
Though he outlawed television, my father sanctioned books when I was growing up. He himself was self-educated and an inveterate reader of encyclopedias, and he allowed his children free run of the town’s one-room library. That my siblings and I gravitated to books made sense.
Our only worry was getting actual books past my dad, into the house, so we could read them. Nor did we dare leave them laying about. My dad might pick up any book and beneath its cover find something to censor—pants-wearing, cursing, running around, drinking. If my dad found sin-talk, he confiscated the book.
Back then, the public library in my Georgia hometown was located between a dry cleaners and the county jail. In fact, the library and the jail shared a parking lot. The walk from parking lot to library was a kind of gauntlet. Inmates would cat-call us from barred windows.
Once inside we devoured every book in the children's section. I was obsessed by a series of YA biographies of famous people—Annie Oakley, George Washington Carver, Abraham Lincoln, Pocahontas. I was driven to learn as much as I could about how to live.
Later I was influenced by the work of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of The Yearling. I recognized myself and my geography in the boy Jody and also in Rawlings herself. In her nonfiction book Cross Creek, named for the place she lived (two hundred miles south of my place), Rawlings describes anoles.
“They are partial to a warm bed that a human has slept in and expects to sleep in again that night,” she wrote. “They have to be lifted from it by the tail, which surprises you by breaking off in your fingers.”
She called them chameleons. Chameleons I knew. Jane Austen or Charlotte Bronte never mentioned chameleons. Cross Creek was my world, canonized. I could become Rawlings.
We called them lizards. From the moment I read that one passage I never looked at lizards the same.
I learned from reading books the duration of my childhood that
Books open doors.
Books open eyes.
Books open minds.
Some people believe that art should exist because it is art and for no other reason. The sole purpose of art is to fill the world with art.
I stand on the far side of that philosophy.
I believe in art as a catalyst. I believe the medium of books is particularly suited for catalysis.
We are born on to a planet teeming with gazillions of stories. Some of those have taken over and become dominant paradigms, and sometimes the dominant narrative is oppressive. Stories can make us worse people.
And stories can make us better people. I'm all about that sentence. I believe that the purpose of story is to serve the evolution of human consciousness. A story should push us along in the bumbling journey of our soul, which is intent on learned what we were put on earth to learn.
Yes, a story should first be art. But I believe that our job as writers—or at least my job as a writer and I hope your job too—is to populate the world with stories of justice and goodwill until oppressive narratives
t
o
p
p
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You have to find stories that are big medicine and tell them.
I Hope you Beat the Latest Bid on the Writing Retreat at My Farm
I donated a few days at my farm for someone to write in peace and quiet, surrounded by grass, flowers, gardens, horses, and trees. (And the smell of sourdough bread baking in the earth oven.)
Terrain.org has some really sweet offerings in their fundraising auction here. (Hike Grand Manan with Alison Hawthorne Deming. $100)
Set Sail in My Magical Craft
My online course Magical Craft of Creative Nonfiction leaves the harbor soon. Get a ticket to ride if you want to officially study writing, as opposed to winging it. We’ll study craft and structure and technique, and we’ll call in the mysteries to help us along the way. There’s more info on my website. Course starts Nov. 1.
I love your glamour shot, beautiful inside & out. Books changed my life probably more than any other thing. My great aunt gave me a set of books for my birthday when I was 8yo. I was disappointed, she always gave my brother toys. Those 5 books set me on a journey of reading & adventure seeking that has given me a full life. The box set included: Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Moby Dick, The Call of the Wild, & Treasure Island.
Needed this one right now. Trying to muster voice and courage to speak my piece into the storm. It’s no joke.