Often, we ignore, talk away, ridicule and make fun of issues and opinions that we don’t want to see. We may disagree with something, or think we disagree, because we have not really thought about the issue, and then it can be easy to pass by the topic and change the debate.
A few days ago, I watched a memorial programme on Swedish TV about the world-famous children’s writer Astrid Lindgren (1907-2002), the country’s most read writer, translated to numerous foreign languages and also made into films. Astrid Lindgren’s loved characters include Pippi Longstocking, Emil of Lönneberga, the Lionheart Brothers, Mio, my Son, and many others. They are strong children, especially the girls, who tell truths that we adults become wiser if we listen to and reflect on.
Astrid Lindgren is a master at drawing attention to class and social inequality issues, including in her book ‘Rasmus and the Vagabond’, where the boy Rasmus, who has run away from the children’s home is cared better for by a homeless man than all the social workers and bourgeois pillars of society. Astrid Lindgren presents the relationship in a moving and unfussy way while we today might have been quick to jump to worries about abuse. In other books, too, she describes children’s relationships with adults other than the parents, such as Emil’s relationship with the farm worker, and the slightly antagonistic relationship with the maid who is overeager trying to teach him good behaviour, yes, and getting her engagement sealed with the farm worker. Neither Emil nor the farm worker wants to follow society’s requirements too soon, but I am sure they, too, would succumb to most of the going cultures and traditions, yet, not quite giving up dreams and creative alternatives.
In that sense, Astrid Lindgren makes us see that innovations can just as well come from people on a smallholder farm than the city’s middle and upper classes houses. Besides, in Astrid Lindgren’s books, all children go to school and learn some of the basics of coping in the modern society and the new world. Astrid Lindgren is not directly political, yet, she certainly encourages political thought about class, social differences, gender issues and more, and she was a lifelong social democrat. When Astrid Lindgren in 1948 received a travel grant to visit USA, she was shocked to see the discrimination against blacks there. A few years later, she summarised some of her impressions in an essay collection entitled ‘Kati in America’. She wanted us to see what we didn’t want to see, but indeed had to see to make life better for children and adults, in Sweden, USA, and everywhere else.
In the TV programme that I watched, Pastor Regina Karacsonyi drew attention to a few more important issues. She asked: How do we include, not hinder, the children to take part in religious and other events? How do we include women better? And how do we include, not hinder, refugees and other newcomers to our lands to be part of our communities? We may think we are open and inclusive, but in actual fact we are not since we often don’t want to see the truth.
The Cathedral Dean, Lennart Koskinen encouraged us all to become a bit more like the children in Astrid Lindgren’s world, doing a bit more mischief as long as it didn’t hurt anybody else. And again, children might actually help us see what we don’t want to see.
Astrid Lindgren had the wisdom and artistic skills to make us all love her characters and through them see what we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to see. Well, many times we might well know in advance, but not tell others, remember from our own childhood and other situations. A child is sometimes allowed to show us reality, tell stories, and help us all see what we don’t want to see.
In the famous Swedish literary TV programme, ‘Babel’, anchored by Jessika Gedin, last Sunday’s edition was much about children’s literature, the writers’ panel spoke about books about childhood and growing up, not only written for children but also for adults. Jessika Gedin said that having looked through her own bookshelves in preparing for the programme, she had realised that almost half her books were about childhood and growing up. Childhood stories have a common denominator for us all, since we have all experienced it, either the stories are truth or fiction, helping us to see what we otherwise don’t want to see.
The new literary star, Douglas Stuart (45), who is also a fashion designer living in upstate New York, USA, was interviewed about his debutant book, ‘Shuggie Bain’, which won the prestigious 2020 Booker Prize. The book is about a boy growing up in a working-class neighbourhood in Glasgow, Scotland, in the 1980s with a single mother suffering from substance abuse, and not quite fitting into the rather rough, masculine culture.
The author’s own mother, although a fantastic mother, was also a victim of alcohol and drug abuse, and she passed away from it when the writer was only sixteen, the youngest of three children. Douglas Stuart said there were no books in his home, or other homes in the neighbourhood for that matter, but he hadn’t really felt deprived because of that; after all, there were so many things to do and be exposed to, including listening to others, observing and thinking, yes, seeing what others wouldn’t bother to look for. It was part of good behaviour never to visit neighbours or relatives unless one was equipped with stories and news to tell. He thought that his mother’s alcoholism had helped him become a particularly observant child, seeing and interpreting his mother’s mood and condition when she came into the room, always wanting to be of whatever help he could, in a sense being the only adult in the room. But he stressed again that she was a fantastic mother; we must not generalise saying that people with addictions or disorders cannot be great, perhaps more sensitive and caring, than many other parents, and then of course, in such homes, there is a hope with sad edges, that situations will change, and everything will be fine.
Responding to Jessika Gedin’s question, Douglas Stuart said that his mother would have been so proud to have taken part in her son’s recent success, perhaps having told neighbours and friends that she had inspired him to write and tell the true story. And he added, she was always proud of him, and his success as a writer wouldn’t have been needed for her opinion about him. Besides, he mentioned, the book had been refused by more than two dozen publishers before it was finally accepted, although he had published shorter articles in top literary magazines. Perhaps I should mention, too, that Astrid Lindgren also had difficulties getting her first books published, but she soon became tremendously popular. As a teenager, Douglas Stuart was told by a teacher that he should not study literature, because coming from his working-class background that was perhaps not suitable, resulting in him subsequently studying textiles instead. We may all have conventional and standard opinions about each other, often not seeing simple things and greatness in others, indeed not seeing things we don’t want to see.
Atle Hetland
The writer is a senior Norwegian social scientist with experience in research, diplomacy and development aid.