Tragically Sincere at Heart

I hadn’t quite realized until I got to campus that this was going to be a speech to the largest group of people I’d ever speechified to — about six thousand, I think, given the size of the graduating class and all the family in attendance. My previous largest audience speech was probably the Wiscon Guest of Honor speech, which had maybe 800 in attendance?

It hadn’t felt that significant beforehand, because a high school graduation speech should be short and sweet, I think — I managed to keep this under 7 minutes, I’m pretty sure. And I figured the seniors were probably only half paying attention anyway, and mostly just wanted to graduate as quickly as possible. So I wasn’t thinking of it as weighty as the WisCon GoH speech (which was also more like 20 minutes, if I’m remembering right.)

But there really were a lot of people there! In retrospect, I kind of wish I’d tried to make it funny.

What can I say? At heart, I am tragically sincere.

*****

Oak Park River Forest High School 2023 Commencement Speech

I’m going to pick up on Superintendent Johnson’s theme of storytelling and run with it. Let’s talk about *how* we tell stories, and what kinds of stories you all will choose to tell.

I’m a storyteller by profession – I’ve been a working writer for thirty years, and in my day job, I’m an English professor at UIC. I often draw on my own life to tell stories about individuals, but usually, I’m trying to use those stories to talk about larger issues in our society.

I’m going to tell you one of those stories now.

***

When my son, Anand, was starting kindergarten at Holmes, I was in the midst of treatment for breast cancer. (I’m fine now.) Chemo, surgery, and radiation often left me exhausted, and I wasn’t able to do much in the way of parenting that year. My husband was also exhausted from trying to take care of me and the kids, in addition to his job.

My son had a tough time in kindergarten. Anand got called into the principal’s office seventeen times (!) for disciplinary infractions, and at one point, even got into a shouting match with the vice principal in the cafeteria. Anand was struggling, and for a parent, that’s scary.

It was also confusing, because at home, he was a sweet kid, with a strong sense of justice and fairness. Why did he keep getting into trouble at school? My husband is white, and Anand is not as dark as me, but still darker than many of his classmates. I couldn’t help wondering whether his brown skin influenced how quick people were to assume he was violent, that *he* was the troublemaker in class.

I was still working through treatment, so I was driving to UIC a few times a week, listening to NPR on the commute. It was 2014, and we were in the midst of the Syrian refugee crisis. I kept hearing people say we should of course let the poor women and children in, but they weren’t so sure about the men, or even the teenage boys. Those scary brown boys, who might be violent.

All of that merged — my anxiety about raising a brown-ish boy in America, those voices on the radio. I wrote a science fiction story, “Plea,” about refugees on another planet. I tried to put all my anxieties into that story, but also all my hopes – that people might read it, empathize with the plight of the refugees, and extend understanding and empathy to people in their own communities, in the real world.

I hoped that story might lead people to check themselves, to question dominant narratives. Maybe they’d extend a hand – helping out at a refugee crisis center, collecting supplies. One of my friends collects sewing machines for refugees who were used to making clothes by hand in their home countries.

Or maybe they’d aim towards bigger changes, asking hard questions, looking for new stories. Who is excluded by our country’s immigration laws? What is the purpose of nation-states? Should we have borders at all? I don’t know the answers to those questions, but I do know that we should be asking them, questioning the stories we’ve grown up with.

***

Here’s the thing – all of our social systems, ALL of them, were set up by people like you and me. People coming together and saying, “If we do this, it will make our children safer, it will make our lives more prosperous, it will help keep a roof over peoples’ heads and food on the table.” Those initial impulses are often idealistic and high-minded, but they can also ossify over time. ‘The way we decided to do it,’ becomes ‘the way we’ve always done it,’ and *that* is very resistant to change.

Often, we try to improve society with small, incremental changes. “Let’s tweak this policy and provide free breakfast as well as free lunch to school kids, because it’s impossible to focus on learning if your stomach is rumbling.” “Let’s move some money over and hire a few more counsellors because hey, we’ve just been through three years of a pandemic, and *everyone* could use some help with their mental health.” That’s good work, that’s important work.

But sometimes it can obscure the larger questions – what is school actually for? How is it structured? Is it serving all of our young people? Is there a better way to do things? Can we look to other societies, other cultures, for warning, or inspiration? What are the stories they’re telling? What can we learn from each other, to build better systems, and fix the world?

Maybe we make education a real priority and say: “We want to invest in an educated society, because we believe it’ll make us all richer in the end. Any class you want to take, at any point in your life, we’re going to pay for it.”

Or maybe we should get rid of school altogether, and find a new way to educate everyone.

Maybe we’ll get rid of insurance companies too, and provide universal healthcare to all. Maybe we’ll abolish prisons, and seriously reconsider what led us to set up those prisons in the first place.

So many things become possible, once you start paying attention to the stories we’re told, and start thinking hard about the stories *you* want to tell. Everything can change, and often, much faster than you’d believed possible.

***

Graduates, you’ve been in a structured learning environment for many years now. Wherever your path takes you next, you’re going to be in charge of your own education in a much more independent way. You’ll choose what you read, what you watch, who you listen to, whose stories influence your thoughts and actions.

So here are my two specific asks: That you help when you can in the immediate ways – when your neighbor is hungry, they need a meal, not a plan for restructuring food distribution in twenty years —

— but that you simultaneously question *everything*. Be willing to change *everything*.

I want you to

• go out there,

• take your education in your own hands,

• create new, better stories,

• and then use them to fix the world.

(No pressure!)

***

Thank you all for your time. On behalf of the Board of Education, it is my great pleasure to accept the Oak Park and River Forest High School graduating class of 2023. Heartfelt

to you all!

*****

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(Note: Thanks to Jed, Dan, Benjamin and Kevin for their thoughts on earlier drafts!)

Plea: https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/plea/