The Mother or the Muse?

Some writing seems to drive its own destiny. Had this sensitive journalist never crossed the path of this devoted mother, this story might never have been told.

Last night I heard an interview with French journalist, Pierre Haski, who is responsible for bringing to light the ambitions, hopes and frustrations of a young Chinese girl living in stark poverty in Zhangjiashu, a Muslim village in northwest China. Zhangjiashu is in a region of China that has been ravaged by drought and declared uninhabitable by the government, yet more than three million people still live there. Pierre Haski visited this region in 2001 and upon leaving Zhangjiashu was approached by a woman who put three small notebooks into his hands. The notebooks turned out to be a diary written by Ma Yan, the woman’s 13-year-old daughter.

When asked what was so remarkable about the diaries, Haski replied that they are not only a first-hand account of the daily struggle of an obscure population, they also reveal the poignant evolution in Ma Yan’s writing as more and more of her emotions flow into her observations and interpretations of life. Central to Ma Yan’s writing is her belief that education is the key to overcoming poverty and her determination to stay in school despite the overwhelming barriers of money and distance. A French newspaper published an excerpt from the diaries and the public response was so great, it led to a scholarship fund for Ma Yan and the publication of her book, The Diary of Ma Yan: The Struggles and Hopes of a Chinese Schoolgirl.

The book has now been published in sixteen countries and has triggered the establishment of The Association for the Children of Ningxia, an association dedicated to providing scholarships to children in the region, mostly girls, who are excluded from the education system.

Our Children

For someone who loves to read, I read VERY slowly. And I admit that not only books stack up in alarming numbers before I actually crack them open, so do magazines and newspapers. But yesterday I finally picked up the May 29, 2005 New York Times Magazine and read the article by Cynthia Gorney about Tracy Della Vecchia who runs a website for mothers of American soldiers who are fighting in Iraq. Her own son has spent the last three years in Iraq; he has been home twice in that time. He is 22. Tracy built the website when she learned her son would be going to war “in part because she guessed ….. that people would want a place where they could sit in the dark making an effort to hold one another up…”

Whenever I think about war, I think about mothers having to watch their children openly embrace danger. It breaks my heart; I cannot fathom the immensity of it, the implications. The article follows Tracy through normal days and holidays while her son faces imminent danger in a distant land. It mentions how she spends hours at her computer attending to the website in which “pride and grief and bewilderment and rage seem to be crashing around all the time.”

Why is it that we, as a civilization, still seek resolution to international differences by dressing our children in uniform and sending them off to destroy the enemy in face-to-face battle? Aren’t we sophisticated enough to raise the level of conflict above mass destruction? And what constitutes a win when the repercussions are intangible? The impact on these families is astounding, overwhelming, and on so many levels incomprehensible to those of us who haven’t endured their experience. As a good number of us continue to live untouched by the turbulence in Iraq--thank you, Cynthia and Tracy for a brief, yet sobering glimpse of the personal side of war.

Book Expo 2005

WHAT an overwhelming, exciting, wonderful experience! Just like the old ABA Conference back in my bookseller days--brought back many memories. We wandered the show...walked down the huge, aisle length booths being handed advance readers' copies from all directions. I tried to discriminate--came home with about 30 books. Everything from chick lit, to a J.M. Coetzee novel, to a journalist's account of the impact of the "American war on Iraqui citizens, to a documented history of life on a plantation in both the "big house" and the "slave cabins' by a University Press, to a bio of Mama Cass--the first ever--and memoirs, lots of memoirs! That is truly my world--the publishing world, the writer's world. Knowing that some of the best (and okay some of the worst) writers were in the building and new work, new art, new books were everywhere--don't know what it is, but that's what stirs my soul. Then we found a great parking space in the Village and just happened to wind up at White Horse Tavern (where Dylan Thomas drank himself to death; somewhat appropriate considering the day we had) for a few beers, and had dinner at a wonderful little French restaurant across the street--Philip Marie's. They have the most amazing Fruit and Nut Salad....then we got back in the car and came home.

So here I sit, surrounded by books and publisher's fall catalogs...magic.