Recently I attended a conference on South Asia, which sought to illuminate some of the very difficult problems in this area. Cynthia Schneider, a Georgetown professor, said, "Stories, not policy papers, change the way people think." In her opinion, the United States could make an impact by supporting cultural development in this part of the world. She said the telling and retelling of stories is vital to the human condition, and that while many people in these countries cannot read, they all have access to television or media delivered via cell phones. And they are all hungry for a good story.
If this is the case, the writer in any country has a very special task in society and in history, whether he or she is published or not. As writers, I feel we have an obligation to take note and record the narratives of relatives and friends. People's lives matter. If from these records we ultimately produce a book that is published, well, wonderful. But the recording of the narrative is what is important.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Changing the Way We Think
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Oh I so agree! Don't I wish mightily that I had more stories from my partents and grandparents. That's one of the reasons I blog about growing up when and where I did. It's a little bit of history.
ReplyDeleteI agree, and like Bish, my first thought was about stories from grandparents. How I wish I'd recorded my grandfather's stories of growing up in rural Idaho! Stories are true treasures.
ReplyDeleteI recently found my sister had some of my father's original paperwork detailing his service in WWII. I can't wait to do some research on those three years of his life. He never spoke of it while he was alive.
ReplyDeleteJ.A. - My father never spoke about WWII when he was alive either. He was a fighter pilot stationed in Italy. When he died, my sister and I found his flight records, discharge papers, and year books from flight school. Stuff I'd never seen before.
ReplyDeleteFamily history provides a wealth of ideas we can mine for stories.
Nice post, Linda. Perhaps each of us should take a few days off from our "aiming to get published" work and write a little bit of family story/history for the next generation.
ReplyDeleteI also agree. Whether it's fiction or a true anecdote, stories affect us--both consciously and unconsciously.
ReplyDelete