My amazing and wonderful daughter recently started college. She’s doing a lot of political science. She’s also chugging a lot of coffee and writing a lot of political science essays the day of the deadline.
*sobs emotionally* that is definitely my kid *sob* #proudmum
Having safely delivered the Lisan al Gaib into adulthood, I decided it was time to do something which might not seem like a lot to you, but for me was quite momentous:
I decided that it was time to pass on some of the books I’ve been keeping on my shelves, for her, waiting until the time was right.
And now that’s done.
So here is what I passed on.
My criteria were simple. One: easy does it. I could not pass on anything too advanced, or complex, or obscure, or academic. Wherever it is she’s going, I need to ease her in, gradually and gently. She needs to read everything she can, on her own terms, until she finds herself reading the thing that leaves her shaking and sobbing and changes her life from that moment onwards. (I know what mine was. It’s mine alone. She’ll know what hers is.)
Two, my battles are not her battles, and my fights are not her fights. What she does with her life, and career, are up to her. She is not a foot soldier in the battles I’ve chosen to fight. I can only give her a gentle nudge on how to conduct herself in whatever battles she chooses for herself.
Three, the journey is the destination. I wanted to give her examples of how those who came before her have structured their work, as well as their advocacy. I wanted to share examples of honouring people through beautiful prose, not footnoted statistics. I wanted to teach her how to write in ways that will live long after her.
So first came the books on writing well. These were:
- George Orwell’s How I Write, a small monograph containing “Why I Write” and “Politics and the English Language“, which you must commit to memory.
- The Guardian style guide, and
- The Economist style guide,
- both of which you will pry out of my cold dead hands. Dictionaries teach you how to spell. Thesauri teach you which words might work better. Those two style guides will slap you around the head about both.
Having sorted that, then came the books on writing beautifully. These were:
Martha Gellhorn, The View from the Ground: an anthology of her peacetime writing from the 1930s to the 1980s (my god.) This volume includes her seminal essay on Eichmann and the Private Conscience, which I had to read, myself, as a young political science student. If nothing else, read that.
The first thing I’m doing in the afterlife is heading straight to Martha’s celestial gin joint, where John Steinbeck will already be at the bar. I know he’s no good for me, but I won’t be able to say no. The three of us will be there a good while. Leave us be.
Mary Miller, Jane Haining. Jane was a pious, meek, and humble farmer’s daughter from a two-street village, in the middle of nowhere, here in Scotland. She died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. How she got there, and why it was where she chose to be, deserves more recognition. I passed on this book because Scotland’s history is extraordinarily patriarchal, and it should not be. It’s not enough to learn history: it’s to learn what’s missing from that history.
Randy Shilts, And The Band Played On. This one’s deep for me, as a GenX parent. But I passed it on as an example of telling a story about yourself without ever once mentioning yourself in the story, much less making it about you. It’s how to write when you can’t save your own life – it’s too late for that – but you might save someone else.
The header image in this post is from an exhibition of Keith Haring’s art which was staged over the summer here in Glasgow. As a graffiti artist, very little of his art survives. It barely filled one room. But we went there, and I explained it. She gets it, academically. But I hope she never has to know what it is.
Mitchell Zuckoff, Fall and rise: the story of 9/11. This is a book about why Mum curls up into a PTSD ball once a year every year. But it’s also an example of how to take a story involving thousands of people, and data points, and perspectives, and sort it all into a narrative, written beautifully.
Other books on my shelves were up for grabs, but they are my stories, my history, and my fights. Not hers.
I would not dare to put them in her way.
