rebeccakuder

See No Stranger by Valarie Kaur

Cover image of SEE NO STRANGER by Valarie Kaur

A friend asked me to join in a discussion of Valarie Kaur’s See No Stranger at the library, and the invitation ended up being a real gift. Kaur’s wise and practical information toward understanding our shared humanity is so necessary—especially in what feels like an impossibly broken world. One idea from the book has stuck with me. It gives me hope.

p. 27:

“As I move through my day and come across faces on the street or subway or on a screen, I say in my mind, Sister. Brother. Sibling. Aunt. Uncle. I start to wonder about each of them as a person. When I do this, I am retraining my mind to see more and more kinds of people as part of us rather than them. I practice this with animals and parts of the earth, too. I say in my mind “You are a part of me I do not yet know. I practice orienting to the world with wonder, preparing myself for the possibility of connection.”

Some other powerful passages:

p. 10:

“Wonder is our birthright.”

“Wonder is where love begins, but the failure to wonder is the beginning of violence.”

On Christianity:

p. 22

“In the United States, white supremacy is intertwined with Christian supremacy, one an extension of the other. Any theology that teaches that God will torture the people in front of you in the afterlife creates the imaginative space for you to do so yourself on earth.”

p. 26

“Her name was Faye and she was the first Christian I had ever met who did not believe I was going to hell. I would go on to meet many more people like her and learn that there are many ways to be Christian, just as there are many ways to be Sikh. Our traditions are like treasure chests filled with scriptures, songs and stories—some empower us to cast judgment and others shimmer with the call to love above all. There are no true or false interpretations. There are only those that destroy the world we want and those that create it. We get to decide which ones to hold in our hearts.”

rebeccakuder

The hands of a storyteller

From http://www.janetpihlblad.com/pages/leafwork_thumbpage.html

“The first sentence of every novel should be: ‘Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human.’  Meander if you want to get to town.”

This is from Michael Ondaatje’s book, In The Skin Of A Lion, which I blogged about here.  When I first read this passage, years ago, I realized this is the kind of fiction I want to write, and this proclamation provides comfort.

There’s a beautiful feeling I sometimes get when I’m reading.  It’s the moment I realize I’m in the hands of a good storyteller.  I’ve had that feeling sometimes reading “great” books, and sometimes reading unpublished student work.  The feeling helps me relax and be along for the journey, and I crave it in everything that I read.  This is not to say that I want what I read to soothe me–on the contrary.  (As the fabulous Joy Williams wrote in her essay “Uncanny the Singing That Comes From Certain Husks,” “Good writing never soothes or comforts.  It is no prescription, neither is it diversionary, although it can and should enchant while it explodes in the reader’s face.”)  But that somewhat unnamable awareness that I’m in good hands as I read is always welcome.  It has to do, maybe, with an amount of confidence (and sincerity) in the writer, because I don’t get that feeling, usually, when I read an overly clever or cynical voice–a narrative stance that, to me, usually feels insincere.  I think the feeling I’m pondering can be called “trust.”  As I notice it, something changes in my body; I relax a little (even if the story is unsettling, exploding in my face) because I understand an agreement the writer is making with me, and I am making with the writer: I trust that she or he will uphold whatever rules and aesthetics the story (or poem) requires, and I trust that the writer’s choices were made in earnest, and with honor behind them.

I want to give that same feeling to my readers.  With my words, I want to craft a net, a web, or a hammock, to catch, or lull them into a place, a moment, a thought.  Myself I want to quiet down to what’s essential, and I want the reader to witness (with me) that silver drop of water on a leaf, or that strange knocking sound that’s just too far off to identify but too close to ignore.