The First of Nine Qualities is Strength
Last week I pledged to discuss nine reasons to read my upcoming book, From the Lives We Knew. Imagine a classroom led by a teacher who assigns my book to her students. After giving them time to read, she convenes discussions about the virtues of the main characters. Her outline includes the following qualities:
Strength – Distinctiveness – Resourcefulness – Self-control – Dignity – Righteousness – Mercy – Achievement – Courage
She invites me to sit in on the conversations. The words on her list were not considerations while writing my book, so I’m eager to learn what the students will teach me about the stories. I wince when a student complains about being required to read the book. I flinch when another corrects some unintended error. I cringe when someone points out how much better my book would have been had I only said such and such. Yet I smile when a student identifies examples in the stories of the qualities on the teacher’s list.
The first word on the list is strength.
The first thing that comes to mind isn’t the strength of the people who tell their stories; it’s the strength of their oppressors. Another word for such strength is force. A government, an army, or rebel faction forces its iron will on others, makes them go where they do not want to go, makes them stay where they do not wish to stay whether with threats or the actual use of violence. This type of strength is hard, rigid, and inflexible. The stories you’ll read in my book include several examples of it.
On further reflection, however, the type of strength the characters in these stories build is sturdy but not stiff. It’s elastic and buoyant.
The main characters in these stories experience some type of loss. Most have been displaced from their homeland, but some suffer other kinds of loss. Five of the main characters are women. Of these five, four women demonstrate real toughness at decisive moments. I won’t spoil the stories by getting too specific, but I hope you’ll look for evidence of this assertion. The fifth woman’s strength is less apparent because circumstances crush her spirit. Yet even she has to be strong merely to survive.
Like The Little Engine That Could, these survivors plod and trudge. They lean on and encourage each other as they grow in strength. When you read From the Lives We Knew, I hope you’ll look for the various ways they manifest their strength in response to the often brutal, rigid strength of their oppressors.
