Notes From the Field

by Anna Deavere Smith

  [Slide]

  Ms. Dodson was released from prison in 2018.

  [Slide]

  TRAUMA

  [Slide]

  DR. VICTOR CARRION, MD

  PSYCHIATRIST

  DIRECTOR, STANFORD EARLY LIFE STRESS RESEARCH PROGRAM

  DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHIATRY, STANFORD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

  STANFORD, CALIFORNIA

  “DNA”

  “DNA”

  (Elegant, Puerto Rican–born man. Fine black loafers. Seated in a modern, well-appointed office. Accent slides in and out of standard American and one influenced by the Spanish language. Very careful speech, thoughtful, seemingly very aware of the consequences of what he says. Gentle manner. Musician comes onstage.)

  * * *

  I became interested in brain development and the effect of stress on the development of the brain. I am getting notes from teachers saying, “This child has ADHD. Please place on Ritalin.” And I’m like, “Wow. The diagnosis has been made. There is a treatment plan. Am I needed for anything?” And in fact, when some of these children had an in-depth clinical evaluation, they did not have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. But they had a long history of adversity.

  And many of them had a history, not of only stress, but of traumatic stress.

  [It’s] a type of stress that really impacts your functional, uh…it—it impairs your function. So it impairs your function academically, it impairs your function socially, and it impairs how you feel—you feel distressed. And this is how these children were feeling.

  (Listens to a question.)

  Historical trauma exists, not only in history. It exists in our daily life. And I think as a society, we sometimes experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Specifically avoidance. Which is a very bad symptom. Not wanting to talk about it or not thinking about it. Or not addressing it? And…what happens when that avoidance is there…the impact of the trauma permeates, it continues. But the way that it also happens is that, it goes from generation to generation. Because I see many children, and now I see many adults, that may not have the trauma experiences in their lives. They have learned that as a response, from caretakers.

  They model it.

  Now, some individuals think that this actually may be passed also epigenetically. Where there may be some changes in coding of—of DNA. Where—where you actually alter your DNA, and then what you’re passing is an altered DNA.

  (Listens to a question.)

  Slavery? (Considers this very carefully. Begins next sentence tentatively, then picks up speed.) The social factors that are—surround the issue of of slavery and the history of slavery are enough that they don’t need any DNA change. (Quick stop.) Because in the way in which they have resulted in many populations of African Americans living in a state of poverty where it’s very hard for them to escape from. It’s a way of maintaining that enslavement. And of course, it’s not only in African Americans. But I think many communities that are African American have gone from a history of slavery to another form of slavery, y’know, through poverty.

  (Musician exits.)

  [Slide]

  STEVEN CAMPOS

  FORMER INMATE

  DISHWASHER, DISNEY HALL

  LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

  “Microwave”

  “Microwave”

  (Sitting in a straightbacked chair by a window in a loft in downtown LA. Not his loft, just the place where the interview took place. Salvadoran. In his early twenties. White “wifebeater” T-shirt, black chinos, wide belt, tennis shoes. Sitting completely straight, hands folded. Small of stature. Not a lot of movement. Looking at interviewer/audience very directly. Often stops at the end of a thought, pausing for the impact but with no expression on his face. Wide smile sometimes, even when the content is dark. Obviously very intelligent. He sounds almost like a ’50s beat poet. His demeanor changes toward the end, when he becomes effusively upset.)

  * * *

  Trauma, shit, anybody can— Anything that a freaking…They say they went to school for all that bullshit and all that shit. No. Hell no. You can fake their asses like a lot. Shit, I seen a mothafucker fake trauma, to the max— (Sudden stop.)

  (Listens to a question.)

  Ummm he was acting like he was traumatized by what he did, and everything he got: they had to comfort him like a little baby. Hell yeah! He confused them. You can trick a therapist into giving you meds, and he would do it, and he really would fall for it. You can trick therapists! They’re supposed to know when you are telling them a lie and they wouldn’t even know. I tricked ’em, told him I couldn’t go to sleep, and he gave me sleeping meds? I seen other kids just say stupid shit, and they got meds, just to get meds, tweaking meds…

  Some motherfuckers gangbang and all that shit? NO! You PUT yourself in that position. It’s like, I put MYself in that situation. Yeah. Shit, we all…you knew what you were doing before you…shit, if you didn’t, you wouldn’t have got yourself in it! Or else you were too damn retarded.

  (Listens to a question.)

  Historical trauma? That’s bullshit! That’s bullshit! I’m Salvadoran. Hell no. They ain’t mess half my people up. Blacks, they don’t…Dude. Man. Most of blacks who are incarcerated n’even care about slavery. They just move on like another part of their…They be like, “It ain’t my time. I wuzzin’ there, so what do I care about it?” Yeah, a lot of it is bullshit. Only to some—yeah, they care about it. Only to ones that really care about the real past—o’ the black, like activists, they really care about it. But the blacks, no, hell no.

  They just gotta change ’em internally. You want to change, you just going to have to do it by yourself, or—and get help. People will help you but mainly, you gonna have to do by yourself, like I’m doing. (Burp.) As soon as I came out, gotta job.

  (Listens to a question.)

  Dishwasher at Disney Hall. Downtown LA. Got my substance abuse. Stayin’ away from the homies. Stop drinking and smoking. Trying to get my mind right, get back on track. Get enrolled in college.

  (Listens to a question.)

  I’mma go into nursing. I was always fascinated about bein’ around open wounds. Blood don’t creep me out, and so you know, perfect job for me. I signed up for Los Angeles City College. I just got in yesterday, they emailed me that I got accepted.

  (Listens to a question.)

  My mother’s happy that me, my brother, and all her brothers are out, ’cause we all did— They went to prison, I went to YA….It’s all about what you wanna do. It’s not “Aw, I can’t do it, aww, my mind’s too fucked up.” No, it’s none of that. If you want your mine like that, you gonna have your mine like that; if you really wanna change and do all of that shit you wanna do? Then you gon’ do it.

  Trauma. Motherfucking act like to max. Some, some cases that’s true, and some it’s not. To the sexos? Yeah, that’s true, they have some fucked-up lives. Sex offenders? They have some fucked-up lives. They repeat what they did ha—what happened to them. So, yeah, I understand sexos, cause they have some fucked-up lives. Oh, yeah, a sexo put a k—a baby in a fucking (snaps his fingers) uh microwave and let it pop. Man, let that motherfucker pop. Now that’s some fucked-up shit. (Solid stop and pause, as if patiently waiting for that idea to land.)

  (Listens to a question.)

  I don’t know what the fuck happened in that motherfucker, damn! That ’fucker put a microwave and a baby and make that motherfucker pop! ’At’s some sick shit. (Solid stop.)

  You gotta be a lunatic to do some shit like that. (Solid stop.)

  Not even the hardest vatos I know would do some shit like that. (Solid stop.)

  Not even the hardest gang members I know would do some shit like that. (Solid stop.)

  Even we’ll look at you like you retarded. Why the fuck
would you kill a baby? We frown upon that shit, we don’t fucking do that, baby, we don’t fuck an innocent, we don’t we don’t like doing that shit. It happens! I can’t lie…but…We frown upon that shit. That’s just like, the fuck do they got to do with it? We try to keep that shit as separate as we can. But shit happens.

  (Listens to a question.)

  I’ll smoke that motherfucker. I’ll kill that motherfucker. I don’t stand for that shit.

  (Listens to a question.)

  Yeah, I believe in capital punishment. Hell yeah! ’Specially for sexos! ’N’ muderers! Fuck it! You get caught for it, oh well, you did. Shit, you you dumb enough to get caught for it. You fuck! It’s yo’ bad.

  [Slide]

  STEPHANIE WILLIAMS

  EMOTIONAL SUPPORT TEACHER

  PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA

  “A Tree Out of the Ground”

  “A Tree Out of the Ground”

  (African American woman, mid- to late-twenties. Healthy, friendly, vulnerable, emotionally available, generous. Wonderfully expressive with hands as well as voice. Hand and body movements are always connected to meaning, never random—almost like choreography. Sitting on a sofa, horizontally. Lots of pillows. Fast-talking, like a saxophone, except when thinking something through. Musician is onstage.)

  * * *

  It was (very long pause) Huey Elementary School? I was an emotional support teacher. And itttt was…it was rough.

  I never…realized…how bad a situation could be…until…I worked with that population.

  You have ten of the most needy children—kids that need food. Shelter. Clothes. Love, like…an education. They—just—need—so—much. And you’re just one person.

  Like…In retrospect, I really did all I could. I worked myself to the bone. I felt hopeless. I just felt like really hopeless in the situation. I felt like I had a whole bunch of starving hungry people, and I had nothing in my hands to give them. Even though I tried to give them so much? They had seen so much of life? And so much rough stuff? They were just like, “What’s school?” Like, y’know what I mean? You get seventh graders that are smoking weed, “What’s school?” You get seventh graders that are outside all hours a night? Like, how am I to keep them in the classroom? Incentives. Like incentivizing them.

  And I spent so much time with my heart racing. There’d be so many fights that would, like, you know, spontaneously like start to fight or s— Y’know, “Somebody looking me the wrong way!” “Bitch, what the fuck you looking at, bitch? I fuck you up, duh—duh—duh—duh!” No, no, not to me, they say it to, like, somebody else. Here goes my heart start racin’. But like the thing is, I—I mean, I don’t wanna sound—I ran that classroom. I ran a tight ship. I broke everything up.

  It’s hard to—it’s hard to be that strong day in and day out. It really is. Like it got a point where people were like, “Tss!” Like, you know, when a new kid would come in? (In a student’s voice.) “Tss! Don’t fuck with Miss Williams, she’ll tear you up! Don’t fuck with her. You better leave her alone she—she’s.” Whatever.

  It’s hard to—it’s hard to be that strong day in—and—day—out. It really is. But it’s, like, to go through that all day, is like—is like beeeeinggg—it’s like being in jail without a gun. It’s like me running a jail without a gun. That’s what it was like. Running a jail. Without a gun. Everybody for themselves, but I want you to maintain order. No guns, no handcuffs, no billy clubs. I can’t throw you in a closet, I can’t do any of that. It’s just like, I gotta keep you in order just by being me!

  An IEP is an individualized education plan. And for a st—child that’s in special education and which—the majority of, you know, our kids are—do have special needs, they’ll have an IEP. I mean our poor kids, our black kids, our, you know—our inner-city and rural kids. The majority of our inner-city and rural kids have IEPs. But it’s for anybody that has a need that stretches outside of the general ed curriculum. And for a kid that’s eighteen or seventeen, you can go back from basically from when they’re three for kids that have had early intervention and see the types of things that they’ve gone through, you know? Um and as a special educator, administrator, we have access to files and they’re this big and if you go through it it’s—you see these kids’ stories. It’s funny, when I first read IEPs, I’m like, “Oh shit. Oh, they throw desks, they do this, they do that.” You get to see this person, like, in person, and they just blow your mind; they’re nothing like their paperwork. But then when you see all the things that they’ve gone through in the paperwork, you gotta look at them and be like, “Damn!” You know? More power to you, like you’re—you’re still here, like. Like, when you hear these kids’ stories and the things that—they’ve gone through, and some of it—I can relate to them.

  But it’s like, like everybody y’know, I had a little bit of self-esteem issue, but my mom, whenever—she—would—drop—me—off—to—school, she’d always—say, “Why do you have to work harder than everybody?” And I would have to say back to her, “Because I’m black and I’m a female.” And like her saying that and embedding that in my head? Ev-er-y day. She would drop me off at school and be like, “Why do you have to work harder than everybody?” “Cuz I’m black and I’m a female!” That would be like what I would say back to her. And like just keeping that in mind? And always knowing that like: things were gonna come up, like, being the only black kid in school, being the only fat kid in school, being the only…kid with a single parent in school, being the only kid that lived in the hood, in my school. Like it just kinda gave me enough grit to be able to just be confident enough to go to Moun’ Holyoke, ask for help when I need it, and just kind of like you know! Explore.

  But I think you find a lot of resilient characters. I mean, not only the students but people that teach. And I felt like I actually made, to a certain point, where I could sit down and say, y’know, “It’s not that hard.” So I always felt like I could help them, because I understood.

  Like, kids would be bipolar or manic. Okay, I—I can give you specific examples. I have one girl that ummm was given up by her mom—her mom already had mental health issues, and she was so mild and lovely. Y’know, she didn’t look like everybody else did. She was, you know, the girls would call her ugly. “Oh, your butt too big, you nappy head, you too black.” Y’know, whatever it is that they wanted to say about her. And she would take it and take it and take it. And one day she just…blew her top. Blew her top. She blew her top, and she fought a girl and ripped her hair out. Bloop! Got thrown in the ES [Emotional Support]. Loved her for it doing it, though. I’m like, “There you go, girl!” I mean, I don’t—I don’t condone fighting, but you know. She told me it, I read it in the thing, I was like, “Oh, God!” Sh—sh—she said she got tired of it. Tore the girl’s hair out. She couldn’t take it anymore!

  I had another student that—he was a foster-care child. Oh, it’s [a] horrible story. (Very rapidly.) His parents were addicted to drugs, he got very sick as a baby, they brought him to the hospital, they realized that he was being molested. So they immediately took him. Placed him into—I believe his father was molesting him. Put him into, y’know, a different foster home. And so he had, y’know, symptoms of being addicted to drugs as a baby and being molested, and— He would just have these fits of just—complete and utt— Docile any other time. Complete rage, like I’m talking about like ZZzerohh to a million in one second. Like—I have never seen an eleven-year-old pull—a—tree? Out—of—the—ground. OutTheGround! So angry that he pull—he could pull a tree out of the ground. So angry that he could take a table and turn it over. Beat somebody up.

  I met him—how I met him was…This is a crazy story, it was my first—firsT…week. Working at Huey and, I hear somebody, just like blood-curdling scream. And I just see him running through the hall. Not—it’s more—wasn’t like a it was like a sssslow run, it was just lik
e a very angry. He kinda Runs! Like! This! And he gets himself so worked up tha—he pours sweat, just like pouring down his body. And he’s ripping things off the wall. “Unhhh!” Throwing stuff and throwing stuff and throwing stuff. And—I just followed him!

  And we ended up down…stairs on the first floor. And all—I didn’t know what to do. I had no idea, ’cause I’d never seen anybody do this before. Ididnotknowwhattodo. So all I did was grab him in the tightest hug. And just hold him, and hold him, and hold him, and hold him. And I just held him, ’cause I’m really, really strong. So I just held him and held him, like I put him in a hold? But it was like a hug. And I just held him until his body just collapsed. And he just started crying and crying and crying and crying on me. He was—I think at that point he was ten or eleven? It was like my third day working at Huey.

  (The musician leaves the stage.)

  [Slide]

  NEVER GIVE UP

  [Slide]

  JAMES BALDWIN

  FROM “A RAP ON RACE”—A CONVERSATION WITH DR. MARGARET MEAD

  1971

  “Walk on a Leaf”

  “Walk on a Leaf”

  (This material comes from a seven-hour conversation that Mr. Baldwin had with Dr. Mead. It was both recorded and published as a book. Only Mr. Baldwin is performed for the purposes of this play. Musician is onstage and playing music as Baldwin speaks.)