We Learn More From Stories Than Textbooks
The Women by Kristin Hannah
We can learn all we like from non-fiction, but some of the best sources of wisdom are in stories. Real, made up, or loosely based on facts, these stories are how we learn to interact with the world. I’ve just finished reading The Women by Kristin Hannah. It is a coming-of-age story wrapped up in the tragedy of the war in Vietnam. I am hesitant to say Vietnam War after we were told in Vietnam that it is called the American War. The protagonist, nurse Frankie, rushes off to Vietnam age 21 to follow her older brother to the dismay of her parents who want nothing more than for her to be a good wife and mother. She returns home after two tours, broken by the loss of her brother, her fellow doctors, patients. Compounded by a broken heart, she loses her way, deep into the forest. Her forest is marred by drink, prescription pills and PTSD.
This fictional character, steeped in the reality of history, lived and breathed the reason I created Wildest Dream:
She’d made some of the most momentous choices in her life before she had any idea of consequences. Some had been thrust on her, some had been expected, some had been impetuous. She’d decided to become a nurse at seventeen. She’d joined the Army Nurse Corps and gone to war at twenty-one. She’d gone to Virginia with her friends to run away from home, and when her mother needed care, she’d come home. In love, she’d been too cautious for years, and then too impetuous. In retrospect, it all felt haphazard. Some good decisions, some bad. Some experiences that she would never trade. What she’d learned about herself in Vietnam and the friendships she’d made were indelible. But now it was time to actually go in search of her life.
Hannah, Kristin. The Women.
She was lost in the forest. At times death seemed the only way out. But through the passing of time, great friends and supportive parents, she came to a place at the age of 29 when she could finally look in the mirror and say, ‘I need to find the path.’
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang
On her 16th birthday, there was no celebration as both her parents were in prison. Instead, Jung writes down a poem. Something she loves about her father is how he introduced her to classical Chinese poetry. She knows it’s dangerous to write as your words can be taken out of context and help against you for many years. Her words hit the page. “I described my bewilderment at the new world, at not knowing what and how to think. It was a poem of groping in the dark, searching.” A banging on the door. Happy birthday. As usual the rebels were probably here to raid the house. Jung runs to the toilet, tearing her poem into tiny pieces and flushes it away.
We learn a lot from fiction, but perhaps we learn more from the lived experience of others. Jung Chang is an inspiration for me, author of Wild Swans who documented life in 20th century China by telling the story of her grandmother, mother and herself. Her life was unspeakably hard. As a child of Mao’s China, she lacked access to proper education, play and her love of writing, instead witnessing death of her friends and of society instead.
She watched first hand as her parents were tormented, beaten and imprisoned for their inability to bend to the complete mania of Mao. After Mao died, a slither of normalcy returned, and she could go back to school, finishing top of her classes and nationwide tests – her ticket out of China. She was one of a select few who were granted permission to study in the United Kingdom.
She was in her mid-thirties, finally free from China and its daily torment. Yet she was stuck.
It was at this moment that I lost the passion [for writing]. In fact the last thing I wished to do was to write. To me, it would have meant to turn inwards, and dwell on a life and a time that I hated to think about. I was trying to forget China.
Jung Chang, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China.
Throughout her early adulthood in China, then in the UK, she was in her shadowed forest. But drip by drip, she found her passion. She explored her new country, she fell in love with Jon Halliday. Eventually, her mother was able to visit her. For weeks and months, her mother recounted stories of the three Wild Swans. The grandmother, the mother and finally the daughter, Jung. These stories would go on to become her international bestselling book and launch her as a voice for the truth about recent Chinese history.
She didn’t wait until she was 50 to turn inwards. She turned inwards when she intentionally started thinking, what do I love doing? What am I passionate about? An entire generation were under some form of mind control from Chairman Mao. For Jung to break free and create the life she now has is remarkable. It would’ve been easy, and entirely forgivable, to give up at any of the hardships in her life. She didn’t. She kept on walking through that shadowed forest until she re-found the path.
