Double Consciousness in Beast Meridian

“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.” — W.E.B. Du Bois

I have no other way to look at this spectacular book, Beast Meridian, than through the lens of Du Bois’ double-consciousness. The concept of fragmentation is built into the fabric of this work. There is an explosion of differing forms, of words on a page, of what it feels/looks like to be in a liminal space. While reading this book I was drawn into the sections “Dissociative States” (25-27) and “Assimilation Rooms” (30-37). The former gave the sense of being inside a mind, the stream of consciousness moving from moment to moment, thought to thought — a mind removed from body, perhaps reality at times. One moment when I felt disoriented in the text was during the lines, “18 every solid thing becomes itself backward 19 & we crane our necks to try & see where we are going 20 & we must have left something behind 21 what is backward is now forward…” (25). What is happening to a whole person (mind, body, spirit) when they are removed from comfort and thrust into the unknown, unfamiliar, unfriendly?

“Assimilation Rooms” was everything to me. I took some notes while reading it and they are as follows:

• p. 30 definitely made me cry
• Reading in Spanish, what little I know of Spanish, I could understand the tone as a child that was in a new place, learning a new language, and there are things this child loved to do, but they were also scared
• Reading the english confirmed it for me. Often times there is an inclination to leave out the translated text, but I felt that in this case it only enhanced or reinforced the reality of what happens inside the mind of a child during the assimilation process. The way in which the English is treated is intriguing to me, it is footnoted (pushed to the margin of the page) and it is a smaller font. While the Spanish text is prominent in the center of the page, in a larger font but it is in grey while the English is in black. There is a dueling between the two that seems to never feel resolved. 
• p. 31 the only word I can think of right now is heartbreaking
• “amor prohibido” or prohibited love
• “my tamed boca” or my tamed mouth
• p. 32 thinking about the use of the footnote — as an academic tool to provide further or perhaps even tangential information
• p. 34 — psychiatric disorders mentioned in the footnote and the jumbled up fragmented nature of this page/ and the previous pieces suggests some comment on the duality or multiple personalities associated with assimilation
• p. 35 WOW
• “first generation don’t make it the last/ you can be anything in America especially/ when you’re made an example”
• Psychiatric hospital intake photo 1996 (38) captures so much of the points made in “Assimilation Rooms”
• Important to note the reality of mental health issues in communities of color being overlooked or treated as weakness, when we are more susceptible to breaks because of our daily realities as well as the pressure and lack of support received from within the communities, it is interesting to see the willingness to demonstrate an attempt to seek treatment or help in such a case.

I decided to put my raw notes in because I felt they were more expressive of how I felt while reading the text. I think the ways in which Villarreal is pulled between places and languages demonstrates the ways in which a mind becomes split, schizophrenic shattering of who she is. Transitions from Spanish to English to Spanglish. Brackets and parentheses fracturing phrases. I'm absolutely enamored with the ways that this book conveys the concept of double consciousness throughout form as well as language. There is an uneven two-ness inside the covers of this book that is the definition  of complexity. 

xoxo, 

Rai