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Many Stones
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From: Maia <maia>
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 11:15:02 -0800
Ginny,
Way back when (January 8th!), you said "It's interesting to me that no one has mentioned Many Stones by Carolyn Coman, even though it, too, takes place in a nation in which I'm certain few of us have lived or visited" and asked
"would you use The Homeless Bird to teach about India or Many Stones to teach about South Africa? Or is each novel "about" something else?"
Having just finished Many Stones, my vote would be that it is about something else - or elses, I guess. I know we will get back to this book when we discuss the Printz awards, and I look forward to the discussion. I hope that many folks do pick up Many Stones - among other things, I think that it would be interesting to compare the protagonists' voices in, say, Kit's Wilderness, with Berry of Many Stones. Almond's characters (both in Kit's Wilderness and in Skellig) are amazingly sympathetic. But what is Berry? Often insincere, nasty, angry, hostile, uninvolved... a thorough contrast to her life-loving (but now dead) sister. And yet, I think that Coman's characterization works. She allows Berry enough "give" that we can feel with her
(or at least I did), even though she can be pretty awful.
I would agree that Many Stones is about grief, not only regarding Laura's death, but over the loss of Berry's family structure too. I think it is also about being a white North American adolescent, middle class or up, and confused about the rest of the world. Berry is savvy enough to be pissed at her father's comment about Anne Heche being a lesbian, to feel ashamed for Suzanne's behavior, and to call it like it is, at least to herself. (Her inner dialogues about Josh are fascinating.) But she is clueless about -- and uninterested in -- the country where her sister lived and worked; she doesn't want to "get it" or be a part of it. She's smart enough to understand that she is naive and isolated, but also so furious and wounded that she doesn't want to take the risks of learning. Actually, she reminds me of a number of teens I have met.
I think that Many Stones could be a good springboard for talking about racism, powerlessness, and ignorance -- not because it is a splendid revelation of life in South Africa - it's not - but instead because Berry thinks so many things that generally go unspoken. Her thoughts are crude and uncomfortable, but they'd make a strong table for the discussion of internalized and inexpressible racism. Berry exposes her failings, leaving room for other folks to do so as well, and then grow. And because
_Berry_ is angry and confrontational, students may feel permitted to be so too. (A good thing, I think.)
About using this book in a unit on South Africa: Many Stones may take place, in part, in South Africa, but it is "set" in Berry's mind and experience. We don't really see much of Africa through Berry's eyes, which frustrated me as I was reading Many Stones. However, I am willing to accept that _Berry_ wasn't seeing South Africa either, that she wasn't transformed by the physical place, and so it didn't figure significantly in her lens. (There are a number of passages that show that Berry was, in fact, doing everything she could to keep South Africa "out", along with everything else.) I agree with Dean that you would need to be prepared to investigate the political references made, but I certainly wouldn't use this book to introduce South Africa. More interesting might be to read the book sometime after a thorough class unit on South Africa - and on Stateside international policies - and then to see what the students thought of Berry's perceptions.
Maia
-maia at littlefolktales.org www.littlefolktales.org the Spirited Review: www.littlefolktales.org/reviews
Received on Wed 31 Jan 2001 01:15:02 PM CST
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 11:15:02 -0800
Ginny,
Way back when (January 8th!), you said "It's interesting to me that no one has mentioned Many Stones by Carolyn Coman, even though it, too, takes place in a nation in which I'm certain few of us have lived or visited" and asked
"would you use The Homeless Bird to teach about India or Many Stones to teach about South Africa? Or is each novel "about" something else?"
Having just finished Many Stones, my vote would be that it is about something else - or elses, I guess. I know we will get back to this book when we discuss the Printz awards, and I look forward to the discussion. I hope that many folks do pick up Many Stones - among other things, I think that it would be interesting to compare the protagonists' voices in, say, Kit's Wilderness, with Berry of Many Stones. Almond's characters (both in Kit's Wilderness and in Skellig) are amazingly sympathetic. But what is Berry? Often insincere, nasty, angry, hostile, uninvolved... a thorough contrast to her life-loving (but now dead) sister. And yet, I think that Coman's characterization works. She allows Berry enough "give" that we can feel with her
(or at least I did), even though she can be pretty awful.
I would agree that Many Stones is about grief, not only regarding Laura's death, but over the loss of Berry's family structure too. I think it is also about being a white North American adolescent, middle class or up, and confused about the rest of the world. Berry is savvy enough to be pissed at her father's comment about Anne Heche being a lesbian, to feel ashamed for Suzanne's behavior, and to call it like it is, at least to herself. (Her inner dialogues about Josh are fascinating.) But she is clueless about -- and uninterested in -- the country where her sister lived and worked; she doesn't want to "get it" or be a part of it. She's smart enough to understand that she is naive and isolated, but also so furious and wounded that she doesn't want to take the risks of learning. Actually, she reminds me of a number of teens I have met.
I think that Many Stones could be a good springboard for talking about racism, powerlessness, and ignorance -- not because it is a splendid revelation of life in South Africa - it's not - but instead because Berry thinks so many things that generally go unspoken. Her thoughts are crude and uncomfortable, but they'd make a strong table for the discussion of internalized and inexpressible racism. Berry exposes her failings, leaving room for other folks to do so as well, and then grow. And because
_Berry_ is angry and confrontational, students may feel permitted to be so too. (A good thing, I think.)
About using this book in a unit on South Africa: Many Stones may take place, in part, in South Africa, but it is "set" in Berry's mind and experience. We don't really see much of Africa through Berry's eyes, which frustrated me as I was reading Many Stones. However, I am willing to accept that _Berry_ wasn't seeing South Africa either, that she wasn't transformed by the physical place, and so it didn't figure significantly in her lens. (There are a number of passages that show that Berry was, in fact, doing everything she could to keep South Africa "out", along with everything else.) I agree with Dean that you would need to be prepared to investigate the political references made, but I certainly wouldn't use this book to introduce South Africa. More interesting might be to read the book sometime after a thorough class unit on South Africa - and on Stateside international policies - and then to see what the students thought of Berry's perceptions.
Maia
-maia at littlefolktales.org www.littlefolktales.org the Spirited Review: www.littlefolktales.org/reviews
Received on Wed 31 Jan 2001 01:15:02 PM CST
