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Volume 5, Number 2 - Spring 2007
Readers Become Writers
of Their Own Diverse Life Stories
by Anndee Hochman
Alice Walker may have come to terms with her childhood injury, but the wound still stings for Ken and Pervis, Caspar, Jason, Liz and Ron.
These six participants in a People & Stories/Gente y Cuentos Crossing Borders program have read Walker’s essay, “Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self,” an episodic piece about an injury that scarred the author’s eye and devastated her self-esteem for years. In the end, it is Walker’s daughter who transforms the old wound into a metaphor of possibility: “Mama, there’s a world in your eye!”
People & Stories executive director Patricia Andres poses a question. “Was there something that happened in your life that still affects you, that feels alive today?” she asks the group. “Has it affected you differently at different times?” This program is one of four pilot series funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts; in addition to the usual reading and discussion, participants are invited to write stories of their own lives, triggered by a question or idea in the text.
Ken peers through gold-rimmed glasses to read his offering, titled “It’s Only a Game,” a story of hoping to make the 8th-grade basketball team. When he saw his name on the team list, “I jumped higher in that moment that I would ever jump in or out of a game.”
For Pervis, Walker’s essay has touched a more painful memory: “I was very young. I started using drugs and lived a very negative lifestyle…but now I have seen all my wrongs.” Andres considers the piece, then asks, “Is there a moment you could point to when you had that turnaround?” and Pervis turns back to his page.
Caspar recalls “a July summer day…so hot that you could see the heat rising from the blacktop in front of our house.” He stuck a pen into an electrical socket that day; he writes of how the lights flickered inside the house, and of the beating he got before going to the hospital.
And that story, in turn, sparks a memory from Liz. “When I was really young, I was swimming off the coast of South Africa, and I got carried out by the waves. Someone came in and rescued me, but I always wondered why I got a beating from my parents.”
One moment, they are readers, referring to Walker’s essay; the next, they are writers, discussing craft and approach. “I can’t figure out how to get to the end and make my point,” Ken says, and Liz advises him to “put it all down, then edit. Just the act of writing has a transformative effect.”
One person at the table has not shared his writing at any of the group’s previous sessions. Today Ron decides to speak up. “There were over 200 people there,” he reads carefully from his paper. “I remember the feelings I had at that moment. I was sad, happy but also proud to be part of the ceremony. The last thing I remember…was the big silver box being lowered into the earth.” Not until the very last line of the piece does Ron reveal that the deceased person was his beloved Nana.
The group breaks into applause, and Ron ducks his head.