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"Naughty Kitty",,"My humanities moment comes from a cartoon by American B. Kliban. My mother had a kitchen towel with the image on it, and it had been in my kitchen for as long as I could remember. When I was young, pre-kindergarten, it was one of my favorite things in the house. The image on the towel is a cartoon: a single panel image of a fat, black-and-grey tabby cat sitting on a barstool playing a guitar, singing a song about how much he loves to eat “mousies.” The cartoon feline resembled our real-life cat, Max, and I was astonished how these two cats, who looked almost exactly alike, ended up in the same house - what were the odds??
Besides the cat itself, the cartoon has four lines of song. I had my mother sing the kitty song approximately 500 million times, as young children do when they have a favorite song. The best part was the last two lines, which went into thrillingly graphic detail about how, exactly, this cat eats the mice, including which body parts to start with. When I heard the song, I felt both shock and like I was getting away with something - children are not supposed to learn about things like this! I was both delighted and horrified that my mother, who was a VERY nice lady and very good at all the things mothers are supposed to do, would intentionally expose me to such violence.
Singing the song on this towel was the first time I ever remember being conflicted about something. It forced me to grapple with what I perceived to be an inconsistency. To me, the following sentences by themselves were all true, but when you line them up, they couldn’t possibly all be true at the same time:
My mother was a good mother.
Good mothers didn’t talk about nibbling on small animal’s feet.
My mother repeatedly sang me my favorite song about nibbling on small animal’s feet.
To make matters even worse, polite girls did not sing about gruesome things, yet here I was, continually requesting it! What did that say about me? Eventually, I would learn that there are many different ideas about what “good” mothers and “polite” girls do. I learned that even if you were labeled one thing, it was ok to act in ways that might be unexpected, and that it was sometimes ok to transgress the limits I thought were there. ","American B. Kliban","a Kliban cat cartoon",,mid-1980's,"Brandy, Graduate student",,,,,,naughty-kitty,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"NHC virtual residency","Cartoons,Children,Family,Mothers,Songs",https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/18/481/pexels-amina-filkins-5561460.jpg,Text,"Graduate Student Residents 2021",1,0
"Unexpected Lessons in Empowerment",,"My Humanities Moment involves a connection between two individuals that might not initially seem to have anything in common: Jane Austen and Quentin Tarantino. One of the first places I found inspiration for the tenacity that has always kept me going through numerous personal and professional challenges was in the novels of Jane Austen. The rather conventional Austen can hardly be called a feminist since her strongest characters ultimately bend to the social and gender expectations of their time. When I was in middle school, however, I didn’t know that. I read for pleasure, rather than analysis, and had a greater desire to accept a much more romantic vision of the world. This caused me to see characters like Elizabeth Bennett and Elinor Dashwood as strong women who faced difficult circumstances with grace and determination and spoke up for the things they believed in. I remember admiring their ability to put actions behind their words and positions—they seemed to fight hardest when things got tough.
Flash forward about fifteen years to the first time I saw Tarantino’s Kill Bill series. Ironically, The Bride (Beatrix Kiddo) spoke to me in the same way as the Austen characters. Kiddo is attacked by people she considered her allies and left for dead in a way that pretty much should have assured her demise. The most inspiring scene for me has always been in the second movie, which depicts her escape from a grave in which she has been buried alive. I found her will to survive circumstances that would have destroyed another person—both literally and figuratively—incredibly motivating.
Getting my masters’ degrees and my PhD has been a struggle to say the least. When I began my quest for an advanced education, I was a young mother who lived in a tiny rural town, fighting for a way to effectively express my value system in an environment that was much more conservative than I was. But whenever I felt like giving up—like when I was overwhelmed with work, life, or whatever—I tried to remember these fictional women. They refused to wallow in self-pity, but simply picked themselves up, reorganized, or even crawled out of the dirt to face the next moment with purpose and resolve. I still think of them when I find myself faltering and credit them for giving me the willpower to fight my own battles. They truly have made me the person I am today.",,"Books and Films",,"Throughout my life","Melissa Young, Archivist and Historian",,,,,,unexpected-lessons-empowerment,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"From my involvement in the graduate fellowship program","Alabama,Austen, Jane,Books & Reading,Empowerment,Feminism,Film,Historians,Kill Bill: Volume 1,Kill Bill: Volume 2,Mothers,Pride and Prejudice,Sense and Sensibility,Tarantino, Quentin",https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/15/312/Sand-brock-15.jpg,Text,"Graduate Student Summer Residents 2019",1,0