Required Reading {Engaging Culture}

As a child, I lived much of the time in the imagined 19th century of my mind, playing dress-up and reading hundreds of girl's novels about the olden days. Laura Ingalls and Mandie were among my best friends. 

It seemed more exciting, more romantic, more adventurous than my own farm childhood.

I often wished I had been born in another time and place.

~

At a recent academic conference, I was chatting with an acquaintance from another university, catching up on our private and professional lives. We discussed her past research in Canadian literature, and a novel both of us had read. She raved about this novel, while I expressed that although it was a page-turner I had read within the space of 24 hours, years ago in a tent while camping in Austria, I had found some scenes in the novel extremely disturbing. 

"Am I just overly sensitive when it comes to protecting children and abuse?" I wondered. The novel gave a stark and realistic portrayal of a Maritime community, a certain kind of life in a specific time and place. 

Knowing each other to both be believing Christians, we cautiously broached the subject of what is acceptable for a Jesus-follower to read, to research, to teach. 

Is there merit in fiction which portrays evil? In filling one's mind with images, stories which disturb, even disgust?

This is a topic I have wrestled with for a few years. On the one hand, I believe each reader must be discerning about what does them good and may cause them to have thoughts which are negative, unhelpful, even sinful. The Bible teaches us to "gird up the loins of our minds." To think about, to dwell on, that which is honourable, pure, just, lovely, excellent, commendable, praiseworthy. 

But perhaps there is a difference between reading, and dwelling on. 

I do not believe Christians should confine their reading to the sterilized "Christian fiction" (often taking place in a romanticized 19th century or among the Amish) of the Christian bookstore. This kind of reading seldom portrays realistic, present-day characters, with real questions and problems, real sin, real struggle, and real redemption. It rarely helps you to better understand your neighbour who is facing a divorce, your brother-in-law's alcoholism, your high-school aged son who feels lost and isolated, hiding a porn addiction, the bi-polar colleague with erratic behaviour, nor the homeless man you pass everyday in the street feeling guilty about. Rather, "Christian fiction" provides escapism from the realities of life in the here and now, the place God has pulled me out of eternity to live in. 

Escapism does not honour a God who determined the exact times and places where we should live.

~ 

As I've mentioned before, I found great encouragement in knowing that the prophet Daniel did a Bachelor's in literature. He was appointed to a place of influence in a foreign Kingdom after having studied the language and literature of the Chaldeans for three years.

Jesus hung out with people of all walks of life, from the despised prostitute to the hated rich tax collector, from working-class fishermen to the religious leaders of the day. He engaged with his culture, ate and drank and went to parties, and never shied away from a controversy. He cared about people. Messed up, broken, sinful people like us. He was not oblivious to the world going on around him, to the needs and struggles. He was not hiding in his holiness.

~

Literature - short stories, novels, poetry - is an amazing tool for understanding and engaging the culture we live in. Classic works of a nation's fiction, as well as current bestsellers, should be required reading for anyone hoping to impact that culture. Fiction gives us a window into understanding peoples' motivations, their world view, the history and politics which impact their way of reasoning, behaving, deciding, believing.

There will be things which disturb. You probably won't like all of the characters and wish you were like them, or even want to cheer for them. 

Fiction gives us eyes to see, ears to hear. It enables us to go where perhaps our own feet never will, to ask questions we are too embarrassed to speak out, to understand and give a frame of reference for starting a conversation.

Here. 

In the real world, with our real, broken, messy colleagues, family, neighbours, ourselves.

Now.

For such a time as this.

Why I didn't go to my university graduation

Call me a CanLit nerd, but the Giller Prize longlist came out today and that's cool.

I've always been what you might call a "nerd." I got good marks. I liked reading. I was the kind of kid who dreamt of studying at Oxford, who slogged my way through classics of English literature passed down from my seven-years-older brother when he returned home from university in the summer (for some reason I wasn't daunted by titles like Jude the Obscure and Hard Times). The other kids on Bus 17, trundling around the dusty Ontario countryside with the windows half-open and gravel ricocehting off the rattling sides, had a nickname for me: "Coolness Einstein." I was OK with it.

I don't remember anyone ever trying to help me choose a career when I was a teenager. I had a guidance counselor, but I don't recall any meetings with her or personality tests filled out, although I am sure I must have done something of this nature. I always knew which subjects in school interested me the most, and as I was at the top of my class in several subjects my teachers probably assumed I'd turn out alright and left it at that. My parents have always been supportive of whatever I have chosen to do without trying to bend my interests one way or the other.

This resulted in me leaving the farm for university in Toronto at the naive tender age of 18 without having a specific career in mind. Nor did I know what my majors would be. (We only had to decide in second year, as far as I remember, and I could change these later as well.) This all seems very namby-pamby when told to Germans, where there are 3-year apprenticeships for every kind of trade and a university student must apply for a specific program of study, having chosen her major/minor combination before taking her first class (though this can also be changed later, after a lot of wrangling with German bureaucracy and possibly changing universities).

I arrived at Victoria College in the University of Toronto in September 2000, full of romantic ideas about studying in ivy-covered walls, having signed up for five courses in five different subjects. English literature, French language, the History of European Civilization, Political Science 103 and a special first-year seminar with only 10 students taught by an esteemed professor about Renaissance Rome. It was a phenomenal first year, broad, enriching and with all the excitement of a WASP farm girl in an international metropolis (fellow residents on my floor marveled "Your grandparents lived in Canada too?!" while others corrected my pronunciation of Cal-gary).

The following year I chose a double major, but after spending my third year at Université Laval in Québec City I chose not to return to Toronto for my fourth year. I was in love with Quebec and when presented with an invitation/challenge to stay, I jumped at the chance. I changed my double major to a double minor and suddenly, just like that, I had finished my B.A. My graduation was scheduled for a few months later, on my birthday actually. I weighed the cost of the 8 hour train ride, the fact that I would not be graduating with any of my friends, and that I would only be allotted 2 tickets for guests, and decided not to attend the illustrious ceremony at Convocation Hall in Toronto.

Photo via utoronto.ca

Deciding to not get the four-year "Honours" BA was a challenging decision for my young self who had always placed a great deal of stock in my grades, measuring my self-worth by whether or not I excelled in academics. I was sent a notice to pick up a package at the post office on a cold November day in Quebec City, my boots squeaking on the narrow, hard-packed snow-path that had replaced the sidewalks. When I picked up the sturdy, flat, cardboard envelope, I knew it contained my Bachelor's degree. I didn't open it.

Not wanting to mar it, I carried the closed envelope gingerly as I tramped onwards to my intended destination, a movie theatre in the pyramide. I was a little distracted by the envelope at my feet while I watched Mona Lisa Smile in French. In the English-speaking world, graduations are a rite of passage, a big deal. I didn't celebrate mine, which felt a little strange. I wasn't sure if I should care. I winced knowingly at how the movie's motif was rather à propos to how I had bucked the expectations I had had for my own life. At the time, I thought I was giving up the possibility of ever doing a graduate degree (little did I know I would end up marrying a German, start a Master's degree 5 years later in English literature, and afterwards do my PhD in Germany where there are no 4-year B.A.s anyway. And where just getting your degree sent to you in the mail is par for the course.)

Now I can see that those hard decisions I made at 21, to "give up" my academic dreams and pride to stay in the culture I loved were a necessary part of sifting my character. I needed to learn how to not find my self-worth and value in my performance, in what I achieve, what I do. Finding my value in who I am in Christ, in being simply a child of God, looking at his promises and what his word says about me has proven to be enough, more than enough, and the only thing I can't lose when life doesn't turn out how I planned.

I find myself this week marking undergraduate term papers and attending an academic conference in Konstanz. That confused, -40 winter in Quebec City with my Bachelor's degree in a cardboard envelope at my feet, I would never have guessed I'd be here in Germany, doing this, exactly a decade later. I still have that envelope, it now houses a few more Very Important Things and has proven handy as I traipse across borders. There is an upcoming crossroads, and again my career could take several diverse turns. The pathway to your dream is not always straight or without delays, and sometimes the way you end up taking is the way that took you. Rarely is it the way you once thought would best get you there. The destination, the dream, often grows up along with you.

What I'm into // August 2013 edition

I am joining Leigh Kramer's link-up for the first time this month. Here's what I was into in August:

Books I've read:

A Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp.  Late, I know. I've read Ann's blog on and off for a few years, and I had read articles and blogs about her book. I ordered it and 2 other books for my parents, fellow southwestern Ontario farmers, for Christmas 2011. It turned out not to be my mom's cup of tea. (She doesn't drink tea, in fact. Or coffee. My husband has tried but has not won her over to the delights of cappuccino.) So I nicked her copy on our trip to Canada last month. A Thousand Gifts is written in beautiful prose poetry, inviting you to slow down your life, be thankful and truy dwell in each moment, whether painful or joyful. If you love country living (or just like imagining it), it is a beautiful read. I'd like to see this kind of lifestyle (living in the moment, capturing the beauty in the every day, thanfulness even for seemingly ugly things) contextualized for the urban environment. I got a little weary of the repetitive adjective-after-noun style which seems to be Voskamp's hallmark ("the spaces wide open" "attention full" "the bubble trembles slight"). This book is meant to be lingered over and enjoyed in small doses. If you are a straight-shooter with no interest in poetry, you might want to look elsewhere.


Books still on my desk:

Signs and Wonders by Alix Ohlin

Handbook of Cultural Geography by Kay Anderson

The History of Montreal: The Story of a Great North American City by Paul-André Linteau

In addition to sundry articles and about twenty more of my students' term papers to mark...

Movies I've seen:

I think I may have seen one movie in a theatre since our first child was born 3 years ago. For us, watching movies means our lovefilm.de subscription which mails movies to our home (no Netflix in Germany! And iTunes rentals seem so expensive.) We snuggle up on our huge sectional couch; my tiny 30 cm screen laptop brings us closer. Two trans-Atlantic flights gave us more viewing options & time than usual, despite flying with a baby and an almost 3 year old.

Admission - I watched this on the plane from Heathrow to Toronto, interrupted, oh, about 7 times to take a child to the bathroom, serve a child food, calm a child down etc. Light comedy. I'm a sucker for any academic movie, and I love Tina Fey.

Les saveurs du palais (English: Haute Cuisine German: Die Köchin und der Präsident) Ah, I love a good French film. A French foodie film? Throw in a smidge of politics and a pinch of Antarctica? Yes, please.

I also got the chance to catch Curious George (twice!) and Toy Story 3 on the plane rides, with my adorable little boy leaning against my arm asking me "Wo ist George? ... Wo ist er jetzt? ... Und was macht er jetzt?" ("Where is George? ... Where is he now? ... And what's he doing now?") He didn't want to put the earphones on and the plots would have been too hard to keep up with anyway, but he enjoyed the moving pictures. His favourite character in Toy Story was the "baby", that demonic looking cupie doll. I let him keep thinking it was a nice baby.  

Television:
We don't have a TV, so we have only occasionally watched some series online over the past few years, such as Downton Abbey and The Office (American version). Ah yes, while at my brother's place we did watch an episode of the Amazing Race Canada. I wonder if those insightful body builders won...

Things I love:
The German Kindergarten/Krippe system: this coming month both of our kids will start Kindergarten (ages 3-6, kids who turn 6 start grade 1 in September of that year) and Krippe (day care for 1-2 year olds, when they turn three they start Kindergarten). We've had two parent nights to visit the Kindergarten and Krippe in order to learn the values and day-to-day routines and two "familiarization talks" with the two Erzieherinnen (literally means "upbringer", like an Early Childhood Education person) responsible for each of my children over the past two weeks, so they can get to know my child's needs and routines individually and let me ask questions. I think this deserves a post of its own in the coming days!

Don't even get me started on the great Pikler-gear they have in the Krippe for the toddlers. Our daughter was there today to meet her Erzierhin and was so excited to climb, explore, slide and pull herself up on everything. 

Anyone who really knows me, knows I love my Ergo. The Ergo Baby Carrier is just the best. My sister gave me her lightly-used one when I had our first baby, and we have used it a ton with both our babies. We thought we lost it for awhile, so I even bought a new second-hand one, then found the original and sold the 2nd one to a friend. Then I submitted some photos to an Ergo Baby contest and they rewarded me with a brand new top-of-the-line Performance Ergo carrier! 

We use it almost daily when at home (on walks, at church) and of course we took it with us on our 3 week trip to Canada in August. I can't imagine trying to pull/push luggage, a buggy with a toddler in it and fish around for boarding passes and a passport without my Ergo. It was handy not only for our 11 month old who usually rides in it, but we also put our 18 kg son in there on my back when he was jet lagged and couldn't walk anymore. He loves it! He hasn't ridden in the Ergo since he was 18 months old, but this is our new thing. Now that Annabelle likes to look around and have more range of movement in the stroller at times when I have both kids by myself, I ask Andreas (when he gets tired) if he wants to ride on my back. He climbs on, I strap him in and we're off! As I wrote on Pinterest, the Performance Ergo is even more comfortable than the original, with thickly padded shoulder and hip straps that feel like a high-quality mountaineering backpack. The weight is so well distributed I can jog with my big baby in that thing, and it is comfy. So much easier than trying to carry them.

My most-read blog post:
In Memorium: My Austrian Spiritual Father
A tribute to an Austrian mountain man and what I learned from 6 weeks hiking through the alps, sleeping in a cave and going 48 hours with no food.

Linking up with Leigh Kramer today.

How studying literature helps you change the world

"A B.A./M.A./Ph.D. in English? What are you going to do with that?"* 

I've heard variations on this theme. Dave Ramsey, for all his very helpful and practical financial advice, rails against doing a degree in something as asinine as literature on his radio show. Literature isn't useful, you say?  

Knowing how to read, how to intelligently engage with a text (and texts are all around us), how to express your ideas coherently in written and oral form, think critically, engage with culture, explore the struggles and inner lives of characters who are just like the people in the world around you...these are just a few of the benefits of doing a degree in English lit. (Or Québécois, or German, or Hindi literature, of course.) I admit, a degree in literature is not a surefire road to riches, but the skills one learns when reading and studying literature can be used in any career (i.e. right-hand man to a king) and are immensely helpful to anyone who wants to understand, impact and, dare I say it, "change" the world around them. 

Here a brief video about the research of Prof. Dr. Linda Hutcheon (University of Toronto) who will be coming to a conference we are hosting in Konstanz in September, on why an English degree helps you in every career:

For local academic types, she'll be giving an open lecture on September 18, 16:30 in the Audimax entitled "From Reader Response to Reader Response-Ability."

*Note this is not a direct quote from Dave Ramsey, just a typical sentence I have heard several times from various people. And similar to some things I've heard on his podcast :-)

Out of the pond

"Only later would I discover that most other people simply floated in mossy little ponds labeled 'French and Catholic' or 'English and Protestant', never wondering what it might be like to step ashore. To be out of a pond is to be in unmapped territory." ~ Mavis Gallant, The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1996, 691.

There was a time when I didn't like Montreal. In my self-important, navel-gazing 19-22-year-old phase I was both too Ontarian and too francophile for Montreal.  I was living in Québec City at the time, and only traveled through le metropol on my way back to see my family in Ontario, changing trains in Montreal, or visiting some friends of friends from the islands for a party. I found Montreal to be a strange mix of the things I loved about Toronto and Québec City, neither one nor the other. A vast urban centre second only in size in Canada to Toronto, the city of Montreal is roughly half French-speaking and half Other. I found being greeted in English in stores or restaurants in downtown Montreal off-putting (and if someone detected my accent and switched to English in a conversation: downright insulting! I considered it one of my Major Life Achievements when people stopped switching to English upon hearing me speak.)

Montreal seemed to be a mix of too many other things that didn't fit into the image of Quebec in my head. Having always had an intrinsic desire to become bilingual, a life-long love of the French language and Quebec, I wanted to throw myself into Québécois culture.  During the two years I lived in Quebec City, the only times I spoke English were to my family on the phone once or twice a week. My only English input at the time was occasionally watching the news on CBC, unless it was one of the rare times my francophone coloc wasn't at her boyfriend's place, and she asked me shyly if we couldn't watch the news in French while eating dinner?

Having lived in Europe for the past nine years, I have loosened up about language. When I first came to Germany, I was shocked - shocked! - to hear English (read: American) music on the radio most of the time. To see English signs and slogans liberally scattered over the landscape. And nobody cared. We're not in language-law-territory anymore. 

Montreal is a famously divided city, The Two Solitudes and all of that. I am quite in support of CanCon legislation and measures to protect the French language in Quebec, and I'm not trying to stir the pot today. Living in Europe with its many languages, learning to survive/thrive in my third and being forced to teach business English to pay the rent in our early married days brought me back down to earth. I'm glad I can speak English, it is helpful and I'm no longer too cool or too Québécoise or whatever I thought I was back then to care too much what language people address me in. Whatever the language, it is the heart of the person I want to get to know, and whichever means helps me to do that I'll use. 

The I'm-back-in-Montreal-and-it's-snowing! face, 2009.

Somehow, whenever we have visited North America over the past 9 years most of our travels have brought us to Montreal, and my fascination with this enigmatic city has grown. I love Montreal, the diversity, the cold, the pastries; my old friends who have migrated there from St-Jo or Québec or the islands; the crazy, suicidal outdoor staircases; the code-switching mid-sentence and cacophony of franglais. The quote above is from one of the best short story writers on the planet, Mavis Gallant, born and raised in Montreal in the 1920s-30s. Rare for an English-speaking child at the time, she was sent to francophone convent schools, thus resulting in her rather unique perspective on Montreal, out of the pond, in unmapped territory.  

Many would say that this contact zone of cultures and languages, everyday bordercrossings and forays into unmapped territories is what makes Montreal such fertile ground for cultural creatives. Today I read that, among its many other illustrious cultural achievements, Montreal has been called "the spoken word capital of North America" (see Anglo-Quebec Poetry 1976 to the 21st Century edited by Jason Camlot and Todd Swift). Cultural geographers have a field day with Montreal, attempting to chart its the depth and width and breadth. 

What I love about this international life I've been called to, married to a German, having left chunks of my heart in Quebec and Ontario, Greece and Austria and Uganda and Konstanz, is being out of the pond. Out of breath and laughing on the sandy beach, exhausted but jumping back in again. Sloshing water from one pond into another, disrupting stagnant ecosystems, adding a little fresh water, a little salty. Bathing in alterity and resurfacing with new perspectives, wider range of vision, beyond any one cultural or linguistic group. Crawling back into my kayak and learning to surf the waves.

Narrative Saves Lives

So there is a new "narrative mapping" tool out there, touted as the "new instagram for writers." You (may have) heard it here first.

Story + maps = me happy! 

A lot of my research has to do with concepts of place and space and how the spaces we inhabit shape us and we shape them, and how all of this is represented in fiction. (I am working on my doctoral dissertation in North American literature and cultural studies, specifically focusing on comparative English-Canadian and Québécois fiction.) These ideas can seem very abstract, or even "obvious," to the uninitiated. ("You are writing an entire book about 'the North?'" Eyes glaze over.) I have always had trouble wrapping my mind around some philosophical concepts, and I am thankful for those scholars who have summed up and deconstructed Lefebvre, Soja and Bhabha for the rest of us.

It took me a long time to decide to pursue a Master's degree in literature because I struggled with thoughts that it wasn't "important enough." (I started in 2008 and finished my final oral exam in 2010, the day before my maternity leave with our first child began.) I always wanted to make a difference in the world, to do something of eternal value. I had a five-year break between finishing my Bachelor's degree (from U of T while living in Quebec, another story) and starting my Master. During those intervening years I got to travel and volunteer at two Bible schools in Austria and Greece, met the man of my dreams (and beyond what I had on my little checklist), got married and settled in Konstanz. I started, then stopped, another M.A. program that wasn't for me. (In Toronto, we used words and books to study political science, not the statistics and SPSS of the KN school of public policy and management! Numbers are not my friend.) Getting over the shock of not succeeding in my studies for the first time was a major life lesson in not putting my self-worth in what I do and achieve, but who I am in Christ.

I had often felt divided, pulled between a career in academia and serving in "ministry." I knew doing an M.A. would take time and hard work and thus would leave less time to be directly invested in other things. A desire to learn, research, study and write has been inside of me since I was an embryo (or, as we tell our son when he asks where he was when we got married, or when mommy lived in Canada, since I was "in God's thoughts, but not on Earth yet.")

So back in 2006-08, I took a long time to decide to do an M.A. in literature. My husband has always encouraged me, he has always supported me in chasing my dreams and fulfilling my potential. Finally, I found encouragement in Daniel's story. Yes, that guy with the lions, though not that part specifically. Daniel the man God used greatly in a foreign kingdom to have a place of influence in society, he did a B.A. in literature and cultural studies (check it out.) Good enough for an OT prophet, good enough for me. But before this epiphany, I struggled with thoughts that literature didn't "really matter." I mean, this isn't medicine, it isn't going to save someone's life. 

Or could it?

Could narrative save someone's life? Could telling a story, and telling it well, actually give hope to someone in the pit of despair? Actually resonate with a stranger on the other side of the planet and make them feel less alone? Could it shine light on the evils of forced sex slavery, motivate just one person to kick up a fuss, to spread awareness, to raise funds, to facilitate freedom for a victim? Could narrative literally save the life of a 13 year old girl who is at this very moment locked in a dirty room near Hamburg's port, handcuffed and brutalized up to 40 times a day?

Hot tears burn my eyes as I write these words but they must be written. I must tell their stories.

Freedom starts with us.

Join me in the fight against human trafficking, won't you? To learn more about the problem and see how you can be part of the solution go to the A21 Campaign, whose goal is abolish the injustice of human trafficking and sex slavery in the 21st century. They are on the ground in several European source and destination countries, working to rescue and rehabilitate victims as well as prosecuting perpetrators. Join us in spreading freedom in Europe. It isn't just happening “over there,” it happens here. In our city, our country. Freedom starts with us.