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8 ' B i S f e ï street ro o tS lB Education * Dialogue* Independence VIO LEN CE, from page 7 meadow would say the same thing. Society. has to be restructured. These kids aren’t that anomalous, really. They attract a lot of attention; some of them will commit some pretty serious crimes, but the problems they have are not that unusual. I used to do a treatment group called “Alternatives to Violence” ana on this one occasion I asked kids what causés violence. A.H,: They made a list. * staff had to take him down. I got him by his arm, got him to his room and flopped him on his belly on his bed. He became hysterical. That level of hysteria, that pure primal hysteria: I knew that something bad had happened to him. A few weeks later they were able to contact a counselor he had had on the outside, and sure enough, he had been raped. But he was also in for rape. He’d raped a disabled woman. In prison he was really likable, really sweet But you knew that he couldn’t be on the outside, he was dangerous because he could not control his emotions or desires. He was the kind of person, pretty rare, that you want to keep locked up for his own sake and for the sake of his potential victims. Some kids — boys at least — who had been sexually violated, as horrible as it was for them, would start to do that to others. When I was doing that group Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse, most of the boys who were in there were afraid they were going to do it to somebody else. But statistically, most kids that that happens to don’t do it to ' somebody else, Some do, but most don’t. And I would try to Yeassure them. J.G.: Yçah. That is a great list. I think this pretty much sums it up. The first one is single-parent families, where the single parent simply does not have enough time to supervise their kids. Well, I don’t think we’re going to solve the problem of divorce in this country, but what we can-do is .¡make things a little easier for that single parent. If she’s able to work, there should be daycares. Iknow legislatures and Congress don’t want to spend money; some of th’em aren’t even sympathetic. But always foolting at the long term, it’s a* good investment: daycares. If mom is not able to work because of illness of disability or drug addiction, daycares are A.H.: You wrote that you enjoyed working still offered. So that^s one thing. a t this place because it allowed you to feel some People who are addicted — there shoiild o f the things that you felt in Vietnam. Like be help for them. Maybe not every drug what? should be illegal; I’ll just say flat out, | thirifo marijuana, for one, should be legal. The J.G.: Well, I came back from Vietnam main draw of using marijuana for kids is that with post-traumatic stress, the full blown it’s a sign of rebellion. If you take that sign disorder — probably. In those days there away, so that yeah, you can smoke wasn’t anybody to help us. I had a marijuana, but so what, I think it wouldn’t psychologist tell me that he didn’t want to, be âs attractive for them. - help me because I’d been in Vietnam. Then: Violence in the household or It was pretty miserable for about 10 years. nearby. In my own mind at least, I would , But ultimately I got to a point where the look at a kid as kind of a conduit. Violence symptoms that remained — because many of goes in, and violencé comes out. Day in, day them simply dropped away — thoselhat out. That abstraction really worked for me. remained; I kind of liked. > think the If the kid was doing something violent to psychological term is‘ “hyper-vigilant.” I’m otb e f' wndor '4 twQ' lnd?' ' ■jiwa r yy, ttwiik ; u'flttig 'mure a wat e Attny,r .... We had a boy who was pretty severely surroundings than most other people. retarded, and on one occasion I and another part o f your team - t h e soldiers, your fellows. I used to have pronounced startle reaction. If somebody came up behind me J.G.: Well, I used to consider them - the and touched me or tapped me on the gang kids at least - 1 used to call them in . shoulder, I’d spin around ready to fight, my own mind my little soldiers: It isn’t so. ready to hit them. I’m not like that now. I • much that they were part of a team, but don’t act on it, but the sensations of startle they were born and grew up in an are still there. environment that essentially was a. place of When I’d get kids that I knew had had low-intensity warfare, what we used to call violence in their lives, I’d always ask them guerrilla warfare. In certain areas you could do you get this symptom or that symptom, be reasonably safe, unless somebody from | whatever. If they had a startle reaction, and the outside comes in and shoots you up. In many of them did, I would tell them that it’s other areas - which could be only a few feet normal. Then I would tell others: Watch this away - y o u ’re not reasonably safe, so you kid, he’s got a startle reaction. But that’s , don’t go there, unless you go in force. That’s because I could bring that to the job. the kind of edge you’re living with all the . Teaching them how to deal with time, although in their riase they don’t know themselves would help me. I used to do this other training called aggression replacement there’s any different way to live. training, and it reduced recidivism. Part of it A.H.: You asked yourself early on how much we called anger control or anger more tragedy you could handle in this management: I’d teach them how to do exercises for when they would want to hit or ’environment. What was the answer? The last line in your book was that y o u ’d stayed years hurt somebody, they could use this exercise too long a t this place. to calm themselves down. One was deep breathing. That’s heeh invaluable for me. () J.G.: What I meant by that line was that I was angry and I couldn’t get rid of that . A.H.: So it was a matter o f being a teacher anger. Mainly because of what happened to fo r these kids a t the same tim e as learning Norah (a young girl who was left in yourself. ; maximum security months longer than protocol mandated, without an explanation). J.G.: Yeah. It’s the same principle as a But then other things happened later to person who has an alcohol problem being a other kids that were even worse. We had a counselor in the rehab cottage, I had a kid that was in maximum security for two problem with the impulse to lash out. I years. ~ ■ . ; . should say I never have lashed out, but the _ As far as tragedy was concerned, or at impulse is not pleasant. I don’t know if least when I would start feeling you’ve ever been angry and don’t do overwhelmed by it, flearned that if I just something about it, but it can be physically hung in there at least my feelings about it painful not to do it. would pass. I experienced that more than once, just feeling overwhelmed by other A.H.: A sensation in your h a n d s... people’s sorrow. But it did pass. . ' Actually, I’m not really Sure it would pass. J.G.: ieah. Your heart. It’s just it’s beating so hard because the impulse is to do It might have just gone somewhere else in- my psyche, where I couldn’t recognize it as something, arid you don’t allow yourself to, readily I so ybu ju st feel it throughout yOur body.' A.H.: I t sounds like sometimes the kids were Reprinted from Real Change © S tre e t News Service: www.streetpapers.org BOOK REVIEW Recording the voices of those afraid to speak B Y THOM AS VIN CEN T Xinran’s most telling quality as an interviewer is her absolute sincerity. By magine you have been given the assignment sharing her own emotions honestly and openly to chronicle an entire generation. All the with each of her subjects, she subtly invites hopes, fears, tears and laughter of 20 years’ them to respond in kind. The results are worth of graduating classes are to-be combined remarkable, as the lives and feelings of a into a single book. Imagine further that your generation steeped in denial begin to shine subjects, now in their 80s and 90s, have been through like rare sunbeams on â cloudy day. traumatized by poverty, war and repression, More than just a record for future generations, and have grown up in a country'where being the interviews themselves also offered many of open and honest with your feelings was not her subjects a chance to come to grips with only culturally frowned upon, but often could their own history. The book is full of subj ect you and your entire family to public interesting paradoxes. Many of the old folks humiliation, imprisonment, even death. In her who are proud of China’s future plans'for book, “China Witness,” author Xinran faces growth aré also saddened and confused by the just such a daunting challenge and emerges death of cultural traditions such as lantern victorious, giving us a fascinating glimpse into making, herbal medicines and tea houses that the lives and experiences of a people few in > inevitably result when a country like China the West knowanything about. ignores its own cultural identity in favor of A collection of interviews with elderly “progress.” Time arid again interviewees Chinese, “Witness” is not as much a history display an almost pathological personal book as it is a series of testimonials by people humility, while at the same time clingirig to an who witnessed history. The book has been intense sense of national pride. In the: words of compared to the writing of Studs Terkel, whose Yishujia, a woman acrobat and one of the few book “Working,” was so successful at people in the book to have traveled abroad: * chronicling a generation of Americans., But “Behind closed doors we all admitted that they “Witness” is even more impressive than (the Western world) were advanced and we Terkel’s work because of the immense were poor, but we couldn’t bear for anybody governmental arid cultural hurdles Xinran had else to say that Chinese people were bad, or to overcome to get her subjects to open their that we were deprived. How can I put it? Dogs hearts. In contrast to America, where freedom don’t hate their homes for being poor.” of speech is the norm and where a single Perhaps the greatest paradox in the book, ’ question can often garner a person’s entire life however, is the juxtaposition of maintaining story, getting Chinese priople, particularly devotion to country and party even wheri that older folk, to be frank and open is as easy as < devotion runs smack into traditional ideals of tiying to pry apart a bear trap with , a pair of duty to family. When asked if they have any tweezers. As Xinran says in her introduction, regrets, almost to a person, Xinran’s “Almost no one in China today believes you can respondents express sadness that they were get their men and women to tell the truth.” not able to devote more time to their families C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R I "China Witness: voices from a silent generation" by Xinran Xinran or do a better job raising their children. Though many of them willingly spent years of their lives in severe hardship, toiling for the state, most recognize, on looking baefc, that orie of the casualties of their sacrifice was the love and education they could have passed on tri their children. In the words of one highly decorated petroleum engineer: “The children were left at home with no one to take charge of them. Now my children think badly of me because they had no chance to go to school, they missed out because of me.” Ironically enough, though many of Xinran’s subjects are spending their last years “atoning” by helping to raise their grandchildren, few of them haye even tried to make their own children understand the sacrifices they made. The , shame they feel is too great to overcome. Ultimately this is what makes the book so poignant. By writing down the stories of a generation that lived through World War II, the Cultural Revolution and even the present day modernization of China, Xinran provides a conduit through which they can communicate" with future generations. “For Chinese people, it is not easy to speak openly and publicly; about what we truly think and feel. And yet this is what I have wanted to record: the emotional responses to the dramatic changes of the last century. I wanted my interviewees to bear witness to Chinese history.” For the “silent generation,” for générations to come, and for the rest of the world, “China Witness” is that rarest of gifts: a book that will stand the test o f time. , f R eprinted fro m Real Change © Street News Service: www.streetpapers.org
