The Extended Essay

Aly Higgins

Professor Leake

WRIT 1733

April 26, 2013

Expanding Truth, Pain, and Love: How to Tell a Human Story

            What is the What by Dave Eggers is a novel that accounts the story of Valentino’s, a Sudanese refugee, journey from a small village in South Sudan to a suburb of Atlanta. The story is filled with many periods of triumph and many times of suffering; however, Eggers commitment to a new standard of truth allows the story to come alive even when it is “difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen” (O’Brien).  The contradictions and skewed timeline in the novel allows the reader to become immersed in the emotional validity of Valentino’s story, and calls for a critical assessment of how stories are received in our world. Through a unique narrative viewpoint, Eggers challenges the reader’s perceptions of truth and pain, and aims to break up the traditional opinion of how a ‘refugee’ story should be told.

Truth, a target often sought but rarely defined, is hotly debated in reference to the validity of a story. Facts, events, and locations seem to matter greatly to the public; it is if we have evolved into a mechanic lie detector, only expressing signs of interest when we feel as if we have been deceived. “Without the grounding reality, it’s just a trite bit of puffery, pure Hollywood” (O’Brien). However, is truth truly nothing more than the legitimacy of data? Must our stories be put to a technical test? Authors de Sousa and Morton argue in their article “Emotional Truth” that “it is accuracy rather than truth itself that is valuable” (265). The distinction between the two lies within the distinction between relaying belittled pieces of information and delivering something whole that contains value. To better clarify the distinction, “truth comes in many forms, some cheap and some valuable” (de Sauso and Morton 265). For example, a cheap truth is one that has factual legitimacy but is plagued by vagueness; a cheap truth could refer to a description of a flower as colorful. While that description may be true, it conveys nothing of great value about the event.

Thus, accuracy, rather than truth, can come from malleable roots yet still contain a profound calling to the heart of the matter. In What is the What, the unique narrative structure of the novel illuminates a deeper truth. In the novel, Eggers alternates between the present-day robbery in Atlanta and his journey from South Sudan as a child. The story is told in an illogical order, yet the connections between his different periods of suffering allow Eggers to create a cyclical pattern that uncovers a deeper truth. If the story had been told in the factually correct order, Valentino would have existed as two distinct versions of himself: the refugee fleeing his hometown and the refugee trying to make it in the United States. The disruption of factual truth allows Valentino to share “the whole truth of [his] existence” since “the stories [can] emanate from [him] at all the time [he is] awake and breathing” (Eggers xiii, 29). Demanding a higher standard of ‘truth’ that may exist in a disrupted form evokes a “rich a body of beliefs and desires, fitting the person’s situation and its possibilities” (de Sauso and Morton 272). In other words, adhering to a commitment to accuracy creates more creative space for the author to tell the story how it is remembered rather than how it happened because in reality, “happeningness is irrelevant” (O’Brien).

The effectiveness of incorporating valuable truth in a story directly influences how well pain and suffering, key elements of a refugee story, are communicated. Pain is complex and originates from a primal source rather than a linguistic conscious. As a result of this difficulty, “the communicability of pain is frequently questioned; any expression of pain is considered … deficient and incomplete, … [because] it defers meaning” (Hron 35). Pain has the tendency of being swept away into a “universal ‘suffering form’” (Fadlalla 80). It is a trait that can come to define an entire mass of undistinguishable faces rather than a poignant attribute of an individual story. For example, Valentino criticizes the United States’ reaction to the stories of the Lost Boys, the group of South Sudanese refugees that walked from their home towns to the asylum of the Kakuma refugee camp. In the United States, the people avidly listen to the accounts of lions, military shootings, and unfathomable moments of suffering. They are riveted by the prospect of young boys being forced to drink their own urine when that detail is “apocryphal, absolutely not true for the vast majority of [them]” (Eggers 21).  

While pain may be universal, it cannot be generalized because it cannot be restricted to the confines of language. Pain is often reduced to a “ghostly shadow” because it is difficult to linguistically “describe their pain, convey its intensity, explain its cause, or specify its location” (Hron 39, 41). Pain, just as truth, can never be portrayed with total correctness; it can only be expressed from memory with emotional accuracy. Valentino’s story only exits in the “diary of his dreams”, and he can tell us the pain of seeing men killed before his eyes, of losing his friend Noriyaki, and of having his “voice and movements … restricted by the things [he owned” during a robbery” (Eggers 29, 26). It is impossible to recount these sufferings with complete integrity, but factual integrity does nothing to recount pain accurately. Only maintaining the commitment to tell a story through the individual framework of one’s memory can make pain expressible and accountable.

The question I am trying to answer today is, how do I tell a refugee story? First, however, I must address the definition of a story. A story is a tool of human communication that has been molded for a variety of purposes. Throughout history “the story was used to preserve the culture of a civilization” and as time passed, stories were “used as means of instructing others” (Stein 489, 490). Thus, a story was merely a bare skeleton used to serve a functional purpose. What is the What disrupts this definition. Valentino tells his story because he believes that “to do anything else would be less than human” (Eggers 535). In other terms, the purpose of Valentino’s story, and potentially other refugee stories, is not the serve a purpose to the outside world, but rather, to serve a duty to oneself. In a refugee story, a story is not told to “instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior” (O’Brien). A refugee owes nothing to the outside world for it was that world that reduced the refugee to merely a soul controlled by outside, unfair circumstances. Stories entrenched with the horrors of mental and emotional displacement have the responsibility to adhere to a deeply personal truth- one that is contradictory and not relevant to the moral codes of the readers.

I would argue that the way to tell a refugee story is to tell it with no greater purpose at all. The truth should only consist of the emotional and mental interpretation of the situation; it is more functional to recount a blurred compilation of fragmented memories from the most remote corners of the mind. It does not have to make sense. “A true story, it truly told, makes the stomach believe” (O’Brien). In other terms, the truth of a story, rooted in the juxtaposition of horror and beauty, should evoke a primal, incommunicable reaction- the same sort of reaction that precursors pain. A real truth cannot be validated by the suffocating limitations of the written or spoken language. A story cannot be categorized in an ‘other’ category. Thus, maybe the way to tell a refugee story is to not really tell it as a refugee story at all.

In the famous literary piece How to Tell a War Story, Tim O’Brien stated that his story “wasn’t a war story. It was a love story”. Through the horrific account of the death of O’Brien’s friend in the sun rays shining through the canopy of the Vietnamese rainforest, O’Brien reminds us that war is a conglomerated contradiction “because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love” (O’Brien). Thus, a war story, or a refugee story, or a story of suffering is never really about the suffering. In What is the What, Valentino was not telling a story of his horrors; he was telling the story of his mother, of Tabitha, of William K., and of his father. Therefore, a refugee story is really no different than a love story because it includes boundless emotions, periods of elation and depression, and a truth that is more than a set of facts. So, how do you tell a refugee story, you may ask? I’d start with a commitment to refuse to categorize it as anything other than a human story. A human story about the most humane of truths: love.       

Works Cited

De Sousa, Ronald. "Emotional Truth: Ronald de Sousa." Aristotelian Society Supplementary                      Volume. Vol. 76. No. 1. Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2002.

Eggers, Dave. What is the What: A Novel. San Francisco: McSweeney's, 2006. Print.

Fadlalla, Amal Hassan. "Contested Borders of (In)Humanity: Sudanese Refugees and the Mediation of Suffering and Subaltern Visibilities." Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development 38.1 (2009): 79-120.   Print.

Hron, Madelaine. "'Suffering Matters': The Translation and Politics of Pain." Translating pain: immigrant suffering in literature and culture. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009. 33-62. Print.

O'Brien, Tim. "How to Tell a True War Story." The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction.                   Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990. n/a. Print.

Stein, Nancy L. "The definition of a story." Journal of pragmatics 6.5 (1982): 487-507.

The Event

At the Voices of Refugee event, two individual refugees and one family of refugees told their stories of their journeys to the US. The panel included one male from Burundi, one female from Burma, and a family from Bhutan. The stories all had a similar thread because all the refugees extensively expressed their value of education. The daughter of the Bhutanese family shared her hopes of attending community college and DU and the elders of the family expressed that their only hope from the US was that “all their children receive an education”. They all also had positive reactions to their lives in the US; many of them have found a sense of community and support through the work of the African Community Center.

The Voice of Refugee event provided many new insights about how to tell a refugee story. Many of the stories were told with humor; they highlighted lighthearted mishaps and small successes in the US. For example, the woman from Burma shared the story of her kids going hungry in the airport because “[they] did not speak enough English to talk to the vendor, so the kids were just lying on the floor hungry”. Another example is when the young daughter of the family jokingly explained that “she was born in a forest!” The stories were also more broad and general than the stories we have read in class, which was disorientating because I am used to hearing all the details of a refugee story instead of just the rough outline. My reaction to the level of detail incorporated in their stories illuminated another one of my inherent assumptions. After reading the astonishing events and pain that both Mawi and Valentino encountered, I developed the assumption that every refugee had witnessed crazy, horrific events during their journeys to asylum. However, at the VOR event, their stories seemed more ordinary to me. My definition of their stories as “ordinary” was jarring because I realized how immune to human suffering I have become. In an era that consistently displays stories of death and war in the media, suffering has become an everyday aspect of life, and so, without shocking details, the refugees’ accounts of fleeing their homes (an event that should be unimaginable) seemed mundane. This realization has helped me discover that I need to adjust my level of sensitivity to other people’s suffering. Therefore, I thought the VOR event was effective because it told real accounts without the amazing embellishments, which allowed me to analyze my own assumptions about refugee stories. 

The Self Reflection

My experience at the African Community Center has provided great insight about the influence of language on a person’s first impression or judgment of another person. Due to weather and other conflicts, I have only had the opportunity to go the ACC once; however, I already feel as if I am being exposed to a whole other viewpoint of reality. My experience at ACC is illuminating my own tendency to associate one’s intelligence with his or her language capabilities.

           

I am already thankful for my experience at ACC because I believe this experience will help me work on one of my prejudices. When speaking to a non-native English speaker or to a person who is just learning English, I view their lack of grammar and vocabulary proficiency as a sign of lower intelligence. At the ACC, I am working in the interview prepatory program, so teaching English is a vital part of my work. Last Tuesday, I worked with a Sudanese woman who had only been in the US for a few short months and who, consequently, knew very little English. While I did not experience impatience or frustration with her pace, I did begin to notice that I was making automatic assumptions that she was less intelligent than I was because she struggled with my native language. It was not until she mentioned that she had been a nurse in Sudan that I gave her the intellectual credit she deserved. I was very disturbed at the ignorance and elitism present in my own thinking. I couldn’t help but think of the lessons in Of Beetles and Angels. By doubting the intellectual dignity of the woman I was teaching, I had essentially turned her from an angel to nothing more than a beetle; I had dehumanized her in a significant way, allowing her to only “survive … in the ghostly shadow of [her] former [self]" (Hron 39). In essence, I had reduced her story to “easy-to-consume images and narrative forms” (Fadlalla 81). I now plan to use my experience at ACC not only as an opportunity to learn about refugee lives and stories but also as an opportunity to disrupt my own privilege and exclusionist ways of thinking. I am grateful that my own prejudices have been brought to light because now, I have a full opportunity to move forward toward a more understanding and accepting perspective about the world. 

The Promise

Peek’s post-humanism critique of Egger’s What is the What added to the edge of darkness prevalent in the novel. It added to Fadlalalla’s dismissal of a universal suffering form, noting that “the promised freedom and equality for all that emerges from conceptions of a universal humanity is continually offset by the realities faced by the relocated southern Sudanese refugees” (Peek 120). In other words, Peek discusses the danger of making false promises. When I was a little girl, I was told that if I worked hard in school, did well on my exams, and participated in other activities, I would be rewarded with an acceptance letter to the school of my dreams. Throughout my time at Legacy High School, I pushed myself to the ultimate boundaries of capabilities, always keeping the words of my supportive parents in mind. I met all the logistical requirements of the top schools in the country; I felt as if I had done everything right and therefore, deserved a spot at the school of my dreams. However, I was eventually rejected from 4 of my 6 schools and every scholarship opportunity. In the midst of my devastation, I felt an aura of confusion: wasn’t I promised these opportunities? While I cannot blame my parents for instilling a sense of faith and optimism in me, I have wondered, especially after reading Valentino’s continued and incomparable disappointments, if promises actually make the world a more bearable place to live.

Peek argues that promises, specifically humanitarian promises, are illogical and unconquerable. In the end, “the much sought-after ‘Neverland’ of America is revealed to be a promise that remains unfulfilled” (Peek 121). Valentino does not go to college right away. He is continually taken advantage of- his oppression continued in the supposed land of the free. Promises, it seems, are only malleable manifestations of power disguised as selfless signs of help from above. It divides human society into a class of ‘givers’ and a class of ‘aid-recipients’. Now let me ask you: which of these titles is engraved with a sense of dignity? Peek argues that promises of humanitarian aid “embed a hierarchy within the concept of the human that impacts our ability to recognize the lives of others and constitutes its own discursive violence by privileging a Western humanist structure of subjectivity” (Peek 123).

Through the use of promises, the gap between the subjugated story-tellers and the comfortable listeners grows only further apart.

The Comparison

The most striking differences between What is the What, Of Beetles and Angels, and God Grew Tired of Us is the selection of tone. In God Grew Tired of Us, there is a humorous atmosphere. The directors chose to include moments such as the refugees learning to eat potato chips for the first time, which inspired light-hearted laughter and a sense of innocence into the film. The film found a nice balance between addressing the emotional voids felt by the featured refugees and illuminating the optimism present in their every day actions. Of Beetles and Angels, in contrast, contains a sweet sentiment. Its overall message is that ‘angels’ can be found in the most unusual of places and that recognizing angels in one’s life can be a powerful motivator toward life success. Of Beetles and Angels focuses largely on the people in Mawi’s life rather than Mawi himself; throughout the novel, Mawi describes how the work and words of his father and brother helped him strive to reach a better life. Finally, in What is the What, there is a large aura of resentment, prejudice, and hate. During the first pages, Valentino tells the story of his life to a boy named Michael, the boy holding him hostage in his own home. Throughout the story of Valentino’s suffering in Sudan, he makes jabs at Michael; he notes that Michael must have experienced pain in his life but that that pain will never equate the suffering of the lost boys because at least Michael had clothes, food, and shelter during his hardship. The tone of resentment present in What is the What was surprising and unnerving because it hadn’t been prevalent in the other two refugee stories; however, this tone was also refreshing because in my opinion, it made Valentino seem more human. His flaws and his prejudices, specifically against the Arab people, made him relatable because he openly showed how he was far from perfect- far from an ideal manifestation of the America Dream. Through this tone, Valentino was able to drive his story away from the mold of a ‘universal suffering’ account; his raw honesty revealed an edge of darkness that hadn’t been approached in the other stories.

While the tones between these stories may have differed, the goal of each story remained the same: to reveal a truth. By reading these stories, I have adjusted my definition of truth. Truth is not merely the accuracy of historical events, facts, or even, emotions; it is the dedication to making a point greater than one’s self. It is a devotion to exploring impossible wonders and unfathomable pain while remaining loyal to one’s duty to paint the larger picture. This is what truth is to me, and the stories of these refugees constantly warp and expand this new interpretation.