What does it mean to “walk Chicago”?
Many of my walks for this class began from the Lincoln Park Quad and taken off one way or another down Fullerton. It feels like a central street in my life here because it can lead me to almost anywhere I need to go. Today, I was walking down Fullerton and thinking about all the things I have learned in this class. In my final project, I want to compare the messages I interpreted from each of my walks and come up with my general takeaway from slowing down and “walking Chicago”. The main lesson I feel I have gained from this class is not to judge a book by its cover. It sounds cliché, but I often made false assumptions about my walks or a certain area that could have prevented me from learning these valuable lessons had I not pushed my boundaries. Before college, I had been told never to walk anywhere alone and to stay out of notoriously bad areas. This is still not bad advice, but I took it too seriously to the point where I ended up walking in paranoia in each new place. Everywhere we went during Immersion week was an incredible learning experience for me that I never would have gained had I not taken this class. Some of those neighborhoods I had been specifically told by my parents not to venture to. I have learned that while I should continue to be safe, it is important to venture outside of familiarity in order to learn about the history and communities in the city of Chicago. I also want to talk about how being a woman makes it difficult to feel safe exploring these new places. Overall, in this final project I will break down each of the walks I took and piece together all of my takeaways into a walking guide to Lincoln Park and beyond from the eyes of someone who is slowly developing a very open mind.
Reading Reflection
The question I came up with and reflected on:
How do individuals’ differences (racial, economic, social, etc.) in society change the way communities interact?
Society has a way of separating people that are different from each other. In the Book Club Chicago article by Tonika Johnson and Maria Krysan, interviewed Leslie Cortez, daughter of immigrants who grew up in Humboldt Park. She talked about how going off to college at Concordia University, she was outcast because of the neighborhood she grew up in and where she came from. She asks the question: “What does it mean to be from the places people stereotype?” (Johnson/Krysan). This introduces the idea of stereotypes being associated with communities and isolating those within them from other communities. In this week’s readings, the folded map projects bring together people from different sides of town with very different stereotypes associated with them. One of them even brought North and South side residents together and documented their exchanges in an attempt to “desegregate our city” (Johnson). Another map project Tonika did compared pictures of houses from each side of town. These efforts to highlight the ways our communities are polarized help to advocate for change in the way people interact within them. Efforts like these can help build bridges between people where there never should have been gaps created by harsh stereotypes. (200 words)
