Locomotion

I’ll start with Locomotion. I was in love with Locomotion; I wanted to take him home, raise him as my own, ensure that every day he knew he was loved and cherished and never alone. This book made me want to be a foster mother, to adopt. It gave me such a heart for foster kids. My best friend has three adopted siblings, all of whom were foster kids before being adopted. Another of my dear friends has a little brother that was a foster kid before being given to her family as permanent guardians. Seeing these kids, and hearing Lonnie’s story, just shredding my heartstrings all to pieces. Kids always, always, always deserve to be protected and loved and cared for, no matter where they come from or who they are or what’s happened to them. Lonnie’s story was honest, heartfelt, and believable.

I thought that Woodson’s article “Who can tell my story?” was beautiful. It was, as I’ve come to expect from her, artfully written and touching. My only problem with it is one that’s questionable; it’s just that, as a heterosexual middle class white person, I felt excluded. Perhaps, because of the sins of my fathers, I should be excluded. Or perhaps not. I’m not really sure, since I’ve never, as Woodson says, “been in her house.” I was confused by it. I understand what she’s saying, but I’m left questioning. Does she mean that no white person can write from the point of view of a non-white person? That we should all just tell the stories that we’ve lived, or do we have the flexibility to try to enter each others’ houses? If we do, does that extend to white people too? Could I ever have walked in the shoes of a black person well enough to write it? Or am I permanently excluded because of my majority status?

Katherine Paterson says I could. She traveled many times into the shoes of others, but she always seems to be protected by the distance of time; writing back in history seems less threatening. Every character that’s written seems to be an author’s statement on their group; every black character is representative of all African Americans, every Southerner representative of all white Southerners, every Korean representative of all Koreans. As such, it makes it seem safer to place your characters far in the past, where the generalizations aren’t so personal to your readers.