Reader Empathy and Communicating Emotion

As it's turning out, there is one book each semester of Craft from which I learn what not to do. Reading CF's post, I'm glad I wasn't the only one who had issues with Williams' depthless memoir. Williams definitely tried to tap us into the deepest, most tender pulp of emotion - isn't that what we all want to do? It is what we want to achieve when we write, isn't it? Then where did Williams fall flat - and how can I avoid those shortcomings?

There is one thing I've identified in books that always leaves me wanting more - and leaves me feeling like an asshole for being skeptical about. That thing is an assumed empathy. An author presents me with a case of emotional depth or complexity that banks on my automatic empathy; most of the time, this is the case with parents or cancer. Because it's assumed everyone's heartstrings vibrate on the same sentimental frequency when it comes to certain emotional topics, an author might not put in any work to get me there. Williams did this with her mother; right off the bat, she's going full speed ahead about her intense feelings of attachment and devotion and blah blah blah for her mother, never giving me any scene or context to get a sense of why that relationship was so intense. Why should I care? Williams seems to assume that I care because it is a mother-child bond, which is inherently magical, or so I've heard.

Okay. Now, what if I had a horrible relationship with my mother? What if I had no relationship with my mother? What if I had no mother? How do I relate to this soul-wrenching bond? How do I understand it? This is not to say that I need to relate to every single thing I read. I don't need to have been a druggie to feel/care about Yuknavitch's journey. I don't need to have been a child immigrant to feel/care about Grande's journey. But what they both did - and Williams didn't - was take the time to illustrate why they, as narrators and characters, cared, and in doing so, took me by the hand and led me to caring myself. 

I'm sorry. Maybe it's cold, but my empathy is hard-won. You can't assume it, or take it for granted. You have to earn it, and take the time in your writing to make sure I feel that emotion.

Thoughts on When Women Were Birds

There wasn't a prompt, so I'm just going to talk a little about the book.

What’s most fascinating about this story is the bond that the women in William’s family shared, as well as the role depicted by the author of the LDS church. One of my closest friends is Mormon, so it was very intriguing to hear a different viewpoint of the church and more specifically the feminist aspect of it.

Williams often related herself and the women in her story to birds, which wasn’t very surprising. Her grandmother, Mimi was a very important figure in her life who always encouraged Williams and her brothers to observe nature, and things in their natural habitat, Birds especially. Because of Mimi’s love of bird watching, the interests and all the things it entailed passed smoothly down to her granddaughter. This resulted in her open way of thinking, and a life as an environmentalist.

Birds are free, soaring, and living a life outdoors and this is what Williams most valued. She valued a life free from conventionality, although many of the people surrounding her were grounded in the orthodoxy. Her mother and father-in-law, for instance, are two people she respects, and loves and dearly, but her views are more liberal like that of Mimi. A good example of her determination to be free thinking is when she refused to encourage Brooke to come back to the church at her father-in-law's request. (This being the favor to get the meeting with a man in position to make real change for her environmentalist campaign.)

            Structurally, I really enjoyed the read. There was much repetition within the italicized parts that described her mother, with the slightest word change at the end of each sentence. There were poetry inserts and even letters from Williams’ mother to the author which were very quite beautiful. I thought they were symbols of her mother’s love, kindness, and respect she had for her daughter and proved to be thought out and well written. It was easy to believe the author’s theory of her mother’s defiance against customs of the faith and the gender norms that were expected of them as LDS members. However, I found the craft awesome. The craft/art of journal keeping and the passing down of so many accounts from generation to generation is nothing short of amazing.

Added note: I had an annoying ebook, so didn't bother in posting quotes, however the below stood out.

"Mormon women write. This is what we do, we write for posterity, noting the daily happenings of our lives. Keeping a journal is keeping a record. And I have hundreds of them, hundreds of journals filled with feathers, flowers, photographs, and words. Without locks, open on my shelves. I have more journals still with field notes from the Arctic to Africa, to days spent at the Prado, to time shared among prairie dogs. Daybooks with calendars, shopping lists, and accounting figures are strewn across our home. I cannot think without a pen in hand. If I don’t write it down, it doesn’t exist (91 ebook)."

This passage is very telling and makes a lot of sense as to why her mother had all of these journals and why it was so important for Williams to decode the absent words.  (Blank pages)

The author is filling her mother’s blank pages for her. All the things he mother couldn't, wouldn’t, or didn't know how to say, she wrote them for her. Filling the pages with her life as she (the narrator) knew it.

"My Mother's Journals are...." 

             I found it intriguing that at one point the narrator mentions the blank pages as being a reflection of her mother's defiance. Especially since her mother was so adamant about practicing Mormon faith and following it's rules. The scene that comes to mind is when Mimi is challenging protocol of the church, allowing women to speak and have certain roles in the church, etc., then the conversation ending in the narrator's mother requesting Mimi never to speak negatively about the church in her house and in front of her children. 

More notes in class.

A Complicated Take on Voice

This book is like a cup of tea. It’s not my cup of tea. But as a lover of teas, I can find a deep appreciation in what others are sipping on here. As I’ve grown into my own voice and self and womanhood, the writings of TTW have greatly lost their appeal. Particularly, as a queer and Afrikan and Coharie woman, I’ve swallowed more than my fair share of white woman logics on womanhood before I realized I had to find my voice separate from them. 

Is her feminism really my feminism? Is her sense of loss really my sense of loss? Do I need the discovery of their voice to, not find my voice, but rather be heard? Do I need to rely on them to learn “Afrikan women were carrying the environmental crisis on their backs” in order to do revolutionary work? Are our stories, witnessed, caught as memories instead of ongoing, just parts of their stories? Which women do I wish to read, for political sake and for sanity sake? How much colonial violence that is “innocent” must I have to read, swallow, and feel poisoned with?

Where in her nature are my ancestors, is my ancestral lands and languages, are the birds that my people see as the life-force. Our relationship to everything that she writes with substance on are deeply different and yet, perhaps, I need to believe we are tapping into the same human experience. One can appreciate beauty and craft despite this conclusion, noted, but at what point does this version of celebrated “insight” become numbing and bitter and isolating?  

None of which is neither here nor there: my words are not intended to (nor can) silence her or this story.

I see the power of one giving a telling of their insights. I see the need for her obvious demographic of readers to encounter her words, she can tell a layered story of women that they will listen to. And of TTW’s speaking to the layered ways women find their voice: through silence, through masks, through meditation, through reflection, through learning how to appreciate the waves of life, through the danger and beauty of being mothered and motherhood, through the watery streams of consciousness…

Of the many things I am, I am a lover of nature writing. Williams, Dillard and Silko being authors of some of my favorite memories. Nature writing is often a weaving of poetry, letters, essay, journalism, journalling, meditation, etc. How does one tell a story of their sense of self in the vastness of time and earth? What craft techniques translate the heart and mind onto the page? These are the questions that I have asked myself as I flip through my grandmother’s journals, as I fill journal after journal with private stories about where I am in time and earth and history. As I map and place my peoples, where do I exist? What craft element does TTW help us develop?

Voice.

Most fascinating to me, the structure of the piece as a showing of voice development and a showing of re-visitations to the themes of her life/art. 

No matter how I feel about the content of this book, I am moved by the ways in which Williams tackles just this, so deliberately/intentionally. Writers are asked all the time to tell us the secrets of finding their literary voice. Of course, the telling of that story is personal, it is often filled with stories of how we were voiceless or had to come to terms with the voicelessness of others (the silence of wives, the metaphors within her speech impediment, etc). Williams, then, does a lot of telling, but crafts a showing. 

Briefly, my favorite examples of her showing:

Chapter IV: Use of short sentences 

The structuring silence, secrets, restraint

The showing of that watery stream of consciousness. 

Page 21: “Between the silences, we played together.” 

Silence is the larger and what is then taught to her by her mother. 

Throughout: Poetry/quotes of greats

“The blackbird whistling 

Or just after”

- Wallace Stevens

My Mother’s Journals are “just after”

Giving meaning through these inserts, a certain depth to the meaning of these blank journals. 

Additionally, quotes are prompts to guide how to find voice, how tot see these blank journals, (favorite example on page 57). Thus, a showing of her variations on voice, her noted experimenting with voice (and not with dope or drinking, haha). 

In Lying, A Metaphorical Memoir, the author had a tendency to reiterate and the themes of her book as the lyrical gems move the piece and lulls the reader. So does TTW in When Women Were Birds. This creates a showing of her mind returning to obsession, to heartache, to the waves crashing into her, to her return to the profound sentiments in Refuge (119), and so on. It is a showing of complicated meanings of life and everything we encounter in it. Those blank journals cannot hold one meaning— they must be related to the grandmother’s field guides, to her youthful love of writing, the the underground living of women (92), to clipped wings and caged birds (147), to every story TTW will write in those journals and in her personal journals and that could have been written in them. 

Something New

It has been said that there is nothing new in the world.  That even those things we perceive as new are merely variations of what existed before it. As a creative being, I find this difficult to believe.  Especially when it comes to the written word.  True, there are only so many words available to describe the human experience and the world in which these experiences take place.  However, each of us experience life from a different vantage point making the possibility of newness a reality. So what’s my point?  Terry Tempest Williams creates something new in When Women Were Brides. “Everything feels new (21).”

In the beginning, Williams writes “I am fifty-four years old, the age my mother was when she died (1).”  The reader is immediately aware of the familiar stories of life and death, mother daughter relationships and the passage of time.  There is nothing new about these themes. However, Williams’ technique of telling an entire story in the first sentence of her memoir is something I have not encountered.  Another amazing technique happening in the first sentence is Williams’ skill of simultaneously placing the reader in the future, “I am” and the past, “when she died.” Definitely a compelling reason to continue reading and to search for what else is new.

Keeping her promise not to look at her mother’s journals until after her death begins a stretch of intrigue that keeps the story mysterious.  Upon discovering that each shelf of journals is blank, Williams gives the reader a glimpse of this blankness by leaving six of the pages that following the discovery blank. Silence has never been so loud.  Williams writes, “Her absence becomes her presence.” Again the reader is placed in duality—absence and presence.  We’re still on page one.

It doesn’t take long to realize the significance of the blank journals and their silence interweaved throughout the book.  Their ongoing life and death lessons. They are the gateway to exploring voice and passion as a writer and a woman.  Williams deploys them to show both strength and weakness, voice and silence.  “The blow of her blank journals became a second death. My mother’s journals are paper tombstones (15).” As the reader contemplates with Williams why her mother’s journals blank, Williams continues to layer the book with unexpected surprises, “A woman’s water breaks, and she goes into labor.  Birth is imminent. A writer’s imagination breaks loose and she, too, goes into labor (21).”

Williams uses repetition to further show the impact of the blank journals. Although the phrase, “My mother’s journals are...”  is repeated throughout the book, it is an uninterrupted list from page 191 to 194.  Here are few of my favorites:

“My Mother’s journals are a blinding truth (191).”

“My Mother’s journals are white flags of surrender (191).”

“My Mother’s journals are a cruelty (191).”

“My Mother’s journals are her colored hair left white (192).”

“My Mother’s journals are diapers washed and folded (194).”

“My Mother’s journals tell me nothing (194).”

“My Mother’s journals tell me everything (194).”

These poetic truths return us to the beginning, a binary of knowing nothing but knowing everything.  Two opposing revelations gained from the same evidence. In this way, “Everything feels new (21)” about this book.

Angle and Distance

                                                             Angle and Distance

           The concept of gifting your daughter, while you are dying with cancer, your journals, is a beautiful and thoughtful gesture. The fact that they were empty is a perfect metaphor for my reading of this book. Although the writing is beautiful, lyrical and gripping at times, it falls and feels empty.

            I wonder why this is and I have come to a couple of conclusions, but first I want to talk about what is working for me. As I said the language is beautiful and some of the things Terry Tempest Williams (what a name) is doing stand out.  On page 17 when talking about her mother’s voice she says, “My mother’s voice is a lullaby in my cells. When I am still, my body feels her breathing.” That is just a lovely sentiment that is earned by all her musings about her mother and her empty journals. Also I enjoyed (and sometimes didn’t) the consist of naming what that journals were in relationship to the chapter. “My mother’s journals are……). It was like a poem especially on pages 190-195

            The journals and the obsession caused by their blankness worked because the mother’s voice is present, particularly in letters to Williams during key points in her life. I appreciate the almost stream of conscious writing this had at times. It was interesting and somehow found a way to make it back to the “plot” of the story even when it seemly didn’t have anything to do with it.

            Okay, now for what I found difficult. I’ve been thinking about it and I believe the problem I am having with this has to do with the angle of discovery (I see what you did there Elmaz). This book feels so far away from the deep truths that we have been experiencing for most of the semester. Things are mentioned and then glossed over, but we spend pages talking about books and writers and art and songs. I understand that part of the theme of this book is the power of silence and the fact that her mother  gifted her empty journals, but come on.

            The stories are told from so far away that the emotions of the moments are lost on me, here are a couple of examples. On page 70, when she meets Brooke, there is the quickest of scenes, it is a good scene, after she lists the books he is buying there is a bit for dialogue: “’My dream in life is to one day own all the Peterson field guides,’ the man said passionately. My friend looked at him and said, ‘That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.’ Without thinking, I interrupted. ‘I already have them—‘ our eyes met. ‘Brooke Williams,’ he said.” I mean that is good, but it isn’t deep, other than “without thinking” we get no sense of her thoughts feelings and why she interjected. She didn’t let us in, and I felt that repeatedly.

            For a book that spoke a lot about voices I’m not so sure Williams listened to her voice at the time the scenes were taking place. I really missed the angle of the person experiencing the events. All there was was the person remembering the events. The scenes didn’t move forward and were draped with the reflecting not reflecting but musing on what that meant to the mothers blank journals. Maybe it has to do with were I am at in the moment, but her lack of putting us in the moment made me feel a little lost and a lot empty. If that was the point, then she nailed it.

         Best,

       CF

School Days

In this book, everything and everyone is a character- not only is there the little boy, his siblings and friends, and Mam Ninotte, who are the most memorable, but there's also the Repondeurs, whose chorus reflect and explain what happens during the tale. It took me a minute to get used to the Repondeurs- at first I found them distracting, but as the story progressed, I enjoyed the fuller view they gave of his world. There's a scene where the little boy is new to school, and just learning that he must speak French instead of Creole. We feel his dismay when he realizes- "Oh, the Teacher was French!" (48) 

Then the Repondeurs sing, 

"All along the Horizon,

 on a calm sea, 

use your Creole. 

If the weather changes, 

surging billows,

wallowing troughs, 

gird your loins, 

get a grip on your French." (48)

This gives us a broader picture of what an impact this new language is to him- his world, the "Horizon" is Creole- it is the language spoke by his family, friends and neighbors. But in the new strange world of school, where teachers beat and ridicule students for speaking a language to them that is as natural as breathing, the only language that can be spoken is French. He describes his 'lil-mama tongue' as being on "house arrest. (65) Formerly talkative and observant children, he and his classmates are silenced whenever they enter the schoolgrounds, and are chastised for speaking Creole to each other even during play. In this way, language is a constant and recoccurring character in this book.

Another thing Chamoiseau does well is having one character represent a larger issue or theme. Big Bellybutton was one of these characters. He is deeply black and extremely poor; his French is dismal but his math skills are brilliant, and he is harassed by the Teacher because he isn't one of the lighter and more affluent students from an upper class family. Big Bellybutton is symbolic of the colonized people of Martinique. His "blackblack skin, his kinky wool, his flat nose, his Creole accent, his complete ignorance of French vocabulary- his chronic tardiness," are results of the "same no-account world that had produced the Creole culture: each barbarous element implied the other." (78-79) Just as the people of Martinique were colonized by the French who considered them "barbarians," and disregarded their culture, language and intelligence, Big Bellybutton also endures a kind of colonization process as school, where his appearance and lifestyle causes him to be persecuted and the Teacher is on a constant mission "hound the child. To defeat him." (79)

One of the techniques I enjoyed most in this tale is the character becoming a city. In my own work, whenever I talk about home, certain cites become characters for me- there is Brooklyn, where I lived most of my life, and the small town in Virginia, where my family is from. Cities play such an important role in the setting and development of stories, because they give us a solid world where our characters land. I know very little about Martinique, but getting a close view of the little boy's city made the story more complex, layered and rich. One of my favorite scenes is the little boy's walk home from school.

"Taking a detour flushes out Downtown...you discover houses without voices, their windows gaping onto a lifeless stillness...you discover bars of light-streaked gloom where black men wearing small hats pulled low over their eyes sip quietly at peaceful intoxications...You discover that watchmaker who has become immortal beneath the remains of countless clocks...You discover the melancholy return of fishing boats up the slack water of the canal when the catch has been too meager...You learn about the other Downtown." (95)

School Days is an interactive story; everything and everyone makes an impression on and responds to everything else. The little boy observes his world and the Repondeurs elaborate on these observations. The island of Martinique is colonized and there is the battle between the language and culture of the French, who are seen as educated, and the indigenous customs of the Creole people, who are seen as primitive. This struggle creates the world that the little boy enters when he attends school and influences everything; the way he and his classmates are taught, the way they are treated by the Teachers, and the way they treat each other. It even influences the parents, like when Big Bellybutton's poor father is called into school, chastised in French for the behavior of his son, and the father, seizing on a "millennial rage," beats his son in front of everyone like he was pulling up a "damned weed by the root." (84) Throughout the description of this scene, the language Chamoiseau uses lets us know that the father, while angry at the son, is also angry at the world he now inhabits, and is performing the discipline that is expected of him. And like the people of Martinique, who continue to survive in the ways they are able, Big Bellybutton endures his punishment but remains "undefeated in his heart of hearts." (85)

Rashida

Self Determination-Finding the "Real" You

Self-determination is characterized by the act of making up your own mind about what to think or do free from outside influence; the right to decide upon political status and affiliation, and the freedom to decide who and what you are.  I wasn't expecting an exploration of self-determination in this read but rather a story of personal fortitude.  As with the other books we've read this semester, I found the answers to many of my questions pertaining to my writing.  What genre is my work? Am I within the lines or outside the borders of my genre? In School Days, unknowingly, Patrick Chamoiseau addresses my questions as he takes full advantage of self-determination.  In the first section, Longing, Chamoiseau uses the following to identify the protagonist:

The little black boy

The child

The little boy

The bullish child

Little monster

Quacking Chicky

The impious One

The Tormentor

The Impatient One

It could be argued that these names are simply adjectives used to add variety or to keep the reader engaged. They can also be viewed as naming conventions created to continue referring to "I" in the third person.  While both are true, there is another dimension—multiple characters encompassed in one. With solid craft, good writing is the result no matter what the genre or writing style. 

In the first sentence of the book, Chamoiseau introduces skin color and plot, "the little black boy made a mistake begging for school (pg. 11). The reader is immediately grounded in the story and called to witness the mistake and listen to the confession. The little black boy is not mentioned again.  Its as if he is introduced to the reader as someone identified by an outsider who sees the protagonist first as a color then a little boy.  The little black boy is then identified introspectively as "the child (pg. 12)" followed by "the little boy (pg. 13). "  With mastery, Chamoiseau  continues layering the character, adding depth and tension, "That mulish child made himself into the martyr of the century (pg. 16)." Could it be that writing in third person creates distance between the writer and the story thereby making it manageable to write about someone else rather than self?

Among other things, what I've learned from this book is that there is not much difference between self-determination, personal fortitude and writing style.  One is deciding to be a writer, the other is writing using your own voice rather than one you're told to use--personal fortitude is the fuel.  Chamoiseau, writes about  navigating cultures, language and finding a way to survive.  His book is as much about determining the writing process as it is about  determining self.