Silent Unprivileged Stories

When I was a Big Brother for Jason, an African-American 10 year old male, we went into his apartment so he could look around for a long overdue library book. As I accompanied him from room to sparsely furnished room, looking in nearly vacant closets, cupboards, drawers, the only book we found was a phone book, looking silently neglected much more than actively abused. My first white male privileged feelings about his Mom had to do with blaming her for probably not even feeling ashamed for her irresponsible choices while economically and politically administering their bookless house in this pre-WWW information age. But, then I began asking questions. What could Jason tell me about his Mom's life when she was his age? What were stories familiar to her, read or retold or experienced and re-experienced, therapeutic or traumatic? Through this widening narrative moment of multigenerational conjecture, hypothesis, questioning, contemplating, I also learned to question what traumatic straight white male stories are experienced by gay and bisexual and transsexual 10-year-olds, regardless of racial identification, And by 10-year-old girls, perhaps regardless of racial identification, or even further amplified by being doubly, and silently, outside straight white patriarchal privilege. I found myself suddenly tearfully incapable of briefly imagining much less deeply, unflinchingly contemplating the trauma of growing up poor and lesbian and black or brown or too red or too yellow without any books or stories, read or retold or experienced about how her 10-year-old life will matter, could be healthy, someday, would ever be felt safe, unless held shamefully silent, Not appropriate material for books or retelling or experiencing straight white male dominant stories, economic and political narratives about retributive trauma and not multicultural restorative democratically inclusive therapy.