Small Wonder

Katie D.

August 5, 2011 - 8:02 PM

As part of this wonderful Costa Rican vacation, I have been reading Small Wonder, by Barbara Kingsolver. Kingsolver is one of my favorite authors, and is one of the voices I trust to tell the truth about things, and to speak honestly to both the injustices and the beauties of the world. I love her fiction, and I am deeply moved by her works of non-fiction. Small Wonder is a collection of essays that she published in response to the world as it was on September 11, 2001. As we approach that sad anniversary, and as I read these words from this paradise, I feel called, again, to take up writing and activism, and to live each day with profound gratitude and joy.

The books we read are important. To me, they can be an essential counterpoint to the life I am living, and I sometimes learn more from works of fiction than I do from my university classes. I started this summer's journey with The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, which is the story of following your one true dream to find your place in life. What a powerful allegory for my own summer, in all its difficulties and marvels.

While traveling to El Salvador, I read Speaker for the Dead, by Orson Scott Card. This sci-fi book is part of a series, and deals intimately with encounters with The Other, and the experience of finding the stranger to be not unlike ourselves. Aside from that, it is a book I have loved for years, and therefore gave me great comfort during that second week of this summer's adventures.

During my trip with the Caravan of Mothers through Guatemala and Mexico (which I have not yet blogged about: I still need to sort through that particular experience before I can write about it) I met two girls from the University of Notre Dame, who replenished my dwindling book collection at that crucial moment. So I read On the Road by Jack Kerouac. This was not my first experience with On the Road, and it probably won't be the last. It is a book of its moment: a book about the despair and wild freedom of traveling through the Beat Generation. I read this book while on a road journey of my own, experiencing a different kind of wild potential in the act of moving through the world.

Now, as I page through Small Wonder on the beach, I am struck again and again by how intimate the relationship between word and world can be. Kingsolver writes of a profound joy at witnessing, for instance, the flight of scarlet macaws in Costa Rica. She describes the landscapes and the place with a profound wonder and humility, while simultaneously speaking to the delicacy of this world, and the necessity of finding new ways of preserving it. I have been moved, again and again, by her words. Perhaps this book is a little heavy for a vacation's pleasure reading. But it strikes me as the perfect thing: the honest assessment of our place in the universe, and the echoing pleasure at being part of this world.

I also feel that I am being called, again, to write. Writing this blog has been a joy and a discipline for me, and one for which I am truly grateful (besides, I have the giddy pleasure of being able to call myself a professional writer!). However, I also feel that I need to push forward, and try to find more spaces for my own views and words to launch out into the world. It feels like Small Wonder is egging me on, somehow, and that this is the moment to begin. Kingsolver writes, "The business of fiction is to probe the tender spots of an imperfect world, which is where I live, write, and read." I read this and wanted to stand up and cheer. I've been saving up my lived experiences to try to dive into the brokenness and beauty of things.

So when better to start than now? And here? Readers, wish me luck.