This piece was originally published on Medium on 13 September 2017.
I leave my home of over twenty years in less than two weeks to start a new adventure. Or continue the old adventure. I’m not sure which is correct yet. But between the logistics of planning a three year move for an intensive degree and saying goodbye to a place I have only grown to love more in the last year, I also have the chance to see something I worked on for months at the newspaper come to fruition in a way I didn’t think possible.
Back in May, while working on a historical piece, I noticed that there were glaring holes in the narrative small-town Connecticut tells about its history. Despite the fact that their names cover the landscape, indigenous people are often absent from the colonial narrative. Despite the fact that trade based on their use in industry across the globe is what made New England financially strong during the colonial period, slaves, too, are notably absent. So I started working on a piece using local experts on the history of slavery in Connecticut, and why it is important to look at this history to better understand some of what we face, socially, today. It was finally finished, and published, at the end of August.
History is a collection of facts that continues to grow, that we weave into a story to help us explain who we are and where we are from. What we choose to remember helps us decide, as individuals and as a larger society, who we will become. And that is something that we are grappling with on many levels right now — who are our towns, our states? What does it mean to be an American, or even, human — and who gets to call themselves either of these things without someone else thinking that they have the right to question its validity.
When we cut out parts of our history, whether it is intentional or not, we erase people. We refuse to see them as part of that fabric of the past, and so it becomes easier to tell ourselves that they are not us, but something other. They are not us, and so they are not ours to protect and respect, to treat as part of the country we inhabit today. We give ourselves permission to ignore the events that lead to social disenfranchisement in the present, and to make excuses for our complicity.
Acknowledging complicity has been a major underlying thread of this narrative. Something I learned as a facilitator is that we cannot start to have conversations about how to solve problems without first considering the ways in which we ourselves might be compounding or contributing to the problems. If I’m playing a game to facilitate leadership training, and I’m not listening to what my peers are saying — or not saying––then I am part of the problem. I cannot reasonably be angry that a) things are not working or b) that the problem seems to only get worse. This remains applicable when dealing with larger problems as well. Part of what we are seeing right now is different groups of people who are disenfranchised in different ways by the way our society is constructed, saying “help, you are hurting me,” and getting all sorts of reasons why they are wrong or why someone else, who doesn’t live those experiences, doesn’t think that their pain is valid. It is a form of silencing, and in the context of all the ways we have silenced people through history, it is no small, excusable thing.
The tides of the world change, and so too must the stories we tell about ourselves. So too must the ways in which we look at our history, or else we will never grow. A more comprehensive view of history, with more voices represented only helps us, though there are those who are working very hard to convince people otherwise, that the bubble should not be burst because it would ruin the idyllic vision that has persisted. And this is what really drove me to pursue that story from May to August, to want to continue to find ways to interrogate the history I grew up learning; the bubble has to burst. Whether as a journalist or an academic, or something in between part of my job is to interrogate these things, and put it on the record. An article, a panel, these are small things, but it is the way I can stand witness.
So maybe this panel, this piece of closure will be nothing, and maybe no one will show up. Or maybe there are enough questions about why we are doing this at all that people will want to come and learn more. But there are things that have to start to be said in the most idyllic communities, and this is one place to start. So, if you are around the CT River Museum on Sept. 18 at 5:30 p.m., I hope you’ll join us. And otherwise, I’m sure I will be checking back in here as the adventure continues.
This post was originally published on Medium on 20 July 2017.
Sometimes news that seems small in the grand scheme of things is actually indicative of much deeper problems and shifts in society, which is something I had the chance to address in this piece, published at Roar.
I was inspired to pitch this while in a blind rage the day after a friend passed the news on to me that in a sort-of add-insult-to-injury-and-call-it-privitisation way, it would now cost a fee to email UK Immigration for questions regarding the application process. (Prior to this year, phone calls had an associated fee, but emails were free.) I actually never planned on writing it myself, thinking that I would share the news in a few groups of travel writers and fellow international students, and someone else might find a way into the story, take an angle on it. I didn’t want to rock the boat — I’m going to start applying for my own UK visa again soon, and it was bear-enough of a process the first time around before the added NHS costs. But the more I thought about it, and the more it was buried further under the surreal news cycle we all live within, the more I had to say something.
Now for some, as I wrote, this is just a matter of costs, a way to enforce a policy of austerity by reducing government spending in some way. But things that cannot be ignored — which I was only able to touch lightly on in the piece but which motivated it nonetheless — is that there is a distinct implicit bias revealed about how we decide who belongs where, and we can dig into that by considering the following question: Who is an immigrant, and who is an expat.
If we look up the definition in Merriam-Webster, an “expat” is defined as “an expatriate person,” and “expatriate” is defined as “to withdraw (oneself) from residence in or allegiance to one’s native country” or “to leave one’s native country to live elsewhere.” “Immigrant” is defined as “One that immigrates such as a person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence,” and “immigrate” is defined as “to enter and usually become established; especially: to come into a country of which one is not a native for permanent residence.” But, as discussed here, here, and here, the ways in which we choose when to use which term is a matter of semantics, and also, social constructions tied to colonialism regarding race and ethnicity. The summary: when we say “expat” we are often reserving that term for white westerners, and it is a bias that we don’t question, but we should.
The world continues to globalize. Education is supposed to be the great equalizer in the contemporary world. However, it is not lost upon me as an American student/graduate student that the value of my education is not the education itself, but what the debt subsidizes in turn through both higher fees at home and abroad, and fewer available funding options. When this adds up over ten years of higher education, combined with the perception of academia, the true value society places on education becomes clear. Contrary to what those who determine what school fees should be seem to believe, I am not landed gentry from the Regency period with nothing else to do with my time or wealth. Contrary to popular memes regarding academics, I did not choose to pursue a PhD because I can’t do anything else. I did not choose this path to hide from reality in ivory towers, as some think academics do. And in truth, I think that those academics who choose to do that, especially in this generation, are few and far in between.
I chose this because I am driven to solve problems. I’m not here on a whim, nor because I simply enjoy throwing myself at brick walls, but because the hopefully-to-be-peer-group who evaluated not only the quality of my work to date but my potential to contribute in a meaningful way to a specific field decided that, with a bit more training, I might have something useful to contribute. And then, as high as the bar is, and as much as it keeps shifting ever higher, I still know that my privileges shield me in this endeavor as much as they do in other parts of my life. The idiocy I face comes in the form of unwanted touching and comments because I look “exotic,” or with “striking features,” not because the world has been able to categorize me on sight and determine me threatening. There is surprise that I speak “normally,” confusion about where my name — and therefore my people — might be from. But I’m from a solidly middle class part of Connecticut; socio-economics and the way I am read by others because I tick the boxes of “American,” “from New England,” “educated,” and most importantly, “undefinable” means that I will always be the expat, not the immigrant. In most ways, I am almost always the “right” kind of people; institutionalized racism is not something that affects me, or creates extra barriers for me, as it does for many others.
Yet, it is because I straddle these hurdles, I feel compelled to write about them, and call attention to them. Because I know that if circumstances had been different, if I hadn’t been raised in New England, if I hadn’t been able to be sponsored for grants by a respected international organization, the next step on my way to Cambridge would not be an annoyance and a financial puzzle, but a financial impossibility. The weight of an un-lived other life begins to feel like a responsibility to speak when able. I don’t know how to fix the problems that drive immigration, the problems plaguing global economies, or the unrest that seems to be growing in this world. But I do know that commodifying global movement and education, while piling on cultural biases that continue to promote discrimination isn’t going to solve anything. Hopefully, if we can start naming that which is implied in these kinds of policies, we can better open up conversations about finding real solutions.
“Winter had muted the earth…” I remember reading those five opening words for the first time when I was about eight or nine years old in the Town Campus gymnasium while at a youth program trip during one of the school holidays. The sound of sneakers squeaking across basketball courts faded. I finished more than half of the book that day and then dove into the rest of the series. I was a committed resident of Mossflower Country from that point on.
I don’t remember who gave me that first copy of Brian Jacques’ Mossflower, but it still sits on the downstairs bookshelves, though the pages have to be handled more gingerly now. What I do remember is checking out the rest of the series in bulk from the local library, the excitement of adding to my collection of Jacques’ Redwall series from the local bookstore, wondering what the illustrations would be, if there would be the short introductory poems, and how the narrative would be shaped this time. I remember the heroes, the stories, the depth and richness of language and wordplay in those texts, the whimsical songs, the feasts and food that one could only dream of tasting, and the lessons learned. Mossflower, Redwall Abbey, Salamandastron — these were the places that captured my imagination long before I went to Narnia, travelled to the Lonely Mountain, fought epic battles at the side of an armored bear, or understood that what truly made Death Eaters dangerous was not their complicity, but the complacency they encouraged in others by inspiring fear. Reading the Redwall series was a complete, delightful, sensory experience. But beyond that, Jacques wrote into being a world where everyone was welcome, and where courage, honor, and friendship were not mere bywords but could tip the scales at pivotal moments.
At a certain point between middle school and college I fell behind on the series, but when I was working for my university newspaper in February 2011, I saw a headline come across the AP newswire announcing that Jacques had died a few days prior. During the next school holiday I found myself back in the town library picking up where I left off as best I could, but mostly returning to the titles that had stayed closest to my heart. It was bittersweet to reread these, because the memory of the first time I had read each title colored the experience with a touch of the surreal: someone whose mind I had been offered a glimpse into, a glimpse which expanded my life and world exponentially, was, suddenly, no more. I remember reaching the halfway point of Lord Brocktree and leaving the simple, white and black R.J. Julia’s bookmark tucked within the leaves, shutting the cover, replacing the dust jacket, and crying. Perhaps it is sentimental to grieve or mourn someone whom one has never truly met. But storytellers such as Jacques leave so much of themselves, and their hope and promise for the future, within their tales. It was hard not to take personally the loss of someone who, though a world apart, created the narrative space that helped to form who I became as a person.
I picked up Redwall again as part of my 2016 reading challenge, I think in an attempt to reclaim some of the idealism that the election year had stolen. After reading it I wrote: “Sometimes in transition periods the best way to keep moving forward is to hold on to the stories that always feel like home, and that become a part of you.” The series as a whole had made me not only love reading, but made me fall in love with the flexibility and whimsy of language. But it was in the second book of the series, long one of my favorites, that I realized that I was actually searching for the same things I looked for in books as a child. Comfort. Heroes. Sanctuary. Something to believe in again. My first impression after re-reading Mossflower after such a long hiatus was “sometimes the only way through sleeplessness caused by reading about everything terrible in the world is to nestle down with old favorite stories instead.” Re-reading the books was a lot like going home again, experiencing the same love and wonder of childhood but being able to understand the depths of the lessons I had learned passively.
At first I just found peace, a sense of quiet space in the midst of the excess noise in the world. But the more I read, I realized that the world that Jacques created had been a literary sanctuary for my childhood self. The rhythm of the words, the structure of the narrative, the ability to experience fear and uncertainty and loss but have them shaped as a part of life — these things left an impression on me. Of course, so did the food and the songs. Redwall Abbey might only exist on the page, but the sense of warmth and homecoming reclaimed in each of the texts, especially in times of strife, well, those things were very real to me. The idea that someone had been able to dream of a place where people were kind and took care of each other, where there was the opportunity to challenge one’s self and others to do great things, where friends and family and community were appreciated and celebrated, made it seem even more possible that such a community could exist outside of the covers and dust-jackets. Mossflower, Salamandastron, and Redwall Abbey might be imaginary, but the potential to explore one’s self through the journeys to and through these places in Jacques’ texts are somehow far more real, perhaps because readers can connect with characters organically and make the written experiences of growth their own.
Jacques did not offer a utopia, but a vision of a place where people could strive to be their best selves, to make mistakes, and to grow from those mistakes. That is a powerful thing for a child to internalize; years later I can see how this formed my own perception of the potential of people to become the best version of themselves with the right encouragement. Sanctuary was not just the Abbey, though an abbey in itself represents a kind of sanctuary, a promise of a new world. For me, sanctuary became realized as a dream of a better world, a world achievable through the actions of others and people helping people, ordinary people becoming inspired to act as their own heroes in times of need. I’m not sure when in life we abandon the dreams and truths of adolescence in favor of the skepticism, distrust, and absolutism of adulthood — if there is a definitive moment or if it is a gradual shift as we weather different losses and disappointments — but I realized that maybe even more than heroes, I needed to be reminded about that kind of a dream, and be reminded that if someone could imagine that world, like anything else, it could become possible.
I think it is important to point out that this potential to become a hero, to create a sanctuary, to dream of a better community or world and build it, is not something Jacques offers to children without a price. Death, loss, betrayal, and war are all reoccurring themes, and he takes many characters away after readers get to know them and care about them, even if only in a brief vignette. Children lose parents, parents lose children, friends die in accidents or old age, or in wars. Sometimes there is a reason or a cause, and sometimes there is no good reason, no explanation we can give for why it was someone’s time to leave — much like loss in the real world. In fact, the only unrealistic deaths are those of warriors in the battles Jacques constructs — unreal if only because in the world between the pages, there is a clear sense of right and wrong, of whose side to be on. And it is that sense of right and wrong, that clear moral compass embedded in a code somewhere between Judeo-Christian morality and the chivalric code, with a good, old-fashioned sense of fellowship and service thrown in, that Jacques’ heroes derive strength from. This is their reason for continuing to fight though they watch their comrades die in front of them, to push back against evil hordes, search against all odds for kidnapped children, and scour the earth for cures for friends fallen ill. Time and again, battles are won and miracles achieved because a few characters with strength and courage, expressed in endless ways, give enough of themselves to tip the scales just enough for their allies to rally and take the day.
And, of course, now I can recognize the Christian allegory embedded in parts of the text, much as an adult might when returning to C.S. Lewis or Philip Pullman after the enchantment of talking animals and parallel worlds slightly fades. But Jacques pulled back from the allegory. Though he offers readers an Abbey and a code of peace and fellowship, his continuous spiritual hero figure is a warrior first, one who chose to live peacefully but was always ready to pick up the sword to protect that peace, or ordain one who could carry that mantle. The world can be continually remade into a better version of itself so long as people are ready to find the inner strength to protect it. This was not a message I recognized when I was young, but rather, a sense of hope I found this year, re-reading in the context of Brexit, Trump, post-fact politics, increased attacks on free speech, the rise of fervent anti-intellectualism, the humanitarian disasters in Aleppo and other parts of the world, the exponential death of the Amazon rainforest and other environmental disasters, and the inhumane reactions to peaceful protests in the name of civil rights and protection of resources across the United States…I’m not sure it is possible to provide a full context of what this world has grappled with this year or the extent of the losses that should never have been. But what I saw as well were the small victories, the people who did rise up and stand forward and decide that it was not enough to stay silent any longer, communities built, alliances forged. Even in the darkest moments, there will be people who choose to stand up for the rights of others, to fight when others cannot, to protect those weaker than themselves. And because of those people, the world becomes different. What Jacques gives his readers is the realization that one does not have to wield a sword to become that person; the potential to act with courage and honor, to live in such a way that they demonstrate a commitment to the value of the lives of others, exists in everyone, if only they choose to act on it when it matters most.
Courage, honor, friendship — and loss. These were the four cornerstones of Jacques’ world, even more than the battles between good and evil. Peace is a verb in the Redwall series; it must be practiced actively and defended when need rises. But peace is achievable. Change is possible even when, or especially when, it seems beyond hopeless to think that anything will ever get better. Sadness and joy, life and death, hope and despair, conflict and peace are all a part of existence, all turning on their own cycles, and all must be met head-on. Without challenges, we would never find our courage, know what it means to act with honor, or test the strength and value of our friendships. And without loss, we don’t appreciate our lives. Everything that lives must die, though we don’t get to choose how or when or why. We don’t always get to say goodbye. But we can learn to accept it, celebrate the person we loved and honor who they helped us to grow to be. We can learn to say goodbye, and rather than fear what we do not know. We can live our lives striving to be the best versions of ourselves, so that when our time comes, we can walk into the darkness without regrets, but instead with the hope that we will see those we lost, and wait patiently for the ones we leave behind to join us when it becomes their time. All stories end. They have to. And the storyteller must move on as well. But the beauty of literature is that no story truly ends; we can pick up the book again, and take the journey anew.
Stories have their roots in us, and we, our roots in stories. Sometimes returning to our imaginary, liminal spaces is even more powerful than returning to “real” places, because while our favorite haunts in the real world might evoke memories, our imaginary or literary or musical places evoke the dreams we had for our futures. We can see more clearly why we were inspired, and we can find that sense of hope and promise again, for better or worse tempered with the maturity and cynicism of adulthood. We can trace the moments in the text that became formative parts of our identities, and can understand why certain moments of loss or joy affected us more than others. I found a part of myself when I was young in the woods by the River Moss. To see that world again not only helped me to put reality in perspective — all things considered, the world is not so much tragically worse than it was two decades ago, though it may seem that way — but it helped me to build new connections with people who themselves remembered their journeys to Redwall. And there is something powerful about meeting people who share the same fictional spaces; technology might be isolating us in many ways, but books still have the power to bring us together. Perhaps, in times of turmoil, what we need to do to learn to bridge those seemingly unbridgeable divides in society is to turn inwards and remember our favorite books, remember the kinds of worlds we dreamed of inhabiting, the values we learned within those places we escaped to, revisit them, and share them with the people around us. Millennials turn almost cultishly to Rowling and her oft-quoted words about the doors of Hogwarts always being open to friends; Jacques closed near every one of his twenty-two Redwall novels, and a few of his other books, with that sentiment since 1986. It is always possible to open one’s eyes to the endless wonder of the world and those we share it with; it is never too late to return to the stories of our childhoods where we first set our roots, and truly be home once again.
Michelle Anya Anjirbag studied literature at the University of Connecticut and the University of Edinburgh, and is interested in how books and stories shape the ways people think about each other. She reads voraciously but especially loves children’s and young adult literature, travel writing, and the musings of stodgy old men near the end of their lives. She can be found on Instagram (@michelle_anya) and on Twitter (@anjirbaguette and @bookfeet).