Recently the students of Lake Washington Girls Middle School were treated to a visit from Nancy Rawles, noted playwright and author. Her books "Love Like Gumbo," "Crawfish Dreams" and "My Jim" all draw upon a lifetime of involvement with civil rights, race, poverty and gender issues. She was, therefore, the ideal speaker to conclude the school's quarter dedicated to understanding the causes and devastation of genocides throughout the world.
Prior to the visit, each student had wrestled with Elie Wiesel's holocaust testimony "Night," George Orwell's "Animal Farm'" and presented an in-depth group project on either Rwanda, Guatemala, Cambodia or Nazi Germany: all meaty subjects for 12-year-olds. However, their maturity and ability to put things into perspective was surprising.
Together with Rawles, the students mulled the philosophic issues of how and why humankind repeats such bestial acts throughout history. Much was jammed into the morning lecture, including a short creative writing session with students standing up to proudly read their works. But the chapter read aloud from the book entitled "Slave" by Mende Nazer, a personal tale of being stolen from her native Sudan and transported against her will to modern day London, particularly hit a note with the group. The thank-you note to Rawles from Hannah Keyes said it all:
"I found it really weird that here in the 21st. century there are still slaves. It seems horrible that anybody would have a slave now. The [part] that you read to us from "Slave" sounded interesting. I'm planning on reading [the book] soon. I was also planning on reading the book that you wrote, "My Jim." When you said that you took your book to Mende Nazer to read and to [critique], you must have been a little nervous. But all that she said after reading it was "How did you know?" That must have felt wonderful."
Nancy Rawles did much more than just stand in front of a group and read aloud. Her understated mannerisms in no way diminished her presence. She shared writing techniques, personal goals and her own fear of rejection. She was impressive, and the students were riveted.
It is hard to know what will inspire people to read more or write for pleasure and risk using more complex and challenging vocabulary, whether it's for everyday use or for a submission to a poetry competition. Goodness knows that, as a populace, our writing skills have slumped into blandness.
The telephone and e-mail have almost completely erased the necessity to sit down and formulate our thoughts; to put them down on paper, scratch and scrawl indecipherable modifications and then rewrite the final draft, luxuriating in our prose and imagining the emotions of the recipient. Before these modern communication conveniences, the wait for a reply was long, sometimes very long.
I am not wallowing in nostalgia here, but the immediacy of our modern tools is also its Achilles heel. We say things on the phone without reflecting, but at least we have the benefit of listening to a person's reaction. Via e-mail, we often hit "send" without stopping to re-read our own words and have no way to gauge the reaction they will cause. In our insatiable desire to "do more" with our time, we skimp on vocabulary and increasingly adopt cryptic shorthand in the name of efficiency.
I applaud Nancy Rawles for seeing the value in going into small groups and sharing her powerful writing skills. There is no doubt that she reached all the students in the room on Wednesday and inspired them to write and read more and to choose subjects with content.
Student Ellie Jajewski had the proverbial last word;
"I like when you read from the books "Slave" and from "My Jim." I also enjoyed hearing you sing the Spanish song and telling us about the song too. It was fascinating but depressing at the same time. I had never heard about you until you came to visit our school. I really want to read your book "My Jim." I thought you were wonderful and I hope you can come visit our school again."
Mount Baker based writer and photographer Jacqui James may be contacted via editor@sdistrictjournal.com.
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