A World Between Four Walls: ROOM by Emma Donoghue

When I was a senior in high school, one of our Accelerated English Class assignments was a "creative" book report.  I chose To Kill a Mockingbird.  Probably because of play rehearsals, I'd waited until the last minute to complete the assignment.  I madly searched through my parents' magazines for pictures to illustrate various quotations from the book.  Everything was clicking -- no matter where I turned, I found drawings and photos that perfectly illustrated my chosen quotes, or found a picture that triggered a quote to accompany it.  I capped the project by writing a summary of the book in free verse, from Scout's point of view, in her voice.  I became Scout as I wrote, and when I finished, returned to the world dazed. 

I got an A+ on that paper:  "Originality A+, Quality A+, Use of Source A+", and  Miss Bischoff's comments included this one:  "I wish everyone I know could see it!" At the bottom of the page where Scout's "poem" ended she wrote, "This gives me goose pimples, it's so good!" (all exclamations hers).  My dad, too, thought it was great and offered me $50 for it.  At the time, that was a heck of a lot of money to me, but I wanted to keep it for myself.

I thought of that project all these years later as I read Emma Donoghue's Room.  The story is told from the point of view of a five-year-old child who has known only the four walls of one room his entire life.  Within those walls, however, his mother has created a world that, to him, is full of wonders.  Any unhappiness he suffers is minor.  He looks forward to small pleasures with eagerness.  He's smart, curious, creative.

As I read, I thought back to the time when I wrote my poem and created my project, remembering how possessed I felt at the time.  I was thinking -- Emma Donoghue must have felt the same, but she sustained that creative possession through 321 pages without faltering.  How did she do it?  She must have dreamed the book when she wasn't awake writing it.  She must have constantly had Jack in her head.  She didn't let go of him, and he held onto her all the way through this very disturbing, haunting tale.

Here's a quote that gives the reader plenty to ponder (and believe me, you'll have this book stuck in your head long after you put it down):

"In Room we knowed what everything was called but in the world there's so much, persons don't even know the names." (p. 267). 

I don't know the names of half the plants and birds in my little part of the world here in Pennsylvania.  Think of all we don't know, of all that's left to learn, enough in our own little worlds to carry us through a lifetime.

 

Censorship Today - Twain Still Makes the News

It would be interesting to hear Mark Twain's reaction to the censorship of Huck Finn (a new edition has the word "nigger" replaced with "slave" so as not to "offend" African-Americans.)  What the ****?  To hear Jon Stewart and Larry Wilmore take on the ridiculousness - and seriousness -- of this attempt at censorship, go to this link:


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/12/jon-stewart-takes-on-huck_n_807921.html

Wilmore also brings up the Republican reading of the Constitution and talks about how they conveniently omitted the part about African-Americans being "3/5 of a person."  As Wilmore - and many others - have said, "You can't whitewash our history."   

Bill Maher also took this issue on last Friday with D.L. Hughley was his guest.  Hughley said, "They took nigger out of Huckleberry Finn and replaced it with slave. White people, that's NOT an upgrade." 

There have also been serious editorials and articles about the Huck Finn censorship; an excellent one appeared in the NY Times on January 6, 2011 by Michiko Kakutani.  The title alone is priceless:  "Light Out Huck, They Still Want to Sivilize You." 

But back to Mark Twain -- what would he say?  I'm sure he'd have some choice words for English Professor Alan Gribben, who has taken it upon himself to revise Twain's classic. 

What is Gribben thinking?  This censorship is of a piece with the 2010 Texas school textbook controversy, in which the Texas state Board of Education is changing the historical record to eliminate Thomas Jefferson from the list of our nation's founding fathers, erase Senator Edward Kennedy and Cesar Chavez completely while highlighting Ronald Reagan as a hero, rename slavery "the Atlantic triangular trade", among other things.  I wonder what the Texas Board of Education would call Jim?

Another censorship issue I've come across recently is in the February issue of ARTNews, in a Commentary by Robin Cembalest called "Between a Cross and a Hard Place."  The article details the Smithsonian Institution's decision to censor a video by David Wogjnarowicz.  Catholic League president Bill Donohue, House Republican leader John Boehner and minority whip Eric Cantor, among others, used this video as an excuse to question the Smithsonian's federal funding.  When museums cave in to the right, it can backfire years later, the museum in question having lost the respect of the arts community.  This is an excellent article -- I highly recommend it for your reading, as Ms. Cembalest describes the controversy most articulately.

These illustrations illustrate to me how our country is moving farther and farther to the right, becoming more and more conservative.  These examples show how fearful people are of reality, true history.  How do they sleep at night, knowing they're feeding their children lies?