HEY, CHRISTOPHER: Thanks for being a "home inspector" (as you put it) scrutinizing Hugo House ["Open House," July 24]. We welcome community feedback on our efforts to be a center serving writers and readers of all ages and backgrounds. However, we wish you had taken a closer look. Although you presented several thought- provoking observations, much of your 4,100-word inspection report dwelt on a misperception that most of what we do is offer "middle-aged, middle-class white women" touchy-feely writing classes. In fact, there's a lot more to find here, in the classrooms and elsewhere. A few examples:
The Annual Inquiry festival of arts and ideas (which draws up to 1,000 people the first weekend of October, and this year will focus on how games--mental and physical--affect our society and culture);
Our Writers-in-Residence, who provide free consultation to any member of the public, and curate special literary events;
Our youth programs, including Scribes, a summer intensive writing camp; the School Alliance, an afterschool creative-writing club at three sites; and the Stage Fright youth open-mic series;
The Jon Nelson Prison Program, bringing writers to Washington State Reformatory in Monroe and, this year, publishing the work of inmates;
The way we support the arts community by making our theater, cabaret, and other spaces available annually for some 300 theater, spoken-word, music, and other types of performances and events. (Some artists apply for and receive subsidies; others rent parts of our building at low rates);
The way we are supported by hundreds of individuals, volunteers, other arts nonprofits, corporations, foundations, and government agencies, including an NEA grant in 2001-'02.
By the way, most home inspectors check the basement. That's where you'll find one of our newest initiatives, the Zine Archives and Publishing Project (ZAPP), which houses some 7,000 zines, and offers workshops and other resources for indie publishers.
Maybe our problem is that as a community center for the literary arts, Hugo House has too much going on to be understood easily. We hope to hear more opinions on that.
Trisha Ready, Programs and Education Manager, Richard Hugo House; Cliff Meyer, Communications Manager, Richard Hugo House
BY ASSOCIATION
DEAR CHRISTOPHER: Thanks for associating me with "every major Hugo House event," but you really ought to give credit where it's due. I have initiated nothing at Hugo House except the two classes I taught five years ago. I was part of the world out of which it emerged, but I stood by and watched it grow. In six years--out of, what, 500 events?--I've been involved with five. Also, I left Seattle four years ago. Your anonymous sources apparently have something on their minds other than Hugo House. Why not credit Jeanie Fisher, Gary Greaves, Kirsten Atik, Linda Mitchell, Tobin Eckholt, or any of the scores of people who have actually enabled the programming and done the work? What about Shawn Wong? He's been on the board for five years. The people who really run Hugo House are a bunch of writing geeks, and they're helping people write, apparently without notice.
I was surprised to read that "Stadler thinks the criticism that Hugo House is 'emotionally supportive' or 'touchy-feely' is really about the question, 'What's up with all these women?'" My e-mail to you in May said something very different: "Unease about 'therapeutic' workshops that 'lack rigor' is code for a whole history of gendered issues that don't sort out strictly male/female. Many women have the same complaint about Hugo House, and many men benefit from the qualities under attack. Misogyny isn't men hating women, it's a long-flowing cultural stream that casts suspicion on qualities that have been gendered as feminine." The distinction is important. I think it's crucial to indict masculine insecurity without always dragging women in as some kind of banner of virtue.
Classrooms driven by masculine insecurity--and I mean those in which the instructor brings his or her superior taste to bear, rewarding the good and squelching the bad--bore me. Nothing could be more pointless and dull than the repeated exhibition of the teacher's tastes. Some students would like to be read without being judged. That doesn't mean being supportive or cozy, it means paying attention and not making your own taste the issue. Apparently there are also those, students and readers and literary critics, who can't wait to see teacher's fiery sword. If that really interests you (it doesn't me), propose your class to Hugo House. Their doors are wide open.
Matthew Stadler, via e-mail
CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE RESPONDS: To clarify, Matthew Stadler's comments in last week's story were drawn from a phone conversation that took place on May 28, not from any e-mails he sent thereafter. I shortened his original quote, though I did not take it out of context. (The original quote was this: "The commonplace that Hugo House tends toward the therapeutic, or lacks rigor, or is focused on emotional support or acceptance--those are places where we're getting very close to that core disquiet about: What's up with all these women?") As for why Jeanie Fisher, Gary Greaves, Kirsten Atik, Linda Mitchell, Tobin Eckholt, and Shawn Wong were left out of the story, well, they were left out for the same reason that Jan Wallace, Colleen McElroy, Ernest Burgess, Lynn Hogan, Chris Crandall, Laura Hirschfield, Brian Arbogast, Linda Derschang, Kathleen Alcalá, Matt Briggs, and Toni Aspin (to name a few others) were left out. My goal with the essay was not to celebrate the personal contributions of everyone involved in Hugo House's rich and complicated history. My goal was to articulate the issues and perceptions that stand in the way of Hugo House being a viable and respected community center--i.e., the things that people think about Hugo House but are too chickenshit to say.
BLAME THE GIRLS
STRANGER: The writing-as-process movement in the U.S. educational system is loaded with male theorists, notably Peter Elbow. Likewise, some of the more touchy-feely practitioners in the self-help scene are bearers of the phallus: Does the name John Bradshaw ring a bell? Your critique of Richard Hugo House makes a valid point about the vagueness that surrounds process-based writing instruction, but smearing that critique onto some monolithic female gender was a dope-move. Apparently several decades of feminist thinking have passed you by. The femaleness of Hugo House's staff is hardly the origin or cause of their approach to writing instruction.
Institutions develop writing practices in response to current standards of pedagogy. What's happening with writing instruction at Hugo House has happened in university composition classes and in creative-writing programs. The freak-flag of process theory has been flapping in the breeze for years now (though you'll be happy to hear that a "post-process" approach is poised for a breakthrough). A product-oriented analysis would have situated Hugo House's philosophy within current institutional practices, rather than simply blaming the girls.
April Denonno, via e-mail
SCARRED BY ACID RAIN?
DEAR EDITOR: What planet does Sandeep Kaushik hail from? Kaushik's contempt for Americans seeking alternatives to Dubya and Dumber is strange [In Other News, July 24]. Last time I heard, 700 people at a political rally is a good thing. Worse, Kaushik doesn't get it that "aging hippie peaceniks" and "baby-boom New Agers" belong to the same friggin' generation! Are Kaushik's glasses rose-colored, or just deeply scarred by acid rain?
Thornton Kimes,
via e-mail
DEPT. OF CORRECTIONS: Last week, in the news story "Repair Bill," by Amy Jenniges, we mistakenly wrote that Seattle City Council Member Judy Nicastro did not return our call. In fact, as we went to press, Nicastro's legislative aide Jill Berkey did call to defend her boss, saying Nicastro hadn't fixed DCLU repair and replacement cost guidelines (as requested by the Seattle Displacement Coalition) because the timing was off, and she was working on other land-use code fixes.
