And Yes, The Body Has Memory

"Yes, and the body has memory. The physical carriage hauls more than its weight. The body is the threshold across which each objectionable call passes into consciousness-all the unintimidated, unblinking, and unflappable resilience does not erase the moments lived through, even as we are eternally stupid or everlastingly optimistic, so ready to be inside, among, a part of the games" (28).

This paragraph of Claudia Rankine's section on Serena Williams stood out to me because I felt like it was a brief transition into the more subjective and personal side of the issue being described. Now, each of the bad calls become a weight added to the carriage that is Serena's body, and the reader is taken inside her head to see how those calls pile up inside. When the reader understands that all the bad calls are internalized with "unflappable resilience," it becomes amazing that Serena does not yell at every questionable call.

I think this explanation added a real weight to the bad calls, and demonstrated how they play into a larger issue. By making it evident that Serena must bottle up the moments that she was not judged fairly if she ever wants to be "inside" the games (as in the white games), we are able to see how twisted it is that the refs have the ability to essentially keep the playing field unequal forever.

When Rankine said that "we are eternally stupid or everlastingly optimistic" I could feel the desire and anger at the absurdity of it all in her words. The desire to be on a level playing field. And it made me angry that, in order to do so, Serena has to keep pushing down all the bad calls and snide comments made about her just so she can keep playing tennis in a world that seems to have two different rule books.