If you don’t pay attention to the flyers plastered across the walls of academic buildings, or browse upcoming events on the University Calendar, you may not have been aware that National Geographic reporter and UC-Berkeley professor Cynthia Gorney visited campus earlier this month.
Gorney graced us with her confident and energetic presence as a part of the Journalism Department’s recent affiliation with the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting in Washington. While visiting, she discussed her in-depth reporting on child brides with Journalism and Women’s and Gender Studies classes, showed her National Geographic documentary that showcased this reporting, participated in a discussion panel with Journalism Professor Justin Catanoso and Pulitzer Center Director Jon Sawyer, and experienced firsthand our east coast humidity.
I have to admit that while Gorney was here, I felt kind of like her personal stalker. Not only did I slip into a class she was speaking in, attend the documentary and Q&A session, and hunt her down afterwards as she was hurrying off to dinner, but I dared to show up at her doorstop on Good Friday during the wee hours, when your hair hasn’t fully air-dried, and coffee is still in the pot…Nevertheless, Gorney managed to look relaxed, in casual black pants and a white t-shirt, as she answered the door, led me inside, and offered me a cup.
While we talked, the professor, public speaker, and worldly reporter that I had watched over the past few days transformed into a mom, housewife, soccer coach, and Grey’s Anatomy fan.
As I scribbled illegible notes and sipped my caffeine, she told with me about her background in journalism, what it was like reporting on child brides with photographer Stephanie Sinclair, and how she’s avoided cynical-journalist syndrome throughout it all.
Her latest project, tracking down the villages in Yemen and the region of Rajasthan in northern India that participate in underage wedding ceremonies, was no easy task (they are illegal, after all). Once they had been found, however, Gorney proved to be a natural at establishing relations with the mothers and children.
Gorney chalks up her ability to connect with the young Indian girls to a simple love of children, and a sense of comfort around them.
She shared a story about a boarding school she visited in Rajasthan, where the smart girls from the village were sent to receive their educations. Sitting in the tiny excuse for a dorm room, talking (through her interpreter) to the girls about what life was like for them and what life was like in the U.S., Gorney said she “felt so at home.”
It reminded her of her own daughter’s high school years, and the many conversations she had with her and her friends about life, learning, and the challenges of growing up.
“Despite the vast differences between my daughter and her friends, and these girls, there also are connections that are the same – in my experience – in whatever culture you’re in,” she said.
[pagebreak]
There is an undeniable power and meaning behind these culture-transcending connections, as well as a high degree of emotional investment.
“Sometimes the emotional nature of what you’re doing gets to you in ways that you don’t quite expect,” Gorney admitted. “You are a human person all the way through it.”
When I asked her how she handles these emotions, Gorney points out the she doesn’t fulfill the popular cliché of the cynical, angry-at-the-world reporter.
Yet, being all at once an emotionally-responsive woman, as well as a successful journalist, doesn’t come without challenges. In light of this, Gorney told me about her first job as a reporter at the Washington Post, where at 22 she was assigned the overwhelming task of covering the White House.
“There was a period when I realized that my supper every night, just because I was so terrified, was butter pecan ice cream and booze,” she said, laughing. “And then I realized I was going to end up fat and drunk, and so that stopped. But you have to learn how to be a human person, and especially as young women… We really do react to stuff differently.”
The child brides project was certainly a story made for female reporters. As Gorney commented on this, her admiration and respect for reporting partner Stephanie Sinclair shone through.
“Stephanie and I were definitely able to do [this project] in a way that two men would not have been able to,” she said. “Not only because there were places that physically men would not have been able to go, but also because we brought to it different kinds of passion; we were a really good fit.”
And the results certainly prove so! To learn more about the complicated truth behind the ritual of child marriages around the world, view Gorney and Sinclair’s documentary, Too Young to Wed: The Secret World of Child Brides.