At my graduation from Bryn Mawr College in 2004, we were lucky to have playwright and actor Anna Deavere Smith as our commencement speaker. To my knowledge, her monologue-punctuated oration was the best commencement address the school had witnessed in years (or since). I have never managed to get a copy of her exact words, but I did find an article by someone who clearly enjoyed the same sections I did. Some excerpts:
She told graduates that the most progressive work a woman can do “is to take the tradition of housework–the idea of making a place for nurturance, and broadening it, to broaden it outside of the ‘house’ and into the world.”
Smith said that the 20th century has left women in houses that are supposedly distinct and safe, and the challenge is to move out of those houses and defined roles.
“My goal is for some of you not to make homes, but to carry tents and to pitch them not in the safe houses but in the crossroads of ambiguity. Here is where you will meet and learn to engage with others across all kinds of boundaries. It’s the roaming homemaker that we need in the world today,” said Smith…
…Her explanation of the housework and homemaking needed in today’s world included her portrayal of characters who were able to “move outside of the house at any given moment to solve a problem.” …
“But in this huge world, with large disputes looming, what does home become? What is the home that you make?” asked Smith. “Home is that which warms the heart of those who can feel its embrace. Take what you have learned from this intellectual home of the last four years and begin the practice of making home for larger and larger circles of difference…”
Inspired, I did what any member of Generation Y would: I went home and made roaminghomemaker my e-mail address. And when it came time to blog, I used the moniker as my title.
What do I mean by “time to blog”? In July 2007, after three years of working (and one of blogging) at National Geographic Traveler magazine, I picked up stakes and relocated to Ghana for a seven-month placement with Journalists for Human Rights, a Canadian NGO. My job would be working with journalists at the Ghanaian Observer newspaper, building their capacity to report on human rights stories. Once upon a time I had religiously sent mass e-mails to friends during my travels, but had gotten out of the habit. And as a blogger at the Geographic, I excused myself from blogging in my personal life by saying it was work, not play. Once I no longer blogged for a living, I no longer had that excuse. And I knew I would never be forgiven if my seven months in Ghana went unreported to my friends-and-relations. I heeded the walrus’s cry—”the time has come”—and created a blog where I could talk of many things, during my time in Ghana, and beyond.
One more note about the name: While I cherish and aspire to the metaphorical use for which Smith coined this phrase, in my case it is also quite literal. I travel compulsively, and am known for my homemaking tendencies, from rearranging hotel furniture to make rooms more cozy, to baking pies “just because” and feeding them to co-workers. If I succeed in “making home for larger and larger circles of difference” while I’m at it, all the better.
Jessie Johnston Accra, Ghana August 30, 2007p.s. If you want a more conventional picture of what I get up to, you can look at some of my work.
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