Books That Make Me Ask, “Why?”

Having just finished Circe, by Madeline Miller, and being in the midst of reading Mornings in Jenin, by Susan Abulhawa, my mind is on the eternally fascinating concepts of mortality and purpose of life. Both stories draw on these ideas in markedly different ways, and each one shows the beauty and tragedy of life, whether it is an immortal, forever life, or a fleeting, unjust one.

Circe is a retelling of The Odyssey, which I, as many others, was exposed to in about seventh grade. My class read excerpts and we watched the movie that chronicled the adventures of Odysseus, and his encounters with various mythological gods and monsters. This novel is narrated by Circe, a lesser goddess and witch, who lives alone on a beautiful island and, in the classic story as well as this one, turns men into swine. But this story does Circe, the character, so much more justice than the original tellings of the epic. Circe is complex, evolving, and, in my opinion, worthy of admiration. The beginning of the story, for me, oscillated between boring and titillating. And as I continued reading, I realized that what I initially perceived as ‘boring’ was actually writerly genius because the author was able to, amazingly, find a voice that sounded eternal– a voice that had seen centuries and centuries pass her by, a voice that had witnessed war, death, punishment, heartbreak, disappointment, and everything harrowing a human can experience and realize that it is all circular, a voice that could convey a growing understanding of the beauty of mortality and that life and lifetime should be treasured, rather than squandered, as immortal, indestructible beings might be inclined to do.

In contrast, the characters in Mornings in Jenin do not squander. At times, they treasure. They treasure their land- their trees, the harvest, olives and they treasure their family- their genealogies, their siblings, their lore. Other times, some of them give in and give up in the face of loss, fear, violence and hopelessness; however, this wasn’t a squandering of life, it was an instinct for survival. I’ve only read the first half of Mornings in Jenin so far, and honestly I feel nervous writing about it. This is perhaps because I haven’t yet finished the book, but I think it is also because I have lived such a carefree and privileged life that has felt far removed from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I don’t feel I know enough about the history and writing about the agonizing trials that real people have endured, which are so separate from my own existence and history seems wrong. It seems doubly wrong because the trials endured are largely ignored by history, as it is commonly understood.

When I think about historical fiction that has moved me, so much has been about World War 1 and World War 2. Some has been about the Revolutionary War in the US and there has been quite a lot about the Civil Rights Movement of the US, as well. This is true for literature I have read as an adult and also for books available to me as a youth. This, in itself, is good. It’s great. In learning about World War 2, for example, a middle school student could read Number the Stars, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Prisoner B-037…and those are just some of the most popular books students have read listed from off the top of my head. There are countless others. For me, and I know this is true of many students as well, in my history as a reader, there have been almost no books that have been centered around conflicts in the Arab world, and what has been, I have sought out myself – Persopolis, a graphic novel and memoir by Marjane Satrapi that takes place in Iran, Waltz with Bashir- a Lebanon War Story, a film about a 1982 massacre, and The Breadwinner Trilogy,  about the Taliban in Afghanistan, by Deborah Ellis. Only one of this brief list (the last one) is one that I might recommend to eighth graders, maybe seventh graders. When I taught in Kuwait, one seventh grade class read Summer of 1990, but I don’t think that has the potential to appeal to people outside of the Arabian Gulf.

Looking at these titles, including my current read, it is clear that all of these are about different people, different countries, different histories. As a reader, you cannot accumulate the details, a depth of knowledge, the insights, the opinions that are available when reading through a multitude of the available stories about World War 2. There is simply not enough written. And this is the greater reason, I think, why it feels audacious to write about this book.

Still, it is always worthwhile to talk about and verbalize what a book makes you think about. Because, of course, this is the power of fiction — that there are great truths about life, humanity, and the world, embedded in the story an author tells. One of those great lessons of life that Mornings in Jenin has presented to me so far has to do with stripping a people of their humanity. The Palestinians were made to feel inhuman– their homes were taken, their land redistributed, their children were massacred… basic rights of life were ripped from them. Some of the characters in this book looked to anger, some retreated from feelings altogether, building up walls separating them from anything that would move them, and some turned towards acceptance, as much as they could anyway.

It was 1948 when Israeli military forcibly removed Palestinian civilians from their homes. And since then there has been violence and atrocities committed on both sides in an ongoing, horrific cycle. This continues today. And prior to 1948, the Jews were targeted and massacred across Europe. There is documentation of genocides going back to the 18th century, and even prior to that in ancient and medieval times.  Genocidewatch.org (http://www.genocidewatch.org/alerts/newsalerts.html) informs me that there are currently five genocides underway today, with more that are imminent.

What is wrong with us?? Every single human I have ever met is a complex combination of good and bad. But ultimately what everyone wants is to be safe and free. Why do we, as a human race, continue to draw on politics and boundaries and hate? Why are we unable to honor humans as humans?

Every time I think about the state of hate in the world, I become overwhelmed and heartbroken. What can I do? What can others do? Every conflict has a deep history that informs the opinions and feelings of people involved in it today. I know there is no easy solution. But how can life go on like this? Is it enough for someone like me to read and learn…and that’s it?

My life will go on, living happily in California or Hong Kong or wherever I am– I’ll think about yoga and fitness, which restaurant I want to eat at later, whether or not I should really make another online purchase for new clothes. Carefree frivolity. While so many others are barely surviving. I am grateful– grateful for the life I live and for the worries I suffer. I recognize that my concerns are valid that my joys and sorrows are worthwhile. But there are times when I struggle with the fact that there are so many people in the world whose day-to-day lives do not meet the basic requirements of human rights. And I struggle with the fact that I don’t struggle with this more.

In hindsight (now that I have finished both books, Circe and Mornings in Jenin), both books are worth reading. Circe is a bit more fun, while Mornings in Jenin is repeatedly heartbreaking. The latter is also the one I cannot stop thinking about. But both have got me asking, “Why?” Why do we continue to make the same mistakes again and again, century after century? Why do we not capitalize on and empower the creative, problem-solving minds at our disposal to restructure the systems that run our livest? Why do people everywhere fall back to traditions of conflict? This blog entry went in a direction I did not expect it to go in, but that’s what books are meant to do. They are meant to make you think and question. I hope to find more that engage my heart and mind in this way.

Character Education in an English Unit

As a middle grades educator, I firmly believe that character and values should be part of everything we do. This is not a new notion. Middle school is notorious and commonly known as “the worst”. It certainly was the worst part of my childhood. (Maybe that’s not totally fair. There were some good aspects I suppose, like the basketball team and getting my braces off in 8th grade, but DAMN…a lot of it was awkward and terrible.) So, focusing on character development is a way for young people to become fully actualized humans and to feel like they are fully actualized, which is really powerful.

Anyway, my current school, like many schools, espouses a set of values for their student body. And one of our values is INTEGRITY. Integrity is a tricky thing for a lot of middle schoolers to truly get, I’ve noticed. A lot of our students tend to think that it is synonymous with ‘honesty,’ and of course, honesty is part of the equation, but integrity is really a lot ‘larger’ than just honesty. Also, it is one of the most important qualities, I’d argue, because being in integrity is driven by a person’s principles, and it is a big deal – a huge achievement –  for pre-adolescent to newly-adolescent young people to fully know their principles. Often, the young people I know have a sense of their principles, but have yet to articulate them, which presents more as wavering principles. Once people can articulate what they value, they are more able to stand by them. This is the idea that prompted me to facilitate an exploration into values.

During class, we examined actions and discussed what values the actions reflected. We also partook in a values quiz (just something I found online), which the students could then reflect upon. Finally we moved into narrative (memoir-ish, personal narrative nonfiction) writing, the brainstorming for which began at ‘values.’ For example, I knew one of my values was integrity. So I tried to brainstorm memories in which integrity was at play. There was an incident with me (newly licensed to drive), my mom (telling me I was not allowed to leave the house and drive away), and a set of keys in my hand…what to do, what to do? And there was an incident in my 7th grade social studies class – to cheat or not to cheat? From the brainstorms, everyone was to write their own personal narratives.

I wrote one, too. It was early in the year, and I teach Language Acquisition, so rather than wait for student-exemplars, for which I was unsure I’d be getting at the time, I wrote a model. I aimed to include internal thinking, intentional paragraphing, flashbacks, and a purposeful lead (in this case an action leading into observation). Here it is (please note that my school’s default is British English, so you’ll notice that I spell words with ‘s’ instead of ‘z’ and I don’t use a period after personal titles):

I lifted my head from my desk and looked around the room. Being in the back row, smack-dab centre of the classroom, I could see everybody else in the room. Two people were directly to my right and two were directly to my left.  About twenty-three students sat somewhere in front of me.

I started counting how many ears I could see – I’d rather think about anything other than what I was supposed to be doing right then, which was taking a test. A very long, very boring test on the crusades of Medieval Europe. Or something else like that, that seemed ancient and unrelated to me. But then I lost count of the ears I had already counted. So I got back to work.

Time dragged on.

What felt like years, but what was probably only about 20 minutes or so, passed. I wasn’t close to done with my test yet and I was feeling a little desperate. My brain felt numb and I couldn’t remember any of the dates or events that we were being tested on.

It might sound like I was a terrible student. I wasn’t. I actually really liked school. In fact, I loved primary school. I loved learning and exploring and talking about what I learned. I had loved school because it was fun and sometimes learning felt more like playing. But then I got to middle school. The classes were bigger, and the teachers didn’t know me. I only ever saw a few people from my primary school; I didn’t have any of them in the same classes as me. My favourite class at this point was English because the teacher let us read every day to ourselves. I liked PE sometimes, although the class was too big to truly be a good class. There were 50 girls in my PE class! I’m pretty sure Ms Uretsky, the teacher, didn’t even know who I was. For the first time ever, Math was hard, and for the first time ever Science bored me. I just missed doing experiments like we did in primary school. All we did with Ms Perpins was read out of a giant textbook and take copious notes.

But Social Studies. Social Studies was the worst. Every day we walked in. Sat in rows. Listened to Mr Bamar drone on and on about some event. Sometimes instead of listening to Mr Bamar lecture, we read an account of the event in a textbook. One time we watched a video. But every day, we were silent; every day we sat in rows and looked forward; every day I hated attending class.

And today was just as bad as any other day. Today we had 60 minutes to answer questions in paragraph form. My wrist was aching and I was only halfway through. Every minute that ticked by felt like an agonizing year of my life had been stripped away.

And suddenly, Mr Bamar stood up, weaved his way through the desks and walked out of the room.

Where is he going? I thought to myself. We are in the middle of a test! Is he leaving? I watched as he ambled towards the door, weaving in and out through the rows of desks, and walked out. I shot up, sitting straight in my desk. I looked to the left; I looked to the right. Should I cheat? Does anyone else want to cheat? These criminal thoughts filled my brain, and almost instantaneously came the realisation that no one else was looking around having the same thoughts. Everyone in the class continued working on their tests. I was surrounded by diligent, heads-down, focused test-taking. My ears turned red as I took this in and was filled with shame. How can I be the cheater here? Why did no one else even think of cheating? Am I a bad person for wanting to take advantage of the situation? Are they all above cheating? Should I be above cheating?

I turned my eyes back to my test. Somehow I got through taking the test, but I know that that moment changed me. It was the first time I thought about doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do. Little did I know that as my life continued, I would look back on that experience many times.

 

Thank You, Lisa See

Anybody here on Goodreads? I am, and this year I have the lofty goal of reading 60 books. This sounds way more impressive (I think it’s impressive? Are you impressed?) than it actually is because it’s basically part of my job to be well-read in books appropriate for middle grades (grades 6-10, specifically). Some of those books, while excellent, are quite a bit easier to get through than literature written for an adult audience. Anyway, as a result of this goal, I spend a lot of my time looking for new books– asking for recommendations, perusing the featured lists and top charts of ibooks, googling ‘beach reads’, etc.

One of the books I found was The Island of Sea Women, by Lisa See. I loved it. Truly. I read it just last month, in April, and my mind keeps returning to it. Here is a short summary, that, in honesty, doesn’t do the beauty of the narrative justice at all:  This book is about a woman named Young-Sook, whom we meet as an old-lady and are then taken back through her life, beginning from her time as a young, novice diver.  She is from the island of Jeju, in Korea, and, in 2008, she is one of few “Sea Women” left. The “Sea Women,” or haenyeo were members of a matrifocal society, in which the economy was based on the sea life that the women could dive for, collect, and sell. In actuality, this is a story of resilience, forgiveness, family, and duty, and it is a story that explores social norms, the challenges of understanding the perspective of others, and the cold injustices – even horrors – that a governing body can inflict on civilians.

I can’t get my mind off this book for a multitude of reasons. But here’s the main one…before this book, I had never heard of the haenyeo, or the Bukchon Massacre, or the April Third (4.3) Incident. And that just seems wrong. How can my entire education and exploration into history and global awareness totally ignore this corner of the world? This pocket of history? A total and complete assault on innocent people? It’s not right. I spent 8 years in the public school system, 4 years at a private American high school, and 4 years at a fantastic California University. How had I never, not once, heard of these?

And it occurred to me…why are literature and history classes not more integrated? I know that there are humanities classes, and maybe somewhere, sometimes, there might be classes that integrate these two disciplines with intention, but why the hell isn’t it happening more?

I am a reader. I have always loved reading. But my focus and love has always been on stories. I have always lacked the focus and interest to really get into nonfiction, particularly expository nonfiction, which is extremely common in history and/or social studies classes. Even now, when I most definitely see the value of nonfiction and the necessity of reading it, I tend to seek out narrative nonfiction, rather than expository. And in my youth, my approach to reading texts in science and history classes was, in general, lackluster at best and nonexistent at worst. I am sure there are many students who feel the same way I did.

But from reading this book, I became fired up — learning about Jeju, traveling to South Korea, reading up on the political tensions that took place there, particularly in the 1930s on, learning about South Korea in its current context — these are all on my ‘to do’ list now, and I have already started pursuing some of these items. As a result of reading this book, I became genuinely interested in learning (a feeling which, when it comes to history class, I rarely –  if ever –  felt, unfortunately), and what spurred that? It was the narrative aspect. For me, nothing has ever pulled me in more than a story. Reading Young-Sook’s story, empathizing with her, galvanized me to do a bit of research about the time and place and context of her story. That’s exciting…and I wish that I could sense that enthusiastic, genuine curiosity and interest from students.

The characters in this book were complex, compelling, imperfect, and I loved them. When their hearts broke, mine did, too. And that emotional unrest pulled me in cognitively as well. It excited curiosity in me. Imagine if we could let literature do that for students who need to learn about Civil Wars, Colonization, Revolutions, or anything else based in history.

Thank you, Lisa See…you wrote a very moving book, one that stirred my heart and mind. I can’t wait to read more from you.