Blindness and blind spots.

“Jovencito, it’s going to be lonely being different and yet strong in this world,” James Francisco Bonilla’s grandmother told him when he was ten. Born with congenital cataracts, James had limited vision in his right eye and none in his left. At age nine, after a classmate hurled a horseshoe at his face in a racially motivated assault, James’s right eye was injured and he became legally blind. At home, too, he feared physical violence, experiencing the unpredictable outbursts of a single mother suffering from severe mental illness. Throughout his youth as a Puerto Rican New Yorker, James was continually failed by educational systems that exposed him to one abuse after another. Searching for relief and inspiration, he discovered an unexpected solace in the natural world, spiritual encounters with Mother Earth that led him toward both personal healing and advocacy.

At nineteen, a breakthrough in medical technology restored the sight in his right eye, and James recognized his unique perspective on the struggles of the disabled and marginalized in American life—and his intense will to make a difference. Here, James is joined in conversation with Beverly Daniel Tatum and Charmaine L. Wijeyesinghe.

James Francisco Bonilla (he/him) is a New York–born Puerto Rican writer and retired professor of Hamline University in St. Paul. He has written and presented nationally and internationally on diversity, cultural competence, and leadership, especially on how to diversify environmental organizations. 

Beverly Daniel Tatum (she/her) is an award-winning educational leader, best-selling author, expert on the psychology of racism, and longtime social justice educator.

Charmaine Wijeyesinghe (she/her) is a consultant and author with 40 years of experience working with colleges, universities, and public and private organizations on diverse social justice areas and organizational change.

REFERENCES:
What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma / Stephanie Foo

Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution (film)

The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight / Andrew Leland

Peril and Promise: College Leadership in Turbulent Times / Beverly Daniel Tatum

Promoting Diversity and Social Justice: Educating People from Privileged Groups / Diane J. Goodman

Always We Begin Again: The Benedictine Way of Living / John McQuiston

Praise for the book:

“With its intersectional analysis of racism, mental illness, and disability, this memoir brings a fresh and inspiring voice to the world of social justice literature.”
—Beverly Daniel Tatum

“This memoir is the essence of what I still seek to share with youth in all communities.”
—J. Herman Blake, professor emeritus, Iowa State University

“James Francisco Bonilla shows that hope and healing can be found through advocacy and community.”

—Sue Abderholden, former executive director, NAMI Minnesota

“This inspiring memoir encourages a new generation to confront biases and champion social justice.”

—Madeline L. Peters, disability consultant

An Eye for an I: Growing Up with Blindness, Bigotry, and Family Mental Illness by James Francisco Bonilla is available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.

Episode Transcript

James Francisco Bonilla (00:05):
Growing up as a light skinned Puerto
Rican kid, somebody who didn'tspeak very good Spanish, there
was always a sense, well, you'renot really Puerto Rican enough.
Similarly, because I was legallyblind, but not totally blind,
you know, people, well, you'renot really blind. So that, you
know, would make me feelisolated. Well, good morning

(00:27):
folks. My name is JamesFrancisco Bonilla.
I wrote a memoir called E Y Efor an I, the letter I, Growing
Up with Blindness, Bigotry andFamily Mental Illness. Today,
I'm joined in a conversationwith Beverly Daniel Tatum and
Charmaine Wijeyesinghe. I'm justreally tickled to be able to

(00:49):
have this happen. I think what Iwould like to do now is let them
introduce themselves.

Beverly Daniel Tatum (00:54):
Thank you, Jim. I am delighted to be here.
As you have heard, my name isBeverly Daniel Tatum, and I am a
psychologist and longtime socialjustice educator. I've been
privileged to know Jim for along time, professionally and
personally. And I was delightedto be able to read his book and

(01:15):
be in this conversation.
So much of the book is aboutidentity. I think it makes sense
to tell you a little bit aboutmine. I am an African American
woman, light skinned AfricanAmerican woman, which I think is
important to know because theexperiences of dark skinned
people and lighter skinnedpeople is different, even in the
context of racism. And I amsomeone who grew up in, a middle

(01:39):
class educated family. I am achild of educators, heterosexual
woman married to a heterosexualman.
And a able-bodied person, thoughnow in my seventies,
increasingly aware of physicallimitations as we age. So as
they say, temporarilyable-bodied. I am grateful to be

(02:00):
part of this conversation.

Charmaine Wijeyesinghe (02:02):
Good morning. I'm Charmaine
Wijeyesinghe, as Jim said. I'malso just so delighted to be
invited into this conversationand to share my thoughts on
Jim's book and to be inconversation with Beverly and
Jim. I know both of you for along time. Jim and I were in the
same doctoral program at UMassAmherst and Bev and I know each
other from our time at MountHolyoke College.

(02:25):
I have been a social justiceeducator since 1985. I have a
career in higher education, notfor profit doing that type of
work. Most of my writing andspeaking talks about social
identity, social oppression, andabout the last fifteen years,
intersectionality and what thatmeans for identity, social
systems, social justice. So Ithink so much of the book weaves

(02:46):
in themes from all of ourbackgrounds. I'm excited to talk
about that.
Because Jim's book touches somuch on how identities and
people's perceptions of ouridentities affect our
experiences. Like Bev, I willshare a bit about that. Most
people will perceive me as anAfrican American woman, and a
lot of my life has been shapedby that. I'm a child of

(03:08):
immigrants. My parents came fromSri Lanka, which at the time was
called Salon in 1958, and I'mthe first citizen by birth in my
family.
I identify as biracial, but Ididn't always. And part of our
discussion might touch aboutthat, the evolution of identity
and how we name ourselves. I useshe, her, and hers pronouns. I'm

(03:29):
a female in my older middle age.And I appear, I think the reason
people think I'm AfricanAmerican, have medium brown
skin, tight curly hair, it'smostly gray right now.
And I'm excited to get rightinto the book and the discussion
and what perspective Jim mightbe able to elaborate on and to
be in conversation about Bev'sand my perceptions and questions

(03:51):
about the book.

James Francisco Bonilla (03:52):
Thank you. So this is our group. And
just by way of identifying, I amwhat's called a New York born
Puerto Rican from a workingclass family. I'm light skinned.
And as we'll talk more about inthe book, when I was born with
congenital cataracts, whichmeans I could never see out of

(04:15):
my left eye and my right eye waspretty functional until
something happened.
And I'll talk about that in aminute. I did get the sight back
in my right eye, but my left eyeis still not functional. I think
that's all I'll say about myselffor now and maybe more will come
up later. I just wanted to givelisteners a quick overview of

(04:37):
the book. As I said, I was bornwith congenital cataracts.
And when I was nine, I got sentto a Catholic boarding school. I
call it a reform school. And Ihad the sight, I lost the sight
in my right eye when a classmatehurled a horseshoe at me and it

(05:00):
hit me unfortunately in my onegood eye. So I lost most of the
sight in that right eye. Andfrom that point on, I was
legally blind.
I was also at home contendingwith a mother who suffered from
pretty moderate to severe mentalillness. And I write about that.
Went to public school. First Iwent to Catholic schools, which

(05:23):
I got kicked out of. I can saymore about that.
And then I went to publicschools, some of which were
excellent, some of which werehorrific. Some of that was based
on my being Puerto Rican, someof that was based on my being
legally blind. So from age nineto 19, I was legally blind. At

(05:43):
19, there was a revolution inthe technology that allowed them
to remove the cataract from myright eye. And I was able to get
the sight back in that eye.
And from that point on and evenearlier before I had had the
surgery, I got introduced tothis notion of disability rights

(06:05):
and a disability move. I was 15at my first sit in at an agency
for the blind. And thatintroduced me to the notion of
social justice. And even thoughI started out as being involved
in disability rights, especiallyafter I got my eyesight back, I

(06:26):
became a community organizer andworked on social justice issues
around race and class. And Ieventually, and this is where
the book pretty much ends.
I went to graduate school, whichis where I met Charmaine and
Beverly and became eventually aprofessor where I taught issues
of social justice and leadershipand cultural competence. I saw

(06:50):
this line and I'm gonna steal itfrom somebody else, but I think
it's a really good line. Whilethis is a memoir, it's also a
meditation on disability, raceand generational trauma. So I
think with that said, I'm gonnaopen it up to folks' questions,
thoughts, reflections.

Beverly Daniel Tatum (07:11):
Well Jim, let me start by congratulating
you on this book. I think itdoes bring a unique voice to the
literature, the social justiceliterature, in that you weave
together these different themesof your identity. You know,
growing up New Yorkian, as yousaid, with a disability,
thinking about and having thatchange. You know, having it

(07:34):
change at nine and having itchange again at 19. But I'm
curious about why you havewritten this book at this
particular moment.
Talk to us a little bit aboutthe it's very personal about
writing this book, and why now?

James Francisco Bonilla (07:52):
The book was an evolution. A lot of
writers will tell you thatsometimes the muse leads you in
directions that you had no idea.So I had thought about for a
long time, and even in myteaching and training, I would
talk about being legally blind,being Puerto Rican. I was
writing a novel and finally Irealized this novel is not going
anywhere. And I was at a retreatand the retreat leader said to

(08:15):
me, You should write about yourlife story.
And within that afternoon, Ibasically outlined the entire
memoir. I thought it was gonnastart out about being legally
blind and Puerto Rican, Butpretty soon I realized that how

(08:35):
I wanted to start the book wasto talk about my mother and my
experience with my mother andher experiences. And it sort of
evolved from there. I didn'tplan on writing it coming out at
this point in time. I thought,well, it'll just be a meditation
on these issues, but, you know,we're living through an
extraordinarily challenging timefor social justice workers.

(08:56):
I'm glad it's come out, and I'mlooking forward to how people
respond.

Charmaine Wijeyesinghe (09:01):
I wanna follow-up with that, Jim,
because I think it is a piecefor our time because it
illustrates both despair and tosome extent, hopelessness at
times, but resilience andcommunity and finding both
personal strength in times ofisolation, but also strength in

(09:26):
community and ways of doing thework in many different ways
throughout the course of ourlife. So I want to appreciate
and thank you for writing thebook. The title for me, I want
to know more about that. So it'san I, so as you said, an I E Y E
for an I, the single lettercapital I. Can you tell us a bit

(09:48):
more about that and how thatcame about and how it might
relate to the book?

James Francisco Bonilla (09:53):
And again, it was one of those
serendipities. I was having aconversation with somebody, so
what are you gonna call it? AndI said, oh, and she said, oh, I
like that idea, an eye for aneye, because the focus was
about, I'm using the word focus,was about my eyesight. But I
think as I evolved and as thestory evolves, it becomes more

(10:15):
about me, the eye. But thatwouldn't have happened without
growing up with blindness andbigotry and family mental
illness.
What I've come to refer to nowas generational trauma, which
I'm realizing more and more thatthere are people writing about
generational trauma,particularly within communities

(10:37):
of color. Stephanie Fu wrote abook called What My Bones Know,
which is about Asian Americansand the generational trauma she
experienced and how it wasn'tdiscussed. Does that answer your
question, sort of?

Charmaine Wijeyesinghe (10:52):
It does. And now I'm wondering, is there
a passage that you wanted toshare?

James Francisco Bonilla (10:58):
Oh, many passages. Let me pick one.
And this comes to the questionof why did I write the book? For
me, the notion of seeing and notseeing became the basis for a
lot of the diversity work Iwould do. So I'm gonna read a
piece from the very end of thebook called Seeing Beyond Our
Blind Spots.
The blind French philosopherJacques Lusserain wrote a book

(11:22):
and he observed, The sighted areconstantly diverted from total
attention. So are the blind, butnot to the same extent. For
them, remaining attentive toone's blind spots is a practical
necessity. I've said, Jim Benihave said, that blindness is not
just something that happened tome, it's also something that

(11:45):
happened for me. It is one ofseveral gifts handed me as our
being Puerto Rican and livingand coping with mental illness.
Those gifts began thetransformation from the blind
eye to the seeing eye, and thoseare in quotes. Not only am I
forced to identify my blindspots, I'm often forced to see

(12:07):
new possibilities. Some of myblind spots are physical. Not
seeing out of my left eye hascaused me to accidentally walk
into a bed corner or crash intoa stranger who approached me
from my blind side. As a child,I could see well enough to enjoy
playing on New York City's manyconcrete handball courts.

(12:28):
The hot pink of the Pensey Pinkyhandball was just bright enough
for me to see it against thegray courts and tested my
reaction time. But the fantasyof being a handball legend ended
pretty early when other kidsfigured out that a sure way to
beat me was a well placed shotin the lower left quadrant of my

(12:49):
field division. They could seemy blind spots before I did. But
blind spots are not simply aboutphysical limits. Once while
talking with a friend about achange of presidents at his
college, I asked, what's hisname?
Given my knowledge of highereducation, I assumed I'd

(13:09):
recognize him. Clearing histhroat, my friend said, and
you're Mr. Diversity? Our newpresident is a woman. Back then,
I felt embarrassed, annoyed,defensive, and resentful that my
sexist blind spot had beenexposed.
Like physical blind spots, biascan be noticed by others, but

(13:31):
left unrecognized by those withthe bias. Newer cars come
equipped with a feature calledblind spot monitoring that
enables drivers to be alertedwhen they are drifting sideways
into an unseen car. I look backon my decades as an educator as
helping supposedly sightedpeople learn to find and monitor
their blind spots when dealingwith the other. That required,

(13:56):
and it continues to require, mynoticing my own biases regarding
race, gender, heterosexism,religious suppression, classism,
ageism, and ableism. Alsodemands, overcoming blind spots
demands a willingness to admitthat we each have mental
constructs and implicit biasesthat limit our vision.

(14:20):
These blind spots are oftendetrimental to ourselves, to
others or to both. Growing up asa young Latino kid in Catholic
school, I internalized negativeexpectations fostered on me by
white nuns. The nuns belief thatI was slow and not very smart
resulted in my acting out. As aconsequence, I was inaccurately

(14:44):
tracked into special needsclasses, which happened by the
way to a lot of Latino kids.Overcoming one's blind spots is
never a one and doneproposition.
On a recent Zoom call, a writingcolleague referred to their
spouse telling a story. Notthinking, I asked, what's his
name? To which she kindlycorrected, my spouse is a woman.

(15:07):
This time, I thanked my Zoomfriend for correcting my blind
spot about sexual orientation.Yep, you can teach an old dog
new tricks.
We need only to be open tosensing our world more fully by
remembering that when one eyecloses, another eye can open.

Beverly Daniel Tatum (15:27):
Thanks for sharing that Jim, it's very
helpful. As you were reading, Iwas thinking about the summary
in the flap of your book. And itrefers to the book as about
eyesight lost, vision restored,insights gained. All of that is
captured in the quote you justshared. I wanted to ask you

(15:48):
about the opening of your book.
While so much of the book isabout your vision and loss,
gain, etcetera, there's also alot about your mother. And the
book opens very dramaticallywith the scene, when you were
five years old, running fromyour mother who's threatening

(16:08):
you with a knife. And it's quiteshocking, you know, to think
about that experience for a fiveyear old and how confusing that
must have been and frightening,etcetera. And throughout the
book, you talk about the ways inwhich your mother's mental
illness intruded into your lifein difficult ways. And yet your

(16:30):
mother was also the person whofound the specialist who
restored your vision.
It was her connections that madethat possible. And just knowing
that speaks to the complexity ofthe relationship between you and
your mother. And I just wonderedwhat it was like for you writing
about that.

James Francisco Bonilla (16:52):
My advice to people who are
considering doing memoirs is tohave your therapist on speed
dial, because I spent, you know,before I wrote the memoir, I had
spent a lot of time and as mymother got more sick, things got
clear to me that she was notquote unquote normal. A child, I
didn't have a language tounderstand mental illness. And

(17:14):
it wasn't until I was, you know,I think 10 or 12 that a
neighborhood kid's mother had anepisode and everybody was making
fun of this kid. And this kidhappened to be the neighborhood
bully. So it was sort of like,you know, we were having fun
teasing him, and then Irealized, I'm not going to tell

(17:36):
my mother this story because Ithink I intuited that there was
some mental illness going on inmy own family.
And I was like, I'm legallyblind. I don't wanna have the
additional trauma of beinglabeled from a mentally ill
family. So it was really quitean evolution in terms of my own

(17:57):
experience. And it wasn't justmy mother. I had an aunt who was
hospitalized.
I had my father who sufferedfrom, they didn't have this
language back then, but PTSDfrom his time in Korea. And then
eventually, you know, Istruggled with my own mental
illness in college, almostdestroying myself. So it became
a theme in the book that I hadnot originally thought about.

(18:21):
But the more I read about andthe more I understood, this was
a theme that happens in a lot ofcommunities of color as well as,
you know, majority communities.

Charmaine Wijeyesinghe (18:32):
I want to chime in here, if I might.
Following up on that, Jim,throughout the book, were very
honest about internalizingmessages about yourself and
about other people, about peoplewho have a mental illness, about
folks who are dark or lightcomplected, and issues around
gay, lesbian, bisexual folks,trans folks. So you're very

(18:53):
honest about that. I think thatalso demonstrates for folks that
regardless of how long you dothe work and how much reading
you do, we all have those blindspots and we're going to be
continually reading. But interms of internalizing, I
realized internalizing some ofthe messages early about that
example with a bully and hearingwhat people were saying about
his mom, sometimes internalizingthose messages prevent us from

(19:16):
seeking community.
Because we're high I think atone point in the book, you talk
about part of your experiencebeing almost like being in the
closet on some of these things.So could you talk about that in
terms of how internalizing thosedominant messages about people
keep us from being in community?

James Francisco Bonilla (19:36):
This is ironic in many ways because when
I was kicked out of Catholicschool, I was sent to this
boarding school with the notionthat because I was, first of
all, put into a slow class inCatholic school because the nuns
mistakenly diagnosed my PuertoRican accent as a speech

(19:56):
impediment. You put a kid who'smoderately active into a slow
class and I acted out. It turnsout that literally tens of
thousands, if not hundreds ofthousands of kids of color,
particularly Latino kids, overthe years had been funneled into
special ed slow classes becausethey were misdiagnosed as having

(20:20):
a disability. Years later, whenspeech pathologists who had a
Latino background tested thesekids, they were not slow. In
some ways, many of them wereactually average to above
average.
But that message of I was slowhaunted me for years. So much so
that even when I was in graduateschool, I was really struggling

(20:43):
to write my dissertation becauseI felt like Val Young talks
about imposter fraud fakesyndrome. And one of the things
that got me through that wasBeverly's husband, Travis and I
ended up putting together asmall group of men of color who
were also trying to finesse ourway through higher ed and who

(21:03):
were also struggling with ourown internalized messages.

Charmaine Wijeyesinghe (21:07):
Thank you for that, Jim. And the
follow-up question is somethingthat Bev touched on, how the
book demonstrates thecomplexity, the interweaving of
the nature of oppression,discrimination, and how it
affected you. My work withintersectionality, I always
think about it and it encouragesus to move from eitheror to
bothand. A number of chaptersare dedicated to your

(21:29):
relationship with your motherand her mental illness and its
impact on you. But there's alsoa chapter, I think, it
demonstrates how Dee is abusiveand manipulative.
But I think on page 162, I wroteit down. There's a chapter on
choosing a parent, where youvery graciously say, this is
what she gave me, resilience,the operation, her connections.

(21:50):
So she was both abusive andingrained some very lasting
skills in you. Your supervisorat what I think is Camp
Lighthouse, who attempted toassault you and then also helped
you with college and jobs, andhow schools were both places of
isolation, but in high schoolalso opportunities to engage in

(22:11):
student government and clubs andathletics. So there's this idea
of eitheror or bothand.
So I was wondering how yourprocess of writing the book or
some of the even the contentmight help people doing social
justice work hold both andperspectives.

James Francisco Bonilla (22:29):
Yeah. Part of this has to do with just
my getting older and being ableto understand some of the
nuances. I think in the earlierdraft, I was harsher on my
mother. And one of the earlyreaders said, do you wanna talk
at all about Puerto Rican womenin the forties and fifties and
sixties who, I mean, in PuertoRico, there was scores of them

(22:52):
that were sterilized withouttheir consent. There was very
few, if any, resources forLatina mothers who might've had
issues concerning mental health.
I mean, that's starting tochange now, even though the cuts
to Medicaid, maybe not so much.But at the time, there were not

(23:12):
a lot of resources for her totackle her issues around mental
illness. And it wasn't reallyuntil her husband died two years
before she passed that shefinally went to go see a
therapist. She had the resourcesand because it was available.
The complexity that you'respeaking of is being able to see

(23:34):
that she was both abusive andcritical to my becoming who I
became.
I think at one point I referredto her as force of nature. Well,
that force of nature sometimesgot turned on me, but sometimes
ended up working for me. Andbeing able to hold both of those
things as true is I think one ofthe places where I was forced to

(24:01):
stretch. This brings up arelated question perhaps. I talk
a little bit in the book about,you know, I struggle with the
idea of having surgery because Iliked who I was as a legally
blind young man.
Once I had the surgery, I waslike, oh, this is fabulous. And
I think both are true. Beingable to hold the contradiction
of being legally blind, I wasfine. When I got the eyesight

(24:25):
back, that was very helpful inso many ways. But sometimes we
tend to say, well, either you'refor a cure or you're against the
cure.
And I think it's never thatclear cut.

Beverly Daniel Tatum (24:38):
I wanna pick up on that, if I might,
because that was one of thethings I wanted to ask you
about, you know, this tensionbetween having an identity as a
person with limited vision, thenreally a blind person. And then
all of a sudden, a sightedperson, you know, at the age of
19. You talk about what wouldthat mean to go from one to the

(25:01):
other. There's a chapter titledSeeing in Technicolor. You know,
the experience of Technicolor,of course, was quite wonderful.
You know, like being able totaste all these new flavors, but
still, you know, so much of youridentity up to that point had
been built around being a personwith a visual disability, with,
you know, limited vision. Howdid you navigate that?

Charmaine Wijeyesinghe (25:25):
And if I might jump in, Jim, as you know
I am prone to do. As an intro toanswering Bev's question, for
folks who may not have read thebook, I mentioned to you that a
particularly poignant area ofthe book appears on page 123 in
the chapter that Bev mentioned,seeing in Technicolor. For folks

(25:47):
who haven't read the book, it'sreally going to give them that
context of the significance ofthis piece.

James Francisco Bonilla (25:52):
Okay. I should have been grateful, but
the night before surgery, I'vebeen panicking about just those
exact words. What if I'm nolonger a blind person? What if I
suddenly become sighted? Whowill I be then?
Having spent more than half ofmy nineteen years of life

(26:13):
legally blind, I was terrified.I developed into a high
functioning young blind man,able to work as a counselor in a
camp for the blind, capable ofattending college and even
studying in London. I thought ofmyself as the poster boy for the
well adjusted, successful, highperforming disabled person. I

(26:35):
had taken the hand life haddealt me and assembled my
identity accordingly. I likedthe legally blind me in
capitals.
Why would I want to be justanother member of a sighted
society indistinguishable fromthe hordes? And and this ties
into some of the other themesabout the book, finding

(26:57):
community. It had taken me along time having been legally
blind and gone to some schoolsthat were supportive, some
schools that weren't, includingcollege, to find a sense of
community and my sense of myselfin that. I had a blind community
that I was quite comfortable inand acknowledged in, not just by

(27:19):
the other blind participants,but by the counselors became my
friends as well. And so thisnotion of all of a sudden, I was
no longer gonna have, in myhead, access to that community
was really kind of terrifying.
I think one of the ways that Iended up coping was I didn't
really leave those communities.I ended up becoming an advocate.

(27:41):
I took part in sit ins. Thatidentity became the jump off
spot for my activism. And once Ibecame active in those
communities, other communitiesopened up to me.
And this raises the questionthat I'd spoke of earlier of,
you know, there are people whoare pretty articulate and

(28:01):
adamant that they don't have tobe cured. I have a chapter in
the book that I like a lot thattalks about with correction and
all the people that aredisabled. And I ask at the end,
gee, what would it have beenlike if all of you able-bodied
people had been corrected? Youmight be something far more than
you imagined your life would be.

Beverly Daniel Tatum (28:23):
Yeah, well, triggers another question
which goes back to your birth,right? You know, born with
congenital cataracts. My husbandis now a man in his 70s and like
a lot of us had a need forcataract surgery, Right? And so
when I read that about having ababy with congenital cataracts,

(28:44):
I was imagining that in today'smedical world those cataracts
probably could have beencorrected, fixed, you know, at
the time or early on in your,you know, toddlerhood perhaps.
And then thinking about whatwould that mean for you, the
person you are today.
All of the experiences thatyou've had, whether that was,

(29:07):
you know, with the mother youhad, And you asked that question
like, would a kinder, gentlermother have produced a different
person? Corrective surgery earlyin life, would that, I mean,
clearly that would have changedyour school experience in many
ways. It's just an interestingquestion to contemplate that the
person we're talking to today,Jim Bonilla, author of this
great book, is the result ofvarious circumstances, some of

(29:32):
which in today's world would notexist or could have been
prevented, if, you know, maybethat's another way to say it.
And just wondering your thoughtsabout that.

James Francisco Bonilla (29:42):
So I'm a lot older than I look. That's
my vanity speaking. Becausesixty years ago, there was no
surgical procedure that workedwith cataracts. What I
understand is that the lenses ofthe eyes, which is where the
cataract grows, when you're veryyoung, there's fibers that hold
the lens in place and they'revery hard and they didn't have

(30:06):
the surgical expertise at thetime to do surgery unless you
were very old and those fibershad softened. Then somebody came
up with an idea of, Oh, we can'tsurgically do it but what if we
use ultrasonic sound?
And that's exactly what theydid. They put a little vibrating
needle by my eye which shatteredthe lens and they had like a

(30:29):
little tiny vacuum cleaner thatjust vacuumed out the lens and
now they gave me a contact lensto wear on top of that. Today,
they just use lasers and it'spoof, poof and it's gone. So the
level of complexity and thetechnological fixes have just

(30:50):
gone right through the roof. ButI think this is an interesting
question because there's no realright answer.
I have no idea what would havebeen like if I weren't legally
blind. And this is where theidea of how identities
intersect. There was a way thatmy being legally blind in the
New York City school systemwhere only 80% of, where only

(31:14):
twenty percent of the PuertoRican kids in the system
graduated high school. The factthat I ended up getting special
services because I was legallyblind, I credit with getting me
through high school and evenjunior high school. If I had not
been legally blind, I stillwould have had to deal with

(31:34):
other aspects of my identity,being Puerto Rican in a system
that was at worst hostile, atbest apathetic.
And I would also still have todeal with a mother who suffered
from pretty severe mentalillness. The fact that those
identities intersected likethat, yeah, it's an interesting
question. I don't know what theanswer.

Beverly Daniel Tatum (31:56):
It's so interesting what you said just
now that I'm gonna call your,being legally blind your special
identity. You know, that beingmade special in that way got you
services that you should havehad anyway, but maybe weren't
available because of the racismin the system. So it's just an
interesting intersection how,the one hand, being a victim of

(32:18):
ableism, but on another hand,the response to the disability
in some ways counteracted thesystemic effect of the racism,
which is, you know, I hadn'treally thought about that as I
was reading your book, but it'svery interesting to hear you,
reflect on that now.

James Francisco Bonilla (32:34):
If I had been going to school a few
years earlier, as as the 1960s,New York City public schools had
no legal obligation to provideany special services for
disabled people. And there was ayoung woman named Judy Heumann
who was in a wheelchair and Judybrought a lawsuit and she ended

(32:57):
up becoming one of the faces ofthe disability rights movement.
I'm gonna make a plug for amovie called Trip Camp, which is
about a camp that I had ended upattending where Judy helped
organize a lot of youngdisability activists who then
moved to California and thenwere instrumental in passing
disability rights. But if Iwould have come along just a few

(33:21):
years earlier, I don't think Iwould have gotten that
additional attention and itcould have been much worse.

Charmaine Wijeyesinghe (33:27):
Jim, in addition to your identities
intersecting or kind ofinfluencing each other, I just
wanna highlight the systems weretoo. The systems of racism, the
disability oppression, classism,we're all a part of that
conversation because sometimesin my experience people think of
intersectionality as a frame ora lens on identity. For me, it's

(33:48):
about the systems and how theyinterplay. And then when we
think about social justice, howdo we need to enact change by
not just working, for example,for racial justice, but to
understand how disabilityoppression may be part of the
strategies that we're usingbecause we think we're doing
good work around race, but maybeexcluding people because we're

(34:09):
not attending to how our effortsmay not be friendly, not be
welcoming, accommodating forfolks with disabilities or folks
who are queer or women. But theidea of place is a large part of
your book, and place could becommunity, physical space,
historical space.
If we're willing to, I want topivot to that, how place

(34:31):
influences people throughouttheir lives. And you talk about
your mother and understandingher mental illness as being
perhaps part of her earlyexperiences with her place, you
know, being separated from hermother because her mother was
sick and observing her motheractually pass away. A theme for
me that runs throughout the bookis your connection to place and

(34:52):
particularly to nature and hownature is really a saving space
for you.

James Francisco Bonilla (34:59):
Yes. I mean, I grew up in the city, so
the access to nature was notsomething that I routinely had.
The experience I had as amessenger about going to Paley
Park in Manhattan, It's the siteof an old building. It was
actually an old infamousgambling establishment. And the
guy out of guilt donated thebuilding.

(35:20):
They tore it down, but they keptthe back wall and they planted a
whole set of trees. And in theback wall, they did a waterfall.
And as you're walking down thestreet, I think it's 53rd, you
step into this place and thesounds of the cities drop away
and all you hear are the birdsin the trees and the waterfall.

(35:42):
I was a blind messenger, there'sa chapter in the book where I
laugh about that, but I would gothere for my break or waiting
for them to tell me where I wasgonna go next. There was a
little cafe, you could eatcoffee, and there was something
incredibly calming about thatexperience that I just didn't
find anywhere else until I wentto Camp Lighthouse and at Camp

(36:06):
Lighthouse, which was on theJersey Shore, I started having
these very intimate experiences.
I would do like, I think mysecond or third night as a
camper, I illegally or violatingall the rules went for a night
hike at midnight and went for aswim. And you had to walk across

(36:27):
a boardwalk to get to the baywhere you could swim. And of
course the boardwalk was over amarsh. And at night, a marsh is
like one of the most alivethings you can experience. It
just became a proving ground formy fine tuning my senses to
nature.
And at different points, and Iwould say in different crises in

(36:49):
my life, I felt like nature cameto me and said, Hang on there,
young sir. It was the equivalentof therapy. At the time, there
was certainly not something thatwas available for low income
communities. But nature became abalm, a healing source for me.
As I started towards retirement,I've increasingly been

(37:10):
interested in getting more youngpeople of color in nature.
You know, I had spent a big partof my career as an academic
looking at systems thatdiscriminated based on race or
gender. And I became, BaileyJackson, who is one of my role
models, I would use his modeland work with lots of colleges

(37:34):
and universities and nonprofitsto explore how it was that their
systems unintentionallysometimes excluded women and
people of color. And so I becamesort of a systems person. And
towards the end of my career, Iwas thinking, I've never really
talked very much about thepersonal aspects.

Beverly Daniel Tatum (37:57):
I think that's very important that the
personal narrative,particularly, as you said,
people connect to the narrativeand learn from it sometimes in
ways that maybe more theoreticalor abstract discussions are not
as effective. As you werespeaking about it in this
moment, we're having thisconversation, You know, where
there's so much, what we mightcall anti DEI, you know, anti

(38:21):
diversity, anti equity, antiinclusion rhetoric coming from
the highest places. It seems tome your book provides an
antidote in a way to thatthrough the narrative, through
the personal narrative. Becauseit makes clear, you know, the
wide range of experiences andthe intersection as, both you

(38:42):
and Charmaine have pointed out.You know, your personal
narrative intersects withsystemic barriers, repeatedly.
And there are allies in thestory, people who take action to
help you in ways that are reallyimportant. Think of your advisor
who says, you should go toLondon, and sends you there and
says, you know, don't worryabout what other people say. I'm

(39:04):
in charge. You know, I can makeit happen. You know, I mean,
there there are lots of examplesof people who opened doors and
who were advocates or allies inthe face of these systemic
barriers.
I think it speaks to the powerof the individual, as well as
the importance of acknowledgingthe power of systems.

James Francisco Bonilla (39:24):
You know, one of the things at UMass
Amherst, Laura Rauscher and Ipioneered the first Disability
Oppression Weekend. And one ofthe interesting things that she
and I talked about was the factthat people who would often be
resistant to acknowledgingracism or sexism or heterosexism

(39:48):
just couldn't relate to thoseidentities and they would never
see themselves in that place.But as we know, most of us
eventually become disabled,maybe temporarily, but as we get
older, sometimes permanently.And I felt like, we're living in
times where people are resistantto this material. How do I reach

(40:12):
them?
I was in a writers group thatwere not social justice people
at all. They were just otherwriters who were writing
memoirs. And I noticed thatthere was ways in which I was
able to reach them, talkingabout the disability experience,
that if I had come at them atfirst about, you know, Latino
ness or being working, you know,they would have recoiled. And

(40:33):
Laura Raschu's now passed, Godbless her. We talked about
there's a potential here inconnecting disability work to
these other issues that I thinkhas real significance,
particularly in the times we'reliving in.

Charmaine Wijeyesinghe (40:46):
It reminds me, Jim, too, of our
own, you know, for those of uswho work in social justice or
those of us who may beconsidering working in social
justice across generations orwhenever people choose to enter
this work, is particularly, Ifind, in times of stress or

(41:07):
either perception of the realityof shrinking resources, that we
cling to this idea of hierarchyof oppressions. We have to deal
with race first, for example. Iencounter that a lot when I talk
about intersectionality forpeople of colour. They'll say,
This is all great, but just soyou know,

James Francisco Bonilla (41:24):
race is at the top

Charmaine Wijeyesinghe (41:25):
of the list. Or someone will say, Class
is at the top of the list. And Ithink what your book does
wonderfully is interweaving, itreflects that interweaving of
experiences and connections tooppression and connection to
attending to all of them insocial justice. Sometimes it's
possible for certain, I want tosay identities, I use the word

(41:47):
social location to emphasize thepower, to be foregrounded. And
so in your book, sometimesdisability is foregrounded
throughout and yet there aretimes that race takes a more
significant part of thenarrative.
And I just want to affirm thepower of using narrative to

(42:08):
teach. Throughout the book, youinterweave your story with other
resources and other experiences.Was that an intentional choice?
So it highlights your storythroughout, and yet you connect
it to larger frames ofknowledge. As Bev was saying,
these are unprecedented times,and at the same time we've been

(42:29):
here before in some way, shapeor form.
How do we work as communities associal justice educators? And
also, how can we use personalstories to connect to larger
systems and larger change?

James Francisco Bonilla (42:41):
The question of hierarchy of
oppression has always beeninteresting to me. There's a
joke in Puerto Rico that when weassemble a firing squad, we do
it in a circle. And how thatplays out in larger political
dramas is it weakens us. AndI've been just increasingly
aware of growing up as a lightskinned Puerto Rican kid. There

(43:04):
was sometimes, and now somebodywho didn't speak very good
Spanish, there was always asense, well, you're not really
Puerto Rican enough.
So that would make me feelisolated. Similarly, because I
was legally blind, but nottotally blind, people, well,
you're not really, really blind.And I was reading, there's a

(43:26):
wonderful book called TheCountry of the Blind, wonderful
book. And he talks about hisexperience going blind and he
goes to these differentorganizational conferences. And
what he notices is even in theblind community, there's a
hierarchy so that if you'reblind and also developmentally

(43:46):
disabled, they didn't reallywanna interact with the
developmentally disabled.
This notion of hierarchy ofoppressions really works to
weaken our ability. And this iswhere my community organizing
life comes back. We're as strongas we are together. You know,
you can snap a pencil in halfpretty easily, but when you get

(44:08):
a group of 10 pencils, see ifthey can snap those if they're
tight. That's been a little bitof the learning curve for me.

Beverly Daniel Tatum (44:15):
Jim, I want to share with you that one
of my favorite sentences in yourbook comes toward the end when
you are describing, theexperience of surfing, body
surfing, And, you know, beingtossed by the waves and all of
that. And then you say, youknow, one of the things that

(44:37):
you've learned from thatexperience, that it's possible
to navigate choppy waters andstill experience hope, joy, and
ultimately peace. I will takethis minute to do a personal
plug. My latest book is calledPeril and College Leadership in
Turbulent Times. There's a lotof turbulence in the higher

(44:58):
education atmosphere ecosystemright now.
But at the end of my book,there's a chapter called Reasons
for Joy. And in it, I talk aboutthe ways in which people find
joy and a sense of purpose andpossibility even within all the
turbulence in the highereducation ecosphere. You know,

(45:21):
you're speaking personally, butit spoke to me in the context of
having just written that bookand thinking about all the
turbulence in higher education.To think about being able to
navigate choppy waters and stillexperience hope, joy, and
ultimately peace.

James Francisco Bonilla (45:36):
That chapter ended up touching some
people, again, who were not atall connected to any of the
issues of social justice, butthey could relate to this
question of, even in turbulenttimes, we not only can find
hope, we have to find hope.Because without that, then we're

(45:59):
really lost. And coming back tothis issue of nature, for me,
not only was it a healing place,but it was a place where I found
hope and joy and awe. And Ithink, again, we need awe as
part of our strategies for goingthrough these really difficult
times.

Charmaine Wijeyesinghe (46:20):
You know, as Bev was talking of the
idea of joy, reminded me in mybookcase, luckily is right here,
of our colleague Diane Goodman,who wrote a second edition of
her book Promoting Diversity andSocial Justice. And she
interviewed a number of people,and Jim, you may have

James Francisco Bonilla (46:34):
been one of them,

Charmaine Wijeyesinghe (46:34):
I know I was, because she did a chapter
called The Joy of UnlearningPrivilege and Oppression. And
she said, as I recall, you know,we think about this as just
heavy work. And she wanted touse humor and she wanted to say,
we can be joyful as we goforward. So I want to appreciate
Bev and also Jim, your bookthere are sections where you

(46:58):
talk about joy and happiness andfulfillment. One thing I want to
Jim, if you had any lastcomments on the idea that the
work is always ongoing.
What I've been really trying toemphasize when I talk to
intergenerational folks, youngerfolks, is saying oftentimes I
feel our goal is to say, I havearrived. I know everything, so I

(47:20):
don't have to know anythingmore. If nothing else, working
with younger people has taughtme I have so much more to learn.
I don't care how long I've donethis work because for me, the
issues are always evolving. Italked about doing homophobia in
women's sports back in the 1980swith Pat Griffin, who is still
in our community, and then wewere talking about trans

(47:41):
athletes.
Now I would imagine if we didthat work today, we would be
talking about that. And as youwere talking about, technology
has changed, the nature ofdisability and our understanding
of that has changed. Do you haveany comments for people
listening about the work isongoing and therefore our work

(48:01):
has to be ongoing?

James Francisco Bonilla (48:02):
You know, one of the questions I
wanted to pose to you folkswhile I had you was, what kind
of advice do we give to thisnext generation of social
justice advocates and activiststhat, you know, who are facing
really tough road? You saidsomething, Charmaine, about know
your history, that we've been intough places before. It's not

(48:24):
that it makes this moment inhistory any less difficult, but
it gives it a context. It's notas hopeless. The other thing,
and this sounds a little zen,but maybe it is.
I think one of the things thatI've learned as I've gotten
older is about practicinggratitude. That oftentimes when
we're sort of fighting thefight, gratitude is the furthest

(48:46):
thing from our mind. So I thinkpracticing joy, spending time in
nature, and practicing gratitudereally, I think, sustain the
spirit that we need in order tocontinue to do this work. But
I'm also intrigued and wonderingabout what your advice would be
to the next generation ofactivists who are maybe

(49:08):
listening to this and wondering,those old people, what do they
know?

Beverly Daniel Tatum (49:13):
Well, Jim, I'll start by saying this, that
when people ask me, as theyoften do, sort of what gives you
hope, particularly in thismoment, I often turn to history
and say, you know, I like toquote Doctor. Martin Luther King
in his last book, Where Do We Gofrom Chaos or Community? And

(49:36):
even though that book waswritten in 1968, you know, it
reads like it was written today.And certainly we stand on the
precipice of that question ofchaos or community. One of the
things he says in that book isthat after every period of
progress, social progress, afterevery he uses the term after
every period of racial progress.

(49:57):
But if we broaden it to sayafter every period of social
justice progress, there'spushback against that progress.
And we are feeling a lot ofpushback right now. But to me,
the fact that we are feeling somuch pushback is evidence of a
lot of progress. That if weunderstand that, you know,

(50:18):
there's periods of progress andthen there's pushback against
it, Inevitably, there isprogress again. So the question
for us today is just how longwill the pushback last?
As we're speaking, there's ahurricane in The Caribbean. The
winds are strong, and yet theysubside and people rebuild. And

(50:39):
that is our challenge, I think.I also like to say, in the much
that you have said, you know,about practicing gratitude,
there is a wonderful quote thatI use in my book that I came
across reading a moderninterpretation of the rule of
Saint Benedict. Okay, so SaintBenedict was a sixth century

(51:00):
monk, you know, founded theBenedictine order and wrote
something called The Rule ofSaint Benedict.
And it has been, interpreted inmodern language in a small book
called Always We Begin Again.And in that book, the
paraphrasing of Saint Benedictis this statement that life will

(51:24):
always present matters forconcern. There's always
something to be concerned about,always something to worry about.
But each day, however, bringswith it reasons for joy. And
that for me has become mypractice of what's my reason for
joy today.
And so certainly on my listtoday will be this opportunity

(51:47):
to have had conversation withyou and Jermaine.

Charmaine Wijeyesinghe (51:50):
I think for me, Jim, in the last, I'd
say even decade, what hasbrought joy to me is
intergenerational work. Ioftentimes will do conference
sessions now with people who arethirty to 35 younger than I am.
And when I first started workingwith them, particularly in the
National Conference on Race andEthnicity called NCORE, we were

(52:14):
on planning groups together andwe didn't like each other. And
part of it was I thought, wewere working on teams for
intersectionality, I thoughtthey don't know what I know. And
they thought of me as someonewho is just old and irrelevant.
And over the course of a coupleof years, we came to like each

(52:36):
other and I could take theiradvice and their knowledge and
make room for that. I had to domy own personal work so I was
able to do that. And they takewhat I have to offer as a gift.
So I feel like trying to findways to find and accept gifts in

(52:57):
places we maybe hadn't beenlooking before and finding joy
in that. And the last story I'lltell is of a young person.
I was once in a community Ilived in New York, there was a
weekly gathering around BlackLives Matter and we'd stand
there with our signs and it wascold and wet and I didn't really
want to be there. And there wasa young person there dancing in

(53:19):
the streets with her sign. And Ithought that's what I need to
figure out how to do every day,is to find joy and to just dance
in whatever way that looks forpeople. So because if we're not
doing this with gratitude andenjoy and learn to do it in a

(53:40):
spirit of fun and community,then I feel personally for
myself, I will surely just giveup or not be open to
thankfulness and gratitudebecause I'm so resentful. So I
think for me, finding joy aspeople have been talking,

(54:01):
finding fun in the work, whichcould be very difficult now, but
for me what has beentransformative is working with
folks I never would have thoughtI would have worked with in
terms of generation.
It gives me a chance to imparthistory because sometimes young
people will say, I'm sointerested in Black identity
development and I mentioned BillCross and Bailey Jackson and

(54:22):
they don't know who they are. Ifyou can imagine that because
knowledge changes. So I'll say,I'm going tell you who they are
and now you tell me yourinterpretation of their work
now. Working in the multiracialcommunity, I tell people you
need to know the history of racein this country to understand

(54:43):
where you may experienceresistance. So there's a
difference between knowinghistory and being constrained by
history.
So it is this back and forthinterplay. Jeremy, I

James Francisco Bonilla (54:54):
thought you were working on a book. Am I
imagining that?

Charmaine Wijeyesinghe (54:58):
Working on, it's a work in progress. It
is more conceptual at thispoint. As many of us have
stated, we're older, I'm in mylate 60s. And as you know, book
projects can stem two or threeyears. But I do have a book in
development, particularly aroundrace at the intersections of
other forms of oppression.
It may be a kind of secondcarryover from my last book was

(55:23):
The Complexities of Race,Identity, Power and Justice in
America with NYU Press. I ampursuing that publisher. And the
question is, do we have enoughtime and energy for another look
at intersectionality and race?So, but thank you for offering
me a chance to encourage me toperhaps go forward with that.
Thank you.

James Francisco Bonilla (55:43):
Good, you're welcome. Well, thank you
and I want to thank theUniversity of Minnesota Press
for putting together thispodcast. And, I look forward to
catching up with both of you atsome point in the not too
distant future. This

Narrator (56:01):
has been a University of Minnesota Press production.
The book, An Eye for Growing Upwith Blindness, Bigotry, and
Family Mental Illness by JimBonilla is available from
University of Minnesota Press.Thank you for listening.