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Black Rock Desert, Nevada
Photo Essays

Burning Man’s Economy of Loving-Kindness

I had thought Burning Man would be a nonstop hedonistic party. But when I arrived at the arts festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert last summer, I realized it was really about building a community—one art installation, and one person, at a time.

Story by Hannah Albarazi
Photos by Sari Blum

As I approached the gate to Black Rock City, a young man came up to my car and greeted me with a warm “Welcome Home.” I had arrived at Burning Man: a week-long arts festival in the Nevada desert held annually since 1986.

Before I became a “Burner”—what the festival calls its attendees, almost 70,000 strong this year—I had dismissed it as a drugged-up, hippie rave in the desert. Months later, certain images of the festival’s spectacle have stayed with me: the skydivers falling onto the sand dunes, the parade of hundreds of topless women on bicycles, the square-rigged pirate ship sailing across the desert on wheels, the skateboard park shaped like a heart. But what stands out to me most about my first visit there is something else: the real and vital community I was surprised to find among the festival’s motley crowd of academics and soldiers, financial advisors and college students, Silicon Valley techies and artists.

At the Burning Man festival at the end of last summer (captured in the accompanying photos by Sari Blum), I came across men and women like Raymond Raven, who was volunteering as a medic. Burning Man does not allow any monetary exchanges except for buying ice and coffee. Instead, attendees swap goods and services, or just offer them for free. Raven, a forty-two-year-old hand and upper extremity surgeon from Burbank, California, didn’t mind that his physician skills weren’t being compensated with dollars. The informal nature of his dealings with other Burners meant that there was no insurance and legal paperwork to process, and it gave Raven the chance to put into practice his conviction that health care is a “right and not a privilege.”

More importantly, it connected Raven with the people he treated in a way he couldn’t at his day job. “Hugs and gifts are by far the best payment I have ever received,” Raven says. The festival, he adds, encourages people to remember “just how connected we are to one another.” (It also helps that there is very limited Internet and cell phone service, keeping Burners focused on each other, not their LCD screens.)

Gift-giving is a crucial part of building community in Black Rock City. Gifts often come in the form of jewelry, massages, advice, or just a swig of water. Your food may be a gift as well—from the woman who chased you down at sunrise to offer a hot breakfast from her tiny cart.

Sometimes the gifts take more elaborate forms. The city—built anew with every festival, only to be torn down at the event’s end—consists of a main camping area, formed by a series of concentric and radial streets, and an area reserved for art installations. There, the enormous wolf you can climb inside of is not just an object of art, but a gift to the Burners from the artists among them. At night, colorful lasers shoot across the night sky, and atop an art installation you can see a sea of neon lights spread out across the desert. When you walk through a tunnel made of plastic and emerge into a giant dome for a communal shower with about a hundred naked people and a DJ spinning—that experience is also a gift, and, potentially, the only time you might bathe that week.

Gillian Grogan, an MIT student and musician, says the gift-giving is contagious, making her want to reciprocate in kind. People in the outside world, she says, “have forgotten how to accept and give anything, either material or immaterial.” Feeling that warmth of giving and receiving without the intent to profit encourages Burners to see each other in a different light—as if they are truly at home, among friends. Grogan says she hopes that the altruism she experienced in Black Rock City will continue to “rub off” in her life beyond its gates.

Creators of an "art car" enjoying the sunrise.
Artists watch the sunrise from the hood of their “art car.”

Sociologist Katherine K. Chen has written (in this magazine as well) about the unconventional and intense ways that Burning Man gets ordinary people involved in what amounts to an international social movement. (A quarter of festival-goers come to the event from overseas, according to a 2012 census conducted by the event’s organizers.) Volunteers devote months of planning and preparation to building a community from the ground up and making it function—and inspire—as an idealistic, alternative vision of life beyond the outside culture of consumption and status-seeking.

That alternative, DIY ethos is at the heart of the festival. Across the “playa”—what festival-goers call the dry lakebed in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert where Burners gather every year—the thumping electronic dance music reminded me of other large festivals, such as Coachella in California and Ultra in Miami. But those events are sponsored by corporations like Heineken and Red Bull, while the elaborate stages and massive art installations at Burning Man are all constructed by the festival-goers themselves.

As Chen writes, Burning Man breaks down the divide that separates formally trained artists and professional managers from everyone else, letting people find their own ways, however large or small, to be creative and contribute—whether that means assembling a stage or art installation, building one of the altered “mutant” vehicles that traverse the playa, performing dance or music, or volunteering the many other skills they use, or don’t use, in the outside world.

Of course, there are also plenty of drugs and exhibitionists at Black Rock City, true to the outside stereotype. But that’s not what I, or many other festival-goers, really got out of our Burning Man experience. Mickey Larsen, seventy-two, a retired high school teacher from Santa Cruz, California, was “dragged” to this year’s festival by his son and friends. Before he arrived in Black Rock City for the first time, Larsen had assumed the event would consist of “loud music, drugs, and pseudo-mystic gatherings.” But there was much more to it than that, he says. He describes the festival as an “intellectual and spiritual playground,” a coming together of immense amounts of energy and creativity to create and nurture an “authentic cooperative community.”

That’s what stayed with me, too, when I returned to “the default”—a term Burners use to describe life outside Black Rock City. Burning Man was less about the partying and more about creating a strong and open community, one without judgment, where radical self-expression is not just accepted, but encouraged as an end in itself.

That spirit carried on to the fiery end of the festival. Of the dozens of art installations assembled in Black Rock City every year, the highlights are two towering wooden structures, the Temple and the Man. In the Temple, Burners leave notes throughout the week that describe the suffering they are dealing with. The Man is seen as a symbol of conformity and oppression.

On the festival’s final weekend, both structures were burned to the ground. The next day, the temporary community of Black Rock City folded up its tents, and the people left the desert, taking their possessions with them and, perhaps, something more.

Hannah Albarazi is a journalist currently based in San Francisco, where she covers breaking news. Sari Blum is a freelance photographer also based in the San Francisco area.

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The Slippery Slope of Social Media

By Lisa Factora-Borchers
phone showing social media apps
Photo by Jason Howie

I am a writer who recently noticed I spend more time reading articles about writing, absorbing Top Ten lists of famous authors’ work practices, and laughing at clever memes than doing any writing. That space where your hands pause, your mind deepens, and your lips slightly part in anticipation was being filled with links to the latest insight from Junot Diaz or a must read command on Facebook because my name was tagged in a post. The time I was supposed to be working was filled with sending a few dollars to an activist whose rent-and-grocery bank account was low, reading breakthrough essays from emerging writers, and passing on information about independent films, memoirs about Caribbean girlhood, and petitions to Free Marissa.

When I noticed my attention span was getting shorter — and that perhaps Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, GoodReads, and Google+ were contributing to frenzied jumps from link to link — I booted myself off social media. Still, there were animated videos about the political situation in Syria and applications for studio time, grants, and artist residencies to fill the small space I’d regained. My attention span was like a connect-the-dots page, but there were no lines drawn to make a picture.

My inability to focus became shamefully apparent during an embarrassing moment the other day. I raced upstairs to get directions on my computer before going out with my family, but found a stray, open tab when I sat in front of the screen. I quickly sunk into an article about postpartum depression, then read about the origin of the magazine in which the article was published, then moved to the bio of the magazine’s founder, then on to one of the zines she’d once written, then … Click. Click. Pause to read. Click.

Nearly twenty minutes had passed when I heard my husband’s voice from downstairs, “Did you get the directions?” Although no one could see my face, I blushed. Have I no sense of time, respect for others, and self-discipline to focus on just one thing?

I thought about the struggle I have with digital distractions. I pondered how my love of things smart and wordy might be balanced with being an essayist and a mother. For writers, the Internet can be a portal to resources, networks, new knowledge, and communities that encourage creativity, but it can also bring the temptation to observe rather than create. While there is a safety in observation, and an allure to continual learning, the deepest gains a writer can make is in the act of writing.

Social media is an infinite playground for intellectual stimulation. It is an unhinged door with no threat of being closed. And its endless void often leads to a blank screen. I want the buzz and the quiet, but the duality remains illusive to me.

Last week my publicist reminded me that I need to “get out there,” and encouraged me to use social media to establish a public voice. I know it’s good advice, but I fear the tightrope walk. Can I effectively balance entertainment and social meandering with prolifically producing creative work?

Over the last several days, I snuggled with my son without wondering if I should take a picture of how cute he looked to post on Instagram. I texted love poems to my partner. I started a morning prayer routine for the billionth time with the hope that this time it will be sustained. I was more present with others, and I was more present with myself.

It felt authentic. I felt authentic. That cannot be downloaded.

I finally returned to Twitter and Facebook today, and the pace felt dangerously hurried. It also felt wonderful. The tide begin to tug at me as I waded in, and its pull shifted the ground under my feet. Afraid again, I take a deep breath and wonder if I will finally learn how to swim.

Lisa Factora-Borchers is a Filipino American writer and editor of Dear Sister: Letters from Survivors of Sexual Violence. She writes about writing, justice, and transformative feminist practice.

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Maybe in America: A Review of Captain Phillips

By Tony Cella

Two pirates confront Captain Richard Phillips on his captured ship

Captain Phillips, the new film based on a real-life encounter between an American commercial-shipping crew and Somalian pirates, opens with the titular character in Vermont, driving to the airport with his wife. Richard Phillips expresses concern about the state of the shipping industry, sunk by the global recession that struck a year earlier.

On the other side of the globe, Muse, a poor Somalian fisherman forced into piracy by his own economic woes, wakes up to news that the local warlord has demanded that his village capture another ship, or suffer violent consequences. Muse joins a crowd of hungry men on the beach jumping and shouting at a young pirate captain to give them a spot on his crew.

The angular fisherman-turned-pirate is an obvious foil for Phillips, their stories — and those of their first-world American and desperate Somalian crews — woven together through crosscut scenes. This parallel storytelling guides much of the film, emphasizing the economic anxieties shared by the men even as it highlights the brutality of the Horn of Africa’s most chaotic state. (The film is based on a book that the real-life Captain Phillips wrote, a memoir of the 2009 piracy attack he survived.)

Somalia’s recent history of civil strife makes it the global poster child for a failed state. The country’s last functioning government dissolved in 1991 when the Cold War ended. The civil war that followed degenerated into a free-for-all of sectarian bloodshed, first pitting political factions and, eventually, tribal clans. In recent years, the economic situation has deteriorated to the point that the installation of ten miles worth of solar-powered street lights in the capital of Mogadishu last May was a cause for celebration among the beleaguered population.

Basic statistics about today’s Somalia — unemployment numbers, literacy rates, total population — are currently unknown, although two relatively stable, if unrecognized, governments have sprung up in the northern part of the country, at the tip of the Horn of Africa. In one of the breakaway states, known as Puntland, many former fishermen during the recession years began raiding the busy commercial-shipping lanes in the Gulf of Aden. The Somalians claimed they took to piracy because international companies used the waters as a chemical dumping ground or overfished, as the film references. In a nod to Somalia’s fractured state, the pirates call themselves the Coast Guard when approaching their prey; Muse compares the ransom money they demand to taxes for passing through Somalian waters.

In a meeting after their first encounter with the Somalian pirates, the crew argues with Phillips. One sailor, a twenty-year veteran sailor, says he didn’t sign up to fight pirates. Phillips points out that each crew member knew the ship’s route before signing up for the voyage, and each knew the dangers of the Somalian waters. When the crew insists that they evade the pirates by heading further out into the ocean, Phillips tells his men that switching the course would slow down the trip and cost the company money. If they don’t like it, he tells them, they can go upstairs to his office and sign the paperwork to quit their job — and go home with the rest of the crew anyway when they reach their destination, Kenya.

Later on the in the film, a wounded pirate cries to Muse that he never planned on being hurt. The Somalians were supposed to capture the ship, hold it for ransom, then get paid and leave. Muse shouts at him that anything can happen on the job. Piracy, like capitalism, isn’t for the weak.

The comparisons continue. Everyone — American or Somalian — hates their boss. After Phillips and his crew escape the pirates thanks to a sputtering motor, Muse wants to chase them. The pirate captain refuses after their radios pick up Phillips “requesting an air strike” from the Navy.

“I may be skinny, but I’m not a coward,” Muse snaps — a remark that provokes a particularly violent kind of work disagreement.

Later in the movie, Muse (played by first-time actor Barkhad Abdi)  brags to his captive that he and his fellow pirates recently netted a six-million-dollar ransom for a Greek ship. Phillips, nicknamed “Irish” by the pirates, asks why Muse is still in the piracy business. The Somalian replies that their bosses have bosses, and — much like the American sailors — low-level grunts like him must pay their dues.

But that fact of life also says something about the key difference between the two crews. The Americans benefit from the safety net of union-bargained contracts and a stable legal system to see them enforced. When the Somalians disagree over business decisions, they don’t sit around a table with lawyers and discuss their options. They pull out guns and threaten each other with death.

Somalia hasn’t changed much since 2009, when the film takes place. The United Nations-recognized government controls little territory outside of Mogadishu. With piracy down thanks to an increased international naval presence, Somalians have lost one more option for gainful employment. Young men join tribal militias or the Islamist insurgency. Gun-shy Somalians working at the bazaar live in constant fear of suicide-bomb attacks. Even subsisting off food rations and other international aid comes with its risks: UN personnel have been accused of child abuse and other sex crimes.

In film’s final scenes, with the US Navy drawing near, a battered Phillips pleads with Muse. “There’s got to be something other than being a fisherman and kidnapping people,” he says.

“Maybe in America, Irish,” Muse replies. “Maybe in America.”

Tony Cella is a freelance reporter who has covered crime and grime in Los Angeles, New York City, and the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska. Email: tonycella37@gmail.com

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Rebel Blues: A Review of Mojo Hand

By Olupero R. Aiyenimelo

Blues legend Sam Hopkins — known as Lightnin’ Hopkins to his fans — influenced everyone from musical giants like Bob Dylan and John Coltrane to activists like Black Panther Party cofounder Bobby Seale. Long after his death, Rolling Stone named him one of the greatest guitarists of all time. Yet not much is known about him. Notoriously private, Hopkins fabricated and exaggerated details about his early life, preferring to keep his origins a mystery.

Mojo Hand, a new biography of Hopkins, details the obscure life and music of an iconoclastic bluesman who was the consummate musician’s musician, inspiring legions of artists across many genres. Born in 1911, Hopkins lived in rural Texas at a time when slavery was still fresh in the minds of those who would inherit its parting gift of Jim Crow. His grandfather, a slave, hanged himself to be free of its atrocities. His father was murdered when Hopkins was three, and his brother left home at fourteen to keep from avenging their father’s death. In his youth, Hopkins endured incidents of vicious racism, including the abusive treatment of white supervisors at the various plantations where he worked.

His was a family of poor sharecroppers with an affinity for music. Hopkins’s brothers, sister, and mother each played instruments, and Hopkins learned to play his older brother’s guitar. By age eight, he had made his own guitar with screen-door wire, and his prodigious skills kept him from having to inherit the “family business” of sharecropping.

Those skills also kept him from following convention. “He didn’t play with a clamp,” says drummer Robert Murphy, who worked with Hopkins. “He just played by ear, just like most of the old-time bluesmen.  He wouldn’t pay much attention to whether it was an eight-bar blues or a twelve-bar blues, just as long as it fit what he was singing and doing.”

The biography captures quite well Hopkins’s aversion to conformity. From his playing style to the way he carried himself, Hopkins was a law unto himself, choosing to do things his way no matter what people said or thought of him. Long before Dylan was rejecting autograph seekers, or band members of Van Halen were making bizarre demands about M&Ms, Hopkins was known for his idiosyncrasies. He was a raconteur, a heavy drinker, and a fancy dresser. He would not record, or rerecord, if he didn’t feel like doing so. He refused to honor contracts that restricted him from working with other record companies at the same time, and would either change the name of a song or change his name to sidestep any lawsuits. He did not like venturing too far from his home base in Houston, and refused to fly, which made life difficult for those who worked with him, and made him hard to locate when there were deals that needed to happen. He did things his way, or not at all, with very few exceptions.

Dick Waterman, who booked gigs for Hopkins, points out that most blues artists came from rural areas. Though Hopkins was raised in Texas farm country, he stood out because he also had spent time in the city and been influenced by its culture. He carried himself as an “urban man” and played his blues not acoustic, but amplified with a pickup. As Waterman says:

He came from a very different place socially and musically.  He was very cool.  Some of the other [bluesmen] would be overly polite and respectful around white people, but Lightnin’ didn’t have any of that.  Lightnin’ would just treat everyone the same, and if anything he carried himself with a sense of confidence and almost arrogance. He was Lightnin’ Hopkins.

Hopkins was also a loner. He would work with only one or two other bandmates, or just by himself. He preferred to be the focal point, and here he showed his nastier side. He would deliberately change the timing as soon as his band got used to a certain tempo or rhythm — in part to keep them from launching any ambitious solo efforts. Oftentimes, Hopkins would not rehearse, and the haphazard adjustments he made with every new performance made it nearly impossible to follow along while accompanying him.

Despite all these things — or, perhaps, because of them — Hopkins’s style is indelible. He made songs up impromptu, and hardly ever sang them the same way twice. His guitar playing was not easily mimicked: he changed it at whim and did not stick to any particular structure or chord style. He rambled through most of his concerts, telling stories that were at times incomprehensible, thanks to his drinking and thick Southern accent. And yet his performances thrilled his audiences.

Hopkins sang, in typical blues fashion, about women (short-haired ones, cheating ones, drunk ones). But his songs also had things to say about everything from work, to road trips, to politics. He often improvised lyrics, such as this freestyle take on astronaut John Glenn’s first orbit of the earth:

People always said this morning
With this on their mind
Said ain’t no livin’ man go around the world three times
But John Glenn done it

The main issue I had with Mojo Hand was the connection the authors imply between Hopkins’s illiteracy and his approach to business. Hopkins rarely signed contracts, and when he did he drew an “X” in place of his signature. He also preferred to be paid up front, in cash rather than royalties. Did Hopkins do these things just because he couldn’t read? The authors briefly mention the suspect business practices of music publishers back then, but they do not elaborate on how these practices often pushed musicians into destitution while the companies made money even long after their deaths. Royalties and publishing rights were rarely honored in those days, and many popular musicians were paid poverty wages for their work. These problems were rampant and well known in the blues and jazz worlds. Operating in a white-dominated industry, Hopkins clearly developed his own survival techniques.

The authors also could have dealt more with Hopkins’s influence on the generations of artists who came after him. Some of his fans included Ringo Starr, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimmie Vaughan, Johnny Winter, B.B. King, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Elvis Presley, and ZZ Top. How did Hopkins’s work inspire them?

Mojo Hand gives us some tantalizing details about a pioneering but private blues legend who, two decades after his death, remains an enigma. An alcoholic, an insatiable artist, and an understatedly temperamental man, Hopkins wound up becoming one of the greats, hailed by scholars as the “embodiment of the jazz-and-poetry spirit, representing its ancient form in the single creator whose words and music are one act.”  In the end, though, this biography is just a sketch of the complex man Hopkins was, a troubled artist with a life that, just like his songs, cannot be fully translated to the printed page. Perhaps that’s what Hopkins would have preferred.

Olupero R. Aiyenimelo is a freelance writer, poet, and lyricist based in Los Angeles.

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Calls for Submissions

Call for Submissions: Incompetence + Stupidity

From social inanities to institutionalized idiocies, we are looking for pieces — both serious and lighthearted — that speak to the all-too-human nature of ineptitude.


In The Fray Magazine | Call for Submissions | October 2013: Incompetence + Stupidity

In a glaring example of governmental dysfunction, Congress has shutdown the US government and may default on the national debt. Many of the most powerful institutions in history have suffered from mismanagement and corruption, but that is only part of the explanation for their failures. Another is good, old-fashioned stupidity.

Organizations can be infuriatingly bureaucratic. Government leaders can be feckless, clueless, and out of touch. Legal loopholes and unintended consequences can create impairments and catch-22’s.

From social inanities to institutionalized idiocies, In The Fray is looking for pieces — both serious and lighthearted — that speak to the all-too-human nature of ineptitude. We want original news features, commentary, photo essays, and review essays focused on incompetence and stupidity.

Please review our submissions guidelines and send a one-paragraph pitch to the appropriate section editor NO LATER THAN NOVEMBER 30, 2013. You may attach a complete draft if you have one.

We also welcome submissions on any other topic that relates to the magazine’s themes: promoting global understanding, encouraging empathy, and demonstrating compassion.

We look forward to hearing from you.

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Photo by Saptarshi Chakraborty
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Power Failure

By Priyanka Nandy
Photo of the author sitting on a throne
Photo by Saptarshi Chakraborty

Lately, as a result of planning my wedding, there’s been a lot of talk among my buddies about what drives the expensive social conservatism we see during our various social and religious ceremonies in India. There is, of course, the cash-flashing, wealth-waving syndrome that leads to obscene shows of buying power, and the media-spurred my-fairy-tale-wedding delusion, but what spurs people with sensible plans and ideological commitments to chuck it all and take a nosedive into these pro forma spectacles of self-destructive wastage?

In a country like India, where power comes in many forms and from many different sources — age, caste, gender, class, senior social roles, perceived religious devotion, nobleness of profession — I’d say that, apart from the usual suspects, embittered failures in roles of familial power play an enormous role in enforcing socioreligious conservatism. This is not to say that successful people with genuine affection for their families cannot be socially conservative, but in the specific case of bitter underachievers, reverting to traditions crafted for the patriarchal family head in a very different economic era allows them, temporarily, to become directors instead of dependents. The more rules and strictures they reinforce, the more power and control they have.

Rituals and ceremonies are their particular triumphs, since during them, they can reduce their more successful kin to temporary penury (or close) by insisting things be “properly” done at enormous expense, almost none of which they bear themselves. The worst aspect of this entire situation, perhaps, is that we have an automatic pity-flavored weakness for the weak and dependent among us — and for these brief periods, give them free(ish) rein over our lives out of affection or sympathy or adherence to social hierarchy, not realising the undercurrent of malice that such indulgence feeds. Indeed, I would say that most people practicing such malice don’t realize they are being malicious either. They take their socially assigned roles seriously, and quite successfully hide their subconscious jealousy and vengefulness (even from themselves) by dressing them in the righteous garbs of culture, tradition, and propriety.

This is aided in Hindu society by a complete ignorance of what Hinduism accommodates and entails. A very practical set of scriptural directives have been drowned under a collage of folk practices over the centuries, and since firsthand knowledge of Hinduism requires actual scholarship — and a broad, receptive mind — most self-identified Hindus go with the flow of simplistic, homogenized inventions and outright aberrations, firmly convinced they’re treading the path of their ancestors a million times removed.

If today I get married and decide to serve roast beef and fried pork at the wedding feast, it would be an absolute phenomenon. I would find no caterers, people would nervously offer sorry excuses for not attending, and those who attend may think they’re being revolutionaries by breaking stupid “Hindu” rigor. But even for a few centuries after Buddha’s death, roast calves and fried pork were centerpieces of Hindu daily and ceremonial eating, in combination with deer, rabbits, boar, various birds, ghee, rice, barley, and honey-thickened, milk-based sweets. But I digress.

The point is, in a social system where there are competing structures of power, every time you mark a social milestone in your life — unless you have genuinely loving and/or sympathetic kinsfolk in positions of familial power, or people secure enough in themselves to either aid you or allow you the freedom of choice — be prepared to either incur considerable financial damage in the name of maintaining the social fabric or causing breaches in the family, for which you shall bear all the blame after you have spent a smaller — but still considerable — amount in marking the milestone anyway.

It’s called social living. Or the tyranny of the weak.

Priyanka Nandy works on structural inequities in public education and public health in India. She blogs at priyankanandy.com and photo shares everywhere.

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The Long March: A Review of John Lewis’s Graphic Novel

By Cornelius Fortune

Fifty years after the March on Washington, we are well versed in the visual cues of the civil rights era: grainy black-and-white photos and footage of peaceful protesters being accosted by angry mobs, beset by dogs and water cannons, and enveloped in plumes of tear gas. John Lewis, one of the giants of the civil rights movement, not only lived those scenes of protest and violence — a beating by Alabama state troopers fractured his skull — but he worked to make sure the struggle led to real political and cultural change by the era’s end.

Now Lewis and his collaborators offer a new visual take on the protests and the people behind them, in the graphic novel March, an illustrated (and unconventional) autobiography of the civil rights leader and longtime member of Congress. In a way, the book brings Lewis full circle: Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, a comic book published in 1956, helped inspire him to take up the nonviolent cause as a teenager.

There’s a long tradition of autobiographical comics, from Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor to Jonathan Ames’s The Alcoholic to Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis (the basis of an Academy Award-nominated animated film). But Lewis is not just any other thoughtful voice of retrospection. One of the original Freedom Riders, he was a founding member and then chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which was instrumental in organizing some of the era’s most important sit-ins and other nonviolent protests against segregation — including the March on Washington. (The youngest speaker that day was Lewis, then twenty-three years old.) He also played a prominent role in another of the era’s iconic demonstrations, the Selma to Montgomery march, the source of the scars he still bears on his head. Lewis went on to a career in politics, representing Georgia’s fifth congressional district since the late eighties and now serving in the House Democratic leadership.

Lewis, we learn in March, was an unusual child. His parents were sharecroppers, and Lewis grew up on a farm in Alabama. As a boy, he raised chickens, not only giving them names but even devising a makeshift incubator because his family couldn’t afford the one in the Sears, Roebuck catalogue. His youth in the forties and fifties is captured in a series of panels: Lewis as a boy honing his sermonizing skills before a congregation of chickens (his first ambition was to become a preacher). Lewis as a young man first hearing King on the radio and becoming inspired to embrace nonviolence. As the narrative of Lewis’s life advances, March reminds us of the events transpiring in the background — from Rosa Parks’s civil disobedience to the killing of Emmett Till to the Brown v. Board of Education decision that struck down school segregation — all of which shaped Lewis’s worldview and led him and others down the path to protest.

The best dramatizations carry a sense of dread, or anticipation, even when you know the outcome. Like a train slowing a moment on the tracks and, by degrees, gaining momentum, March crackles with a sort of inevitability. We watch as Lewis and other young protestors in the Nashville Student Movement, a nonviolent direct-action group fighting against segregation, subject themselves – and each other – to a series of humiliating tests, preparing them for not only the harsh words, but also the physical retaliation they were likely to encounter. As Lewis points out, “For some, it was too much.” The hardest part to learn, he adds, was “how to find love for your attacker.”

Cover of comic "Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story"Once the book settles into the sit-ins by Lewis and his fellow activists in downtown Nashville, you’re firmly locked in — you’re enlisted. And, here, really, is where Nate Powell’s art takes off.

When the sit-ins begin, the artwork becomes darker, the pages soaked with dark ink, the lines sketchier, shadowy, conveying the pain and fears of the nonviolent protestors. Powell’s style is somewhere in between the worlds of photorealism and animation, the images at times seeming to move on the page. It’s detailed enough that each face is distinctive from the other, with exquisitely rendered backgrounds undoubtedly reflecting Powell’s research on the downtown buildings of that era. His use of black and white is not just an artistic choice; it intensifies the action by making the reader slow down to see the details.

Part of a planned trilogy, March ends right after Nashville Mayor Ben West announces to the press and a group of protesters at city hall that he will support the desegregation of lunch counters. On May 10, 1960, six downtown stores, the book tells us, “served food to black customers for the first time in the city’s history.” We’re left with scenes of black Americans sitting at a lunch counter some three years before the historic March on Washington.

In August, Lewis spoke at the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington, sharing the podium with former presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and President Barack Obama. The last surviving speaker of the original march, Lewis noted that the country still has “a great distance to go before we fulfill the dream of Martin Luther King Jr.” And yet, he said, change had come — as March itself suggests, in its introductory depiction of the inauguration of the country’s first black president. “Fifty years later we can ride anywhere we want to ride, we can stay where we want to stay,” Lewis said. “Those signs that said ‘white’ and ‘colored’ are gone. And you won’t see them anymore except in a museum, in a book, on a video.”

Sometimes I hear people saying nothing has changed, but for someone to grow up the way I grew up in the cotton fields of Alabama to now be serving in the United States Congress makes me want to tell them come and walk in my shoes. Come walk in the shoes of those who were attacked by police dogs, fire hoses and nightsticks, arrested and taken to jail.

March invites the reader to walk in the shoes of Lewis and the many other men and women who sat down, picketed, and marched for justice, without violence and with a great love for their attackers — and for their country.

Cornelius Fortune is a journalist whose work has appeared in the Advocate, Citizen Brooklyn, the Chicago Defender, Yahoo News, and other publications.

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Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
News / Photo Essays

All I Know Is Here

Best of In The Fray 2013. Raised in small-town Minnesota, college student Shelby Wolfe traveled to Ethiopia to shoot images for a documentary about poverty. There she met Rahel, a fourteen-year-old girl orphaned by AIDS.

By Scott Winter
Photos by Shelby Wolfe

She was shy, and that’s what drew aspiring photojournalist Shelby Wolfe to her. Her name was Rahel Nunu. Fourteen years old and hidden beneath a green scarf and brown skirt, she lived in a compound in Addis Ababa for Ethiopian children turned into orphans by the AIDS pandemic. Living HIV positive in a country where the disease is so stigmatized had taught Rahel the value of discretion. It was May, the hottest month in the Horn of Africa, but she insisted on covering her arms with the scarf: her skin had erupted with rashes and sores, side effects of the powerful antiviral medications she took. Today she’d also skipped school, not wanting to take the risk of her condition being scrutinized by her classmates, who didn’t know her secret.

A child swings from a rope
Inside the AHOPE compound for HIV/AIDS orphans in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Shelby, a college freshman from small-town Minnesota, was visiting the compound as part of a photojournalism fellowship. She gravitated toward Rahel the moment she met her. The quietest girl in the orphanage, Rahel was an observer when alone or in groups, keeping her distance from the other children as they crowded around the compound’s TV to watch soccer matches and American music videos. Shelby was quiet herself, and she could relate to Rahel.

Sitting down next to Rahel, Shelby pulled out two sketchbooks and a pile of pencils she’d bought on the street. Shelby knew Rahel could draw. She had recently done well in a local art competition. With pencils or crayons or paint, she would draw the other girls—her sisters, as they called each other—or the beautiful women she saw on TV.

Shelby hoped the sketchbooks might get her to start talking about herself. Without speaking, Rahel drew a mother with the willowy look of a model.

Shelby drew an elephant. “Does my elephant need anything else?” Shelby asked.

Rahel took the sketchbook and added a baby elephant next to Shelby’s elephant, making it a mother.

Rahel stands in front of her painting
Rahel Nunu in front of a painting she made on one of the orphanage’s walls.

Shelby was one of ten students from the University of Nebraska who were visiting Ethiopia on a three-week fellowship. For the past few years, donors had covered the overseas travel costs for a group of the university’s student photojournalists and videographers and a few of their professors (disclosure: I was one of the professors on Shelby’s trip). There were two conditions. First was that the students use the opportunity to capture Ethiopia’s stories of poverty and help bring about change there. Second was that they show their fellow Americans a new Ethiopia, a different kind of country than the one that Sally Struthers and company had brought to public attention in the 1980s with horrifying television images of famine victims.

Shelby had just twenty-one days to finish her assignment: shoot a batch of photos and videos that would impress her professors and wind up in a documentary and related blog the class was making about poverty in Ethiopia. Shelby needed a subject, and Rahel was the girl she chose. But Shelby didn’t have the reporting experience to get Rahel to open up to her. Shelby’s past work at her college newspaper was something altogether different from documenting a life-and-death issue like HIV/AIDS in Africa—and truth be told, Shelby had struggled to pass her reporting class that spring, right before she left for Ethiopia. She had never done anything like this before.

And then there was the heartbreak of the orphanage. She saw kids curled up on bunks, clutching their stomachs; the toxic medication they took seemed to make them as sick as the disease it was meant to fight. She saw babies, too, sleeping in rows of cribs, as nurses shuttled about the room caring for them. (“They’re our children,” one nurse told her.) For Shelby, the wild swings in emotion were difficult to take. One moment, she was watching kids playing ping-pong and twirling on a tire swing in front of walls painted with Dora the Explorer and Dr. Seuss characters—one of them drawn by Rahel. Another moment, Shelby found herself in the dark office of the orphanage’s assistant director, listening to Addis Bogale’s sobs as she described the most recent death of a child. “You don’t forget them,” Bogale said.

Shelby was overwhelmed by it all. She worried about whether she could handle three weeks in such grim surroundings. And yet she also knew that Rahel, and all her orphan brothers and sisters, didn’t get to leave.

Shelby slid the sketchbooks over to Rahel.

“You can keep those,” Shelby said.

Outside the compound
Outside the compound, located near the Vatican Embassy in a residential area on the city’s west side.

Shelby Wolfe grew up in Minnesota. Her hometown, Owatonna, population 25,000, is the kind of heartland community that urges citizens on its Facebook page to make flag-themed fruit dips—strawberries, bananas, and blueberries—for the Fourth of July holiday. Her family lived an hour’s drive away from the Mall of America, one of the world’s largest shopping centers. As a kid, Shelby danced at an upscale studio. She had the same boyfriend for three years in high school. But she also loved Vietnamese food, especially a dish of grilled pork over vermicelli, and liked going to shows at First Avenue, a music venue where Prince used to play. Inspired by her globe-trotting older sister, she had hiked the Rocky Mountains and backpacked through Germany.

Shelby went off to college at the University of Nebraska. Away from home, Shelby pierced her nose. She started hanging out in coffeeshops. She became obsessed with her photojournalism class, to the point her other grades dropped and she had to do some explaining to her parents.

But that passion for photography also brought her to Ethiopia. The orphanage is funded by AHOPE for Children, a nonprofit based in Virginia. On her first day there, Shelby and her professor met with assistant director Bogale, who walked them through the part of the compound for younger children and then to a nearby group home. Bogale’s creation, the group home was a new project to integrate the children into the community so that AHOPE could get rid of the orphanage altogether. But that dream was a generation in the making.

Then Bogale brought them to another part of the compound, where Shelby met the teenage orphans. Sitting alone in one corner, watching the other girls watch music videos on the TV, was Rahel.

Rahel watches
Rahel watches other children play basketball.

Addis Ababa is a modern city, only a century old. The capital of Ethiopia, it houses the headquarters of the African Union and is also known for being the home of beloved twentieth-century emperor Haile Selassie, known as Ras Tafari, who became the muse for the reggae movement half a world away.

Shelby saw little of the city. She spent each day at the compound. Nights, she met up with the other nine student photographers and three instructors, and together they critiqued the day’s photos. Those sessions were often as stressful for Shelby and her fellow students as the orphanage itself.

The group looked over the photos on Shelby’s laptop of Rahel sitting on her bed, watching TV, and showing off her artwork. It was clear to everyone that Shelby had some good shots, but she didn’t have a story.

Shelby was growing anxious. She didn’t have many days left. Her professors told her to keep shooting photos. Keep changing perspective. Keep asking questions. Shelby threw herself into the work, getting absorbed by the technical aspects of her craft. She kept telling herself that the story wasn’t about her. She should quit focusing on her own fears. What were they compared to Rahel’s? This girl wasn’t with her family—though she had one out there somewhere, unlike many of the girls in the compound. Not even the teachers at her school knew about her HIV. Being an orphan was enough of a stigma; she didn’t need the kids to know the rest.

Rahel & friends path to school
Rahel and her AHOPE sisters walk to school, where only one teacher knows that the children are HIV positive.

One morning, Shelby followed Rahel to her school, where the staff put Shelby in front of all the kids and gave her a microphone to explain who she was and why she was there. The students lined up to meet her one by one. Then they lined up again to give her pink, orange, and white flowers. “Miss, I love you,” one girl said to her with a smile. The students giggled and begged Shelby to take their photos.

No, she could not fail at this.

One day at the orphanage, Shelby sat on the ground while Rahel rocked in a swing. Names of the world’s cities, countries, and landmarks were written in chalk on the walls of the compound. Rahel asked Shelby about the Coliseum in Rome. Shelby’s sister had been to India, and Rahel asked about how beautiful the country was. Rahel said she’d seen New York in a movie and wanted to see it for real.

Shelby asked her if she knew anyone who had visited other countries. Rahel said some of the other children had been adopted by families in the United States.

“Does that make you sad?” Shelby asked.

“Yes, but other children come.”

Rahel had been in the orphanage since she was five. Every child there, she told Shelby, was part of her family. “All I know is here,” she said.

Rahel and her friends laugh at the boys.
Rahel and her friends laugh after making fun of some boys.

“I realized this is their life and these kids are making the best of it,” Shelby told me later. “I couldn’t imagine not having a family. But at the same time it was really touching that they are each other’s family.”

Her time with Rahel made Shelby think about how fortunate she was. Shelby is close to her older sister, who is always up for going with her to concerts and hikes and bonfires. She has a dad who is a periodontist and a mom who works at a pharmacy, and they lovingly take care of all her needs—from the Ford Focus she drives, to her out-of-state college tuition, to all the dance costumes in her closet.

Rahel had none of that. She could only rely on her “family” at the compound—assuming her sister-friends didn’t leave for a home of their own. When she prayed, Rahel said, she prayed for everyone at the orphanage. She prayed for the many mentally ill among the city’s street people.

“What do you pray for yourself?” Shelby asked.

Rahel said she’d ask God to help her help others. She’d ask to go to a better place, somewhere with a family that would make her their own. God can do anything, she said.

Rahel smiling on the van
Rahel and her AHOPE sisters on the van taking them to field day at the Worldwide Orphans Complex.

Near the end of Shelby’s time in Ethiopia, Rahel and her classmates went on a trip. AHOPE and some of the other local orphanages had organized a soccer tournament, and the girls were set to play matches against the other orphanage teams—some with HIV and non-HIV kids, some with no HIV kids. As they rode to the soccer field in a red passenger van, the girls were noticeably giddy, happy to leave the compound for something other than school. In her field notes, Shelby described what happened next:

The girl sitting next to Rahel began vomiting into a narrow crevice between her seat and the doorway. The laughter and singing stopped, replaced with the sound of violent heaving.

Rahel placed her hand on her sister’s back, but her eyes were peeled forward, and her smile was gone. She handed the girl a tissue to wipe her mouth. The girl was embarrassed and turned to Rahel to say thank you. Rahel smiled slightly at her and withdrew her hand, collapsing it into her lap like it was too heavy for her to hold up on her own.

The van ride was silent for the rest of the way to the soccer fields, where they would face hundreds of other children who do not know they are HIV positive. It was as if they had forgotten, and then been reminded, of the burden they hold trying to hide their status from the world.

When they arrived at the sports complex, the girls put on their best game-faces and stepped out of the van one by one. They stuck together as they walked slowly toward the fields of children already playing.

The photos that day were strong. The van ride. The soccer match. The sidelines. The kids played games, and clapped and sang together. But most striking was an image of shy Rahel, having forgotten momentarily about the camera, dancing with her sister-friends in front of Shelby.

Rahel competes in a race
Rahel and her AHOPE sister, Ruth Tesfaye (middle left), compete in a race during field day.

The fellowship ended, and Shelby completed her assignment. Her professors were pleased. But in her field notes, Shelby was ambivalent. My work and being there for the last two-plus weeks was insignificant and maybe even selfish, she wrote.

When Shelby met Rahel before leaving through the front gate for the last time, she teared up and said, “I’ll see you later, Rahel.” But that wasn’t true.

Rahel said goodbye and waved hesitantly, with a solemn look on her face.

Then Shelby went home.

Scott Winter is an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Shelby Wolfe is a sophomore photojournalism student at the University of Nebraska, where she is a senior photographer at the Daily Nebraskan. In November her project on Rahel will be released in a seven-minute multimedia video. Twitter: @UNL_scottwinter

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Commentary

His Eyes

The expression of a male stranger catches a coffee shop patron by surprise. His eyes remind the young woman of her late father’s, leading her mind to drift between the past and present.

By Shannon Schaefer Perri

photo of Shannon at the coffee shop

For a little girl, I had many big questions while growing up. My mother usually recommended I write them down, so I wouldn’t forget, and then ask my father. No matter my age, my father always treated my questions with awe and philosophical fascination. I remember sitting in our downstairs living room — the one without the TV — me in my pajama set with my wet hair freshly combed, while my father sipped a glass of red wine. I’d feel so grown up, my mom in their bedroom, my younger sisters already upstairs asleep, and my father and I speculating.

I’d ask him greedily: What happens when we die? Do animals have feelings? Does he prefer to be awake or asleep? He’d tell me he secretly wondered if our whole universe was just a cell on the body of a giant creature — the moon an amoeba. I’d ask him if time really exists because sometimes it didn’t seem to. His eyes would widen while the skin around his brown eyes, the same ones I have, would stretch as he spoke and listened.

I’m sitting at a coffee shop, still heartbroken over my father’s death four and half years ago. I’m trying to write, pursue my dreams and all, because my father would have liked that. Yet, I can’t write because an elderly, plumpish man without much hair is distracting me with every lift of his silver eyebrows. He looks nothing like my wavy-haired, spirited father, but something about his eyes, or maybe the thin skin around his eyes, reminds me of him. I try not to stare at this man while he speaks to his friend, but I feel as though he’s flicking pieces of my father at me with every shift in his facial movements. How can this be? It’s like dreaming of my father only to wake up and realize he is dead. Yet, seconds ago he seemed so alive.

It’s trickery for this man to reach into my deepest ache with his eyes and confuse me. I am startled by this man and must remember he’s not my father. And that my father is not here.

I remember getting the call. That particular night I had been studying for a test the next day, books sprawled across my kitchen table. I missed the first few calls, as I had put my phone on silent to concentrate.

When my mother finally got through, she said my father had had some sort of seizure and the paramedics were sending him via STAR Flight to Seton Medical Center Austin. My mother and sisters were driving the hour-long distance. I was already there in the city for college.

I arrived at the hospital before my family, but for more than twenty minutes the doctors wouldn’t let me see him. I paced in the white-tiled waiting room. I wondered if I should have emailed my teacher to cancel my test for the next day. I wasn’t sure exactly what was happening, but I walked around, overwrought that my father could be feeling all alone when I was only a few rooms away.

When I finally did see him, he was talking loudly, but his voice had no variation. He sounded like a robot. He hadn’t had a seizure, but a massive stroke, and his brain was swelling. He kept asking me to squeeze his hand. He wanted to feel his hand on his right side, but he couldn’t because his right side had gone paralyzed.

photo of Shannon as a child with her fatherHis left eye darted around, panicked. “Squeeze my hand, Shannon.”

“Daddy, I’m squeezing it.”

“Squeeze harder.”

“Daddy, can’t you feel that?”

I try not to look back at the man in the coffee shop. I could hear his voice soften. My father’s voice used to soften. My father had the most booming, charismatic voice. It was also the most gentle. I’d like to stop thinking about my father now. I’d like to write and get on with my life.

Yet against my better judgment, I begin to study the wrinkly face and protruding gut of the man in the coffee shop. My skin begins to radiate heat. I bite my lip and begin typing furiously — about nothing — on my old yellow laptop my father had bought me.

How come this man gets to live? My father was young and healthy. I want his soft voice, not this stranger’s. Why couldn’t it have been the other way around?

Shame breaks my anger down.

This man seems nice enough. I can’t make out what he’s saying, but I hear his voice. Its familiar cadence starts to soothe me. My mind drifts to another memory of my father. I was twenty years old, and for the first time I saw raw despair in my father’s eyes — or at least it was the first time I was able to identify it.

We met for dinner at a small-town Mexican food chain called Margarita’s, halfway between my college and home. My father ordered a top-shelf margarita on the rocks, while I daringly ordered a Negra Modelo to impress him, two months shy of my twenty-first birthday. I wasn’t carded, and my father didn’t even care.

His face wore a hardened look of intensity that scared me. He wasn’t doing well at work. He and my mother were struggling. He wasn’t where he wanted to be, and he said that time was running out. He wanted to be happy, he was fifty-six, and he wanted to do the best with the time he had left, he said.

“Daddy! Stop! Fifty-six is young these days.”

“I have a lot of life to live. I’m not ready to die, Shannon.”

“Well, of course you’re not.”

But he did, shockingly, just one month later.

I wonder if the fatal blood clot that traveled up to my father’s brain had already started clumping then. I wonder if a part of him knew what was coming.

It reminds me of when I visited Wyoming. I walked along several rivers, and occasionally I’d see natural debris cluster together, clogging the waterway. I guess this is what was happening inside of my father, to the point that his brain couldn’t take it.

photo of Shannon as a teen with her dadAs the eyes of the man in the coffee shop widen, I see my father clearly. I now understand why this man reminds me so much of him. It’s a very specific facial expression — the same one my father wore when in meaningful conversation, usually about something existential.

I want my father back every day. I see him and feel him, and I’m unsure that he could actually be gone. I have all the same questions as when I was a little girl. Yet, I am stuck. If there are answers, do I really want to know them?

I’d rather be tormented like this, unsure where he is, than to be certain he’s gone. I’d rather be lost and searching than in a place he’ll never be.

Shannon Schaefer Perri is a writer with a background in social work. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her dog, birds, cats, and husband. She is one of the cofounders of the upcoming literary magazine, the Austin Review. This essay is her first published work. Twitter: @ShannonPerri1

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Commentary

Looking Back on Abortion in America

In this excerpt from her recently published book Generation Roe, pro-choice activist Sarah Erdreich talks with women who had an abortion and discusses the complicated set of emotions they bring to the abortion debate — even decades after the procedure.

By Sarah Erdreich

Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt of Sarah Erdreich’s book, Generation Roe: Inside the Future of the Pro-Choice Movement. See the accompanying blog post by Mandy Van Deven, In The Fray’s managing editor.

When people know you work in the pro-choice movement, the stories come out. All of the sudden, you’re a safe person. You can be trusted to hear personal stories about terminating a pregnancy because you won’t judge or criticize. When you go through life hearing such stories, one thing becomes quite clear to you: all kinds of women have abortions. According to the nonpartisan Guttmacher Institute, one in three American women will have an abortion before the age of forty-five.

Rachel (not her real name) is one of my mother’s oldest friends. I have known her and her husband practically all of my life. But it wasn’t until I told them I was writing a book about reproductive rights that Rachel opened up about her own experience with abortion, back in the mid-seventies.

Several years into her marriage, Rachel became pregnant. She had already had two healthy pregnancies, but this pregnancy didn’t progress normally. Rachel was vague on the details when she recounted her story to me, but she made it clear the abortion was medically necessary.

Had I not been offered that option, I very well could have lost my life.… There will always be doubts if I did right or I did wrong, but the right thing is that people can make the choice. I was fortunate that I had good medical care, and I was able to understand my options. But not everyone has that liberty.

“I’m not the least bit ashamed of what I did,” Rachel added. “In fact, I feel somewhat empowered by the choice because that was my right.” Yet Rachel only agreed to be interviewed if her real name was not used.

The day after I spoke with Rachel, I spent some time with a longtime friend of my father’s family. Toward the end of our visit, she mentioned that she had had an abortion many years earlier. Months later, Vicki (also a pseudonym) told me the whole story.

In the early seventies, Vicki became pregnant. Her husband threatened to leave her unless she had an abortion. They were living in a city that was hundreds of miles from her parents, siblings, and closest friends – and in one of the few states that had liberalized its abortion laws by then. “It was [the state’s] law to first see a psychiatrist,” Vicki said. “I remember I told the psychiatrist that if my husband wasn’t in the picture I would not consider abortion, but I guess obtaining the husband’s approval was routine.”

The entire procedure was covered by Vicki’s health insurance. After it was done, her husband — who, she said, had “badgered” her to get the abortion — called her a murderer. She later divorced him.

Vicki never told her family about her abortion.

My ex-husband is the only one who knows. I wanted to tell my mother, but that wasn’t news I wanted to break in a long-distance telephone call. That was back when long-distance calls meant something.… If I’d had more confidence to trust my feelings, and realized I was capable of supporting and raising a child on my own, I would not have had an abortion.

When I worked for the National Abortion Federation, I heard many women express gratitude that they could legally have an abortion, even as they regretted the particular circumstances — an unstable relationship, economic hardship, age, or a lack of education — that made abortion their best choice. To appreciate the right to make your own decision, even as you deplore the circumstances that led to that decision, is a complicated set of emotions that established pro-choice organizations haven’t always successfully addressed.

Groups like Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and the National Abortion Federation generally stick to messages about how common and safe abortion is, but they don’t offer a great deal of in-depth discussion about the range of emotions women may experience after having an abortion. Instead, they offer first-person stories, which overwhelmingly talk about abortion in positive terms. While studies have shown that most women feel relief after their abortions, women who have more ambivalent feelings afterward may not find comfort or support in these stories and messages.

The anti-abortion movement has been incredibly persuasive in its insistence that if a woman has mixed feelings following an abortion, then abortion itself must be unethical. In testimony before Congress in 1981, pro-life advocate and therapist Vincent Rue coined the term “post-abortion syndrome” to refer to an adverse physical or emotional response to abortion. While neither the American Psychological Association nor the American Psychiatric Association recognize post-abortion syndrome as an official diagnosis, the term quickly gained traction in the anti-abortion community.

In 1987, Ronald Reagan asked his surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, to write a report about the effects of abortion on women. An avowed opponent of abortion, Koop believed that the procedure traumatized women. He had even coauthored a book, Whatever Happened to the Human Race, which discussed post-abortion trauma. Even so, he was reluctant to do as Reagan asked. Koop was careful to distinguish between his personal beliefs and scientific evidence, and he refused to let ideology pressure him into taking a stance that the available evidence did not support. Answering Reagan in a January 1989 letter, Koop wrote that he could not conclude one way or another whether abortion was harmful to women.

Koop’s position shocked and incensed his fellow conservatives. President George H. W. Bush declined to appoint him secretary of health and human services in the new administration, and Koop left office one month before the end of his second term as surgeon general.

In 1988, the American Psychological Association commissioned a study to review the research on the psychological effects of abortion. After a survey of over two hundred studies, a panel of six experts found that only nineteen or twenty met what they considered reliable scientific standards. Based on those studies, the panel concluded that “legal abortion of an unwanted pregnancy in the first trimester does not pose a psychological hazard for most women.”

While some women did experience distress, they were in the minority. One study found that “seventy-six percent of women [who had a first-trimester abortion] reported feeling relief two weeks after an abortion, and only seventeen percent reported feeling guilt.”

It is important to note that women seeking later abortions reported more distress after their abortion, as did women who had difficulty making their decisions. While eighty-eight percent of abortions are performed within the first twelve weeks of pregnancy, women who have the procedure done in the second or third trimester overwhelmingly say that the timing was due to a delay in making the necessary arrangements — including raising money and securing an appointment. Fetal abnormality is another reason: many birth defects that are incompatible with life are not discovered until the fourth or fifth month of pregnancy, or even later.

My college years were shaped by the experiences of several close friends who chose to have an abortion following unplanned pregnancies. I learned from their situations that no matter how deeply pro-choice someone might be, it is still normal to have mixed feelings about having an abortion.

“I would never fault a woman who had an abortion for not wanting to share that with other people, because it’s too difficult,” Shannon Connolly, a medical student at the University of Southern California, told me. “But I hope they would be able to. Until abortion is normalized and people are able to say it’s just another part of health care, we won’t be able to talk about it in a meaningful way.”

Sarah Erdreich is a women’s health advocate, writer, and pro-choice activist. Her work has appeared in On The Issues, Lilith, Feminists For Choice, and RH Reality Check.

This excerpt has been slightly edited to adhere to In The Fray‘s style. 

Read the accompanying blog post by managing editor Mandy Van Deven.

Correction, July 15, 2013: Due to an editing error, the writer’s name was misspelled in several references.

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Commentary

I Ran with the Bulls in Pamplona

Last July, four women undertook the life-threatening adventure of running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. They did it to feel the excitement. They did it to test their bravery. They did it to inspire other women to take their chances among los toros, too.

By Jeannie Mark

photo of author preparing to run with the bulls in Spain5:30 a.m.: Oneika’s alarm bellows, dragging me from the darkness. Allowing my foggy mind to waken, I lay inert for a moment to process the reason for such an early wake up call. Today, we run with the bulls.

6:00 a.m.: The girls and I start to dress. The four of us slide on our white pants, lace up our runners, and tie red sashes around our waists. I tie my red bandana firmly against my throat. The day before a Japanese tourist was dragged by a bull when his bandana was snagged by its horn. I turn to the girls and say, “Tie up everything tight. No loose shoelaces, sashes, or bandanas.” Why do I feel the need to pretend to be brave and play mother hen? Deep down, I’m not positive of anything.

6:10 a.m.: The girls and I continue the conversation we’ve been having for days: where is it best to run? We’ve received many recommendations. The top of Estafeta. Fifty meters down Estefata. Telefonica, near the bullring. We agree that the last place we want to end up is the bullring. There’s a waft of fear about human pileups. Nicole B. jokes that she fears other runners more than the bulls. A consensus is reached. We’ll go fifty meters down Estafeta, stick to the right-hand side, and try not to leap toward a bull. Secretly, I want to touch one.

6:14 a.m.: Nicole B. vocalizes her nervousness. She says she’s always like this. I tell her that if she doesn’t want to run, she shouldn’t. It’s an individual decision. I feel the pressure though. This was my idea and backing out isn’t an option.

6:21 a.m.: Oneika reconfirms our plans. She’s been an interesting force during this trip. As we watched the bulls run on television the day before, Oneika squealed with unchecked enthusiasm. This morning she seems more sober. “Stick to the right, yes?” she asks. “Let’s not get near the bulls.” I realize she’s adventurous, but intelligent about it. I long to be like her instead of just grossly impulsive.

photo of a statue of San Fermin.6:30 a.m.: In San Fermin colors, we leave our flat to meet with a fellow runner, Jarmo Jarvi. We head down a ramp close to where the bulls are housed before the run and stand near the old city wall. A statue of San Fermin has been placed in a cubbyhole and sealed off by glass. This is where corredors sing to the divine and pray for a successful run. Daylight is beginning to trickle in. Mornings in Pamplona are chilly, yet I feel a furnace in my belly. Am I losing or gaining courage?

6:45 a.m.: Serious runners are starting to gather. The nerves among our group are beginning to swell. Oneika and Nicole B. break into hip-hop and pop songs to slice the tension. I join in. Nicole S. doesn’t display signs of cold feet. She laughs at our silliness.

7:00 a.m.: We meet a reporter and cameraman from Cuatro TV. Beatriz, the reporter, spots us easily. The proportion of female corredors is dismally low. The cameraman tells us he’s run before and asks where we plan to start. He says starting on Estafeta is unwise. It’s narrow and there are no barricade openings for us to slip through. We glance at each other nervously. He offers to show us what might be safer. At Telefonica, he says, there’s a curve. After that, it’s a straight run towards Plaza del Toros, the bullring. He leads us down Mercaderes, turns onto Estafeta, and inches closer to Telefonica. We weave through partiers, runners, and watchers. I glance up at the balconies and wonder if they pity me – or if they watch in awe.

photo of people watching the bulls run from balconies7:12 a.m.: The cameraman engages with la policía before we make it to Telefonica. Words are exchanged, and so is an understanding. He says we can’t linger here, or we’ll be shuffled off as spectators. An unease rumbles throughout the group. Do we stick to Estafeta, where any of us could become a target without escape? We begin to make our way back to the beginning of the run. I can tell Nicole B. isn’t comfortable with changing strategy midstream.

7:19 a.m.: We wait in the bosom of the crowd of runners. Male pheromones surround us. The reality is hitting me now, so I imagine how I’m going to run. Elbows out, nimble on my feet. Veterans say this is the worst part of el encierro. Beatriz reappears and interviews us in the throng of testosterone. Word spreads through Pamplona, and we become known as the four chicas – the female runners who are challenging the bulls.

7:25 a.m.: In the crowd, I talk to a small Colombian man who says he doubts he will run. Why he hasn’t left the street yet is beyond me. A tall, muscular man pushes toward me. The look on his face is pure fright. He bows out of the run. My limbs are rigid, and my head is on fire. An audible quake shakes me. It is the chant of the corredor. I join in and begin to feel looser. We are all in this fate together. Whatever happens next, we accept.

photo of young women who will run with the bulls7:45 a.m.: The mass of bodies begins to move, and we move with them. I’m worried we won’t make it to the spot we want in time. Our trotting turns into a light jog as we weave down Estafeta toward the corner of Telefonica.

7:51 a.m.: A bit breathless, we make it. I’m now fully awake to this. I feel the pulse of the crowd. I hear the screams of people trying to psych themselves up. Behind me are five young women clutching a doorway. I turn to one and yelp, “Girl power!” We all high five each other.

7:53 a.m.: Police comb the crowds, removing anyone they deem unsuitable to run. With the cobwebs cleared, we are left with a collective jangle of hopes and fears. It’s almost on and I can’t escape now.

8:00 a.m.: A rocket goes off and the mass of runners stirs. People start jumping up and down, trying to see down the street. One of the girls shouts, “What do we do? Start running?” I tell her to hold steady. I haven’t heard the second rocket. People start to rush forward, but I yell, “Wait until you see horns!”

news clipping that features the author8:01 a.m.: We see horns. I scream, “Run!” And we do. Adrenaline rips through me. All I can make out are hides of animals, blending together in shades of brown and tan. Horns swerve in lightening motion. I expect the slippery cobblestones to conspire against me, but by some miracle, I stay upright. Men and women zoom past me, elbowing me and pushing my shoulders from behind. I steel myself against them. Shouts are popping my eardrums. I swivel my head and see a tan bull shaking the earth beside me. If I angle to the right just a bit I can touch his smooth, furry skin. I’m amazed that in all the chaos I can freeze this moment in my mind. Then it’s gone and so is he.

8:02 a.m.: All I can focus on are flashes of other runners. White and red sensory overload. I see Jarmo and Nicole S. in front of me. I know Nicole B. is behind me, but I keep running. A couple is sprawled on the cobblestones ahead, but instead of tumbling with them, I jump over them. This is where my nerve fails. I spot an open barricade through which I can dive, but I don’t. I cling to my adrenaline like a strung out junkie.

8:03 a.m.: My body moves more lithely than I’d imagined. I shout at Jarmo to keep going. I see the tunnel for Plaza del Toros and realize I’m headed for the bullring, which is precisely where I don’t want to go. There is a human pileup at the entrance. I screech to a halt, unsure what to do. There are more bulls coming, and if I don’t move, things could turn bad. Before I can react, the pile of people disentangle themselves and clear the path. I shoot past them into the bullring, gasping for air. A Spanish man grabs me and plants a sloppy kiss on my eye. He exhales all the air from his lungs and laughs wildly. He’s ecstatic to be alive. I notice for the first time that I’m also intact. I made it.

photo of author after the race, being interviewed8:04 a.m.: I notice the atmosphere in the ring. The stands are overflowing. The bystanders are roaring. Some runners have hopped up onto the barriers,where they can avoid humans and bulls. Others are sitting in the stands. Flashbulbs are bursting as photographers capture the pandemonium. I find Jarmo and Nicole S. Jarmo and I embrace. His lip is slightly bleeding. We’re both sweaty, out of breath, and talking excitedly. Nicole B. flies in finally. As she hugs us, a flock of people surge into the ring. The last bull has arrived.

8:06 a.m.: We find Oneika in the stands. She had dived through a barricade after an elbow landed in her eye.

8:07 a.m.: I’m tingly, and playful like a child. When they release the cows into the ring, I leap in and start dancing. Runners with cojones do leaps over the cows. The runners congratulate each other with a handshake or a slap on the back. A woman calls to me, “I’ve been watching you. You are brave!” She anoints me with a high five.

Conclusion: So, we did it. And survived. Would I run again? For some loco reason, I’m game to try.

photo of author celebrating her successful run

Jeannie Mark officially quit her life in 2010 to pursue her dream of world exploration. You can find more about her run with the bulls on her blog, Nomadic Chick, and the website Girls Running With Bulls.

Dear Reader, In The Fray is a nonprofit staffed by volunteers. If you liked this piece, could you please donate $10? If you want to help, you can also:
 
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Call for Submissions: Secrets

How does secrecy, even if well-intentioned, affect human relationships? To what extent does it undermine the credibility of government institutions? Does full transparency help or hurt us? In The Fray wants to know your secrets.


In The Fray Magazine | Call for Submissions | July 2013: Secrets

The classified intelligence leaks by former U.S. government contractor Edward Snowden threw a light on the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs. In response, the Obama administration has argued its methods have been legal, transparent, and successful in foiling dozens of terrorist plots.

To what extent does it undermine the credibility of government institutions? How does secrecy, even if well-intentioned, affect human relationships? Does full transparency help or hurt us?

In The Fray wants to know your secrets. This may be a photo essay on hidden places travelers could enjoy in your city or a narrative exploration of an underground community. You might tell us about a time you kept a relationship under wraps or hid a medical diagnosis. We also want to hear humorous accounts of keeping and learning secrets.

Please review our submissions guidelines and send a one-paragraph pitch or draft to the appropriate section editor NO LATER THAN JULY 31, 2013. Include three samples of your previous work (links are preferred).

We are open to submissions on any other topics that relate to the magazine’s themes: promoting global understanding and encouraging empathy.

We look forward to hearing from you.

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Dear Reader, In The Fray is a nonprofit staffed by volunteers. If you liked this piece, could you please donate $10? If you want to help, you can also: