For many years if you asked me who I was I could give you an easy answer that started with what I do. Exactly what labels I gave myself varied: poet, student, grad student, sociologist, demographer. I can still answer the question of who I am by referencing the things I do or have done. But it is harder now than it once was because there is no easy answer that quickly tells you what I do most of the time. I am currently on leave from UCLA’s department of sociology, where I was, until recently, a PhD student making very slow progress toward a degree. Right now I am working as a research assistant doing pretty much exactly what I was while I was a student. Eventually the projects that I’m working on will be wrapped up enough that I will begin looking for a “real job.”
Meanwhile I still have some easily listable answers to that question of identity.
I am:
a feminist
a liberal
a gardener
a video game enthusiast
a midwesterner at heart
a unitarian universalist (though currently not attending a church)
a rural girl still getting used to the city
a hoarder of books
That’s the easy summary. I write a lot about class, race, and gender issues. I write about living in Los Angeles. I write about having grown up in rural Wisconsin.