How great writing is like travelling… and like light.
Hello Colleen’s blog readers! Many thanks to you and to Colleen for having me over. If you’re wondering where Colleen went, she’s writing about Having Fun over at Homemakers: The Bright Side today.
I met Colleen through her writing. She’d sent a story to Homemakers magazine, where I’m one of the editors. The piece (which we published in Summer 2009) began:
…I’m the girl you met at Kande post office and I beg you to give me your address…I lost my daddie last year…Hope that this letter meets you…I will be happy if you can visit me next time.
The letter is on pale paper cut from a child-sized notebook. I smile at her reference to “next time” and her geographical ignorance at the size of the world. Later I will wonder how she knew there’d be a next time.
I was transported.
Colleen wrote about her pen pal correspondence with a little girl living in Malawi, and how Colleen eventually paid Kondwani’s school fees, then travelled to Malawi again for that “next time” meeting. Reading, I could feel the hot African sun, breathe the dust, hear the chatter of schoolgirls in homemade uniforms.
But I could also feel Colleen’s experiences – the anxiety about the gulf between life in Canada and life in Malawi, being responsible to others and how to help, and how inadvertently uncomfortable generosity can be.
And this is why I love great writing and storytelling so much. It’s like travelling – you get that wonderful almost tilting of the head into a new experience that isn’t yours yet somehow feels that it is – suddenly seeing through another’s eyes. It’s an incredible feeling, like another puzzle piece clicking into place and showing the world larger, in a new light.
I’m grateful for writers like Colleen for sharing their hearts and thoughts as they do.
Here are a few books that I’ll never forget. Maybe you can add to the list!
1. A childhood favourite: The Sword in the Stone by T.H. White. The magician Merlin educates young Arthur Pendragon by turning him into animals – a fish in the coolly dangerous castle moat, a badger, an ant, and most memorably, a grey goose beating its wings in a tight-knit flock in a great all-night flight across the stormy North Sea.
2. An all-time favourite: God Talks with Arjuna by Paramahansa Yogananda. An incredible commentary on the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita that shows how the whole epic and its climactic civil war represent the inner struggle of every person for spiritual awareness.
3. Recently read: The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. “Traditionally built” Precious Ramotswe opens a detective agency in Botswana to help others. I expected tension and danger and instead found a wonderful world of truly good people, where a detective is not a hard-bitten gun-waving cynic but a healer wielding the power of forgiveness.
Ooh a marathon, what a great idea Lori. The Witches is fantastic, yeah!
Colleen, I’d be interested if Nancy or Trixie does still hold up. When I was a kid I devoured a billion books by Enid Blyton (because she actually wrote a billion books and there was always something new in a series to read) but I can’t read them now. The sexism and racism is unbearable.
But just because something is older doesn’t mean it won’t hold up. Every few years I have myself an E. Nesbit marathon – she wrote about a century ago – and those books are still fresh and fun.
I haven’t read the BFG since I was a kid, but I have a copy that I’ll be digging into very soon. (Colleen, I got it at the TMAC conference in Wales). I can’t wait to read it as an adult! I was definitely a big Nancy Drew fan, too.
Janet, I just went through some of his books, as I couldn’t remember them all. Wasn’t The Witches just great? I have to go get that one… And Matilda, James and the Giant Peach and, of course, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Oh my, I think I might have myself a Roald Dahl marathon!
Makes me think I should peruse a Nancy Drew or Trixie book…I have a sneaking suspicion they might not hold up as well as the Roald Dahl books. There’s something timeless about children’s books like that, whereas I wonder if now I might find Honey Wheeler to be a bit of a pain 🙂
Hi Lori and Colleen, I love Dahl too! His word choice is so vivid and he makes all feelings seem larger than life. EVen though the most horrible things happen to his characters. The BFG is fantastic. I also love Danny Champion of the world because I was so rooting for this characters 🙂 . Lori do you like all of Dahl or just the BFG?
I’m going to go with Roald Dahl’s The BFG. So cool.
I love Roald Dahl but have never read the Big Friendly Giant. I just did an internet search to find out what BFG stood for 🙂 I think I’d have to say I was a Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden fanatic as a kid. I think I just loved that there was always another book in the series. I hated it when books ended.