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Chrishayden
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Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 4543
Registered: 03-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 31, 2007 - 10:42 am: | 
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INTERVIEW: alice walker
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http://www.sojo. net/index. cfm?action= magazine. article&issue= soj0706&
article=070626
Eating Oranges in the Astrodome
Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Alice Walker talks about Katrina, bubble baths,
and the art of remembering.
interview by Rose Marie Berger
Sojourners: What did Katrina, and the government's response, reveal for you
about the state of America?
Alice Walker: I was introduced to the situation by television, as most of us
were. Overlaid on the devastation itself was the media's notion that somehow
the people deserved it, because look at how they were looting stores and
rampaging and hurting people. I just knew it was a lie. I'm not saying that there
weren't some people doing that, but I knew that to slander all of the people
was just racist and wrong.
I decided that I would try to go there, to make clear to the people who were
suffering so deeply that the slander of them was just insufferable. We
couldn't get into New Orleans, but we got as far as the Astrodome in Houston. We
took money, books, and things for an altar—we created an altar in the Astrodome.
That was my way of responding to the spiritual needs of the people in that
situation. If that had happened to me, I would want people to come and say, you
are very dear to me, and whatever they say about you that is hurtful and
damaging, I am here to nullify that impression. And I know that I would want to
read, so I brought books for the children and books for the grownups. And
candles and dolls and whatever we could stuff in a trunk.
It was the joy of my life to walk around and hand out envelopes with money
in them, because this is what you do with money—you give it to people who
really need it. We had a wonderful time—in the midst of all the devastation—
talking to people, hearing stories, eating oranges.
My feeling is that the government failed us. It failed humanity. Not just
black people, not just poor people, but it's a failure of who we could be as a
human family.
Now I see how poor people are having to fight to reclaim their housing in
the housing projects. The government has been colluding with the developers to
try to get rid of the poor people so that they can put up housing for "low- to
middle-income" families. That will mean that many of the people, who now are
scattered to the winds, would never be able to return. So the people have
started taking back their housing. It is their right to live in their houses and
not have them torn down so that, years later, fancy houses will spring up that
they won't be able to afford to live in.
Sojourners: Did you see positive responses as well?
Walker: I saw many people of all races who rose to the occasion. The
heartening thing is that there are individuals who responded with humanity, with love
and with caring, out of the understanding that these people are not other
people. These people are us. When you feel that, it's impossible to be calm and
just accept their suffering.
Sojourners: You've identified education as an issue you are passionate
about. Why?
Walker: It's just a shame—and a shame that we should absolutely refuse to
endure—that people are allowed to sink into ignorance and unawareness of the
basic knowledge that people need to live full, developed, beautiful lives. It is
almost unbearable when you think of the loss that we endure because people are
kept ignorant. We have the money to educate people. We have the money to fund
schools. We have the money to help children be awake enough to learn. Society
cannot possibly be healthy and strong if whole segments are kept ignorant and
poor and their neighborhoods flooded with guns and drugs.
Sojourners: You've written about the importance of historical context and
remembering. Why is that important, and what can we do to deepen our ability to
remember?
Walker: I would counsel people to try to get enough distance from the n
ightly news, television—all distractions—to get really centered, to have some kind
of practice that will support their ability to remember. I think many people
are afraid to remember. It's just as horrible as they think. But unless we can
fortify ourselves and train ourselves to remember—literally "re-member," to
put ourselves back together—then there isn't any progress, because we'll all be
fragmented, scared, and running in opposite directions away from each other.
That's not going to be helpful, especially for the time that we have entered
now.
Sojourners: What's something that people could do, either on their own, or
in small groups, to do that practice of remembering?
Walker: At the moment, I'm waist-deep in a humongous book that is coming out
in the fall, called The Slave Ship [by Marcus Rediker]. This is information
that, for the most part, people don't really want to encounter. It's so
horrifying and scary that I myself have to sit and meditate over it. I find myself
trying to avoid knowing what it took to get so many million people here to lay
the capitalist foundation of America, and of Britain, and the West. When you
understand the underpinning of Western civilization as the literal bones and
sinews and teeth and dreams of African people, then it's almost overwhelming
because you realize the sacrifice was really not worth it.
If you have a practice that allows you some internal space, then what you
need to do will come to you. This will get easier as the times get harder.
There's still a feeling that some people are skating along the surface, even now,
as global warming keeps going. But it will become easier for people to dip down
and dip deep, just because they will have to. They will have to know how they
came to this place. They'll want to know that there is some way of changing
it. At least that is my hope.
Sojourners: In the various religious traditions, and in practices that
people make for themselves, there are ritual or communal ways of trying to
remember. Often communities do that as a way of reclaiming the memory of the place
where they live.
Walker: I think people are doing that more and more. For instance, on my
land in Mendocino (California) , one of the first things that was found was a
matate—the stone that the people ground their acorns on. But those people are not
there anymore. Their descendents are the Pomo, and the Pomo are on a
reservation. That carries you into a stream of understanding of how you came to be
there, where they went, what happened to them, and what you can do now to change a
situation that possibly is very hard for them.
One of the things that I do is have a peace camp every year. We have the
privacy and the smallness to really talk about issues that are very hard. The
last one was a group of African-American and Jewish women, because I feel the
invasion by the Israelis of Palestine and Lebanon and the treatment of the people
is so incredibly horrifying—and made more so by the fact that we in the
United States pay billions of dollars to keep this machine of destruction going,
and people who speak out about that are called anti-Semitic.
I have noticed a growing silence between Jewish women and African-American
women. We've always been allies. I can't remember any struggle that I've been
in where there was not a Jewish woman or two, holding her part. Now, for
whatever the reason, there's a silence. That silence will eventually mean that we
won't talk. When we don't talk, we lose.
I think everybody can think of some things to do. That is the wonderful
thing about this period—there is endless stuff to do. You know, it's not like in
the end you have to go find it.
Sojourners: Most opportunities are just knocking at your door.
Walker: Yeah, they're already in the house. I love that! Just dig in
anywhere. Don't even be telling me "What can I do?" Just sit for five minutes and
it'll come to you.
Sojourners: What do you do when you just feel overwhelmed? How do you handle
that spiritually?
Walker: I take a bubble bath. I put on wonderful music. I understand that
the beauty of the world is much more present than the evil of the world. The
evil of the world is so big, but at the same time the beauty of the world
overwhelms it. When you take the bubble bath and you play the music and you dance, or
you look out the window to see that the acacia is blooming—you're not
necessarily healed, but you're rebalanced.
Sojourners: I see you as an American mystic, in terms of being rooted in a
particular African-American history and going to those places where there is a
deep spirituality present and drinking deeply from those wells. One definition
of mysticism is recognizing the interconnectedness and the spiritual oneness
of life, of people, across time ....
Walker: ... of all life, not just people, but all life.
Sojourners: How does the mystic engage the social and political context of
her time?
Walker: In my writing, my focus is often on heightening awareness of
spiritual teachings that might not be so easily understood. One of the problems with
a mystic is that you're often out there by yourself. People will read a book
like my last novel [Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart] and have no idea what
you're talking about. But I trust that as we go along—just as has happened in
the last 25 years with The Color Purple—people will see it as a gift and not as
a slander. The aim of the Buddhist or the Christian person's meditation is to
open the heart. That's what Now Is the Time is basically about.
Eating Oranges in the Astrodome. interview by Rose Marie Berger. Sojourners
Magazine, June 2007 (Vol. 36, No. 6, pp. 20-25). Features.
(Source: http://www.sojo. net/index. cfm?action= magazine. article&issue= soj0706&
article=070626)
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Msprissy
Regular Poster
Username: Msprissy
Post Number: 67
Registered: 03-2006
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 09, 2007 - 01:36 pm: |
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Thank you so much for this interview. Speaking on a small portion of the interview, there are many of us who see America like Alice and President Jimmy Carter. On meditation, I find my peace sitting and looking out my window from the 21st floor. You can see all of the beautiful, lush green trees opening up and reaching for the sky. It is sooo beautiful and peaceful.
Peace out! |
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