Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

I was in line at a coffee shop when a frustrated barista excused themselves after being yelled at by a customer. Someone whispered, “They don’t make them like they used to.” They say, well at least they are not in a war zone or living as a hostage far away from their families.

Yes, previous generations were steely. Survivors of wars, survivors of discrimination, not microaggressions but macroaggressions. The people who could take a joke, the people with skins thick as football leather, who swallowed their frustrations. But at what cost? Our literature, our films, are replete with narratives of addiction and domestic abuse as responses to societal pressures.

I hear lately in public discourse this language of resilience reassert itself again. In private conversations and on social media, several acquaintances remarked on the perceived fragility of “young people today.” These commenters often draw comparisons to their parents or grandparents’ generation.

I consider this language deeply oppressive. It perpetuates the myth that life must be met with a hardiness, rather than with accountability or righteousness. It also is a way to dismiss real demands, such as that we treat each other with dignity, or that we expect more from life than perpetual hardship.

But, even more, this language eclipses very real ways people were nurtured and protected by their families, communities, institutions of faith.

I, too, have used this language to discount young people. But my frustrations led to an examination of my journey. And I realized that I never actually went it alone, merely getting by with my intellect and luck. In fact, I benefited from a long line of care, from people who had no other choice but to watch over their children.

Today’s poem honors the spirit of courageous women who humbly persist, who do not hold back on love.

Field Guide as Sonnet
by A.D. Lauren-Abunassar

My grandmother splits plums by the river—her thumbs are the thumbs of a god:
they divide, they multiply, they extend. She chews a mint leaf down until it is her own

green-colored spit. And when she smokes, the ash does not fall without her say-
so. So: she is a study in force. How to channel the mighty in her own

lithe hands. I told her once: I don’t know how to not be shaped or how to move
beyond this. She said: this is a question of life. Like: get over it. Her mercy flows like a clumsy

river. It moves mad and it carries a hazard of surprises. She surprises me
by saying: grief’s no more than a postcard in lieu of a letter, a plum where a garden should be

a disappointment you pull from the root. Look: the onward’s in the looking, she says.
To the history of other derailments and the women who tendered their manner of moving

on. She is a woman who knows: pain is no more than a wager on survivability. She dreams
in the language of history. When she eats, she keeps one hand open. When she prays

she requires no answers. Still: when she sleeps, she whispers what I whisper.
I want something for keeps.

"Field Guide as Sonnet" by A.D. Lauren-Abunassar from CORIOLIS © 2023 A.D. Lauren-Abunassar. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of the University of Arkansas Press.