Empathy Day - June 12th

June 12^th is Empathy Day.  If you’re not totally sure what that entails, this famous quotation from Harper Lee’s wonderful novel To Kill a Mockingbird is an interesting place to start...

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.

It was Atticus Finch who said that.  Now I love Atticus and he said A LOT OF WISE THINGS but in this particular instance, I’ve always felt that his use of imagery is distracting.  Actually, if you really overthink it, it’s downright creepy and disturbing.   So rather than taking the advice of Atticus, take the advice of the good people at www.empathylab.uk instead and simply read a thought-provoking book.  Here are my Top Five recommendations for Empathy Day.

Coming to England by Floella Benjamin  

This book is beautiful.  And if you are lucky enough to get hold of the big colour illustrated edition, it’s even more beautiful.  Floella Benjamin tells us about her early life in Trinidad and about her big noisy family and her inspirational mother and the Caribbean food she remembers eating and about her long and exciting voyage to England as one of the Windrush generation.  After that, the story darkens somewhat.  We hear of the hostility that is waiting to greet the family in England and about the unfair treatment Floella frequently encounters at school.  Luckily, and with the support of her brilliant mum, Floella keeps her chin up and finds a way through it all.  This is an inspiring little book and an important one.

Refugee Boy 
by Benjamin Zephaniah

I’ve written about this novel before but I’m writing about it again here.  Alem is a 14-year-old boy from Ethiopia.  His dad is Ethiopian and his mum is Eritrean and that makes life very complicated because Ethiopia and Eritrea are at war.  One day, Alem’s dad takes him on a surprise trip to London.  And then his dad just vanishes leaving Alem all alone and in the care of UK social services.  It’s not difficult to read this book and think, What if that were me?  Or my son?  Or my brother?  Or whatever.  And it’s not hard to read this story and make sense of the truly desperate lengths that human beings will go to in order to get themselves or their children to a place of apparent safety. 

Two Weeks with the Queen by Maurice Gleitzman 

I stumbled upon this when I was doing my teaching practice way back in the last millennium.  It’s a story about a 12 year-old Australian boy called Colin who is sent to England to live with relatives while his brother has treatment for cancer.  Colin decides that the most useful thing he can do while he is in the UK is ask the Queen to recommend a good doctor.  Colin doesn’t get to meet the queen but he does meet a gay Welshman called Ted.  A lot happens and I don’t want to spoil anything by giving too much away.  But basically, this book is about cancer and AIDS and homophobia and grief and it’s.... often really, really funny.  It really is!  Go and read it.  However old you are.

The Catcher in the Rye 
by J.D. Salinger

J.D Salinger’s ground-breaking novel about a 16-year-old boy who goes AWOL for three days in New York City may seem like a strange addition to this list.  Holden Caulfield is a boy with a wealthy and privileged background.  On every page, he whines and sneers and boasts and lies and contradicts himself.  In spite of being arguably the most famous teenager in fiction, Holden isn’t an easy person to get on with.  But Salinger isn’t asking us to like his protagonist.  I’m not even sure that he desperately wants every reader to understand Holden either because Holden’s bravado is so unrelenting, it’s very easy to chuck the book aside and miss the clues that make this novel so powerful.  But look carefully at Chapter Five where Holden tells us about Old Allie’s baseball mitt.  And then ask yourself if you still think Holden Caulfield is just a spoilt whining pain in the arse.

           

The Diary of a Young Girl / The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank 

This book should need no introduction.  I borrowed it from my school library when I was a teenager and the thing that struck me most about it was the ordinariness of it all.  Anne moaned about her mum and her sister, thought her father was the cat’s whiskers, wrote a reasonably detailed description of her own foof and had a slow burning thing for Peter van Pels.  Except, of course, that nothing was ordinary.  This is a true story from Nazi-occupied Amsterdam and Anne was a Jewish girl hiding in an attic for over two years.  And then the diary abruptly ends because the people hiding in the attic are betrayed and everyone is carted off to concentration camps.  Of the nine people in the attic, only Anne’s father survived the war.  I think everyone should read Anne’s diary at some point in their lives.   

Seven Great Books by Black Writers

Just recently, a couple of things have got me thinking about books by black writers – and how few of them I’ve read or even know about.  The first thing to get me thinking was Norfolk’s Black History Month.  I was really chuffed to be invited to take part in an event about inspiring books.  But why me though?  I’m not black.  Well that’s very true - but here’s the thing:  You don’t have to be black to read a book by a black author.  Books are for everyone.  So I talked about one of my favourite teen fiction writers, an American called Walter Dean Myers – I’ll say more about him a little later on.

The second thing which got me thinking was something one of my A Level students said to me just the other day.  I’m teaching the The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  It contains some dodgy old language and attitudes.  To help my students understand why, I gave them a quick history lesson on America and slavery and the Civil War and the racial segregation which followed.  This sparked quite a few discussions in my all-white Norfolk classroom.  We got talking about the ‘n’ word and why I don’t think a white person should EVER use it.  We got talking about Stephen Lawrence too.  And then, at the end of my lesson, Sophie said to me, ‘I want to read more books by black writers.  But apart from Malorie Blackman, I can’t think of any.  Are there other black writers?’

‘Of course there are,’ I said – in that overjoyed way I get when anyone tells me they want to read more books.  And I reeled a few names off.  But then I stopped.  And it suddenly dawned on me that – in the scheme of things – there aren’t actually very many black writers at all.  Not that I know of anyway.  So – for Sophie – and anyone else who is interested, I’ve put together a MAGNIFICENT SEVEN of my favourite books I’ve ever read by black writers.  I apologise now – because they’re all massive bestsellers – there aren’t any undiscovered gems here.  Because I don’t know any.  So please feel free to add to my list if you want to by leaving a comment. 

So here they are.  In no particular order.

Coming to England – Floella Benjamin

This is the autobiography of Trinidadian TV presenter Floella Benjamin.  The book begins by beautiful, colourful descriptions of her life in Trinidad and then moves on to the gloomier environment of London in the 1950s.  When I was teaching in secondary schools, I read this book with every Year 7 class I taught.  They loved it.  They were also appalled by the racism that Floella and her family found themselves on the sharp end of.  Really this book is written for kids but I gave it to my mum who likes autobiographies and she liked it too.  A good story is for everyone.  Apart from Floella, my favourite person in the book is Floella’s mum.  Marmie.  That’s an inspirational woman for you.  Right there.

Refugee Boy – Benjamin Zephaniah

Benjamin Zephaniah is best known for his poetry but he’s written hard-hitting teen novels too.  Alem is a teenage boy from Ethiopia who comes to London for a holiday and then finds himself abandoned there.  What can I say?  This book made me cry.

 

Monster – Walter Dean Myers

I mentioned WDM earlier.  He’s MASSIVE in the states but hardly anyone has heard of him over here.  His teen fiction is mostly all set in Harlem, NYC.  This is interesting to me because I like travelling and learning about the world – even if it’s from my armchair.  Monster is an ASTONISHING novel.  ASTONISHING.  It’s about a teenage boy called Steve who is being held in a New York detention centre.  For murder.  Steve imagines his life as a film and writes his story in the form of a film script.  Walter Dean Myers is original, talented and inventive and I love him.

26a  - Diane Evans

This is adult general fiction.  It won the Orange prize for New Writers.  I can see why.  It’s beautifully written and very very moving.  It’s about twin girls who grow up in Neasden, North London.  A little part of why I loved it so much was because I lived for a while in Willesden which was just down the road – but mostly, I loved it because it’s beautifully written.  It’s also extremely sad.  I cried at this one as well.

White Teeth – Zadie Smith

The world and his wife are always going on about Zadie Smith.  But that’s because she’s young and clever and writes like a total dream. (She’s also very beautiful and very cool – but that shouldn’t matter.)  Zadie Smith writes dialogue brilliantly.  When her characters speak, it’s like you’re actually there, listening to them.  She’s written a few novels now but my favourite is her first, White Teeth.  It’s set in Willesden Green, North London.  I lived there once.  This is not the only reason I like this book though.  The other reason is that it’s brilliant.

Noughts and Crosses – Malorie Blackman

Even though Malorie Blackman is the only black writer that Sophie has ever heard of and even though everyone in the entire world has read Noughts and Crosses, I can’t leave Malorie or this title off my list.  Malorie Blackman was writing teen dystopian fiction waaaaaayyyy before The Hunger Games.  And the Noughts and Crosses series really is extraordinary.  I was lucky enough to meet Malorie this summer.  I told her I loved N & C and said, ‘It was the bit about the plasters which really got me.’

And Malorie laughed and said, ‘Everyone says that.’

If you’re read the book, you’ll know what I’m talking about.  If you haven’t, you’re lucky because you can go and do it now J

To Sir, With Love – ER Braithwaite

I love this book.  LOVE IT.  It’s a novel based on the real experiences of Ricky Braithwaite, who came to London in the 1950s from British Guyana to be a teacher in an East End School.  It’s simply and powerfully written and  ER Braithwaite is a total hero.  There’s also a wonderful old film which has handsome Sidney Poitier as the young teacher who weathers loads of racist sh*t and STILL has the generosity of spirit to turn around the lives of those East End ragamuffins.  Lulu is in the film too.  And she sings the soundtrack.  It’s a brilliant soundtrack.  It’s a brilliant film.  It’s a brilliant book.  Ricky, you were a brilliant teacher.

On that note, I’ll leave you with this: