer identity?
>>JACQUELINE RHODES: Oh, queer identity. That also ties into queer identity because I think that once you make the connection of language itself to identity, then you see identity as a material thing that plays, that these are constructions. Something is true here but it is true differently this way. That there is something to the idea of designer intent but that intent doesn't have to carry today. It is sort of like performance. Typesetting is performance, crossword puzzles is performance, playing with words is performance. So I think it ties very much to the queer idea of identity. At the same time, it is what makes me problematize queer theory because it is not all play. It is deadly serious play. 
>>INTERVIEWER: Especially in Wyoming. 
>>JACQUELINE RHODES: Oh yeah. Well, Montana. 
>>INTERVIEWER: Montana and Wyoming. 
>>JACQUELINE RHODES: Montana, Wyoming, most of the states of the Union. 
>>INTERVIEWER: Yeah, you are right.
>>JACQUELINE RHODES: In my paper yesterday I was talking about when I came out, in 1984. In Montana, sexual contact between members of the same sex was a felony punishable by five years in jail and a $10,000 fine, or both. This is small town Montana and the local gay organization was operating it a dinky office over a second rate theatre. We had just started hearing about this gay cancer that was hitting the big cities. You know, it has been 25 years since then; AIDS has taken hundreds of millions of lives. This is all part of my paper yesterday. The FBI right now is reporting there is a 6% increase in hate crimes based on sexual orientation, so we are still stupid about it. 
>>INTERVIEWER: We are still stupid about it. 
>>JACQUELINE RHODES: We are still stupid about it but that is part of language and sexuality are both play. But they are also deadly serious. It is that materiality, it is that materiality. I used reading and writing to learn things and to propel myself because my mother also wanted me to propel out of generations of poverty. I don't want to discount that entirely; that still feels very much a part of who I am. You don't escape it. But it is not playful; I take that very seriously when I am talking with my own students who are first generation students who didn't think that they should be there. I make jokes about this; my job as a writing instructor, a literacy worker, is to populate the university with people who shouldn't be there. 
>>INTERVIEWER: Do you think that language is going to get us out of this sick understanding of gay rights that we have?
>>JACQUELINE RHODES: I do, actually, but it is another of those --
>>INTERVIEWER: Romantic things? You are so Romantic. 
>>JACQUELINE RHODES: It is Romantic, it is playful and it's serious. I think that there is so much weight attached to how we frame issues and that is language framing it. You know, and language is never just that word on the page that I am moving around as a typesetter. It is coming with this entire comet trail of associations that you can't get rid of. When we do Proposition 8, is it a question of whether gays are going to sue the churches? Is it a question of parental rights? Because that is how they won: parental rights. It is freedom of speech. It is like, well, it is not really freedom of speech. So I think that part of it is that framing aspect of it. Part of it -you know this is entirely too optimistic and Romantic idea of the law -- part of it is I like looking at the words on the page. The law says this. There are millions of ways you can interpret that but judges tend to interpret fairly conservatively. What you do is "What are the words on the page? How do you change the words on the page to make it so that then actions that follow from those words on the page make sense?" I think that language, part of it is you put through the initiatives which isn't just language but it is part language. You get people to sign their names to a written document where they are attesting "I am saying this. I am writing this." So, I think that what else is there? 
>>INTERVIEWER: Stop there, that is beautiful. That is gorgeous.