“Life can either be accepted or changed. If it is not accepted, it must be changed. If it cannot be changed, then it must be accepted.” Should I change my appearance to be accepted by others who are uncomfortable by my Vitiligo ? or should I just tell them to accept me for me ?
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I agree with you 100%... Either you like me or not because I'm going to do me regardless.... God created me and I can't change it! He don't make NO JUNK so I consider myself SPECIAL!!!!
I understand that the shoe could be on the other foot but I'm a realtic person and respect others so I truly don't believe that I would ever poke fun at a person for something that they can't control.... I believe it all adds up in the persons up bringing =)
U r right Lucy, but I believe we can make that better and changed completely. Sometimes I do think and believe that having Vitiligo has given us an edge in understanding life issues, if we are not living with this condition there is possibility that majority of us would have been the same people those people are staring, making comments and all.
I just love being practical we all have our issues, not giving them thumbs up for their ignorance, but probably giving them still benefit of doubt.
This depends on what type of person you are. Are you the type that bend over backwards for other people's approval? I am the type if you respect me, I will respect you. We can either get along or get the hell on!!!! Kick bricks with open toe shoes on. You cannot please everyone and your life will be complicated if you start. Its hard to expect others to accept us when there are times we can't accept ourselves. This is for vitiligo or any other issue we may be force to deal with. Its a daily struggle. Some days are better than others. In my opinion we should never start doing things to be accepted by others. Either they like you or they don't. Soon it will be summer and the heat will be on what are you going to do? Continue to dress like its winter and risk a heat stroke because some don't like to see the spots on your legs or arms? Everyone here with vitiligo has the right to exist in this world just like everyone else. We don't think we are better than anyone else and no one is better than us. If we accept others for who they are I don't see why its a problem for others to accept us as is.
If you haven't all ready, pick up 'The Human Stain' by Philip Roth. It's a fascinating read, and I never understood exactly why my professor recommended it to me until the big reveal toward the end. While most scholars' take on the novel is a much broader picture of racism and hypocrisy, I found as a vitiligo patient that it hit closer to home for me. Won't give away the ending, but let's just say that the hero in the book is not exactly who or what he has lived most of his life as, and his reasoning was what really touched me.
Ali it's a very interesting book I already check it out and here are some questions about the book
1. Why does Roth begin the novel by establishing the parallel story of the public scandal over Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky—a scandal that “revived America’s oldest communal passion, historically perhaps its most treacherous and subversive pleasure: the ecstasy of sanctimony” [p. 2]? How are Clinton’s and Silk’s stories similar? In what ways does this context extend the novel’s scope beyond one man’s experience to a larger critique of late twentieth-century American culture?
2. Coleman Silk’s downfall is caused, ostensibly, by the spurious charge of racism that results from his question about two absent black students. But as we learn more of Silk’s past—a past of which his colleagues at Athena have no knowledge—his disgrace takes on different meanings. What ironies are involved in Silk being charged with racism when he himself is black? By denying his own racial identity has he turned it into a kind of ghost? Is Coleman in any way responsible for his own destruction?
3. Delphine Roux appears to act on behalf of the aggrieved students, but what other motives does she have for orchestrating the attack on Coleman Silk? Is she aware of her motivation? What discrepancies are revealed between her public position and her emotional struggles?
4. Why do Silk’s colleagues fail to defend him? Why would highly educated academics—people trained to weigh evidence carefully and to be aware of the complex subtleties of any object of study—so readily believe the absurd stories concocted to disgrace Coleman Silk? Why does Ernestine describe Athena College as “a hotbed of ignorance” [p. 328]?
5. Coleman and Faunia are an unlikely couple—a seventy-one-year-old classics professor and a thirty-four-year-old janitor. What draws them together? What do they offer each other? How is their relationship—the relationship about which “everyone knows”[as Delphine Roux claims in her anonymous letter]—different from what others imagine it to be? Why is Coleman able to reveal his secret to her?
6. Throughout the novel, characters are portrayed as caricatures through a set of preexisting and clichéd stories—Coleman is the racist professor and lecherous old man who takes advantage of a woman half his age; Faunia Farley is the naíve and helpless victim; Les Farley is the crazed, abusive husband. How does the real story of each of these characters defy or complicate these simplifications?
7. In what ways are each of the major characters in the novel—Coleman, Faunia, and Les—controlled by the past?
8. After the funeral, when Ernestine reveals that Coleman was black, Nathan reflects, “I couldn’t imagine anything that could have made Coleman more of a mystery to me than this unmasking. Now that I knew everything, it was as though I knew nothing” [p. 333]. What is Roth saying about the limits of our ability really to know one another? At what other points in the novel does this problem arise?
9. Late in the novel, Nathan discovers that Faunia had kept a diary and that “the illiteracy had been an act, something she decided her situation demanded” [p. 297]. Why did Faunia feign illiteracy? Was there any reason why she chose this flaw in lieu of others? What are the implications of her secret?
10. In the overheard conversation that begins Chapter 3, one of the characters complains of his students, “They fix on the conventionalized narrative, with its beginning, middle, and end—every experience, no matter how ambiguous, no matter how knotty or mysterious, must lend itself to this normalizing, conventionalizing, anchorman cliché. Any kid who says ‘closure’ I flunk. They want closure, there’s their closure” [p. 147]. In what ways does The Human Stain resist this “conventionalizing” need for closure? How does it alter the classical unities of beginning, middle, and end?
11. The Vietnam vet Les Farley is a menacing, violently angry character, whose stream-of-consciousness rants reflect some of the most powerful writing in the book. What kind of mental and emotional damage has the war done to him? How has it changed who he is? What are the implications of Les’s being the instrument of Coleman’s destruction?
12. After an argument with Coleman, Faunia drives to the Audubon Society to visit Prince, a crow who was raised by people and achieved notoriety for acting like a “big shot” and stealing girls’ barrettes. When Faunia learns that Prince has ripped down the newspaper clippings about him, she says, “He didn’t want anybody to know his background! Ashamed of his own background! Prince! . . . Oh, you good boy. You’re a good crow” [p. 240]. And when she’s told that Prince can’t live among other crows, she says, “That’s what comes of hanging around all his life with people like us. The Human Stain” [p. 242]. In what ways can this episode be read as a parable of Coleman Silk’s own experience? How does this passage help to explain the novel’s title?
13. Nathan interprets Coleman’s choosing to reject his past and create a new identity for himself as “the drama that underlies America’s story, the high drama that is upping and leaving—and the energy and cruelty that rapturous drive demands,” whereas Walter thinks of his brother as a “calculating liar,” a “heartless son,” and a “traitor to his race” [p. 342]. Which of these views seems closer to the truth? Are they both legitimate? What is Ernestine’s position?
14. Coleman Silk is a professor of ancient Greek and Roman literature, and the novel abounds in classical references. The college is named Athena, Coleman thinks Viagra should be called Zeus, the author of the anonymous e-mail message that slanders Coleman calls herself Clytemnestra, the three young professors whom Coleman overhears commenting on the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal are referred to as a chorus, and so on. What do these allusions add to the novel? How are elements of Greek tragedy such as hubris, the hero’s fall, retribution, and ritual cleansing relevant to the action of the novel?
15. The Human Stain ends with Zuckerman finding Les Farley ice fishing in the middle of a secluded lake. Les says, “And now you know my secret spot. . . . You know everything. . . . But you won’t tell nobody, will you? It’s nice to have a secret spot. You don’t tell anybody about ‘em. You learn not to say anything” [p. 361]. In what sense is the entire novel about revealing and concealing secrets?
16. The Human Stain is a novel of sweeping ambition that tells the stories not just of individual lives but of the moral ethos of America at the end of the twentieth century. How would that ethos be described? What does the novel reveal about the complexity of issues such as race, sex, identity, and privacy?
I found the book particularly touching for me because I've lived my life so pale for so long that my vitiligo largely goes unnoticed. In a way, I am a fraud. I pass myself off as just a very pale person, and keep a certain part of me secret to the general public. It's not something I even discuss much with those that are close to me. I can honestly say that, other than with my husband and in sessions with my therapist and psychiatrist, this forum has been the most I've ever spoken on my condition. Maybe this has a lot to do with my overall attitude toward other people and how they perceive me. I wear the white patches, they don't wear me.
In a way, I found my condition as something that could not be changed, so I concealed and largely denied it. I think people honestly believe that I enjoy wearing pants and jeans and long sleeves year round. In many ways, I feel this may have allowed me to come to terms with it more easily. It wasn't such an obvious thing that people around me noticed, giving me more time to self reflect and to otherwise blend in with the general population. By the time my condition began to spread beyond the realm of pants and sleeves and parts of my face covered by makeup, I was older, wiser, and at peace with the condition.
As for another part of the book, revolving around the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, it ties into the novel when Coleman Silk dreams of driving past the White House where a large banner hangs from the roof declaring, "A HUMAN BEING LIVES HERE." No one in the book is perfect, and in real life, no one is perfect. To a certain degree, I've lived my life under that same banner. I often wonder if those that are uncomfortable around vitiligo patients are uncomfortable because it's not pretty, or uncomfortable because it causes self reflection? Does it make them wonder if maybe they're being stared at, too? Are they suddenly self conscious about carrying around a few extra pounds, a couple of gray hairs, or slightly crooked teeth?
As Chrissy Hynde once sang, "Well there's blood in these veins and I cry when in pain. I'm only human on the inside."
Wow sitting here listening to your story is almost a reflection of my own life especially the part that you talked about wearing pants and jeans and long sleeves year round. In many ways, I feel this may have allowed me to come to terms with it more easily. I was thinking of the same thing because I often looked forward to winter time so much because it was a chance for me too cover up and even wear gloves to cover my completely dipigmentated hands and I even choose my job based upon my vitiligo I chose a job as a sheetmetal worker because they always kept safety gloves on and I thought Wow this is the perfect job for me because I can hide my hands !!!!
In my experience, I've found that people are only as uncomfortable with my appearance as I am with my appearance. If I smile and walk and talk like there's nothing different about me, I find that people tend to ease up. And for those that can't, they weren't worth my time to begin with.
Ali Marie, I agree with you 1000%! Its all about YOUR ATTITUDE and the way you view yourself. If you appear confidant then people will see that, but if you act insecure with low self esteem ...they will see that too and that opens the door for even more ignorance.
Replies
I understand that the shoe could be on the other foot but I'm a realtic person and respect others so I truly don't believe that I would ever poke fun at a person for something that they can't control.... I believe it all adds up in the persons up bringing =)
I just love being practical we all have our issues, not giving them thumbs up for their ignorance, but probably giving them still benefit of doubt.
Thanks dear
I know thats right!
Ali it's a very interesting book I already check it out and here are some questions about the book
1. Why does Roth begin the novel by establishing the parallel story of the public scandal over Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky—a scandal that “revived America’s oldest communal passion, historically perhaps its most treacherous and subversive pleasure: the ecstasy of sanctimony” [p. 2]? How are Clinton’s and Silk’s stories similar? In what ways does this context extend the novel’s scope beyond one man’s experience to a larger critique of late twentieth-century American culture?2. Coleman Silk’s downfall is caused, ostensibly, by the spurious charge of racism that results from his question about two absent black students. But as we learn more of Silk’s past—a past of which his colleagues at Athena have no knowledge—his disgrace takes on different meanings. What ironies are involved in Silk being charged with racism when he himself is black? By denying his own racial identity has he turned it into a kind of ghost? Is Coleman in any way responsible for his own destruction?
3. Delphine Roux appears to act on behalf of the aggrieved students, but what other motives does she have for orchestrating the attack on Coleman Silk? Is she aware of her motivation? What discrepancies are revealed between her public position and her emotional struggles?
4. Why do Silk’s colleagues fail to defend him? Why would highly educated academics—people trained to weigh evidence carefully and to be aware of the complex subtleties of any object of study—so readily believe the absurd stories concocted to disgrace Coleman Silk? Why does Ernestine describe Athena College as “a hotbed of ignorance” [p. 328]?
5. Coleman and Faunia are an unlikely couple—a seventy-one-year-old classics professor and a thirty-four-year-old janitor. What draws them together? What do they offer each other? How is their relationship—the relationship about which “everyone knows”[as Delphine Roux claims in her anonymous letter]—different from what others imagine it to be? Why is Coleman able to reveal his secret to her?
6. Throughout the novel, characters are portrayed as caricatures through a set of preexisting and clichéd stories—Coleman is the racist professor and lecherous old man who takes advantage of a woman half his age; Faunia Farley is the naíve and helpless victim; Les Farley is the crazed, abusive husband. How does the real story of each of these characters defy or complicate these simplifications?
7. In what ways are each of the major characters in the novel—Coleman, Faunia, and Les—controlled by the past?
8. After the funeral, when Ernestine reveals that Coleman was black, Nathan reflects, “I couldn’t imagine anything that could have made Coleman more of a mystery to me than this unmasking. Now that I knew everything, it was as though I knew nothing” [p. 333]. What is Roth saying about the limits of our ability really to know one another? At what other points in the novel does this problem arise?
9. Late in the novel, Nathan discovers that Faunia had kept a diary and that “the illiteracy had been an act, something she decided her situation demanded” [p. 297]. Why did Faunia feign illiteracy? Was there any reason why she chose this flaw in lieu of others? What are the implications of her secret?
10. In the overheard conversation that begins Chapter 3, one of the characters complains of his students, “They fix on the conventionalized narrative, with its beginning, middle, and end—every experience, no matter how ambiguous, no matter how knotty or mysterious, must lend itself to this normalizing, conventionalizing, anchorman cliché. Any kid who says ‘closure’ I flunk. They want closure, there’s their closure” [p. 147]. In what ways does The Human Stain resist this “conventionalizing” need for closure? How does it alter the classical unities of beginning, middle, and end?
11. The Vietnam vet Les Farley is a menacing, violently angry character, whose stream-of-consciousness rants reflect some of the most powerful writing in the book. What kind of mental and emotional damage has the war done to him? How has it changed who he is? What are the implications of Les’s being the instrument of Coleman’s destruction?
12. After an argument with Coleman, Faunia drives to the Audubon Society to visit Prince, a crow who was raised by people and achieved notoriety for acting like a “big shot” and stealing girls’ barrettes. When Faunia learns that Prince has ripped down the newspaper clippings about him, she says, “He didn’t want anybody to know his background! Ashamed of his own background! Prince! . . . Oh, you good boy. You’re a good crow” [p. 240]. And when she’s told that Prince can’t live among other crows, she says, “That’s what comes of hanging around all his life with people like us. The Human Stain” [p. 242]. In what ways can this episode be read as a parable of Coleman Silk’s own experience? How does this passage help to explain the novel’s title?
13. Nathan interprets Coleman’s choosing to reject his past and create a new identity for himself as “the drama that underlies America’s story, the high drama that is upping and leaving—and the energy and cruelty that rapturous drive demands,” whereas Walter thinks of his brother as a “calculating liar,” a “heartless son,” and a “traitor to his race” [p. 342]. Which of these views seems closer to the truth? Are they both legitimate? What is Ernestine’s position?
14. Coleman Silk is a professor of ancient Greek and Roman literature, and the novel abounds in classical references. The college is named Athena, Coleman thinks Viagra should be called Zeus, the author of the anonymous e-mail message that slanders Coleman calls herself Clytemnestra, the three young professors whom Coleman overhears commenting on the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal are referred to as a chorus, and so on. What do these allusions add to the novel? How are elements of Greek tragedy such as hubris, the hero’s fall, retribution, and ritual cleansing relevant to the action of the novel?
15. The Human Stain ends with Zuckerman finding Les Farley ice fishing in the middle of a secluded lake. Les says, “And now you know my secret spot. . . . You know everything. . . . But you won’t tell nobody, will you? It’s nice to have a secret spot. You don’t tell anybody about ‘em. You learn not to say anything” [p. 361]. In what sense is the entire novel about revealing and concealing secrets?
16. The Human Stain is a novel of sweeping ambition that tells the stories not just of individual lives but of the moral ethos of America at the end of the twentieth century. How would that ethos be described? What does the novel reveal about the complexity of issues such as race, sex, identity, and privacy?
In a way, I found my condition as something that could not be changed, so I concealed and largely denied it. I think people honestly believe that I enjoy wearing pants and jeans and long sleeves year round. In many ways, I feel this may have allowed me to come to terms with it more easily. It wasn't such an obvious thing that people around me noticed, giving me more time to self reflect and to otherwise blend in with the general population. By the time my condition began to spread beyond the realm of pants and sleeves and parts of my face covered by makeup, I was older, wiser, and at peace with the condition.
As for another part of the book, revolving around the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, it ties into the novel when Coleman Silk dreams of driving past the White House where a large banner hangs from the roof declaring, "A HUMAN BEING LIVES HERE." No one in the book is perfect, and in real life, no one is perfect. To a certain degree, I've lived my life under that same banner. I often wonder if those that are uncomfortable around vitiligo patients are uncomfortable because it's not pretty, or uncomfortable because it causes self reflection? Does it make them wonder if maybe they're being stared at, too? Are they suddenly self conscious about carrying around a few extra pounds, a couple of gray hairs, or slightly crooked teeth?
As Chrissy Hynde once sang, "Well there's blood in these veins and I cry when in pain. I'm only human on the inside."
Wow sitting here listening to your story is almost a reflection of my own life especially the part that you talked about wearing pants and jeans and long sleeves year round. In many ways, I feel this may have allowed me to come to terms with it more easily. I was thinking of the same thing because I often looked forward to winter time so much because it was a chance for me too cover up and even wear gloves to cover my completely dipigmentated hands and I even choose my job based upon my vitiligo I chose a job as a sheetmetal worker because they always kept safety gloves on and I thought Wow this is the perfect job for me because I can hide my hands !!!!
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