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From: Maia <maia>
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 13:23:07 -0800
Lyn said "Ultimately, the teacher is the one who presents and guides the book."
Well, teachers present some books (of their own volition or at the district's instruction), they may or may not guide their students in the readings of the books they present (you can obtain those handy little teacher question packs straight from the publisher, no thinking required), and they may or may not have the experience to know what is accurate, what is respectful, and what is crap. But beyond teachers, and yes, librarians too, there is the rest of the world, including bookstores, parents, friends. The worst book I ever read was handed to me by a fellow pre-teen. The best books I found for myself. Actually, thinking back to school, I read a whole lot more junk in class than out of class; much more disturbing (e.g. violent or threatening) material was assigned to me than ever did I read on my own. And I was a kid who read books every day. And I was in one of the so?lled "best" schools, with well?ucated, reasonably paid, and generally respected teachers.
Let's consider a question: Why do we "need" multiple perspectives? Or another, Q: Who are the folks who think that white Americans need to write the stories of, say, women in Iran? A: Generally, white Americans. Those books aren't being written _for_ women in Iran, they are being written for white women in America. They are white folks talking to white folks about "other" folks.
Cheryl perhaps made the key point here: "I wanted to tell a good story and to by the way give sometimes narrow-minded, sometimes materialistic and almost always ethno?ntric American kids a window into a culture with a vastly different way of thinking and a different set of values."
Okay, so she's talking about using Tibet to teach a lesson to
"American" kids, in which I assume she is not including Tibetan-American kids.
What about Tibetan-American kids? And, for that matter, what about Tibetans themselves?
See, we have this semi-globalized culture here, languages that are common to many, interpreters who can cross the lines, and the power of things like the internet, email, etc. If the motivation is there, then our kids can hear the stories of Tibet from the children of Tibet. We don't have to put words into their mouths, we don't have to make up pretty, or ugly, stories about their cultures. We could, instead, work to put the power into their hands, so that they can speak with their own lips and fingers, and not through the filter of our mouths.
It's time for white women and white men, and everybody else everywhere, to stop trying to own other people's stories. It is time for us in America to stop telling everyone else what their lives mean. It is also time for us to honor our own lives, so that we don't have to be materialistic, narrow-minded, and ethnocentric. The best place for us to begin that journey is with ourselves, not by stealing, and wearing, someone else's face.
I'll make one last pitch here, and that is that there is a traditional genre that permits a writer to do just what Cheryl described (breaking conceptional boundaries), without having to use culture theft. It's called fantasy. Make yourself a myth, make yourself a world, create something out of the fabric of what could be, but isn't. But be bold enough and bright enough to fashion its material out of your own soul and experience, and not out of the travel guides to another nation. Yes, you can thieve your way through fantasy, many do -- but how much more brilliant, how much more unique, will your work be if it is drawn from what you know. Making myth, making imaginary space, only works when it has real soil down beneath.
Whether it be realism, mythmaking, or poetry, every writer has within themself the power to create the world as they would that it be; with sweat and passion spent, we can write everything we want to say, building only from the blocks we can reach with our own hands. And how much more interesting the dialogue will be when we aren't shouting out the other speakers.
Maia
-maia at littlefolktales.org www.littlefolktales.org the Spirited Review: www.littlefolktales.org/reviews
Received on Tue 30 Jan 2001 03:23:07 PM CST
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 13:23:07 -0800
Lyn said "Ultimately, the teacher is the one who presents and guides the book."
Well, teachers present some books (of their own volition or at the district's instruction), they may or may not guide their students in the readings of the books they present (you can obtain those handy little teacher question packs straight from the publisher, no thinking required), and they may or may not have the experience to know what is accurate, what is respectful, and what is crap. But beyond teachers, and yes, librarians too, there is the rest of the world, including bookstores, parents, friends. The worst book I ever read was handed to me by a fellow pre-teen. The best books I found for myself. Actually, thinking back to school, I read a whole lot more junk in class than out of class; much more disturbing (e.g. violent or threatening) material was assigned to me than ever did I read on my own. And I was a kid who read books every day. And I was in one of the so?lled "best" schools, with well?ucated, reasonably paid, and generally respected teachers.
Let's consider a question: Why do we "need" multiple perspectives? Or another, Q: Who are the folks who think that white Americans need to write the stories of, say, women in Iran? A: Generally, white Americans. Those books aren't being written _for_ women in Iran, they are being written for white women in America. They are white folks talking to white folks about "other" folks.
Cheryl perhaps made the key point here: "I wanted to tell a good story and to by the way give sometimes narrow-minded, sometimes materialistic and almost always ethno?ntric American kids a window into a culture with a vastly different way of thinking and a different set of values."
Okay, so she's talking about using Tibet to teach a lesson to
"American" kids, in which I assume she is not including Tibetan-American kids.
What about Tibetan-American kids? And, for that matter, what about Tibetans themselves?
See, we have this semi-globalized culture here, languages that are common to many, interpreters who can cross the lines, and the power of things like the internet, email, etc. If the motivation is there, then our kids can hear the stories of Tibet from the children of Tibet. We don't have to put words into their mouths, we don't have to make up pretty, or ugly, stories about their cultures. We could, instead, work to put the power into their hands, so that they can speak with their own lips and fingers, and not through the filter of our mouths.
It's time for white women and white men, and everybody else everywhere, to stop trying to own other people's stories. It is time for us in America to stop telling everyone else what their lives mean. It is also time for us to honor our own lives, so that we don't have to be materialistic, narrow-minded, and ethnocentric. The best place for us to begin that journey is with ourselves, not by stealing, and wearing, someone else's face.
I'll make one last pitch here, and that is that there is a traditional genre that permits a writer to do just what Cheryl described (breaking conceptional boundaries), without having to use culture theft. It's called fantasy. Make yourself a myth, make yourself a world, create something out of the fabric of what could be, but isn't. But be bold enough and bright enough to fashion its material out of your own soul and experience, and not out of the travel guides to another nation. Yes, you can thieve your way through fantasy, many do -- but how much more brilliant, how much more unique, will your work be if it is drawn from what you know. Making myth, making imaginary space, only works when it has real soil down beneath.
Whether it be realism, mythmaking, or poetry, every writer has within themself the power to create the world as they would that it be; with sweat and passion spent, we can write everything we want to say, building only from the blocks we can reach with our own hands. And how much more interesting the dialogue will be when we aren't shouting out the other speakers.
Maia
-maia at littlefolktales.org www.littlefolktales.org the Spirited Review: www.littlefolktales.org/reviews
Received on Tue 30 Jan 2001 03:23:07 PM CST
