Because Stories Matter

“Reading is an exercise in empathy,” Malorie Blackman said, “an exercise in walking in someone else’s shoes for a while.” I believe this, and I believe that stories, the reading and writing of them are important. They can make a big difference in our lives. They can help us grow.

Recently I read a book that touched me in a way I did not expect. The book is Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout, and I admit that I was attracted first of all because the name of the title character is the same as mine. In addition I admire Strout’s previous Pulitzer Prize winning novel-in-stories Olive Kitteridge. So I knew I was in for some good writing. But I did not expect to be so moved, so affected as I was.

The novel takes place in the year 2020, in the first days of the Pandemic—remember those days? When we did not really know what was happening, but we were alarmed. And as time went on, we became even moreso. In the beginning of the book, writer Lucy Barton, is convinced by her ex-husband that “to save her life” she must leave her New York apartment and take up residence with him in a house in a small town in Maine.

So the story is about the fears of the pandemic, but also its freedoms that can be found living in solitude. Living a simpler life. In addition, it is about the relationship between Lucy and her ex-husband, Arthur. As well as the domestic difficulties of their two grown daughters. All of which makes for interesting plot dynamics.

But the part of the novel that most intrigues me has to do with a woman Lucy meets while volunteering. (Fully masked and socially distanced, of course) at a Food Pantry. The woman is Charlene Bibber, fifty-something years of age who works as a cleaner in a retirement center.

Charlene is somewhat of a character, and though the two are of vastly different backgrounds and occupations, Charlene is funny and honest and the two find many things in common. As women of a certain age, they worry about thinning hair, about losing things. About whether the quarantine is causing them to “lose their minds.” And as time goes on, a true friendship forms. In our times of sticking to our homogenous social circles, Lucy recognizes how extraordinary this is, and how valuable.

Then the woman remarks that she is glad they don’t talk politics. And when Lucy sees the bumper sticker on Charlene’s car lauding a certain president she detests, she has a moment of awakening.

This is just a small moment in the book, but it is an important one, one that gave me a great deal to think about. It has been said that fiction is a lie that over and over reveals the truth. In reading stories, we find this. And in writing stories, developing well-rounded characters, we inhabit the mind of “the other” for a while, and our lives become more expansive, fuller. We become rich in ways we couldn’t have imagined.                                                                                                                                                                   –Lucy Adkins

Writing and Creativity Exercise

1. Think about books you’ve read that have widened your understanding of someone different from you. Books like The Autobiography of Malcolm X or I Am Malala. Consider sharing the titles of these books in the Comments.

2. For the next poem or story you write, think about writing about someone of an entirely different background from you. You might write offering a different perspective of someone you considered a bully as a child, or someone in your elementary school class who couldn’t seem to learn to read. Take the point of view of an individual from a different socioeconomic class. Write and see what enlightenment may happen.

For more inspiration, check out our website www.thewritingandcreativelife.com.

Or follow this link to purchase Writing in Community or our latest book, The Fire Inside.