Belonging

Finished June 10

Belonging: The Paradox of Citizenship by Adrienne Clarkson

This set of essays / lectures was the CBC Massey Lecture series of 2014. The first essay talks about the circle we live in, with us at the center, widening to our immediate family, our community, and continuing. There was a line here that I found really spoke to me:

If we concern ourselves with the idea that we exist because others exist, that we are in a web of human relationships, then we understand our individualism in a different way from that of the solipsist. Individuals are no independent of each other. We have individual rights, but we also have duties to others

She goes on to look at this idea of circles in different cultures, from the North American indigenous cultures to the evolution of Eygalieres, a village in southern France, She refers to a 13th century experiment by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, who wanted to see what humans natural language was, without outside influence, but instead discovered that humans need the interplay of human contact to survive. She also talked about how we create identity, using the story of Martin Guerre as an example of recreating oneself.

The second essay begins with the idea of Greek democracy. Clarkson talks about the difference between acting as a private individual and acting in or for the state. The price of belonging to a state meant that a citizen's rights were subject to being taken away if the community felt its values or status were threatened. She notes that the Athenian rights were a privilege granted by their fellow citizens as a community. This leads to the freedom to speak, whether in the Athenian forum, in our own Parliament, or in other public venues. "At best, citizens belong to each other because they trust each other, and that trust is the key to all political functioning and fundamental to our modern notions of what a society can be." She emphasizes that Athenian democracy was not a utopia. Slavery was a reality, and women and men not born in Athens could not be citizens. One idea that I found important here was: 

To be able to belong and yet able to criticize -- to  disagree, to withdraw consent -- is quintessential to belonging, and it is a fundamental notion that has been carried down to modern times. But it must always be remembered that to subjugate all your selfhood, ideas, inclinations, and emotions in order to be part of a collective is not belonging. This kind of sacrifice to others in the group is conformity and, carried to an extreme, bondage. Belonging, in its truest sense, means understanding the nature of the connections between one another -- the very nature of interconnectedness. It can never mean dominance or submission.

She continues to the modern ideal of France with its "liberty, equality, and fraternity" and how the French Revolution influenced that. Quoting Edmund Burke who critiqued some of the worst aspects of that Revolution "liberty is secured by equality of restraint . . . another name for justice. Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither is . . . safe." Burke believed that when building a new society shouldn't start from nothing, but should take the best of the past as a foundation for the future. The good that came out of the revolution was the idea of personal responsibility. Clarkson talks about the differences between the ideas of citizenship in Athenian democracy and now in present day Canada. She ends with a quote from Margaret Laurence who urged us "to feel, in your heart's core, the reality of others." I really like that as a basis for living a good life, that we work for the benefit of and with the coordination with others. 

The third essay deals with the cosmopolitan ethic of belonging in Canada. From her own personal connection to the Chinese head tax, and about how it didn't fit with her experience. As she says, it isn't the laws that make you feel you belong, but the people. Whether they are people in your school, your work, the organizations you belong to, your neighbourhood, or even people you encounter more casually in the course of your day, it is these other people that make one feel a part of a larger group. She includes a 1913 photograph that states the duties of a citizen, one of which is to work for others and refers to the Icelandic Althing, where annually the citizens met to affirm the rights of all. Clarkson discusses the importance of public discourse, of listening to the ideas of other people, of engaging in conversations. In our private lives, we tend to seek out people like ourselves, who believe in similar things, and have the same experiences. Conversations that deal with larger societal issues can be difficult because they can touch emotions, make us feel threatened, or touch on deeply held beliefs. We must be able to have these conversations through seeking mutual understanding and hearing out the other person. This is something that is less common in our world. We don't do enough real listening and critical thinking about what we hear and read, about what our leaders say, and this idea leads to the importance of civic participation. She says "without every citizen's active participation in maintaining the public good, society cannot be expected to sustain the same benefits and freedoms." Democracy requires our ability to accept and include the Other. Democracy deals with obligations as well as rights. It requires us to be civil and treat each other with respect. Again, it comes down to the people. She also talks about volunteerism, and the large amount of this that we do in Canada. "We don't understand that as a society, we in Canada were always a poor country and that, to a large extent, that poverty created our national character." She compares us to our southern neighbour in terms of immigrants, beginning with terminology. Here we have the term "permanent residents" for those foreigners to come to live here after they've been here a certain amount of time, compared to the U.S. "resident aliens", and that in Canada 84% of immigrants become citizens, compared to 40% in the U.S. The period of engagement as future Canadian citizens work towards that goal is a key step in belonging. She talks about how we haven't until recently talked about much of our history that involved people who weren't white, but how important it is that we do. Clarkson came to Canada as a refugee, and she sees her determination to make this country home in the eyes and actions of later refugees from Roma to Somali people. 

The fourth essay is about ubuntu, a South African philosophy based on the concept that all humanity is connected, that the relationship between an individual and their community is interdependent and mutually beneficial. Clarkson begins with Canada's stance on South Africa's request to rejoin the Commonwealth in 1961, and the declaration that was made a requirement for membership. The South Africa of that time was one that had wandered away from the idea of ubuntu, an ancient value of African tribes. "Ubuntu implies seeing another human being as yourself and treating them as you would treat yourself, with love and respect." It is a way of making a deeper connection with those around us. Ubuntu isn't tied to religion or politics. Some religions have aspects that are similar, such as the Christian "love one another as we are loved by God," but the idea of ubuntu is often disparaged as simplistic and discarded in favour of economic philosophies and the emphasis on individual wants. She gives a lot of statistics on what Canadians believe about who can be a good citizen of our country, which is enlightening in its statements if not its practices. She talks about the failures of Canadians in terms of ubuntu, particularly when it comes to our indigenous peoples, but she also gives examples of where we have lived up to this idea.

The fifth essay touches on happiness, about how we treat people affects outcomes. Examples such as treating newcomers to Canada as if they will stay and become citizens leads to that happening most of the time, and the idea of acting "as if" is an important one in terms of creating happiness. She discusses Bhutan and its Gross National Happiness which is based on the Buddhist concept of interdependence. They believe that an ethical and moral life would bring genuine happiness, a happiness that is based on living well and acting well. There is also the idea of honour, and its ties to responsibility and a discussion of ethics: "to act ethically is to act outside of any expectation of reciprocity." Another part of gross national happiness is tolerance, which is something that has been a deep-rooted practice here at the human level, despite some of the official decrees. The fourth part is perseverance, which encourages us to think long-term. Some examples of this are the Manitoba Access Program and changes regarding our natural environment. When we harvest, we need to think about sustainability Clarkson says that Canada is a nation of immigrants, with a history that includes a collection of diverse traumas. Wherever we have come from, there were events that led us to this country, so the past matters, but it should not define our future. "A life defined by loss is not worth living." This discussion takes us back to the circle through the words of John Kelly who says the circle grows as "Canadians of all colours and religions are entering that circle" Clarkson ends with the idea of the paradox from the series title, that "we are most fully human, most truly ourselves, most authentically individual, when we commit to the community."

This is a book that I read slowly, stopping to think about the ideas raised and how they reflected in my own experiences. Definitely worth reading. 

The Wave in the Mind

Finished June 3

The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on The Writer, The Reader, and The Imagination by Ursula K. Le Guin

I've been reading this book slowly, savouring it. Le Guin was such a great writer, and this book has her not only writing, but talking about the process, the craft, and how reading is a relationship we have with a book. She also, naturally, talks about being a woman doing these things, and some of her writing in that area makes me think of Rebecca Solnit on that subject. 

The personal essays at the beginning of the book captured me and made me want to share them with a cousin that also enjoyed this author. She's so much funnier than I expected. The first piece, Introducing Myself, which was written to be performed, is absolutely wonderful. One quote: "As a matter of fact I think sex is even more boring as a spectator sport than all of the other spectator sports, even baseball."

Her second essay, Being Taken for Granite, has obvious humour right from the title and yet is thoughful and profound again right along with the humour. The next essay, Indian Uncles, gives some insight into her background and her parents, and the environment she grew up in. All of that is helpful in understanding in how she came to be the person she was. The essay My Libraries shows her feelings about libraries and what she values about them. She says a public library "must be available to all who need it, and that's everyone, when they need it, and that's always." The next piece is one she wrote for a magazine when she was asked to write about a favourite island. She had to think about it a while and finally chose Sauvie island on the Willamette river, where it enters the Columbia river. She gives some history of it, but talks about what makes it special and how it has, so far, defended itself against being spoiled in how it is used. The last essay in this section, called On the Frontier, was also written for a magazine, and talks about frontiers, physical and mental. 

The next section is called Reading and contains pieces about other writing, from Tolstoy to Borges to Mark Twain. I enjoyed her insights into these authors and their writing. There is also a very interesting piece in this section on rhythm in writing, both in poetry and in prose, and another about rhythmic patterns in the Lord of the Rings books. She also has a piece about reading poetry out loud, and I always like to read poetry out loud if I can, so that really connected with me. 

The third section of the book is called Discussions and Opinions. Many of the pieces here also touch on reading and writing. The first essay looks at narrative and the differences in fiction and nonfiction. The next piece was one that discussed awards and gender and started with an experience where a jury that consisted of three women initially picked only women  for the short list, and the discussion and actions that followed that. This experience drove her to amass some statistics on literary awards and the results were quite eye-opening. This naturally led into the theme of the next essay which looked at genetic determinism and a critique of the naturalist E.O. Wilson and his writing. The next essay talked about feet, and what we do to our feet in the name of beauty. Again, some thoughtful ideas emerged here. This was followed by another essay that touched on ideas of beauty, this time about pets (dogs and cats) and dancers. This essay talked about how we see ourselves and the beauty we see in those we care about that isn't what people who don't know them see. The essay that followed this one, again talked about beauty, and connected it back to the idea of rhythm, both in writing and music, and that made me think of these things differently. This is followed by the essay Telling is Listening, a discussion of communication. Not just communication between people, but also other creatures, and in indirect ways. She talks about conversation and how reading differs from watching television in that it is a conversation of sorts. She uses a lot of examples when she does this and that helps clarify what she is saying and making it understandable to the reader in real ways. The essay The Operating Instructions talks about literature is the guide to life, a manual on it for those that pay attention.The last essay in this section is a collection of thoughts on oppression, revolution, and imagination, grouped into themes. This essay is named from a quote by Primo Levi where he says "It is the duty of righteous men to make war on all undeserved privilege, but one must not forget that this is a war without end."

The final section of the book is one writing and includes talks that she has given when teaching writing, whether in classes or workshops. There are many things she brings into these discussions: trust, the writer's relationship with their characters, assumptions that writers make about their future readers, and the issues that accompany ego for a writer. She also has a piece dealing with that common question writers get about where they get their ideas from. This essay had a few paragraphs that really connected for me:

    Reading is active. To read a story is to participate actively in the story. To read is to tell the story, tell it to yourself, reliving it, rewriting it with the author, word by word, sentence by sentence, chapter by chapter.... If you want proof, just watch an eight-year-old reading a story she likes. She is concentratedly, tensely, fiercely alive. She is as intense as a hunting cat. She is a tiger eating.

    Reading is a most mysterious act. It absolutely has not been replaced and will not be replaced by any kind of viewing. Viewing is an entirely different undertaking, with different rewards.

    A reader reading makes the book, brings it into meaning, by translating arbitrary symbols, printed letters, into an inward, private reality. Reading is an act, a creative one. Viewing is relatively passive. A viewer watching a film does not make the film. To watch a film is to be taken into it -- to participate in it -- be made part of it. Absorbed by it. Readers eat books. Film eats viewers. 

As an avid reader, that really made sense to me. Later in the same essay she quotes Virginia Woolf about the need to feel the rhythm in a story to write well, and it is from this quote the she gets the title of this book. Woolf says "A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it; and in writing (such is my present belief) one has to recapture this, and set this working (which apparently had nothing to do with words) and then, as it breaks and tumbles in the mind, it makes words to fit it."

In the following essay she talks about the impulse to write and how writing comes to her. The last piece is a long poem about writing, which I read several times, getting more from it every instance. 

An amazing book. I borrowed this one to read, but have now ordered my own copy. 

Next Time There's a Pandemic

Finished May 18

Next Time There's a Pandemic (CLC Kreisel Lecture Series) by Vivek Shraya

This book is the written portion of the lecture series which was delivered online in March 2021. The series is sponsored by the Canadian Literature Centre based in Edmonton. The lecture series showcases how writers help us understand the textures of life in Canada. Each year, an established author is invited to speak about an issue that is important to them. It could be something close to their heart, something that is key to their experience, something pressing in the current moment, or a combination of these. Traditionally, the lectures are delivered live, at the University of Alberta, and are aired on CBC through the Ideas radio show, as well as being published in book form. The filmed version of this talk can be viewed on the CLC website. This book also includes a follow-up conversation between Shraya and J.R. Carpenter who created the interactive introduction to the lecture. 

This was the first one to be affected by the pandemic and Shraya brings her wide-ranging skills to the work. She is a multimedia artist, a musician, a writer, and a community leader and transgender.

She begins her lecture by talking about the experience that started her thinking about the subject, an interactions with her massage therapist who expressed a very different experience of the pandemic to that point than what she had experienced. She started thinking about what she would perhaps have done differently if she went through the experience again. Here, she organizes her thoughts into five reflections and talks on each one, expanding her inner thoughts and why she thinks these are important. The five reflections are: stay caring; skip the gratitude and say what you feel; nothing is better than something; value artists; and less surveillance, less judgement, more grace. She also includes a list of commitments she came up with in the early days of the pandemic when she considered how we might live differently after the pandemic, and allows space for you to add your own. Also included here is a song she wrote, called Showing Up. 

Each of the reflections will have you taking time to stop and reflect herself, on her words, on what they convey to you, and on your own feelings and thoughts on that aspect. 

I really enjoyed this read and found it reflective of some of my own experiences. Well worth the read. 

My Twentieth Century Evening and Other Small Breakthroughs

Finished January 24
My Twentieth Century Evening and Other Small Breakthroughs: The Nobel Lecture by Kazuo Ishiguro

This lecture looks back at his life, and his moments of change. He discusses the start of his writing career, a writing course he took over the winter of 1979-80, and how it was the first time he articulated his images of his homeland to others. Putting them down on paper was necessary to him at the time to prevent himself losing them. He discusses his presence in England and the influence that move had on his life. He talks about reading Proust and suddenly seeing a different way of moving a story forward, and later, how a Tom Waits song provided the insight into what was missing in the novel he was writing at the time. There are other examples here of writing breakthroughs for him.
He looks at how small these private movements sometimes seem, even though they are not, and how we have to be open to recognizing them.
He goes on to articulate what he would like see in the literature of the future, and of the important role he hopes it will play in the world.
A small volume, but full of insight and hope.

Great Listen

Finished April 22
The Truth about Stories: a native narrative by Thomas King
This collection of five talks is the Massey Lecture series of 2003. Thomas King is a great storyteller and that is what he does here, tells us stories. There is, of course, a native theme throughout that King uses very well to illustrate a number of issues and themes. His voice is mellow and draws you in. Even the titles of the lectures evoke stories before you hear another word.
Definitely worth a listen. I'm lending this out, but will want it back in my permanent collection.

Great Canadian Read

Finished April 7
Payback: debt and the shadow side of wealth by Margaret Atwood
This book has been billed as a look at the literary side of side, but it is much more than that. It does indeed look at how debt has appeared in literature, including both financial debt and social debt, but it also looks at the history and meaning of debt itself. Atwood talks repeatedly about the balance that is a natural part of debt: for every debtor a creditor. She talks about historical practices around debt forgiveness and what that meant to society. She talks about the debt we owe the environment for what we have taken from it without giving back and how that debt is now being called in. Throughout this book she shows a wonderful sense of humour, dry and witty that had me laughing out loud.
This book is an important one, not just because of the times we are in, but because of the message it has for humanity and the way that the role of debt is explained clearly for even the financially illiterate to understand.
This book is part of the CBC Massey Lecture series and is a finalist for the OLA Evergreen Award. Read it.

Lectures

Finished December 5
City of Words by Alberto Manguel
This is the 2007 collection of CBC Massey Lectures, and I had listened to one of the lectures (the second one) on Ideas one evening and was interested to read the entire series.
Manguel brings life to famous literary works, both classic and modern, by showing how they relate to the current world and our issues. He shows the relationship between identity and the "other" as it relates to both the literature and our increasingly multicultural society. He discusses the difficulties: race riots, politically-motivated murders, suicide bombings, and hate crimes. The series had me thinking about the issues in new ways and towards new solutions. I found it fascinating.