From: Maia <maiakevin>
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 01:45:05 -0700

Young woman?" he says. I turn around.
"If there is a Hell, it's when we stop caring about each other. We wouldn't wish that on anyone."
...
"Go in peace."

Brenda, how daringly you have brought up such interesting questions! You raise the question of race. Then you ask what the books are about. (And how often are we told that books are stories, not "abouts"? Well, phooey.)

If I had to proffer an argument for what ML & TB are "about," I would start with the above quote. And knowing Jinny - and her amazing graciousness - I would bet my lemon seeds that I were right.

In much of ML, we hear LaVaughn's struggle to define what is good: holding out for herself, or holding herself out to others? Is it right to help Jolly, even at cost to her own pursuit of an escape? From the shoe episode: "... and I put the money up on the counter, and I know it's okay. I figure I don't even feel bad about it." Yet Jinny never lets us off easy: Steam Class is where you learn about boundaries, "and how you keep hold of them for safety -- not to let them get out of control." So wisely she continues, "If you got hurt too bad when you were little -- you don't know your boundaries good, you could let people in too close & they hurt you -- or you could keep them way far away & they can't help you..." In that one phrase, Jinny sums much of psychodynamic theory into a form that an adolescent can understand. LaVaughn spends most of ML trying to be right - to develop appropriate boundaries and bridges - where there are no simple answers; she is trying to get it right when it can't be right, but still persevering. As my own Irish mother (a therapist) would say, LaVaughn is trying to figure out how to apportion the potatoes when there simply aren't enough potatoes to go around.

It is not until True Believer that LaVaughn really starts to see a path through that despair, a balance that just might work for her. Of course this comes with a class change (double meaning intended), as LaVaughn steps from a go-nowhere social strata to a climbing-up-and-out one. Her friendships simultaneously shift: the Brain Cells are like brains anywhere, accorded a certain privilege in the school system. Jinny reveals the difficulty in such a transition: if LaVaughn were to leave for a new home with her own mud patch, what would be the cost in terms of friendship, of love, of familiarity? Although LaVaughn feels her fear through the lens of Jody-longing, Jinny leaves open the question (for book three?) of just what does happen when you move from one class to another. How will her mother, who has catapulted her upward, fit into her new life ("I hear my mind hearing her grammar. Did I not ever notice it before?" and "You look at your mother and you have to ask: A life like that, could I live it?")? It is a familiar dilemma for the children of immigrants whose parents have fought so hard to offer them the opportunities that they themselves were denied, and who in doing so, separate their children from themselves, their own social roots and their language. (Jinny does an excellent job at portraying the powers of language, for good and for ill.)

So the books are about class, yes, and poverty, but most fundamentally, it seems to me that Jinny is trying to weave a space between the blockades of absolutisms
-- be they of religious intolerance or boostrap-pulling independence -- a space that is more reflective of a personal faith and of grace, a space that is perhaps first defined by compassion?

There are so many difficulties that Jinny hands us in ML & TB, and so many glimmers of wisdom. Little lessons about loving children, about not sinking into hate. The complexity of her presentation amazes me: with no fanfare, she raises the biggest issues, like What is God? True Believer dives into pretty dangerous territory, as LaVaughn swims through the waters of faith and trust, circled by fanaticism and despair. And what does LaVaughn find? Peace. Not every day, and not easily - perhaps it is that she finds a longing for peace, and the realization that peace is rooted in compassion. (What, after all, is LaVaughn most fulfilled by? Not by passion, but compassion.)

I know that I am rambling - perhaps, like you Brenda, I would find it hard to booktalk these books! Yes, there is so much to discuss... There are so many things that I could detail that put me in awe of Jinny's work in these two books. So many developed threads: like LaVaughn's mother's bigness/expansion/"double parenting" being paralleled by the surplus of good, restorative food in that house; the plant themes -- the seeds, the flowers, the fern spores; the themes of reproduction (again, plant fecundity in counterpoint to human fecundity -- the one desired, the other reviled); the lovely balance and interplay between art and science...

To your first question, I too have been pondering the issue of race. I read ML shortly before I met Jinny, and I remember that I was uncertain then what race I was supposed to assign in my mind to the characters. When I read TB, I knew already that Jinny had deliberately avoided those categorizations, and I was a bit uncomfortable, knowing that she was walking in risky territory. But after spending the last few days with a pit of unresolution in my belly, these are my conclusions for now:

(1) It seems to me that the expressed perceptions of race in these two books operate almost as a kind of Rorschach, or TAT (Thematic Apperception Test) of the reader -- they reveal a great deal about the reader, and his or her own set of biases and experience. So, if for no other reason, I think that these books are valuable as an exercise: what do we each see? And why?

(2) Race does, of course, matter. If Jinny were trying to create a book about black folks, but was being deceptive by avoiding direct categorizations, I would think there were a real problem. But I don't believe that was her intent. I think instead that Jinny is taking her readers on a self-revelatory survey. Clearly, we adult readers are being offered the chance to examine (and discuss!) our preconceptions, and I would guess that the same would be true for teens. It will be interesting to hear what black teens think of these books...

(3) It would probably be a failing to write about black folks and ignore race consciousness. But to write about folks such as these and leave the reader to complete the pictures based on his or her own understanding is not necessarily a failing. How much have we each learned about ourselves from these books? Yes, on the one hand, I find myself wanting to say that we need to hear more from the black members of our community as to their opinions of Jinny's work. But on the other hand, Jinny has done nothing to categorize these characters as black -only some readers have. And some of the members of the CCBC community are certain that her characters are white -- so again, we are left with an interesting mirror of our own perceptions. If this is what Jinny intended, to create a work that causes readers to clarify their own thought processes, then it seems to me that she has succeeded, profoundly. Surely it will not work for everyone, but I believe that these books might be transformative for many.

In conclusion, I'm aware that I don't know half of the answers to the questions these books raise. They aren't easy, and they aren't painless. But I believe that they are the truest kind of literature: the sort that doesn't make all feel right at the end by supplying false resolutions, but instead evoke the complexity of human life, offering the faith that in such complexity and diversity is true peace found.

Thank you, Jinny.

Maia
-Maia Cheli-Colando Little Folk Tales http://www.littlefolktales.org Water on the Web Designs http://www.waterwebdesigns.com
Received on Fri 13 Jul 2001 03:45:05 AM CDT