English, Philosophy

This article is a performative personal narrative inspired by the writing of Eve Sedgwick (1998) and Stacy Holman Jones (2011) using a Halibun style of writing (a method of writing employed by the Japanese poet Basho that combines prose and haiku poetry to describe life experiences in a poetic manner) as a way of enhancing events that have led the author to give up a familial relationship. The article examines a failed relationship between father and son. The author discovers that not all familial relationships are healthy and that not all investigations lead to a positive conclusion. It is the process that is most healing. Rather than experiencing reconciliation, the reader is left with the understanding that it is acceptable to let go of a relationship—even a familial one—that stifles, which then allows a refocusing of energy on those relationships that lift us and allow us to breathe. Using breathing as a metaphor, the narrative reveals the difficulty of allowing ourselves the ability to let go of a failed relationship.

Oldenburg and Brissett (1982) began their interest in the loss of social interaction in America regarding a decay of community. While Oldenburg (1999) continued his interest on the focus of “third places” as the cornerstone of building community, Putnam (2000) picks up the conversation regarding a need to return to the basics of interaction to rebuild community.  According to Putnam, we are worse off today due to a lack of involvement in our communities. It is through involvement/interaction that we create a sense of belonging.  It is that sense of being a part of something more than one’s self that began a grass roots movement in the neighborhood of Seminole Heights. The Seminole Heights neighborhood of Tampa, Florida has made it a priority to share food and eat together once a week as “family.”  Affectionately referred to as family dinner, the weekly tradition has continued now for over fourteen years.  This study explores the unique phenomenon of family dinner in order to make an inquiry into the classification of homes as third places (see Oldenburg, 2000) and its concomitant occurrences of increased community interactions/involvement among participants.

Prior to and after my brother’s death, I found myself being torn between two narratives.  The first included a family that hid news of my brother's illness from friends and family due to the perceived shame of dying from complications associated with Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). The second narrative included a grieving mother wrecked by the death of her eldest son.  I had to balance the two narratives of shame and grief. This reflection addresses the need for spaces and discussions that explore these conflicting narratives and how they interact with each other as our family tries to move beyond the memory’s effect on our family’s storying of my brother's illness and subsequent death. I reflect on the memory as it relates to grief—as a memory that we want to fully face and come to terms with, and also, paradoxically, as a memory that continues to haunt us.

This autoethnographic account details the struggles to accept my identity. In my quest to "find myself," I moved often. With each move, I found the darkness that I needed to survive for it was only in the darkness that I could explore my identity and simultaneously stay hidden. Coming out of the darkness began an intensely difficult journey. This journey takes the discussion of growing up in a shame culture further into adult life and the effect over time that growing up in such a culture has on life, self-worth, and love.

CONTACT THE AUTHOR  AT dr.dfpurnell@yahoo.com TO HAVE THE MANUSCRIPT SENT TO YOU.

The Seminole Heights neighborhood of Tampa, Florida has made it a priority to eat together on a weekly basis as ‘family’ for sixteen years—and counting. The dinners are affectionately referred to as ‘Family Dinner Night’.  This study revels how eating together has helped to build a sense of not only community, but also family among the participants of the dinners.  The concept is introduced with a literature review of food and community followed by a methods section, which reveals three main themes: (1) Food as an agent for engagement, (2) Food as a agent for strengthening social bonds, and (3) Food as an agent for creating an extension of ‘family’.

The purpose of this research study was to extend the concept of third places, as explained by Oldenburg (2000), as being places designed as
meeting places being dynamic rather than static. The primary sites for this
paper were conferences attended by the authors. Defining social events within the meeting spaces of conferences as third spaces pushed the
traditional third place theory forward. It offered a way for rituals to be
explored more deeply through the experiences they offered. This study asked the reader to pay attention to the periphery where interaction takes place and consider how we frame concepts of third places. In this piece, we explored how the space of a conference “functions as a safe, relaxed space outside the home [and] can actually lead to a deeper investment” (Tate, 2012, p. 280) by attendees via third place qualities. The third place quality offers a space within which human connections supersede a space’s designated purpose and become multi-purposed, durable, and long lived, spanning space, time, and distance. We suggest that the conference becomes transformative, altering a non-place (Auge, 1995), a generic place (Yakhlef, 2004), into a third place (Oldenburg, 1999; 2000).

An individual life is simultaneously flawed and valuable. All victims and survivors of sexual assault are unique, as are their stories. The culture of shame surrounding sexual assault on men shows victimization as a weakness. This attitude is sanctioned by the inherent gender inequality present within societies. These inequalities played a major role in my losing sight of my self-worth due to sexual assault, keeping myself in the darkness, and giving in to others’ control of me causing the road to self-forgiveness to become a difficult journey to traverse. When toxic, masculinity and shame are harbored within one’s self, an internal experience of unexpected exposure keeps us from trusting others. The shame creates a cloak of darkness and secretiveness. Instead of secrecy, we need space for men to tell their stories of sexual assault.

Strengthening the connection between people and places they share, I was primarily concerned with how we shaped urban space to (re)make public spaces. This place making was about collectively (re)inventing public spaces based on the interactions that take place within them making connections to individuals and beginning conversations of the complexities of finding place. Therefore, the use of public space should indicate its designation as a third place and not sanctioned rules that control the use of public space. As urban spaces are made into public places through the interaction of community members, I look at how that space is used with a focus on designations of public places/spaces with two goals in mind: (a) The third-place designation can apply to public parks and the interactions that take place within them. (b) Banning activities in public places due to “moral panic” changes the community use of that space.