Shakespeare's Spy by Gary Blackwood

While I read all three of Gary Blackwood's Shakespeare Stealer books and thought the first was the best, it was in the third book, Shakespeare's Spy, that I found this passage. It made me think about teaching children, how fragile their psyches are and how teachers need to be supportive and encouraging in their teaching methods.

" I had grown accustomed to being criticized by them-for my acting, for my singing, for my dancing, for my scriming. But those were all external things, mere skills to be mastered. The play was personal, a product not of my muscles or my vocal cords but of my mind. If they found flaws in it, the flaws were mine; if they judged it foolish, I would be the fool."

Don't we all have a little of that fear when we open our thoughts and hearts to others?

The Spirit Catches You and Then You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman

I read this book after reading Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, in which Ali says that we should not always blindly accept different cultures and we should do more to change them. Of course she was talking about an oppressive culture, but in The Spirit Catches You and Then You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman the opposite thought came to my mind. What makes our western ways the "right" way? This book specifically refers to western medicine. I had so much marked in this book (thank you again, Kindle) I have just written my thoughts here with only a few passages actually quoted.

There are so many things to consider when dealing with a person who has been picked up and set down in a completely different culture, often without any preparation: the way time is kept, the cultural practices of using a person's name, if the names can be pronounced easily,
being uprooted from their own culture, language, foods, and put into a place where nothing really belongs to them. 

Looks can be deceiving. Just because the people of a different culture may look like us, particularly if they have immigrated to our country and have started adopting our look, doesn't mean that they have the same practices. Sometimes we need to ask, before just resorting to our own ways. We should acknowledge all kinds of intelligence. Perhaps cultural intelligences are similar to the multiple intelligences that we recognize in education and these different cultural intelligences should be acknowledged and worked with.

Do we (Americans) coerce people of other cultures to do things our way, thinking it is the only way? (medicine) Do we in our western culture feel we should have control of everything or should we except that "things happen... not everything is in our control, and not everything is in your control." Or perhaps we do this out of our own ignorance, not realizing there are other ways and beliefs.

Fadiman's story illustrates that dealing with a culture so different from our own may put us in a dilemma in which all the choices are discriminatory. What if there is a treatment that can help a patient but the family is unable to comply, through lack of understanding or ability? Do you then tailor the treatment so the family can and will comply, knowing that it is not the optimal treatment?

We should not be afraid to ask questions in order to clarify a situation. We should ask for help in understanding another culture and learn as much as possible so prejudices don't get in the way of our treatment of another person.

"If you can't see that your own culture has its own set of interests, emotions, and biases, how can you expect to deal successfully with someone else's culture?"

The Pioneer Woman Blog

I was listening to an interview with Ree Drummond of the Pioneer Woman Blog and The Pioneer Woman Cooks, when I was struck by this comment:

"You can make all the plans you want in life and then you need to sit back and enjoy the ride."

A Powerful Read

As a Christian raised in typically small southern towns, I came to this book knowing very little about Muslims and their religious beliefs and practices. I learned many things from Infidel by Ayan Hersi Ali, but I was particularly impressed with the way she was able to step outside of her upbringing and reflect on what she was taught as a child. It certainly gave me much to think about. Here are a few of her thoughts that I found particularly worthy:

"some things must be said, and there are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice."

"words are not something you should waste; they should come out of deep prior reflection"

"Societies that respect the rights of women and their freedom are wealthy and peaceful."

"If girls and women are uneducated, oppressed, and psychologically demeaned, then their children are all stunted by their ignorance. If women are well educated and nurtured, they and their children make up a self-reliant, responsible citizenry and a productive workforce."

I noted a few others passages that I will refrain from recording here, because they are Ali's very strong comments on Islam's role as an oppressive, intolerant culture. She also comments on how western cultures often enable these values to continue. This book gave me so much to think about.

Undaunted: My Struggle for Freedom and Survival in Burma by Zoya Phan

Zoya Phan is Karen, one of the eight ethnic groups of Burma (Myanmar). In this memoir she tells of her childhood in a jungle village of Burma, being a teenage refugee in Thailand and how she found her way to being involved in the struggle for democracy against Burma's military dictatorship. The military dictatorship has been employing ethnic cleansing in Burma, of which the Karen have become a victim.

     "In spite of the odds, in spite of tradition and in spite of power, if I believed something was wrong or right and pushed for the truth, I would eventually get it. If someone is trying to put you down, you just have to redouble your efforts to make things right. No matter how hard or embarrassing or even frightening it might be, you will win in the end if you fight for what is true."

     "I nurtured that spark of hope, telling myself that if I believed in something strongly enough, it had to be possible."

     "freedom won't be given to us: we will have to work for it."