Along with TNTBW, and the reason I am still no further along than the middle of Chapter VIII, is that I am simultaneously reading Coates' "The Message," and a new biography of Harriet Tubman, and "El Paraiso en la otra esquina" ("The Way to Paradise") by Mario Vargas Llosa. This title of this last book refers to a children's game of "Paradise," in which the players go to different places in the yard and the person who's "It" goes from one child to another asking if where they are is paradise. "No ma'am," says the other child, "it's over there in the other corner." Meanwhile the other children keep changing places to confuse the seeker. The relevance here is the subject matter of the book - a contrast between the French painter Paul Gauguin and his grandmother Flora Tristan whom he never knew but who was an advocate for workers' and women's rights in early to mid-nineteenth century France.
For us too Paradise will always be unreachable, which is why I believe it is necessary to understand historical context when weighing up past actions and beliefs in the scales of opinion. Human nature does not change much over time, so whether it's post-revolutionary France or post-Civil War America, or today, the struggles are the same. Race and land use are the salient messages of this particular book by Berry. Knowing the past, what can we do today to make our world on this planet a better place?
For too long I have been resting with this comment, thank you for sharing. I have added "The Way to Paradise" to my reading list (ohhh, that reading list). Paradise, a term that (for me) always conjures a biblical Eden but passes just as quickly. Maybe because I don't like the word, its feeling of what ... a perfect place?
Struggle. We individually struggle and for an endless list of reasons bound in a context of experience and personal opinion. I am very much in agreement with your thoughtful consideration (I also think we need to read a book that is less shadowed in darkness just for a break). Land is at the forefront of my ruminations - how do we begin to move from destruction and large corporate management to return the land to care and small farm stewardship. I think it can be done but as you mention, "Human nature does not change much over time." And maybe what selfishly scares me with the effort is the people banging on the gates of the places where individuals have worked so hard to build community and self-sufficiency in an effort to make the "planet a better place." Will the visitors learn and expand that to communities of their own or arrive with expectations too similar to current perspectives? Such a dangerous thought pattern.
Mary Beth, as always, a great essay. Your thoughts always feel to be well formed and considered. Historical context is something I think we often forget. When I consider my grandmother's unacceptable comments about a mixed-race relationship while eating dinner in a restaurant I cringe and find her outburst unacceptable, but I also must be mindful of the historical context of her era and also not being a granddaughter who was privy to the backdrop of her emotion. I appreciate that you mention a need to understand/consider a time - after all, right and wrong is so much the crux of these conversations.
John Quincy Adams is a formidable character. Berry says:
"I know that the gavel or the sword of political correctness will fall upon the word 'Savages,' sentencing Adams to the imperfect and therefore dispensable and forgettable past. But that is only because political correctness has no historical imagination." (293)
Here we have Berry making a generalized statement, something he has been telling the reader not to do for p a g e s. What I admire is that you, and Berry, are making a point of looking backwards to understand the forward of now.
"He was not a perfect man by the measure of his time or ours." (292)
This chapter is my favorite, perhaps because it introduced me to Ernest Gaines. Somewhere along the way I had added two books by Gaines to my library - A Gathering of Old Men and A Lesson Before Dying. I had not read either of them, thanks to Berry I have now read both and will read more. What a gift!
As I reread this chapter it makes me want to go out and work in my yard. Although I pay someone to do most of my yardwork these days, as I read I remember how I feel after a day of yard work: dirty and tired but also renewed. Maybe the human body is built to work and both body and mind suffer when we don’t work.
To Berry’s point about our attitudes toward work, farm work in particular, I have a friend who is the pastor of an African-American church in a rural community in eastern North Carolina. When he arrived at the church twenty-five years ago he was troubled by the physical health of his parishioners, both old and young. Obesity, diabetes, heart and kidney disease, and other chronic illnesses were endemic. Most of the illness was related to diet. The community, as are most rural communities in eastern NC, is the in the middle of a food desert. The nearest full-line grocery store is more than ten miles away.
After many funerals of people to young to die, he was driven to address the problem with more than eulogies and Sunday morning sermons. So, he started a healthy eating initiative in concert with a gardening project. To begin the garden he enlisted the help of his parishioners and the broader community, especially local youth. What began as a small garden plot has now become a hundred plus acre vegetable farm along with beehives and honey production. It is mostly a volunteer effort supported by grants and money produced by the sale of honey. The majority of produce is distributed in the community on a pay as you can basis. The positive effect that it has had on the individual health and well-being, as well community cohesion is amazing.
Tying this farming project to Berry’s thoughts on our cultural attitudes toward agrarian labor: one of the surprising negative responses my friend encountered as he was attempting to get the project started was the opposition of many older people. He saw the involvement of youth a key to the success of the project. However, his recruitment and involvement of the youth was seen by many older people as an effort to teach youth how to do “slave work.” So as the project continued to grow he also doubled down on his community education efforts on both the social and health benefits of the project. Although he does not hear that criticism spoken these days, he says he knows it is still an underlying attitude with a remnant of the folks.
What you share is a story of perseverance, stories that we need to hear that remind of possibilities - both of how to do work even within a place that holds a deeply held criticism. This begs the right or wrong question even if, to me, constructing gardens/happy feels/effort of work/personal health feels so obviously right. Yet, there exists another perspective which can't be discarded. The pessimist in me wonders if those who speak against benefit from, while the optimist in me hopes that they do and it changes opinion.
A new book in my reading stack is from Gaines. I'm reading Ta-Nehisi Coates currently. Both are Berry references. I appreciate how Coates speaks of words and perspective. One idea that continues to work like a brain worm is the censorship of words by banning books, the use of media, etc. Somehow, this ties into our individual opinions and the space we take to support our own morals and values.
“Much of the current hoopla about ‘book bans’ and ‘censorship’ get it wrong. This is not about me or any writer of the moment. It is about writers to come - the boundaries of their imagination, the angle of their thinking, the depth of their questions.” (110, The Message)
As always, thank you for being a part of the conversation.
It is not a perfect book but I believe it offers a real conversation about how to use words and frame ideas around topics that are uncomfortable and confrontational. Of course, I am a proponent of community/neighborhood, less economic reliance, and self sustainability.
If you are a writer who like to write notes and mark up books then buy a copy. I broke the spine last week.
Along with TNTBW, and the reason I am still no further along than the middle of Chapter VIII, is that I am simultaneously reading Coates' "The Message," and a new biography of Harriet Tubman, and "El Paraiso en la otra esquina" ("The Way to Paradise") by Mario Vargas Llosa. This title of this last book refers to a children's game of "Paradise," in which the players go to different places in the yard and the person who's "It" goes from one child to another asking if where they are is paradise. "No ma'am," says the other child, "it's over there in the other corner." Meanwhile the other children keep changing places to confuse the seeker. The relevance here is the subject matter of the book - a contrast between the French painter Paul Gauguin and his grandmother Flora Tristan whom he never knew but who was an advocate for workers' and women's rights in early to mid-nineteenth century France.
For us too Paradise will always be unreachable, which is why I believe it is necessary to understand historical context when weighing up past actions and beliefs in the scales of opinion. Human nature does not change much over time, so whether it's post-revolutionary France or post-Civil War America, or today, the struggles are the same. Race and land use are the salient messages of this particular book by Berry. Knowing the past, what can we do today to make our world on this planet a better place?
For too long I have been resting with this comment, thank you for sharing. I have added "The Way to Paradise" to my reading list (ohhh, that reading list). Paradise, a term that (for me) always conjures a biblical Eden but passes just as quickly. Maybe because I don't like the word, its feeling of what ... a perfect place?
Struggle. We individually struggle and for an endless list of reasons bound in a context of experience and personal opinion. I am very much in agreement with your thoughtful consideration (I also think we need to read a book that is less shadowed in darkness just for a break). Land is at the forefront of my ruminations - how do we begin to move from destruction and large corporate management to return the land to care and small farm stewardship. I think it can be done but as you mention, "Human nature does not change much over time." And maybe what selfishly scares me with the effort is the people banging on the gates of the places where individuals have worked so hard to build community and self-sufficiency in an effort to make the "planet a better place." Will the visitors learn and expand that to communities of their own or arrive with expectations too similar to current perspectives? Such a dangerous thought pattern.
Mary Beth, as always, a great essay. Your thoughts always feel to be well formed and considered. Historical context is something I think we often forget. When I consider my grandmother's unacceptable comments about a mixed-race relationship while eating dinner in a restaurant I cringe and find her outburst unacceptable, but I also must be mindful of the historical context of her era and also not being a granddaughter who was privy to the backdrop of her emotion. I appreciate that you mention a need to understand/consider a time - after all, right and wrong is so much the crux of these conversations.
John Quincy Adams is a formidable character. Berry says:
"I know that the gavel or the sword of political correctness will fall upon the word 'Savages,' sentencing Adams to the imperfect and therefore dispensable and forgettable past. But that is only because political correctness has no historical imagination." (293)
Here we have Berry making a generalized statement, something he has been telling the reader not to do for p a g e s. What I admire is that you, and Berry, are making a point of looking backwards to understand the forward of now.
"He was not a perfect man by the measure of his time or ours." (292)
I suspect none of us will be ...
This chapter is my favorite, perhaps because it introduced me to Ernest Gaines. Somewhere along the way I had added two books by Gaines to my library - A Gathering of Old Men and A Lesson Before Dying. I had not read either of them, thanks to Berry I have now read both and will read more. What a gift!
As I reread this chapter it makes me want to go out and work in my yard. Although I pay someone to do most of my yardwork these days, as I read I remember how I feel after a day of yard work: dirty and tired but also renewed. Maybe the human body is built to work and both body and mind suffer when we don’t work.
To Berry’s point about our attitudes toward work, farm work in particular, I have a friend who is the pastor of an African-American church in a rural community in eastern North Carolina. When he arrived at the church twenty-five years ago he was troubled by the physical health of his parishioners, both old and young. Obesity, diabetes, heart and kidney disease, and other chronic illnesses were endemic. Most of the illness was related to diet. The community, as are most rural communities in eastern NC, is the in the middle of a food desert. The nearest full-line grocery store is more than ten miles away.
After many funerals of people to young to die, he was driven to address the problem with more than eulogies and Sunday morning sermons. So, he started a healthy eating initiative in concert with a gardening project. To begin the garden he enlisted the help of his parishioners and the broader community, especially local youth. What began as a small garden plot has now become a hundred plus acre vegetable farm along with beehives and honey production. It is mostly a volunteer effort supported by grants and money produced by the sale of honey. The majority of produce is distributed in the community on a pay as you can basis. The positive effect that it has had on the individual health and well-being, as well community cohesion is amazing.
Tying this farming project to Berry’s thoughts on our cultural attitudes toward agrarian labor: one of the surprising negative responses my friend encountered as he was attempting to get the project started was the opposition of many older people. He saw the involvement of youth a key to the success of the project. However, his recruitment and involvement of the youth was seen by many older people as an effort to teach youth how to do “slave work.” So as the project continued to grow he also doubled down on his community education efforts on both the social and health benefits of the project. Although he does not hear that criticism spoken these days, he says he knows it is still an underlying attitude with a remnant of the folks.
What you share is a story of perseverance, stories that we need to hear that remind of possibilities - both of how to do work even within a place that holds a deeply held criticism. This begs the right or wrong question even if, to me, constructing gardens/happy feels/effort of work/personal health feels so obviously right. Yet, there exists another perspective which can't be discarded. The pessimist in me wonders if those who speak against benefit from, while the optimist in me hopes that they do and it changes opinion.
A new book in my reading stack is from Gaines. I'm reading Ta-Nehisi Coates currently. Both are Berry references. I appreciate how Coates speaks of words and perspective. One idea that continues to work like a brain worm is the censorship of words by banning books, the use of media, etc. Somehow, this ties into our individual opinions and the space we take to support our own morals and values.
“Much of the current hoopla about ‘book bans’ and ‘censorship’ get it wrong. This is not about me or any writer of the moment. It is about writers to come - the boundaries of their imagination, the angle of their thinking, the depth of their questions.” (110, The Message)
As always, thank you for being a part of the conversation.
I really do need to read this book. Thank you for sharing your notes.
It is not a perfect book but I believe it offers a real conversation about how to use words and frame ideas around topics that are uncomfortable and confrontational. Of course, I am a proponent of community/neighborhood, less economic reliance, and self sustainability.
If you are a writer who like to write notes and mark up books then buy a copy. I broke the spine last week.