It would be understandable to expect in a blog for our book
club about Mina Shaughnessy that posts would include new realizations about her
life and work. However, going over the end portion of Jane Maher’s biography of
MS alongside a transcript of a recent interview by my fellow classmates
(Bravo!) with Jane Maher, I’m finding MS to be an even more elusive figure.
I’m having a hard time reconciling the difficulties of her
personal life with her tireless, brilliant efforts in establishing the field of
Basic Writing and the scholarship along with it. After uncovering more about
the personal side of MS, even Professor Maher mentions how she struggled “with
what [she] was going to do with that information.”
It’s hard to
imagine that a person who was so productive, refined, charming, aesthetically-pleasing,
and inspiring, who easily connected to students and faculty alike, to have what Jane Maher
refers to as a “disaster” of a personal life. But I think it is this paradox
that makes her so intriguing and remarkable to me. When I think of her last
weeks of life, the amount of visitors and attention she received, the requests
she received for speaking engagements, down to her memorial where each speech lasted
almost twenty minutes long, I find myself trying to locate someone I know who
could invoke such a memory or presence. And I struggle to find anyone who could
fit the bill.
This reminds me of a comment that Professor Gleason made
early on in the semester. I don’t remember the exact wording but it was something
to the effect of the danger of Mina Shaughnessy’s legacy overshadowing who she
actually is and the work she did. In my effort to learn more about this major
figure who spearheaded the Language and Literacy program, I hope not to let my
understanding of her be swayed by people who remember her more as an idea than
a person with flaws alongside her success, those “flaws” being what made her so
vulnerable and most importantly, so human.
Some very good thoughts on the enigma of Mina Shaughnessy, Sok. In her interview with us, Jane Maher suggests that Mina got so much done partly because she was retreating from her messy life. How many successful people do the same thing! I suspect that, in the end, she may just have had charisma, a magnetic charm that defied easy explanation.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what Jane actually meant by "disaster" when referring to Mina's personal life. I assumed it was the fact that she was unable to have children and that her marriage dissolved, in addition to the internal stress of constantly facing the most belittling and insulting adversity from her colleagues. The term "disaster," though, is relative. Perhaps that is a term that Jane uses, or others, to describe these circumstances, for what may be disastrous to one might not be to another. If a fulfilling marriage and children were specific wants of Mina then perhaps it's an accurate term. Though, others would be perfectly content without either. I would also suspect that perhaps some backlash that she could have possibly received for having so many partners (maybe even married partners?), as Jane pointed out, may have added to personal turmoil, but again - she may not necessarily have cared of other's opinions, as some again wouldn't be affected by that. I'd definitely be interested to hear what other circumstances played into this perceiving her personal life as disastrous!
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