When we read literature about lives that seem too distant from our own, how do we minimize our tendencies to “other” the unfamiliar?
In the middle school reading classroom, I have found that if we begin with the process of telling our own stories — illuminating the gaps in our memory, the way we fill fissures, and how we make our stories accessible to others — we have a beginning. And I have found that when we do finally share those stories with others and learn how to listen to each others lives, we do a little less othering and cultivate a culture of compassion.
In our middle school ELA class, we grapple with remembering, investigate the meaning of “truth,” and consider reading as a way of listening. Here is a look inside my classroom as we considered these questions alongside author and genocide survivor, Loung Ung.
Writing. We began by spending a few days drafting essays about our lives — personal stories of big moments and snapshots. Students thought about moments that shaped who they are or are becoming. Some wrote about the loss of a grandparent, the day they found out their parents were divorcing, and an experience they shared with someone special. For the snapshot, students captured a moment eating their favorite food (or least favorite), a moment in their favorite place to be, or a time when they realized something about themselves or life. Believe it or not, I used a Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner” to illustrate how we might bring ourselves into a moment and narrate a snapshot in present time. (They were singing this song for weeks.) We reflected on how sometimes our memories feel rather broken and that, when we try to capture memories in writing, some pieces are illuminated, some are hidden, and some are invented, which brings into question how “truthful” is a memory when we share it with others.
After drafting about our lives, I asked them to take a look at the lives of people in Cambodia. Because our computer lab was filled (and I have not worked with our new iPads yet), I pulled a variety of nonfiction pieces related to Cambodia –six different articles — and invited each student read one and render it into a poem, story, or snapshot using language from the articles. We talked about how, when rendering ideas anew, writers have to make decisions about what to include and exclude to capture what is most meaningful. Then, students got into groups to share what they read and their writing, specifically how they captured the history, people, daily life, music, religion, and play. In just a matter of an hours, students had a sense of the poverty and riches of family, the rural and city life, principles of Buddhism, food staples, and the vast music of Cambodia. Students drew connections to their own stories of family, religion, food, and music.
And then we met Loung Ung, who had a story to tell us. In “Writing the Truth,” Ung talks about surviving the killing fields of Cambodia when 1.7 million Cambodians died at the hands of Pol Pit and the Khmer Rouge regime. Ung was born in 1970 in Phnom Penh, and by 1978, the Khmer Rouge had killed her parents and two of her siblings; she was forced to train to be a child soldier. In this clip, Ung talks about the “four little words” that prompted her to write the memoir, First They Killed My Father, published in 2000.
As we read Ung’s memories in First They Killed My Father, students continued to write their own stories, and we continued pursuing the beautiful problem of sharing our memories with others: on one hand, someone is trusting us with their story, but on the other hand, having told our own memories, we know those memories like ours are always partial. So it is not really about reading a story but about bearing witness to their remembering and in that process feeling empathy for another human being.
When we think about someone, a survivor, who willingly relives trauma or perhaps really witnesses for the first time in storytelling, we can think about the reader as one who is that survivor’s companion. In other words, the reader is a secondary witness, also bearing witness to the events, trauma, atrocity seeking an understanding of that which is unimaginable and, perhaps, unknowable, but no less impacts a way of being in the world.
Reading Wounds. To help us think about this concept, and by “us” I mean ELA (English Language Arts) 8th graders, we read a post on a blog “Talking Wounds” that summarizes several points that I first read in Shoshana Felman’s Testimony. This blog is written by visual artist Marilene Oliver and human rights philosopher Sophie Oliver who collaborate on a project that “seeks to explore ways of ethically discussing and representing human rights atrocities.” Below are excerpts from the post that I read with students:
The plea of the survivor, then, is to be heard, it is a request that we, who did not have to suffer the trauma of the surviving the Holocaust, bear witness to the witnesses of atrocity. It is a request that was for a long time painfully denied, but which has in recent years found itself at the heart of a burgeoning interest in trauma and, along with it, an emerging ethics of witnessing.
To witness then, is no solitary act; the wound that talks always seeks the secondary witness that will hear it.
We commit also to partake of an ethics of listening by which we are positioned first and foremost as witnesses to the witness. Through this commitment we acknowledge our responsibility of recognition towards the original witness who, like so many of those survivors of the holocaust who have so graciously given us the gift of their terrible stories, are no longer there to tell their stories, but whose wounds nonetheless continue to speak, and must continue to be heard.
Reading as witnessing, then, brings ethics into the classroom including conversations about our responsibility to recognize distant others as human beings, aligning or positioning ourselves alongside them. I realize this is heavy for middle schoolers, but they can do it. They want to do it. They want to know that what we do in reading class matters beyond a grade.
Seminar: When we read the first chapter of First They Killed My Father, we read for narratorial style primarily. I wanted students to see the storytelling — the writing as crafted with sensory language, imagery, thoughts, feelings and observations, dialogue, poetic language, and perspective. Students heard the voice of five-year old Loung, and they saw how she representing herself as a precocious, middle class, tomboy-ish child who can’t seem to please her mother but shares a special bond with her father. Students began a text-based discussion journal to note aspects of the story that they though were worth discussing based on their writing and research on Cambodia. After reading, students converted their notes into interpretive questions, and we held a fishbowl/Socratic seminar to explore how we were making sense of Ung’s memoir drawing upon some of our experiences writing and sharing our stories.
This was messy, complicated, beautiful work — negotiating “what happened” with how Ung was rendering her memory. Sympathy or “feeling sorry for” comes easily when reading about atrocities. Empathy or “imagining what one must be feeling” is more difficult if not impossible. It is natural to react to graphic scenes with shock and awe, but in doing so, we may feel like voyeurs or sense we are watching a spectacle. The compassionate action, however, can be in first becoming conscious of our reactions and then shifting our stance to read as a privilege. In other words, because we are reading, the story endures with or through us, and we have closed the distance between us and them.
The “Test”: It has been years since I gave a multiple choice test for many reasons, but the main reason is because I think literature defies measurement by letters or blanks. I have found that after any extended period of discussion and reading that students really want an opportunity to sit down and make sense of what they are learning and thinking. So after we finish some sort of “unit” together, I set aside three days for students to just write. All they need is paper, pens, pencils, and a snack. I read their “test” as they write, “assessing” as we go so that I can see what they are thinking, clarify any ideas, ask follow up questions, show them I care what they think, and not take any papers home to grade. Here is the “test” for our work with writing memories, reading wounds, and navigating sympathy in seminar:
Part 1, Themes: We know from the video clip that we watched at the beginning of this unit that Loung Ung decided to write her childhood memoir the moment she heard Pol Pot died in 1998. She told us that she wanted the world to know what this man had done, so she visited her child self and witnessed her life from age five to age ten. In her memoir, she has messages about many subjects in life. In literature, we call what she has to say about these subjects “themes.” A theme is s judgment or an opinion about a topic based on experience and observation. Below are three (3) subjects that the book explores. Choose one and talk about the themes related to this subject. In other words, discuss what Loung’s message to readers is on that subject.
Subject: Family – There are some questions and pages to get you started; use evidence from the text to support your answer so that I can understand what in the story leads you to think, believe, or conclude.
- Loung, Kim, and Chou find a “new family” (page 228). What does family mean here? What is a foster family? Loung uses the expression (page 229) “a family of convenience.” Very quickly Loung’s attitude changes toward her new family. On page 240, she says that she hates them. Why? The children leave this family and (page 247) join a new family. Do these people treat them better? Is it really a new family for them?
- Loung unites with some family members only to separate again when they go to Vietnam, Thailand, and America. Thinking about the entire memoir, how did the meaning of family change for Loung over the five years, and what, in the end, is Loung’s message to her readers/listeners/secondary witnesses about family?
Subject: Revenge – Here are some passages and pages to get you started.
- The subject of revenge occurs throughout the book. Examples will be found on pages 142, 156, 168, 251, and 277. In some of these Loung states that hatred is keeping her alive. How? Against whom does she wish to take revenge?
- Is the Angkar afraid of children? See page 159. Why?
- A brutal execution is described in the chapter called “the execution” which begins on page 264. Does Loung experience any emotion? How is this the same or different that the way she is telling the entire story as a child narrator? Is this revenge? Is this justice? What is the difference?
- Why did Loung write this book? Is it her revenge? In the end, what is Loung’s message to her readers/listeners/secondary witnesses about revenge?
Subject: Hunger
- Explain the role that food, or lack thereof, plays in the tactics or strategies of the Khmer Rouge to control the people.
- How did Loung’s family try to survive starvation? Include specific examples from the text.
- In several instances Loung steals food. See pages 118 and 203. How are these two instances the same or different? Discuss her attitude to each incident.
Part 2, The Craft of Remembering:
Loung has chosen a very simple way to tell her story. What is it? Is a chronological plan the only way her story could have been told? How does the simplicity of the storytelling add power to the story? Throughout the book we are aware that we are seeing the events through the eyes of a child. What impact does this have on you as a secondary witness to the events?
First They Killed My Father is a work of non-fiction, but in several places some text in italics have been added. Scan the text for these places and discuss what is similar about when she chooses to use this form of text. Are these additions to the text successful or does it bring up issues with truth-telling? Would you classify these additions as fiction or non-fiction?
Another author, Patricia McCormick, used personal experiences of survivors to write a novel – fiction. Survivors told her their stories, and then she rendered or told them in a fictional story called Never Fall Down. Not all survivors were as good at writing as Loung Ung, so they relied on a professional writer like Patricia McCormick to tell their story. In this case, McCormick was the secondary witness, and the reader/listener is like a tertiary or third witness – more distance from the truth. Think about Tree Girl. This was an example of a Maya girl who told her story to a famous author, who then turned it into fiction. Here is the question: In drawing attention to a particular event, is fiction or nonfiction the most powerful? Discuss your answer with reference to other books you have read yourself or studied in school.
Part 3, Filling in the fissures with other texts: Use the article from Choices Curriculum and your notes from Ung’s book to respond to these questions.
Who was Pol Pot, and how did he gain political power? Use examples from the text to support your response.
Looking at the article about the Cambodian genocide. How much did the American presence (or lack thereof) influence key events in this book? What was the United States’ response? Why?
Part 4, Bearing Witness and Being a Secondary Witness: Look at the article about this subject,”Talking Wounds,” thinking about Loung Ung’s story, and thinking about your own memoir/personal narrative writing, discuss this question:
What does it mean to witness and to be a secondary witness? Talk about your experiences witnessing your own life and being a secondary witness to Loung Ung’s (as well to the lives of your classmates’ – the ones whose stories you’ve heard)?
As a secondary witness, someone who did not actually see the events but must rely on someone else’s account, we do have to consider what parts might be “less true.” For example, members of a Cambodia cultural group called the Khmer Institute read the book and say this, among other things:
To further impress her readers, Ung actually goes so far as to claim to have shot an AK-47 (142). To be only seven years old and malnourished and still capable of firing an AK-47, a weapon that is even difficult for a full grown adult inexperienced in its use to manage, Ung had to have had superhuman strength.[23] The Khmer Rouge were extremists, but it is hardly believable that they would give such an important and valuable piece of weaponry to a little girl at a time when they were killing people with axes and machetes in order to save bullets. Finally, keeping in mind Ung’s constant refrain about how the Khmer Rouge did not trust and hated light-skinned people, why would they then give such a weapon to a light-skinned girl? She explains, “They think I am one of them, one of the pure base children”; but how could they if she is so different in appearance that, as the reader is often reminded, she is constantly discriminated against?
Other passages equally throw into question whether the story is being truly presented from a child’s perspective or from the perspective of someone writing it twenty years later. In one passage the author recounts: “Twelve months since I said good-bye to Kim, seventeen months since the soldiers took Pa away, twenty-one months since Keav… in my world where there are so many things I don’t understand, counting dates is the only sane thing I know to do” (152). With all the suffering and hunger she has to endure, it seems very odd that a little child would be able to remember dates so accurately. For a person who is pre-occupied with survival and for whom every day is the same miserable existence – without time out for weekends or holidays and without a calendar – remembering dates would be incredibly difficult even for an adult. It is remarkable that such a small child in Cambodia had done so or would even care to do so.[37] Knowing what you know about writing personal stories, about looking back, witnessing the event again from a more grown-up point of view and sharing your story, do you think the problems the Khmer institute has with Ung’s book take away from its truth or not?
Reading and writing memories invites into the classroom the beautiful problem of remembering. Stories, like memories, are always partial. When we tell our memories, the stories of our lives, they are in the process of becoming, and in that there is truth. I found that when reading about lives that seem quite distant from our own, thinking about stories as memories we are witnessing and reading as listening can minimize tendencies to other the unfamiliar. The ELA classroom can cultivate a culture of compassion.