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Classic Program
Senior Focus
Crossing Borders
Volume 7, Number 2 - Spring 2009
Can a conversation about a literary short story
lead to a democratic, reflective exchange? Can an intimate contact with
a poetic text give rise to a new curiosity, to a desire to share one’s
own reactions with those of others? Can it encourage imagination to fly?
People & Stories/Gente y Cuentos started with an
experimental group in Spanish, which I organized in 1972 after coming
back from a five-year stay in Colombia. I approached a group of Puerto
Rican women living in a public housing project in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, and asked if they would like to read together a story by
Gabriel García Márquez, a new author of their own “cultura.”
The word “cultura” resonated with these women—it
meant something one gets in school if one can get there, yet something
not quite like school, something closer perhaps to wisdom, to a secret
knowledge that should be available to all yet was usually reserved for a
few. About ten women agreed to participate, and we were launched.
I was anxious to impart my love of reading and
my admiration for the new writers of Latin America to less-educated
readers. I also thought it would be interesting to have real contact
with people with whom I had rarely had a chance to talk in a meaningful
way.
That first encounter in Cambridge astonished me.
How did it happen that these women—who had not been able to finish
school, who had never heard of García Márquez, and who had certainly
never engaged in any discussion of a literary story—could find
themselves locked in passionate conversation about it? “La siesta
del martes” (“Tuesday Siesta”), which I read aloud on that first day, is
a powerful and marvelously told tale. A mother, accompanied by her
daughter, takes a train to a village where her son has been killed; she
wants to deposit a bunch of flowers on his tomb as a last rite. But the
death has occurred in murky circumstances, and the powerful village
priest is not anxious to let the mother know too much; he tries to
prevent her from entering the cemetery. Through a series of deft,
courageous moves, the mother achieves what she wants.
Rather than asking women to give their opinions
on the story as a whole, I decided to call their attention to a
particularly striking passage where the mother says, “Every mouthful I
ate those days tasted of beatings my son got on Saturday nights.”
Some of the women had been close to violence and
reacted to this metaphor, to the taste of blood that can insidiously
insert itself into daily experiences. But should the mother be so upset
about the blows her son got in a boxing match? Some said, after all,
boxing is a sport that can earn you good money. Others argued that one
should not have to endure violence to earn a living.
I reread the lines that oppose the mother and
the priest—her Spartan refusal to accept his offer to sit down, his
mellifluous clichés of consolation. The words provoked a brisk exchange:
Has one the right to oppose a priest? What are the weapons that a poor
woman can muster to defend her dignity? Should a woman stand up for her
son even if he is, perhaps, a thief?
I was careful to insert questions that
encouraged the flow but never demanded consensus. I reread certain
pregnant lines to help participants notice their language and
highlighted words that could activate memories. New voices pitched in,
and people often reacted with passion.
Yet it soon became obvious that the story did
not demand and could not yield right or wrong answers. What it called
forth was an elaboration, a contribution from its readers, who each
perceived it through the lens of their own life experience. People felt
free to use their voices without fear. Almost inadvertently, the
interchange led to an increasingly critical discussion with multiple
reactions. Stories do
not only put discussions in motion by proposing exciting topics that
resonate with one’s own life experience. Unexpected twists of the poetic
text and unusual expressions have ways of igniting conversation.
A wonderful example happened in Trenton, New
Jersey, where I had organized an intergenerational Gente y Cuentos group
with Hispanic seniors and Spanish-speaking high school students.
The first two sessions were not a success. The
older adults seized the opportunity to harangue the young—“you should
not look at TV that much”…“you should go to Church on Sundays”—while the
young people sat with eyes lowered, not daring to respond, obeying the
Latino “respeto” (respect due to older people).
In the third session, we read “Es que somos muy
pobres” (“But We Are Very Poor”) a short story by the Mexican writer
Juan Rulfo. The narrator, a young boy, recounts how a catastrophic flood
carried away all that the village possessed. After the disaster, his
sisters left, says the boy, and became “pirujas” (prostitutes). As I was
reading, I heard snickering and, as I finished, there was a rush from
both young and old to mouth that word “pirujas.”
Was it that the sound is brilliant, fun? Perhaps
it was exciting to find that risqué word for “prostitute” in a classical
story. They were astonished at being able to play around with that “bad”
word in a formal discussion group. At one point, a kind of release
occurred: the young began to talk in earnest to the older participants:
“You don’t know what it’s like to come from a Latino family into a
Trenton high school!”…“We are not what you imagine.”
A conversation started about why the sisters had
left the village. I assumed that extreme poverty had driven them to
prostitution. But some of the older people put my reasoning to shame:
“But Sarah, we too are very poor and yet have never been prostitutes!”
The younger ones proposed a completely different hypothesis: they felt
that the father had treated his daughters very badly and that they were
really fleeing from him.
This started a conversation on relations between
generations, between fathers and daughters. Almost miraculously, that
word “pirujas” broke down barriers that just moments before seemed
impossible to dismantle. As a kind of “confianza” spread in the group,
both generations began to discuss common concerns: what was women’s
place in society, what were their available options? They ended the
session talking to each other, exchanging preoccupations. Later, it was
heartwarming to see the young people helping some of the older women to
fill in evaluation forms that had been distributed that day.
These lively People & Stories/Gente y Cuentos
encounters demand preparation. The temptation is to choose stories that
focus on issues important to the group we plan to meet. But can we be
sure about what concerns are crucial to others? Perhaps it is best to
trust the power of the poetic narrative. As she prepares a session, the
coordinator must study the story, noting striking expressions, images
and shadows. The best, most provocative questions are built on the
poetic nuggets noted during a close and private reading.
During the session, after reading the story
aloud, the coordinator poses questions. Often, questions based on
particularly knotty points of the story are the most successful at
firing the imagination and uncorking personal recollections. Daily life
becomes important, valuable, as it is connected with a story written by
a famous author and shared with a group of companions: Even though I
have not gone to school, even though I have not read many books, the
many things that I have encountered along my life help me now to
appreciate a complicated story. The new reader feels creative as she
helps bring the story alive. Voices become more assertive, yet curiosity
to hear out the others helps in the acceptance of complexity.
Poetic texts make us wonder, spark our
imagination, bring up memories, reveal repressed feelings and force
questions upon us. Curiosity and desire to share reactions with others
help structure our first, vague resonances. We discuss intricacies of
the narrative; we reject, accept and defend points of view. Literary
stories do not demand conclusions; in fact their complexity encourages
elaboration where new voices not only share in the pleasure of the story
and its poetics but take part in an increasingly critical democratic
discussion where personal concerns become intertwined with social and
moral issues.
(This is an abridged version of a paper
distributed at the Civic Reflection Symposium in Chicago in October
2008.)
Grassroots Voices Relish
Literature's Power & Pleasure
by