The Need to Give Back
The sense of obligation towards family drives many youths of color today. A strong sense of obligation relates to youth’s motivation to provide, take care of and assist their family; financially and physically. This type of attitude is prevalent among the youth of lower socioeconomic status and can even vary by gender. This kind of attitude was also portrayed heavily by Janelle in the play ‘Intersections,’ her sense of obligation may have had a hand in her decisions throughout the play. How can a strong sense of familial obligation, varying by income status and gender, affect a young person’s decisions and even their academic motivation?
In ‘Intersections’ Janelle and her small family, consisting of her younger sister Danielle and older cousin Travis face a tolling situation. Their guardian, their only real family, their grandmother, was dying because of cancer. They had two choices, to let their grandmother stay in the hospital or spend her last days with family at home. In the first scene, Janelle has a big argument with Travis to let their grandmother come home. She reasoned with him “She sacrificed her life for me. FOR US. When mom died, she took us in like it was nothing… Let her come home. I will do anything”. It was likely that their Grandmother took them in at a young age and supported them financially and physically. Janelle probably having seen her grandma struggle must have felt a substantial need to give back to her. Janelle says to her Professor in a later scene “…nothing can stop me from helping.” They do end bringing their grandmother home with an at home nurse to take care of her. Young people, like Janelle who come from lower socioeconomic status, usually have a strong want to help their family. A study was conducted Andrew J. Fuligni and Sara Pedersen at the University of California, Los Angeles on 745 diverse young people from various backgrounds over the span of 3 years. Their research shows that “During young adulthood, poorer young adults placed more importance on family respect and future support than did the young adults from wealthier backgrounds.” (Fuligni and Pedersen 860) Janelle had a lot of respect and love for her grandmother and was ready to fight anything or anyone to take care of her.
It is interesting to note that Janelle reaction to news of her grandmother was very different than her cousin Travis. Travis is adamant on Janelle to keep going to school and complete her education and more level headed than Janelle. It could be possible that Janelle’s gender may have been an influencing factor in her stance of bringing grandma home. According to the study mentioned previously “Gender can also shape family obligations, with traditional gender roles often urging girls, more so than boys, to provide more assistance to the family.” (Fuligni and Pedersen 857) Their results indicated that the young women reported a stronger belief in assisting the family in the present and future, compared to the young men. In her argument with Travis, Janelle indicated that she had previously cared for Grandmother when he left, and she was ready to do it again, implying nothing else was more important than family for her.
In Janelle’s story, a turning point that indicates her mental downfall is her slacking off in school. In her conversation with her professor in a later scene, it is suggested that Janelle hasn’t attended class in a long time. It seems Janelle has lost her motivation to excel in school. Not only that but in her fight with Travis, she blatantly states “OUR FAMILY is first…Education I can get any time.” In lower-income youth with a sense of familial obligation, they start off motivated to attend college, to get a degree and provide for the family. Per a study conducted evacuating college persistence their “results suggest that those who anticipate helping more in the future while in high school may find that motivation and value of education may not be enough during the college years, given the actual helping behaviors that go along with family obligations during this period’.(Witkow et al. 14) This is exactly what happens with Janelle; she cannot deal with her situation at home and the added responsibility on her shoulders, so she starts slacking off in college. After all, her motivation for getting an education was providing for her family, and now that her family needed her, she put education on the backburner. After bringing grandma home and sacrificing her schooling, Janelle still feels she is not doing the best for her. Janelle cannot seem to take that there is nothing she can do to make her grandmother feel better. In her conversation with Danielle, she says this, “Our grandmother is dying! And you, I or that bullshit of a nurse can’t do anything about it. I will do whatever the fuck I’ve got to do to keep her with us. I can’t hand around this apartment knowing I can do something to ease her pain”. It’s evident from this dialogue that Janelle knows there’s not much she can do to fix this situation, yet at the end, she claims to get something to ease her pain. Danielle later implies that Janelle may be going to get a drug that their grandmother believed would magically cure her cancer. Janelle knew that deep down this drug would not heal her grandma, but she could not just stand the thought of grandma dying, and not her, being able to do anything about it. Janelle’s mental state is in shambles, her feeling strong obligations towards her family may have added to her low psychological resources when she was exposed to a negative situation like this. (Stephanie and Wortel 1192) At this point, Janelle makes a last-ditch effort by going to buy her grandmother drugs that she deluded herself into believing would cure her grandma. Janelle ends up being fatally shot by a police officer at the location of the transaction.
A strong sense of familial obligation common among young women of lower socioeconomic status can affect their decisions and their academic motivation, as it did with Janelle. Janelle’s sense of duty played a role in her decisions to her to bring her grandmother home, slack off at school and even turn to illegal methods to provide what she thought was needed for her grandma. Yet, there is no way to truly know what was running through Janelle’s mind through all this.
Questions:
- Does this make sense?
- Does my research connect well the message of my paper?
- Is my intention with this paper clear?
- Is my intro clear enough?
- Is my conclusion clear enough?
Hey Nawal!
1. Your rough draft makes sense, I like that you’ll be researching young women socioeconomic status quo in which makes your research paper different and unique.
2. Yes, your research connects very well with what you are addressing. I like how you are relating it to Janelle who’s a character in the play. Also, I like that you went in depth with Janelle situation.
3. Yes, your rough draft was very clear. It flowed with the message you was getting across.
4. Yes, your introduction makes sense. I know when we discussed in person, I’ve said the first sentence didn’t make sense to me because I thought it was about racism. But now that I’ve reread it a couple of times, it makes perfect sense.
5. Yes, your conclusion is written clear enough for the reader to understand.
I wish you the best luck on your research paper! 🙂
Nawal,
Holy wow — I literally shouted “yes, girl!” when I started reading your comparison of Janelle and Travis’s gendered responses to their grandmother’s situation. Like… yes. I’d love to see more elaboration of that: how does Travis fight to contain his emotions to conform with the expectations of masculinity that are imposed on him, for example? That kind of analysis can make your paper even richer than it already is!
Also, that longggg paragraph — I encourage you to split it up, looking for places where you can demonstrate unique points to your reader (it’ll make it easier to follow, etc). More importantly, though, I’d encourage you to engage your sources more: you do a great job of analyzing Intersections according to gendered pressures and structural misogyny shaping expectations (our own and others’) of how people should/must care for others. However, I’d love to see you integrate your sources even more into that analysis, beyond just finding those quotes in the articles that really help push forward your argument. Don’t get me wrong: you use those quotes very effectively. But I wonder if you can dive deeper into the articles (in the same way that you successfully dove deeper into the text!) to help make your analysis even richer.
I am so pumped to see how this turns out. Spectacular work so far!
1- Does this make sense?
Yes it does, I think this topic is pretty interesting. You definitely see a greater sense of familiar obligation within a struggling family as opposed to a much wealthier one.
2- Does the research connect well with the message of my paper?
It think both connect well. It’s brilliant what are you are taking out of Janelle’s character and situation.
3- Is my intention with this paper clear?
Yes, totally!
4- Is my intro clear enough?
Yeah I thought it was well said and I think anyone especially any person of color,child of an immigrant or anyone that comes from a struggling family would understand this 100%.