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Letter from Joyce Archives
Look for the February 2004 release of The Usual Rules in paperback!
January 11, 2007
Dear Friends,
A little over a year ago, a letter arrived from an almost-twelve-year old girl in Maine, who wrote to tell me how much she had loved my novel, The Usual Rules. When I wrote back, she mentioned how she wished I could visit her school some day. So I presented her with a challenge. "If you can convince your English teacher to assign my new Young Adult novel, The Cloud Chamber, to your seventh grade class next year," I told Samantha, "I'll come and visit your school."
This fall, Samantha wrote back to tell me that the sixth graders at Lincoln Middle School in Portland Maine would be reading The Cloud Chamber in class. And so, two days ago, I flew to Portland to make good on my promise. Yesterday I spent the day with Sammi and her classmates, talking about my books for young readers (Clould Chamber and Usual Rules), but also about being a writer, and why I write: one large reason being, to connect with readers; to feel less alone, and to help someone else out there feel similarly less alone.
I went to Sammi's school to talk with kids not just about my writing, but about theirs. In particular, my goal was to address the same issue that is a theme of The Cloud Chamber, and one that has been a theme in my writing life: the damaging effects of silences and secret-keeping, in families, and my bone-deep belief that the way to a more authentic and less burdened life lies in talking about the elephant in the living room, not stepping around him as if he didn't exist.
I also wanted to inspire the kids at Lincoln Middle School (as i hope to do, wherever I go) in the great value, not to mention the joy, of telling one's own story, in a way that will help those around us understand us better. As happy as I am to see kids reading passionately, whatever the material may be, it has struck me that the great popularity of fantasy fiction, for young readers in particular, has tended to encourage a kind of writing that may not be as rewarding in the end: namely, fanatastical stories, instead of the stuff that young people know best, which is their own struggles and challengese, their own lives. Those are things all of us -- parents and fellow kids, alike -- need to understand better.
Whenever I go to a school, as I did yesterday, kids tell me their lives are boring. Nothing important enough to write about. Nothing interesting ever happened to them. Then I start asking questions, and within seconds, the stories come out. Yesterday, a thirteen year old boy (who claimed he had nothing in his life worth writing about) told me about how, every day after school, he goes home to take care of his mother, who suffers from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. (Asked to describe how he goes about cooking the chicken he prepares for the family, he explained his method of cutting the breast in half and opening it up, "so it's shaped like a heart". Only once his jobs around the house are done -- and if his mom's comfortable -- is he finally free to go out and play basketball. )
There was a girl whose mother's boyfriend had hit her, and a boy whose mother never actually told him she was dying, just sat him down -- a few days before her death -- to say, "You need to get to know your older sister better now." There was a boy whose mom went to jail for drunk driving that left the passenger in another car paralyzed, and (because not all stories are tragic and terrible, thankfully) there were other kids, too, with smaller stories -- but equally valuable ones -- about parents and brothers and sisters and friendship, and the death of a pet, or a grandparent.
One group of students at the school offered a particular challenge, that day, and a particularly valuable source of enlightenment. They were the group of students whose families have come to Maine, from their native Somalia, to escape the raveages of political upheaval, violence and poverty. Most of them are still in a special group, called ELL, working on very basic English skills -- and the fact that their English is still pretty limited, and that they dress so differently, have so little common basis of cultural heritage, or history, has made for a certain separation between the native Mainers, among the students, and the Somalian group. But no assembly in which such a group was present, gathered, as mine was, to explore the value of personal storytelling, would have been complete without raising the question: What happened in your country, that brought you all these thousands of miles away from Africa, to this cold New England state? To my shame -- and it was shared by most of the native-born Americans in the room that day -- none of us really knew the answer to that question (though the Somali students had been attending that school for a few years now.)
So we talked about that too. One boy told us -- in halting English -- that a friend had been killed, for no reason, while this boy was standing next to him. He was not alone, among the Somalis, in having witnessed the violent death of a person he knew. And as hard as it was for these students to convey even a tiny part of their stories to the rest of us, and as incomplete as our understanding continues to be, of what they have lived through, I like to think that all of us -- students and teachers -- learned some important things, that day, about walking in another person's shoes before judging or simply ignoring him.
It was a long, full day, listening to all the stories the seventh graders at Lincoln Middle School had to share with me. I wouldn't have missed a minute of it.
This morning, I woke up in my hotel room in Maine to read the note sent to me, by email, from Sammi Walker, the young girl who had invited me to her school, all those months back. Her letter made my day, as you may understand, when you read it. At the risk of appearing self serving here, I want to share it with you -- because really, the praise she offers me is not so much for myself as it is for a way of relating and connecting in the world that I believe in and want to encourage, in what I write.
It’s a letter I will keep, to remind me why I do what I do. If each of us truly understood the stories of the people around us, my guess is there would be a lot less anger, bitterness and jealousy in our world, and more compassion.
With friendship,
Dear Joyce,
Today, was a day of realization and appreciation. Appreciationfor my classmates, appreciation for you. Until today, until youstepped into my life, I looked at the kids in my class, well basically as just the kids in my class. Today, I watched 13-year-olds open up, spill out things about their lives that were a mystery to most of us -- to a complete stranger.You have three amazing gifts. The skill of putting simple words on a page and converting them to a powerful message. The second being the ability to be honest, understand and people and the fact that nothing is perfect. I admire that you see your flaws, and are okay with sharing the mistakes that you've made, and giving everybody a chance. The third being your gentle nature your ability to comfort children struggling with adult problems and giving them hope. I think one of the most powerful things you did today was talk to the ELL's about their lives in their home country. That is the first time since I started Lincoln that someone voluntarily came out and laid the truth on the table.
Every single teen in that gym had so much respect so much sympathy for those kids. That was the end of mocking. So many kids felt you reach out -- suddenly they had the yearning to let you know their every problem, it is only once in a great while that you come across someone who can literally change the way kids see every person around them. I was just so happy for B. today, he came up to grasping The Usual Rules, with a smile on his face. One that hadn't shone for a long time, "Thank you for getting her to come here," he said.
He felt the connection like someone understood his pain, he needed that. I have learned so much from meeting you. Things I will never ever forget.
Continue to write, with your heart, and I promise with all my heart to always be a faithful reader, and a faithful writer. Every time I start a story I will think of you. And what you taught and how you taught with your soul -- I am officially inspired. On behalf of everyone at Lincoln, thank you. And, a special thanks from me... since I need something after thanks and I've already used the word appreciate about 20 times now I'll just say it in spanish: Gracias (x10).
Your friend,
Sammi
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