age of sixteen. Now that I think back, I started writing on that plantation at the age of twelve. I had to be creative even then. Once the old people said, “Dear Sara, how are you? I am fine. Well, I hope you are the same,” it would take them the rest of the afternoon to finish composing that letter. So I learned to write what I thought they would like to say and to write it fast, if I wanted to join my friends and play ball or shoot marbles.
Not very long ago in Mobile, Alabama, a reporter asked me about what I thought of the minority students who did not want to study dead white writers. I told him that I learned a lot from the works of dead white writers, especially dead white European writers such as Ivan Turgenev, Anton Chekhov, and James Joyce. These are the writers whose work I studied as a student at San Francisco State in the fifties because there were no books in the curriculum by black, Asian, or Hispanic writers. And I told him I could understand the anguish of these young people for wanting to read the work of their own people. I said what the curriculum should include is works by live and dead African American writers, live and dead Asian writers, and live and dead Hispanic and Native American writers, as well as live and dead white writers.
While I was a student at Stanford in the late fifties, my writing professor, Wallace Stegner, asked me, “Who do you write for? Who do you want to read your book?” “I do not write for any particular groups, Mr. Stegner,” I said, “I have learned too much from other writers, American and European, writers who definitely were not writing for me or about me.” “Maybe not for you, Ernie, but many had a particular reader in mind. Now let’s say a gun was put to your head and that same question was asked, ‘Who do you write for?’ ” “Well, in that case, Mr. Stegner, I would probably say that I write for the black youth of the South to let them know that their lives are worth writing about, and maybe in that way I could help them find themselves.” “Suppose a gun was still at your head and you were asked for another particular group you wished to reach.” “Well, in that case I would say that I also write for the white youth of the South to let them know that unless they know their neighbor of over three hundred years, they know only half of their own history.”
A VERY BIG ORDER: RECONSTRUCTING IDENTITY
A fifteen-year-old boy is standing on a riverbank in South Louisiana with a worn-out leather suitcase at his feet and a white pocket handkerchief in his hand. There is no way he can possibly imagine what he will be forty-one years and four months later, in December of 1989.
He is tall, thin; he is worried and frightened. But he continues to stand there as steadily as his legs will allow, because he knows he must go. He must go not only for himself, but for the others as well, because he will be the first male in the history of the family to go away and finish school. It had been planned by the others—if not planned, dreamed—long, long before he was aware of it and definitely long before he was aware of who he was.
There are others about him, his brothers and friends. They are not leaving home, so they are much more relaxed: they can play, chasing one another alongside the highway and up and down the riverbank.
Where the boy stands, he can see the road from which he has just left—the quarter. He cannot see his own home—it is too far down into the quarter—so he cannot see the old people who must still be sitting out on the porch with his aunt.
An hour ago he was packing his suitcase to leave. The few pieces of clothes—two shirts or so, but no more than three; two extra pairs of pants, underclothes, and an extra pair of shoes. Then there was the food that the old people had brought him, fried chicken, bread, tea cakes, pralines, probably oranges, and some unpeeled pecans. After he had finished packing, he tied up the suitcase and looked
Not very long ago in Mobile, Alabama, a reporter asked me about what I thought of the minority students who did not want to study dead white writers. I told him that I learned a lot from the works of dead white writers, especially dead white European writers such as Ivan Turgenev, Anton Chekhov, and James Joyce. These are the writers whose work I studied as a student at San Francisco State in the fifties because there were no books in the curriculum by black, Asian, or Hispanic writers. And I told him I could understand the anguish of these young people for wanting to read the work of their own people. I said what the curriculum should include is works by live and dead African American writers, live and dead Asian writers, and live and dead Hispanic and Native American writers, as well as live and dead white writers.
While I was a student at Stanford in the late fifties, my writing professor, Wallace Stegner, asked me, “Who do you write for? Who do you want to read your book?” “I do not write for any particular groups, Mr. Stegner,” I said, “I have learned too much from other writers, American and European, writers who definitely were not writing for me or about me.” “Maybe not for you, Ernie, but many had a particular reader in mind. Now let’s say a gun was put to your head and that same question was asked, ‘Who do you write for?’ ” “Well, in that case, Mr. Stegner, I would probably say that I write for the black youth of the South to let them know that their lives are worth writing about, and maybe in that way I could help them find themselves.” “Suppose a gun was still at your head and you were asked for another particular group you wished to reach.” “Well, in that case I would say that I also write for the white youth of the South to let them know that unless they know their neighbor of over three hundred years, they know only half of their own history.”
A VERY BIG ORDER: RECONSTRUCTING IDENTITY
A fifteen-year-old boy is standing on a riverbank in South Louisiana with a worn-out leather suitcase at his feet and a white pocket handkerchief in his hand. There is no way he can possibly imagine what he will be forty-one years and four months later, in December of 1989.
He is tall, thin; he is worried and frightened. But he continues to stand there as steadily as his legs will allow, because he knows he must go. He must go not only for himself, but for the others as well, because he will be the first male in the history of the family to go away and finish school. It had been planned by the others—if not planned, dreamed—long, long before he was aware of it and definitely long before he was aware of who he was.
There are others about him, his brothers and friends. They are not leaving home, so they are much more relaxed: they can play, chasing one another alongside the highway and up and down the riverbank.
Where the boy stands, he can see the road from which he has just left—the quarter. He cannot see his own home—it is too far down into the quarter—so he cannot see the old people who must still be sitting out on the porch with his aunt.
An hour ago he was packing his suitcase to leave. The few pieces of clothes—two shirts or so, but no more than three; two extra pairs of pants, underclothes, and an extra pair of shoes. Then there was the food that the old people had brought him, fried chicken, bread, tea cakes, pralines, probably oranges, and some unpeeled pecans. After he had finished packing, he tied up the suitcase and looked
Similar Books
