Imagination Nation

“One writes out of one thing only — one’s own experience.” - James Baldwin

”The American novel is … a conquest of the frontier; as it describes our experience, it creates it.”  - Ralph Ellison

There have been some great comments on the blog about experience and imagination.  I’ve been thinking about both lately.  Most writers start with what they know (experience) and move to what they don’t know (imagination).  New characters, new places — sometimes even new worlds.  Imagination counts for a lot.  Think of Go, Dog, Go! by P.D. Eastman.  Dogs driving cars?  Right.  Or Lafcadio by Shel Silverstein – how many of you have ever seen a lion aim a gun with his tail?  If you ever want to, this is the book for you.  Or for that matter, anything by Dr. Seuss.  

These books are wonderful partly because the authors had such powerful imaginations.  But without something real, these books would be meaningless.  They teach us about the real world in a hundred ways — about colors, shapes, sizes, but also about more complicated things, like loneliness and friendship.  So they don’t succeed unless they build a bridge from the world we know (experience, again) — to the one we don’t (that’s right — imagination).  In Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia, we cross out of our own world, and into another one.

I think this is what Ralph Ellison is talking about in the second quotation up at the top of the page.  We Americans are so different from each other in our experience – in race, gender, religion, and more.  But I like to believe that we’re also willing to share those experiences.  And when we do that — when we cross that bridge – the world of one person’s imagination becomes a shared experience.  It becomes real.

So when we think of historical fiction – for example, the underground railroad books some of us have been reading –  it’s important to ask a few questions:  Where are the writers are coming from?  Where are they taking us?  What do you know about this or that author?  There are a LOT of books out there.  You may wonder if the journey is worthwhile, and asking these questions may help.  (You may also think I’m wrong about all these questions – if so, it’s possible you’re a postmodernist.) 

Two books that use the power of imagination to stretch the history of the underground railroad to incredible new places are Octavia Butler’s Kindred and Walter Mosley’s 47.  They have a lot in common.  Both books start in the present and carry us backward into history.  Both books combine science fiction and slave narrative, an unusual pairing.  And most importantly, both books are excellent examples of how a work of imagination can bring us closer to truth.

More about these last two books next time.  There were some nice comments in the previous post about experience and imagination.  In a great book, you might get both — has anyone out there learned something new, unexpected, and really valuable from a work of fiction?

Times Review

Check out my book review in The New York Times, November 11, 2007!  I’m writing about three books: 

• The Ever-After Bird by Ann Rinaldi  is a retread of Freedom Crossing,
• Underground by Jean Ferris takes you literally underground, 
• Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis is an adventure story.  It’s exciting, funny, serious – and even (cough, cough) educational, all at the same time.  Read it.  You won’t be sorry.

In the review, I’m looking at how different writers exercise their imagination on a subject that none of them have experienced directly.  James Baldwin once wrote that writers write from one thing, and one thing only:  experience.  What do you think, folks?  Agree or disagree?  Let me know.  The jury’s still out on this one…

 Next: Butler, Mosley, and more on the imagination.

Nightjohn

Nightjohn by Gary Paulsen is a searing novel about an escaped slave who returns to the plantation to teach other slaves how to read.  The narrator, Sarny, is twelve years old, and she really knows how to express herself: 

I’m Sarny and they be thinking I’m dumb… But I ain’t.  I just be so quiet and listen all the time that I learn things.  I’m Sarny and the other part of my name be the same as old Waller who wants to be master but is nothing.  Nothing.  I don’t count the back part of my name no more than I count old Waller himself.  No more than I count spit.

Sarny is starting to figure out how the world works, and she knows that justice is no friend to a slave.  She notices everything, and her story, which is full of captivating detail, would probably be an interesting one even without Nightjohn, who arrives in chapter three, rope around his neck, back covered with scars.  Sarny definitely notices him:

I’m brown.  Same as dark sassafrass tea.  But I had seen black people, true black.  And Nightjohn was that way.  Beautiful.  So black he was like the marble stone by the front of the white house; so black it seemed I could see inside, down into him.  See almost through him somehow.

Turns out Nightjohn had escaped from slavery, but chose to come back, to teach other slaves to read and write.  Before long, Sarny is trading tobacco for “letters.” And exposing herself to great danger: those of you who have studied those times will know that reading and writing were prohibited to slaves.

Nightjohn is a terrific story, and one that I would highly recommend for a number of reasons.  First, it stands out because it puts black characters at the center of the story.  I can’t tell you how many books I’ve read that examine slavery from the perspective of white people.  I’m not sure we need that story so badly — after all, it’s inscribed deeply on our culture — not just in literature, but television, movies, art, the economy, everything.  We understand that instinctively when it comes to non-fiction:  we read about Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglas, Sojourner Truth, and so on.  But when it comes to fiction, the majority of the books for younger readers follow the pattern of Freedom Crossing – an interesting story, and very well told, but centered around the experience of a white girl in the north.  There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s refreshing to come across a story that pulls the other way, and Gary Paulsen’s achievement, in reaching out to tell that story, is so impressive.  Nightjohn understands this, and if you read the book, you’ll see he explains it perfectly — about the time Sarny is learning the letter “C”.

The second reason I love Nightjohn is that it exemplifies the reasons historical fiction is so valuable.  In particular, the classic argument:  it brings history to life.  The book starts with an interesting note:

Except for variations in time and character identification and placement, the events written in this story are true and actually happened.

In other words, even if he changes names times and dates, everything in the book really happened to somebody.  This is an interesting issue, with good and bad aspects, and we’ll definitely talk more about this later.  But in Paulsen’s work it seems mostly good to me.  Check out this note where he talks about how he got started writing the book.

Lastly, I love Nightjohn because it’s simply a great story.  It’s written at a level that fourth graders can read, but anyone — even adults — can enjoy.  Paulsen uses drama, mystery, suspense, and humor, and he creates terrific characters with vivid voices.  I want to know what they have to say, and I want to know what will happen to them.  I can’t imagine anyone walking away from this book once they’ve read a few pages.  And in the end, to a reader, that’s all that matters — because no matter how great a book is, you have to read it or it’s worth nothing.

Next week:  Two works of science fiction, 47 by Walter Mosley and Kindred by Octavia Butler.  Also a free copy of Nightjohn to to the best student comment on the issue mentioned in paragraph six of this post.

A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park

Guest Review by KMO

For the past few weeks I have been reading A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park.  It is a Newbery Gold Medal winner.  It’s about a boy named Tree-ear who works for Master Min, a pottery maker.  Tree-ear lives under a bridge with a foster parent named Crane-man.  They all live in 12th century Korea.  Tree-ear is sent to the King’s court in Songo to deliver pottery for Master Min.

This book has a lot of life lessons.  For example, sometimes in life you have to be patient when you want something; if you break something you have to pay for it; and you have to work hard to get what you want.  This book also has tragedies and triumphs.  I liked this story because it was easy to comprehend.  Sometimes it made me feel sad.  I was happy when Tree-ear accomplished his goal. If you like art you will like this story. Overall it is a fantastic book!

Thanks to KMO for a GREAT review of this book; I can’t wait to read it!  Please comment if you’ve read it, and give KMO much praise as our first guest reviewer.  If YOU want to write a guest review, just let me know. -B

Freedom Crossing

How many of you know Freedom Crossing by Margaret Goff Clark?  It’s another book about the Underground Railroad, fairly short and easy to read, but still covering important issues.  I’d say it would be great for anyone in fifth grade and up, maybe even a really ambitious fourth grader.  If you’re older, you could read it to a little brother or sister.

The book is set in New York State, during the time of the second Fugitive Slave Law.  These laws allowed people to chase escaped slaves into free states, and forced local police to help capture them.  The Fugitive Slave laws helped to start the Civil War, because people could no longer ignore slaves when they were being seized in their own backyards.  They were forced to make a choice — and not just about whether slavery was right.   They had to choose whether or not they would act to stop something wrong.

Freedom Crossing is about a girl who has to make that choice.  Laura has returned to New York after living some years with her relatives in Virginia, a slave state.  Her mother has died, her father is away on business, and she’s stuck in the house with her brother.  When Martin, an escaped slave, is brought to their house by a conductor on the Underground Railroad, Laura’s brother wants to shelter him, but she thinks it’s a bad idea:

Tales of masters who beat slaves were rarely true, Laura reminded herself…. “You ought to send Martin straight back to his master…. Slaves don’t feel the way we do,” said Laura with conviction.  “They — they’re like children, and they want to be safe and cared for.”

I know what you’re thinking.  How wrong can a person be?  The sad truth is, a lot of people felt this way at the time.  We even have a word for it: paternalism.  As Laura spends time with Martin, she has to wrestle with her paternalistic ideas, and see if they match the reality of the person she is coming to know.  As she does, the plot of the book builds to an exciting climax, with a chase scene and a house with secret passages.  And better still, the house is real!  If you’re ever in Lewiston, New York, you can go there.

The great thing about historical fiction is that it reminds us that history is alive in the present.  It’s sort of the same way that the person you used to be when you were five years old is alive inside the person you are now.  You may have changed a little — or a whole lot — but who you were lies at the root of who you are, and understanding who you were then can help you to understand who you are now.

So don’t think that just because a book is set in the past, it doesn’t have anything to do with you.  History survives in the lives we lead, and in the stories we read.  For example, the Underground Railroad worked because it was a partnership between people of different races and backgrounds.  When we study the history of the time, our heroes are mostly black:  Frederick Douglass,  Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and so on.  Then why do so  many stories feature white people as heroes?  Who writes these stories, and who are they writing for?  Who is their intended audience?  Is this paternalism?  Let me know what you think.

Next week: Gary Paulsen, a little more on dialect and speech patterns, oh, and as usual I have a free copy of the book — this time, for the best comment on this post.

Cover Story

Somebody asked me how I choose the cover picture when I write about a book.  I try to use the cover of the edition that I’m reading.  Both Beloved and Dies Drear are classics, so they’ve been published many times with many different cover pictures.  Here are some of the different covers for the two books.  Which do you like the best and why?

The House of Dies Drear

Beloved

Next:  Freedom Crossing by Margaret Goff Clark and Gary Paulsen’s Nightjohn.  (These are pretty quick reads, so grab a copy of one of them from the library if you want to participate in  the discussion.)

Beloved

You asked for it, and you got it.  Beloved by Toni Morrison is one of the great American novels.  I could spend the whole year writing about it, but if you’re going to read that much you might as well read the book, so I’m going to be brief.  Should you read this book?  Of COURSE you should.  Okay, the review’s over.  Go home.  We’re all done here.

Or are we?  The real question isn’t should you read Beloved; it’s when should you read it?  Well, that’s another thing altogether.  And to answer that question, you’re going to have to ask yourself two more:  First, am I mature enough emotionally to read the book?  Second, am I intellectually prepared for it?

First question first.  Parents and teachers be warned: there are adult themes in the book that include sex, violence, hate language, and an unflinching examination of slavery.  This is not a book for elementary school students.  If you’re in seventh or eighth grade, get an adult or a group of friends to read it with you, so you’ll have someone to discuss it with.  If you’re younger, wait until you’re older.

Now for question two: Are you intellectually prepared for this book?  To help you decide, I thought we could look at the book.  It starts with an epigram:

I will call them my people,
which were not my people;
and her beloved,
which was not beloved.

- Romans 9:25

This epigram is also a paradox.  How can somebody be your people and NOT be?  How can someone be both loved and unloved?  That’s the big puzzle of this book.  Knowing something about the epigram might help you solve that puzzle.  It comes from the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans.  It might also help to know that the book is based on a historical incident, the story of Margaret Garner, who killed her child rather than see her returned to slavery.  Lastly, it helps to understand the tradition of the Gothic, which I mentioned in the last post, and this is where we come back to The House of Dies Drear.

What do Dies Drear and Beloved have in common that makes both of them excellent examples of gothic fiction?  How does the bible quote relate to the story of Margaret Garner?  A free copy of Beloved to the first student who can give me a good answer to either of these questions.  If you can do that, then I think you’re probably ready for this amazing book.

Coming up:  A word about cover art.

The House of Dies Drear

I have to admit I was scared last week, reading The House of Dies Drear.  Not because it’s a terrifying example of gothic fiction.  No, I was scared because I first read the book about thirty years ago, and loved it.  I was scared that somehow it had lost its magic, that reading it now would be somehow less suspenseful or mysterious, less wonderful.  Well, I’m happy to report that the book holds up.  In fact, there’s a lot more to it than I noticed in my first reading, way back then.

For starters, I notice now that the author, Virginia Hamilton, wrote the book with a bare minimum of racial cues.  For instance, she doesn’t mention the color of people’s skin, or use stereotyped speech patterns to let you know that the characters in the book are black or white.  That’s interesting, but what’s amazing is that she tells such a good story that even without these cues, all the characters are understandable — we know who they are are, and their actions make sense in the context of the story. 

If you’re reading the book, try this: read the first half of the book, up to page 100.  Now make a list of every racial cue you found in those 100 pages .  I’m guessing it will be a pretty short list.  By now you may have made some assumptions about the race of certain characters.  You’ll have definite answers just a few pages after that, if you read carefully.  Virginia Hamilton wrote this novel in the full swing of the civil rights movement.  It was published in 1968 — the beginning of the Culture Wars (before the Ebonics movement, but in the heart of the Black Arts Movement).  At the time, there was a lot of tension between people who argued for integration and those who argued for black power — many believed you had to choose one or the other.  What do you think?

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  For those who haven’t read the book, here’s a brief overview of the plot (don’t worry, I’m not going to spoil anything):  Thomas Small is thirteen years old.  His family - father, mother, and two younger twin brothers - is moving to Ohio, because his father got a job teaching history at a college there.  His father has picked out a house for them to live in.  An old house.  A big old scary house…

The house of Dies Drear loomed out of mist and murky sky, not only grey and formless, but huge and unnatural.  It seemed to crouch on the side of the hill high above the highway.  And it had a dark, isolated look about it that set it at odds with all that was living.

A chill passed over Thomas…. “It’s bleeding,” he said softly.

Next week:  More Dies Drear, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and a few more words about the Gothic.  Plus, a free copy of Hamilton’s book for the first student to answer the question in paragraph three of this post, just to thank you for reading this far.

“The only free road…”

I’ve been reading a lot about the Underground Railroad lately, so I’m going to start with a selection of books on that topic.  They include mysteries, histories, love stories, ghost stories, and even science fiction.  Here’s a first look at the list:

• Kindred by Octavia Butler 
• Freedom Crossing by Margaret Goff Clark
• Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis
• Underground by Jean Ferris
• The House of Dies Drear by Virginia Hamilton
• Beloved by Toni Morrison*
• 47 by Walter Mosely
• Nightjohn by Gary Paulsen
• The Ever-After Bird by Ann Rinaldi
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe*
• The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron*

      * Longer books for older readers.  Tackle them if you want a challenge!

If you’ve read any of these books and want to do a review of your own, please comment on this post and let me know.  Also, if you know of anything else on the subject that’s really good, tell me and I’ll add it to the list.   

What all of these books have in common is that they are fictional (in other words, at least part of them is not true, but invented by the author), even if they are based on real historical characters and events.  I’m interested in the following questions?  How does fiction help us understand historical events?  How is it different from reading “straight” history?  Does the identity of the author make a difference in historical fiction?  For instance, does it matter if the author is white or black?  And if so, how?  Why would someone choose to write historical fiction instead of history?

Next post:  The House of Dies Drear by Virginia Hamilton

Pity the fool…?

Only my first post and here you are, hanging on my every word.  (Okay, be honest:  who made you read this?)  Because you are beautiful people and deserve to know, I’m going to explain the name of the blog.  Of course I love to read.  Don’t we all?  (Long pause.)  Anyone?  (Silence.)  I think I saw someone down in the front row raise her hand… no?  Well, there you go.  The truth is, I’m a fool for books.  Big, small, poems, novels, comics – you name it, I’ll read it.  I like the way they look and feel — I even like the dusty smell of old books.  I’ll read anything and anywhere — on a train, in the rain, in a box, with a fox – anywhere.  And I really get into it when I read.  Once I was on the subway reading Shel Silverstein’s Lafcadio: The Lion Who Shot Back (which by the way is one of the saddest stories I know — more about that in a later post) and I actually started crying, right there in public on the subway, and all the people started looking at me funny, even this guy right across from me wearing an outfit made entirely out of purple velvet, with purple shoes and a purple cane and purple rings on his fingers was looking at me like I was crazy.  But I didn’t care, not me.  Why?  Because I am a reading fool, and I don’t need anyone’s pity.  Just a good book and some time to myself. 

 And now, how about you?  Feel free to comment on this post — tell me how you like to read, and more importantly, tell me what you like to read:  history?  romance?  fantasy or science fiction?  I’ll be writing at least one review every week here, so if you have any suggestions, please feel free to share.

See you next week!  /Bruno