Race Gender and Class

Brinton:  ..I probably lived through my twenties without ever thinking about that childhood to the illness and having anything to do with it. I would say that when I first became aware of it as a kind of powerful experience in my life. That was when I studied psycho trauma when I was in Argentina. And, I might have been…um….how old have I been...in my late twenties…early thirty I guess.   Yeah late twenties……

Hieu:  yeah….I see…..I did not see those until I was close to thirty….

Brinton:  Right….

Hieu:  ….Yeah…when something shifted your life …like changing …..like environment, or something happened to you,

Brinton:  Right….

Hieu:  And you….start…..like……a wakening……ah…haa….

Brinton:  Right…..Right…..I think It was then….it ……short very funny…..I mean….funny…..Not funny - but…..Very interesting experience……I was …..um…..I was working I Argentina…..I was with some thing call “the solidarity movement” ..Something that mental health.  Um…..a…n…d….there was a young woman who was there, who was social psychologist and …..did a lot of work in psycho trauma with children who were disappear, whose parents were disappear through political violent there.  And I was interesting understanding better how she was doing that work and what she was doing.  And she set a very interesting little exercise…….she put a piece of paper in front of me and she said: closed your eyes and draw a picture of your self without taking the pen of ….of ……the ….paper 

Hieu: Yeah…..just one line..

Brinton:  Yeah…and when I opened (raised her voice) my eyes and I saw…..what I had drawn …….I…..h….a…..d..(Giggling)  drawn a human figure that had a whole left side that …..was kind of…… much shrunken and a BIG right side.  And I really…..looking that picture and started to think about pain…….thinking about having illness as a child…..in a way that I never really thought much a bout.  Um…..and then over the next few years I began to…kind of……..sort of rethink that whole experience until ….what that experience meant for me …and ….so interestingly enough ….A lot of people who have known me from many years through child hood and young adulthoods don’t know …or think I might have been sick when I was a child. Because I never talk about it….It wasn’t particular meaningful to me ……in any ways……and so sometimes I …….se….e ……..somebody that I have seen for many years and I might have mentioned something …..And look at me and …What are you talking about?  AND I “realize” that …some thing I incorporate and I didn’t talk about a lot ….because what there to talk about.  ….

Hieu;   Yeah…..nothing to gain to talk……….(Both laugh……)

Brinton: You know ...but... I certainly had figured out a lot about gender and races…… and begun to understand my self social class …..lo….ng ……before I ever incorporated in that sense of having been ..had told …….when I was  a child …having ….had… been had .    Be left with …. Certain  limitations ….And I do have physical limitations.  They are not limitations that mobilized me, but they are part of ..my life.

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