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The GoodLetter Thursday, November 21, 2002
GoodThings, Inc. :: Stories, actions,
ideas, and greeting cards that connect us.
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Greeting Card of the Week
Holiday Card Offer: Be mine
Thanks to all of you who took advantage of our special holiday card offer last week. From now through the end of the year, if you order a pack of GoodThings holiday cards from the top row of cards (see below), you'll get the GoodThings Valentine's Day card below it as a free bonus. Simplify your life and your card buying -- send a few GoodThings holiday cards this year and get a unique Valentine's Day card well in advance. Cash-strapped this holiday season? Few things are as meaningful as sharing a heartfelt card with your friends and family. And, of course, every card you send helps us continue to foster awareness of progressive actions and ideas around the world. (We print all our cards on recycled paper using soy ink.)
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This Week's Feature
A Child's World
A GoodThings interview with Deborah Ellis, author of Parvana's Journey
A children's author with a passion for peace talks about her experiences collecting the courageous stories of women and children in war-torn Afghanistan and makes a powerful case for why every child should have chance to read them.
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Author Deborah Ellis near the GoodThings offices in Seattle
Dear GoodLetter readers,
In late 2001, as the eyes of a bewildered world turned to Afghanistan, readers of all ages found solace in a simple but powerful children's book called The Breadwinner, by the award-winning Canadian author Deborah Ellis. The Breadwinner followed an eleven-year-old girl named Parvana through the embattled streets of Taliban-era Kabul. Her father imprisoned and her mother limited by the restrictions placed on women by the fundamentalist government, Parvana is forced to support her family by impersonating a young boy to earn money in the city's markets. In The Breadwinner, Ellis painted a vivid, hopeful, authentic picture of human beings in a place that most of us couldn't even imagine but was now front and center on the global stage. All proceeds from sales of the book have helped to fund educational programs for Afghan women and girls.
Recently, we had the great privilege to speak with Deborah Ellis while she was here in Seattle to promote her new book and the sequel to The Breadwinner, Parvana's Journey (Groundwood Books, September 2002).
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GoodThings (GTS): Parvana's Journey, the sequel to The Breadwinner, was published in September. How has the new book been received?
Deborah Ellis (DE): It's been received really well in Canada. There's been a high expectation for it among a lot of kids. It hit the #2 spot on the Canadian bestseller list shortly after it came out in September. It's done quite well in the US, as well. I haven't spoken to as many kids in the US but have gotten a lot of letters from American children. It's intended for 8-14 year olds, but a lot of adults and teens are also reading it because it's a good introduction to what's going on in Afghanistan.
GTS: Why do you believe it is important to tell the story of Afghanistan to children? Why not tell a child's story in a book written expressly for adults?
DE: Well, I did write a book about Afghanistan for adults (Women of the Afghan War), but when I was in Afghanistan and heard the story of the girl who was masquerading as a boy, I just knew The Breadwinner was a children's story. It seemed to me to make much more sense to write a book about children for children than to write a book where adults are simply peering in on children's lives in a voyeuristic way. I hadn't intended to write a book for children when I went over there.
GTS: What might you say to a parent about the difficult subject matter? It's difficult for adults, much less a child. What do you say to a child who says "What can I do"?
DE: I hear that question a lot from kids. My answer is to parents to live by example. If your children see you acting against war in any of the many ways you can act against war for the benefit of the planet or for other people, then they're not in a powerless situation. People only feel powerless when there's nothing they can do to change a situation, but when we show our kids that there is a way to change things, that we're not simply stuck with it. If we choose to do nothing, it means we're teaching our kids to be passive. We have a good chance right now to set an example for our children, to show them we're acting against war, because any minute now, your government and mine are set to go to war with Iraq. Where do we stand with that? Why are going to allow it to happen?
GTS: If you aren't a person who's thinking critically about what's happening in the world, it might be possible to read your book as war propaganda or as justification for us being involved in a violent way over there.
DE: That was a big worry last fall when The Breadwinner was selling so widely and people were learning about the Taliban. But certainly, the book is anti-war book. I think you put things out there with the best mind you can and try to counteract any nonsense that rises around them.
GTS: Have you been involved in any efforts to connect kids in North America with kids in Afghanistan?
DE: We have been setting schools in Canada up with schools in the refugee camps in Pakistan and with schools opening up again in Afghanistan. Kids can exchange letters or a classroom can send a banner to a classroom over there. And certainly schools are taking on raising money for an Afghan class or school as a school project.
GTS: Have your books been incorporated into any school curricula to allow for exploration of larger educational issues?
DE: Well, I know that a Jewish school board some place in the US is using it as part of their curriculum. And another school for autistic children is using The Breadwinner as a reading exercise to teach empathy and cultural awareness.
GTS: Have parents asked about the subject matter being scary? The Harry Potter series has scary content, but a parent can always say, "This is make-believe." But in your books, these are very real scenarios. Do parents often ask for advice about how they might help their children deal with some of the emotional issues?
DE: There certainly are some disturbing scenes in the book. A lot of parents choose to read it with their children, and a lot of teachers read it with their classes. I think we should not underestimate children's capacities to absorb and understand this stuff. They see it in movies, they see it on the news. It's all around them. I don't think we should deny them the opportunity to know what's going on in the world. Also, real children live in these kinds of environments. On the one hand, we're saying children like Parvana are different -- which they are -- but on the other hand, we're tacitly saying it's OK for those children not to have access to basic human needs. It's a strange kind of global hypocrisy, protecting some kids while forgetting about others.
GTS: The whole point of art is to help connect people. If children aren't connecting on that deep level, what happens when they're adults?
DE: Exactly. One of my hopes is that children will keep Parvana in the backs of their minds when they grow up and make decisions on how they elect officials on whether or not they're going to go to war, and make decisions on that, when they make decisions about their employment. Are they going to work in an arms factory, are they going to design weapons -- what they are going to do with their lives? I hope they can remember that underneath all those bombs, there are kids just like Parvana and that the decisions they make have a real impact on people's lives that we don't even know. And the things we let our governments get away with have implications down the road, too.
All of this sounds really heavy-handed when I'm talking about it, but when I was writing, I wasn't really thinking about all of that so much. I was just trying to get the story right.
GTS: Talk a little about the organization to which royalties from book sales will be directed -- Women for Women in Afghanistan (WWFA). I know their focus is on improving educational opportunities for Afghan girls. What specific programs are they working on for women and children in Afghanistan?
DE: Royalties have been used to fund all kinds of projects, including setting up women's centers in the refugee camps. These are places where women go to get literacy training, job skills, being with each and talking with each other, get day care, and all kinds of stuff. Some of it is going to fund schools in Afghanistan and in the refugee camps. It's funded other job-training projects -- teaching kids how to run computers, local crafts, cooperative income-generating projects. It's funding hands-on projects. It's not heavy in bureaucracy. We're trying to get as much money to as many people as possible in as many useful ways as possible. We've employed a lot of teachers and bought a lot of books.
We've held three public events -- two in Vancouver and one in Toronto -- to raise money for a new library in Kabul. All the governments in Afghanistan have loved burning books for ages. It's one of their favorite activities, and the country is almost vacant of books. To have a library again is going to be unbelievable.
GTS: Do you find that those kinds of programs -- very much at the grassroots, apart from wading through red tape -- are the kinds of things that are most important for people in Afghanistan? Help me understand how women in Afghanistan will get access to these constructive programs.
DE: Well, these kinds of projects are what WWFA has already been doing. They reach out to poorest of the poor, the most needy, the ones who can benefit most. These are people who have been on the ground, doing the work for years. They know what they're doing and can get the job done. There's been a lot of aid that goes into Afghanistan and goes to the government and doesn't make it to real people. Many governments are forgetting their commitments. We're a small organization that wants to fund small projects with a human touch. They know us, we know them, we can communicate and talk to each other. We can find out what they really need. We know each other's families. Plus when I first wrote The Breadwinner, I didn't have any idea it would make any money. I thought I'd have a few thousand Canadian dollars and a few excited Canadian teachers and that would be it. But the royalties having been pouring in from all over the world, and we've been able to do much more than we ever dreamed.
GTS: I love when that sort of thing happens. When expectations are so low, you become amazed by what you can accomplish. Tell me a little about your career. I know you're a mental health residential counselor -- how did you end up writing?
DE: Well, I've been writing for many, many years, and most of the books I've turned out have been really awful [laughs]. But you train yourself and you get better. And then I wrote a children's book called Looking for X that won a Governor General's Literary Award in Canada, which is a big deal. And I've been an anti-war activist since I was 17. I got involved in Afghanistan issues, and one of the ways that I thought I could be useful would be to collect stories of women over there, talking about what's happened to them since the 1979 Soviet invasion. So I did that, and when I was over there, I got the idea for the children's book. One thing led to another thing.
GTS: Do you find there's ever any opportunity to connect what you've done as a writer with what you're doing as a mental-health professional?
DE: For years, I didn't talk about my writing with the residents. I viewed them as separate. But then that kind of got blown out of the water last fall with the success of The Breadwinner, and the residents all found out about "my secret life." Since then, I've started doing creative-writing workshops with mentally ill women in Toronto. It's been a real joy. So I'm starting to blend the two worlds.
GTS: What are you working on now?
DE: There's one more book in the series that I'm inches away from completing. It follows Shauzia from The Breadwinner and is set during the same time period as Parvana's Journey.
I have another novel for children that's now in stores called A Company of Fools, published by Fitzhenry & Whiteside. It takes places in 1348 in France during the time of the Black Death. There are so many parallels to Parvana's situation and to the AIDS crisis. It's about two choir boys who live in a monastery outside of Paris, and they get together with some monks and form a company of fools, and they go out among the people with the plague and entertain them as they are dying. It's my favorite book so far. It turned out to be such a fun book to write, even though it deals with death.
The Middle Ages were such a crazy time. People thought the world was coming to an end. They wore pointed shoes and had all these crazy notions. One of the boys in the book is a real outsider, a street kid, and his friend has lived in a monastery all his life. The book asks a lot of questions about how we view life. Is it something to be angry at or is it something to celebrate?
GTS: Your books describe the underground efforts of women in Afghanistan, particularly in journalism. Were such underground presses an important part of the resistance in Afghanistan? How have writers in Afghanistan used the written word to effect change?
DE: I think we don't really understand the power of the written word until we have it taken away from us or until we're around people who have had it taken away from them. When I was in the camps and I met the most courageous women on the face of the earth. They'd go into Afghanistan and smuggle cameras in under their burkhas and take photographs of atrocities and hear people's stories in order to smuggle them out and print them in a magazine and risk their lives again smuggling the magazines back in. You really get a sense of what it means to have stories written down and to be able to tell those stories and have people read them and have that connection with other people that way.
The stories of the women publishing underground that appear in The Breadwinner are absolutely accurate. It's not only adult women, but children who are participating in those activities, as well. It gives you a sense of what people are capable of.
GTS: You have to have a strong belief in what the written word can do to put yourself out there like that, to make that kind of effort. You have to really believe that people are going to take what you publish and do something with it.
DE: I think we come to a line in ourselves where we understand who we are and what it takes to remain who we are, and I think the women who did this came to that line. It's such an act of faith, not knowing if the magazine will fall into the wrong hands, not knowing if they'll make it through, but believing so strongly that they needed to do this to continue regarding themselves as human beings. It's the root of that question of who we are and how we act in the face of such oppression. They gave me a great deal of hope in realizing that we also have choices, even if those choices are greatly limited by our circumstances. What I hope to be able to do with my book is to cultivate in children the power of choice and the fact that they have choices. We don't just have to lie down and take what is thrown at us. When I do my talks, I try to challenge children to challenge their parents. We're likely heading into a time of war, and we should be talking at the dinner table about how we feel about it and what we're going to do about it.
GTS: Have your books been translated around the world? Is there any distribution in Afghanistan? Are Afghan girls getting an opportunity to see themselves portrayed as strong characters and people?
DE: Oh, yes! Looking for X has been translated into Spanish and Japanese. The Breadwinner and Parvana's Journey are all over the place -- Croatia, Italy, Greece, Norway, Denmark, France, India, Spain, South America, Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, Germany, everywhere!
GTS: Is it possible to translate the books for kids in Afghanistan? Can it be used to set positive examples for Afghan girls?
DE: A lot of the girls in the refugee camps who can be educated were being educated to learn English, so we've sent a lot of copies of The Breadwinner over there, and we're looking forward to feedback from them. People like to see themselves reflected in literature, no matter what part of their being it reflects. I'm hoping they can be translated into Dari, which is a Persian language, and into Pashtu.
GTS: We're going to read the books to our daughters, and my wife wants to read the books in her women's book group. Have you heard anecdotes of how the book as been shared among women?
DE: Yes! It's been used in a lot in local book clubs, mother-daughter book clubs, kids' book clubs at school, in churches, and in community centers. It's such an honor for me.
GTS: They're such perfect books for families to share. You can't be an adult and not get something out of it.
DE: Yes, and I think what's compelling about the book is that it's happening today. It's not historical but current. There's not much written about war situations while a war is going on. It's pretty powerful stuff.
What's more, it names the thing, it puts a name to people. You can't just block them out as faces on the news, as victims. They're somebody. Parvana has a sister she's upset with. She has favorite foods. She's somebody. In order to have a war, you have to dehumanize, you have to depersonalize. But when you find ways to humanize, it improves the situation at its core.
GOODTHINGS
Seattle, Washington
GoodThings editor and publisher Wood Turner interviewed Deborah Ellis for this GoodLetter.
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Good Grabs :
Headlines that teach and inspire
For the past couple of years, we've found our favorite positive or
constructive piece of world news and have featured it in our "Good Grabs" section on the GoodThings.com home page.
We've heard from many readers who've told us they'd love to see Good Grabs in The GoodLetter. So watch this space
every other week or so, and we'll tell you about a few GoodThings-esque news stories we've found during our Web wanderings.
And as always, if you have a positive headline to suggest, please let us know. It could end up here!
~~~~~~~
Community building
The Values of Good Food
(The Atlantic Monthly)
[more]
Literacy
Library for Kids Goes Online
(National Public Radio)
Raising extraordinary kids
Center Releases New Study on Kids and Commercialism
(Center for a New American Dream)
Global health
Vaccine could wipe out cervical cancer
(The Straits Times -- Singapore)
Mindful living
Simplifying the Holidays
(Washington Post)
~~~~~~~~~~
We love to hear from you about anything: ideas or situations that are inspiring you or challenging you to think, as well as
organizations, programs, and people that contribute to your community and the world everyday. Please drop us a line.
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