I assume there won’t, because your classmates took the poem and you with pretty good humor, respect, and patience, even when they disagreed-sometimes vehemently-with the poem itself. I could tell by your subdued demeanor when you approached me that you were afraid your poem had caused pain, and that there might be some future, perhaps public, fallout for it. And while our discussion never devolved, as I was concerned it might, into open hostility, it also didn’t make anyone feel better for having participated in it, nor did it settle the questions your poem raised to anyone’s satisfaction. Did you, a young white person, the child of people you freely admitted had been shaped by racist beliefs, have any claim or relationship to this voice? Our workshop worried this question for an hour without resolving it. Your poem was meant to be a complex double portrait of both the Black caregiver and your white grandmother, and the racist logic and history that bound them both. You asked because of the tense note on which our workshop ended the discussion of your poem, a monologue in the voice of a Black nurse who worked in your white grandmother’s home in Georgia.
You asked at the end of last class whether I had an essay I might share with you about cultural appropriation.
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