BPF / TW Fall 07 Alice Walker

Pulitzer-prize winning author and activist Alice Walker's new book, Why War is Never a Good Idea (HarperCollins, 2007), is written and illustrated for children and will be available on September 21, 2007, the International Day of Peace established by the United Nations. Turning Wheel's managing editor, Colette DeDonato, talked with her in July of this year about the book's controversial content, raising kids, and nourishing yourself.

CD: I read one of your books, There is a Flower at the End of My Nose Smelling Me, to my two-and-a -half year old and she loves it. How did you get interested in writing books for children?

AW: When I met Langston Hughes I realized that I had no idea who he was and that I had not read any of his books and I felt really terrible. I didn’t want anyone else to grow up not having access to such an important person. It was the first idea that I had for a children’s book. I called it Langston Hughes: American Poet. It was then that I started thinking about how foundational it is for children to have an understanding of the people in the world who write poems, and sing songs, and do the work that keeps the world in balance.

CD: What was the age range for that book?

AW: None, really. It is for any child whose parents can read it to them, or any child who was as precocious as I was. I don’t think in terms of “children’s books.” I just write what feels true and good to me and that I would enjoy—and I’m in my 60s. There is a Flower at the End of My Nose Smelling Me is as much for me as it is for any three-year-old.

CD: Did you read a lot of books as child?

AW: I did. I loved Gulliver’s Travels and later on anything by Jane Austen and or any 19th century English writers that we could find. My father found some old, thrown out Shakespeare and we all read that. I didn’t come from a family where books were easy to come by. My father and my mother brought books home, but my teachers understood that I loved reading, and they were so pleased, so they made sure that I had books to read. They gave me their books. All of my birthday presents were books.

CD: How old were you when you started writing?

AW: According to my mother, I was writing with a twig in the dirt when I was crawling. But after that, I started writing around nine or ten. I have a journal I recently rediscovered that I wrote poetry in when I was 14. That will be part of my archives.

CD: Your new book Why War in Never A Good Idea, which is about some of the realities of war, was designed for readers ages 4-8. I’m wondering if you’ve had the opportunity to talk about the subject of war with young children and if this is what inspired you?

AW: The text of the book was a poem that was in my latest collection of poetry, Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth. I wrote these poems for all the maimed children and the blind children, the children who pick up the cluster bombs and lose their legs and their arms. And the way that we as Americans pay for all of this stuff through our taxes. I wanted to make sure—to the extent that a book can do this—that all the children who play war, whose parents encourage this by buying them little toy guns, have a clearer understanding of the reality of war. It seems important that children grow up having a better understanding of what they are being sent to when they are being sent to places like Iraq and Afghanistan or wherever they are being sent in the world. The ignorance that they carry with them often causes their death, and it definitely diminishes their peace and their happiness.

CD: War is a potentially really frightening and complex concept for young people. What message about war do you want kids to take away from this book?

AW: I think that they may be surprised to grasp the fact that war is actually a war against the earth itself. Because that is so, it means that war is never just against people, it is against the very structure that keeps life going for everyone. The earth does not like being bombed. The earth feels the assault upon itself and all of the creatures are as sensitive to being harmed as human beings are. Those are some of the things that I’d like to have children think about early, so that when they reach a country that is being bombarded, they will not be so numb to reality of what is happening. They will feel the fear of the fox, the terror of the chickens and the donkeys. It’s all one thing. I want to try to help children feel that from two and three years old on.

CD: You have a grown daughter. Do you remember how young she was when you started to talk to her about these complex ideas?

AW: I think it happened first because I was demonstrating against war. The conversation started as a question about why I was doing this and what I was doing. I would say to her, “War is something that human beings have outgrown, they just don’t realize it. War is useless. It uses up all of our money.” I’d say, “Look at this road. If we had more money we could fix this road, or fix this school or get more money to have a decent hospital. But that money is being spent on building planes and ships and all the weapons that they use. And when they get to where they go, they find people just like us and they kill them.”

We know that we wouldn’t want strangers showing up one day and bombing our house and burning our neighborhood. So it’s an easy conversation, really. And people who think that it’s not aren’t aware that children are exposed to television and videos and media and all the things that children are exposed to, and that they get it—they get all of this stuff, but they get it without guidance.

CD: Something you said after 9/11 comes to mind: “When we’re attacked and we suffer, that’s supposed to teach us that we don’t want to attack other people and make them suffer.” This is such a basic truth that has is disguised.

AW: Well, it’s leadership. If we had a leader who was mature, he or she would have said, “What this teaches us America is that we’re suffering so greatly and we never want anyone to feel this way. Therefore we must pursue justice in a way that is not going to result in this kind of suffering.” We could have had that.

We could have had a mature leader who could have done that. But generally speaking we have not chosen those people. We have isolated those people and denied them access to that kind of power. So then we end up instead with someone who says, “You made us suffer and we’re going to make you suffer 50,000 times as much!” And then sets out to do that.

CD: And from a Buddhist perspective—

AW: It’s endless suffering!

CD: How do you think adults can help kids talk about this subject?

The wonderful thing about having children is that you know them well. You have good relationship with them, hopefully, and you talk about everything with them because children ask about everything. And you want to be honest. I would say the best way is always with gentleness and kindness and thoughtfulness, and that you don’t lie to them—ever.

You do the hard work of figuring how best to present something to them. The world is scary whether you are talking to them about it or not. And the situation is dire, so it’s not as if you have the luxury of not teaching them about what is happening.

CD: In this country we may have that luxury because a lot of us don’t experience the war first hand, so we can be in denial about it. I live in east Oakland and last night the 4th of July fireworks and the gunshots went on for five or so hours and my daughter was scared and not yet old enough to understand what was going on. I was asking myself if we lived in Baghdad, or anywhere where there is bombing going on all the time, what would it be like to live with that everyday and would she understand all of this?

AW: Right there is a great place for teaching. What you described is a wonderful way to help her to see that in some parts of the world, it’s not just fireworks and people shooting guns in to the air. They are actually shooting each other. And then she aks, “Mommy why would they do that? And you would say, “They don’t know any better.” When awful racist things would happen in the South, black versus white things, my mother and father would always say, “They don’t know any better. If they knew better, then they would do better.” It’s a question of ignorance.

I think Rebecca’s father and I were always very open and honest with her about anything she was curious about. I think people who feel like they can’t talk to their children about things are deluded about what children can understand. You, being the mother of a two-year old, know that what they don’t understand drops away.

CD: I had this come up when my daughter and I were watching a movie and in the opening scene the fish’s mother dies. When my daughter asked what happened, I paused, and then I very matter-of-factly said, “She got eaten by a bigger fish.” I didn’t want to sugar-coat it or lie to her or leave out part of the story, but I know lots of parents who fast forward through that scene because they think that it’s not ok for them to say to kids that age that someone died.

AW: But it’s a fish, and fish get eaten by other fish! It’s so simple.

When we look at how children are in the world now, how distrusting, and how scared, they are, there’s so much anxiety and so we have to think about whether it wouldn’t be better to give them a foundation of more truth.

CD: Let’s talk about how we as adults hold the horrors of war in our consciousness. This issue of TW is focused on the subject of nourishment. We’re asking people to talk about hope and nourishing ourselves in the face of so much uncertainty and—horror.Can you tell me how you nourish yourself and what keeps you from giving up hope?

AW: I like to say that as long as the earth can make a spring, spring time, I can do that also, because we are one. My solace and my comfort comes from being in nature. Every day I look out at peach trees and hills and water and sky. I just picked a lot of plums today. I can’t give up because nature has not, even in places that have been battered beyond recognition of what was there before.

I have a garden that is so profuse. I have collard greens with leaves that are almost as big as I am. They are incredibly delicious and nutritious. Nature is so giving, and that sustains me. She is never withholding. She is always giving.

CD: Are you reading anything right now that is inspiring?

AW: Right now I’m reading peach leaves, I’m reading sky, and I’m reading water and that’s all I need to read now.