I Think A Book That Is Over

What I've Come To Learn Is That The World Is Never Saved In Grand Messianic Gestures, But In The Simple Accumulation Of Gentle, Soft, Almost Invisible Acts Of Compassion, Everyday Acts Of Compassion. In South Africa They Have A Phrase Called Ubuntu. Ubuntu Comes Out Of A Philosophy That Says, The Only Way For Me To Be Human Is For You To Reflect My Humanity Back At Me.

The Truth Is That History, With Its Imposing Capital H, Is Simply The Amalgamation Of Many Quotidian Lives Lived In Very Ordinary Ways. History Is Always Personal. If You Read Holocaust Survivor Or American Slavery Survivor Narratives, You Realize All Too Well That These Great Historical Moments Were Personal To Someone At Some Time.

I Think That Those Of Us Who Are Ordinary Disappear Easily Into The Backdrop Of Life And We Take Things For Granted. We Often Wake Up In Our Lives And Wonder How We Got There. But The Characters I Create, The People I Am Drawn To, Are Quite Extraordinary (and Not Always In Wholesome Ways), And They Offer Us The Chance To Understand Who We Really Are And How We Became Who We Are.

I Have Not Spoken In Three Years: Not Since I Left Boot Camp. It Has Been Three Years Of A Senseless War, And Though The Reasons For It Are Clear, And Though We Will Continue To Fight Until We Are Ordered To Stop--and Probably For A While After That--none Of Us Can Remember The Hate That Led Us Here. We Are Simply Fighting To Survive The War. It Is A Strange Place To Be At Fifteen, Bereft Of Hope And Very Nearly Of Your Humanity. But That Is Where I Am Nonetheless.

What I Do Is Create A Lens Through My Work That Corrects My Readers' Cognitive Dissonance And Says: You Will See All Of It - Not What You Want Or What Makes You Comfortable, But All Of It. And You Will Not Erase What Displeases You.