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15 October 2024

6 min read

The elegies that fail the forgotten places

Storytelling’s not about giving people a voice, it's about listening to what they’re singing.

Elizabeth Wainwright

Elizabeth Wainwright is a writer, coach and walking guide. She's a former district councillor and has a background in international development.

A book's front cover beside a portrait of the author, JD Vance

J.D. Vance book promotion, 2017.

Does it matter who tells the story of a place? It’s a question I’ve sat with as a writer, a community worker, and as someone who returned to my native West Country after a long time away. My departure and return to this place brought with it a sharper awareness of the labels this rural region could invite; of the way its people could be portrayed; of how easily they can be reduced to a one-dimensional stereotype that fosters little understanding.

And I am both reducer and reduced. I am a proud Devonian, rooted in soil thick with my ancestors, whilst also craving the culture and variety of elsewhere. My story of life in this place is complex. It’s a story that’s mine to tell, and not representative of anyone else from here – just as the people I’ve worked with in communities here and across sub-Saharan Africa taught me too: this person is not this place. This story is not this people.

Stories matter – stories told; stories hidden. They shape our identity, our opinions, our possibilities. John Steinbeck wrote that:

“A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudice…”

Stories told reflect stories carried, like light refracted through a prism. A story’s colours tell us something about who tells the story and how they see the world. Which is one reason perhaps that JD Vance’s memoir Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis came under scrutiny, especially since he was named Donald Trump’s vice-presidential running mate in the forthcoming US election.

Hillbilly Elegy tells the story of Vance’s white working-class family, from his grandparents in the Appalachia region of Kentucky to his own coming of age in Middletown, Ohio. Vance raises questions about how local people, including his own family, are responsible for their own misfortunes, including poverty and addiction. His book came out in 2016, at just the right time to give many Americans an insight into why so many people like Vance’s relatives and past neighbours had voted for Donald Trump. It was painted as the voice of a forgotten community, and it became a bestseller, admired by some for its portrayal of Appalachian culture by someone from the inside. But reading people who know the places he talks of, it becomes clear that the book is “rife with stereotypes and classic Republican talking points peddled under the guise of lived experience,” as one commentator said.

Sarah Smarsh, author of books including Bone on Bone: Essays in America by a Daughter of the Working Class, said in a Guardian piece published in 2016,

“that the media industry ignored my home for so long and left a vacuum of understanding in which the first glimpse of an economically downtrodden white is presumed to represent the whole.”

A Bitter Southerner article responding to Hillbilly Elegy said that generalisation means that “…complexity gets simplified, the edges get rounded out[…]Appalachia has been written about and photographed in such a compelling (if fabricated) way that the descriptions of passersby took on more weight than the lived experiences of the people being described. What remains is a concept of a place that is both wildly romantic in its natural beauty and backward enough to justify the destruction of that very nature.”

We live in divided times, but often I find it hard to discern real division versus the media-created story of division. Theirs is a story that gets things wrong. Smarsh reflects how “countless images of working-class progressives…are rendered invisible by a ratings-fixated media that covers elections as horse races and seeks sensational b-roll. This media paradigm created the tale of a divided America…” This is why it matters that we hear stories that do not fit that paradigm. A many-voiced 2019 publication Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy offered some of those stories in response to Vance’s painting of Appalachia.

Vance thought he could write the story of a 13-state region, but many Appalachians were unhappy about him becoming their spokesperson, especially when he seemed to blame the poor for their poverty. Appalachian Reckoning is a graceful counter to this: not silencing Vance’s own story but offering many more views and stories from Appalachia. Its co-editor Meredith McCarroll said she wanted to “complicate any singular view simply by including multiple ones. I wanted to create a chorus of voices, “each singing what belongs to him or her and to no one else,” to borrow from Walt Whitman’s view of place.” The publication offers cultural nuance, emotional connection, and a “context for some of the claims Vance makes in his book when it moves beyond memoir, and to pass the mic to a wider range of writers, poets, photographers, activists, and artists who make Appalachia a place far too complex to capture and far too dynamic to die.”

This approach feels important now, in the world as is it, with a media that often overlooks nuance, and with a culture that has become so visual that the way things are styled and framed and presented to us online can often be quite different to the reality. It is important to know the difference, and stories can help us discern that.

This symphony of existence can, if we give each voice its space, subvert paradigms of division and fear.

There are stories that are easy to peddle and easy to buy into. In charity work, I saw how the story of the benevolent professional outsider could shape things, leaving little room for local stories and experience. In politics I saw how the story of opposition got in the way of all the people getting on with the everyday work of restoring and caring for their communities across lines of difference. We can, unknowingly, make a place and a people shrink or even disappear with the stories we carry or amplify, or ignore.

Stories wielded unwisely can shrink faith as well as people and places. The Jesus who I did not grow up with but came to know slowly as an adult is a Jesus of nuance, compassion, and deep listening. He would not, I think, recognise the brand of Christianity that can be used to justify particular politics. That religion and politics have in places become so intertwined is perhaps a reflection of the reduction of the vastness of the Bible and the many diverse voices it contains into one story that serves a particular group of people. Jesus again and again subverted what empire and hierarchy and tradition expected of him. He invited people into his story over and over, curious about their own story but never using it as a reason to include or exclude.

When I think about who tells the story of a place – or of a people, a time, a faith – I see that really, there is never one story anyway. There is a chorus of voices, each a little different, each part of a vast harmony that – if we have the ears and heart to hear it – sings a song of challenge and joy, of despair and illumination. Former US president Woodrow Wilson said, “the ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people”. Storytelling is not about giving people a voice – something I heard a lot in charity work. It is about listening to what they’re already singing. This symphony of existence can, if we give each voice its space, subvert paradigms of division and fear, of biased framing and selective storytelling. It can sing us back to ourselves, helping us see each other. And isn’t that what softens hearts, isn’t that why we tell stories? Author Kazuo said in his Nobel acceptance speech that “stories are about one person saying to another: This is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I'm saying? Does it also feel this way to you?” Stories are not tools of manipulation or power, but pathways to encounter, to relationship, to understanding. They are, perhaps, the only way through divided times.

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Leading

19 August 2024

9 min read

Canada’s long hot summer of decline

Courage is needed when a country starts to fall apart.

Emerson Csorba

Emerson writes on geopolitics. He is also a business executive and holds a doctorate in theology.

An aerial photography of a huge plume of smoke from a forest fire.

Jasper National Park on fire.

National Parks Canada.

In July 2024, wildfires blazed across large swathes of Alberta, engulfing much of the town of Jasper. As the smoke drifted to the City of Edmonton, air quality worsened considerably, reaching 10+ out of 10, or “very high risk,” on the air quality health index.

The smoke confined much of the city of one million inhabitants to their homes – keeping stoves, television sets and other electrical appliances off to deal with the mid-thirties Celsius heat. Many wore masks when daring to venture outside. Scenes were, as in the past, apocalyptic – imagine the movie Bladerunner 2049.

In 2016, the first major fire occurred in Fort McMurray, which led to a successful evacuation of 90,000 residents with photographs depicting what looked like hell on earth. This fire, covered by the international press, was at the time a one-off. It has since become the norm during Canadian summers.

The fires are emblematic of the state of Canada.

Now, metaphorical fires of all sorts – breaking of the healthcare system, surging housing costs, immigration without a plan, and decreasing civility in political debate – are spreading across Canada.

It is noteworthy to witness just how rapidly Canada’s situation has degraded. It is a testament to the quickness – not unlike the spreading of a forest fire, ignited by an errant cigarette – with which a small group of individuals within a government can inflict lasting damage on a country.

Indeed, the last decade for Canada has represented a backward turn. It is a regression from earlier domestic and international success, in which many across the world looked to Canada as a beacon of hope. Our international standing has diminished noticeably.

This unexpected looking back to better times is well captured in the song “The Boys of Summer.” I often listened to The Ataris cover of the Don Henley classic when playing travel baseball across Canada and the US in my teens.

The narrator reflects nostalgically on a summer romance. What was once present is now gone:

“Don’t look back, you can never look back/I thought I knew what love was, what did I know?/ Those days are gone forever/I should just let them go but…”.

The story is much the same for Canada. What appeared so promising as recently as the early 2010s – the country on the rise economically and with a solid reputation internationally – has given way to decline and crumbling of vital social services. For example, healthcare median appointment waiting times now average 27.7 weeks (about 6 and a half months), though higher in the provinces of the Maritimes and Alberta.

Internationally, Canada no longer enjoys a privileged relationship with the United States. The relationship will become even more fraught should former President Trump re-assume the role of President while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is in power.

Looking to China, Canada suggests the need for “dialogue,” a foreign policy nevertheless ten years out-of-date, and despite Canada serving as China’s international punching-bag.

We have become afraid to not be invited, rather than to step forward with courage.

We are, of course, in a darkening period in world history. Evil appears to be more strongly at work in the world now than in recent memory.

The coronavirus pandemic was a turning-point, in which American and Chinese relations began to fracture. This was followed two years later by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and close to two years after this, the 7 October massacre of Jews by the terrorist group Hamas.

In the United Kingdom, the murder of three girls in Southport has given way to nationwide riots, spreading through social media and its network effects.

The dividing lines between identity-based groups domestically, and alliances internationally, are becoming clearer and more rigid. This is the trend since the pandemic crisis. Earlier tolerance of “grey” areas of difference is giving way to “black and white” division between nations and groups within them.

Canada is therefore no exception to the crises facing democracies in the political West. Yet Canada’s failures are notable, given the shining light of political moderation, of government effectiveness, and of international collaboration that Canada historically is.

Most notable and concerning within Canada is the lack of courage among political leadership. Canadian leadership fails to speak and act boldly domestically or internationally. Prime Minister Trudeau reportedly avoids cabinet meetings and one-on-one meetings with ministers, hiding whenever problems emerge. This is the opposite of courage.

Courage, a distinctive Canadian virtue so well proven in WWI Battles of Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele and The Somme, or the Battle of the Atlantic in WWII, is in short supply. Yet, if there was ever a distinctive Canadian quality, it is courage, often in times of crisis.

In my time abroad, I have been struck by an increasing Canadian refrain on just wanting to “be at the table,” but without considering what our contributions at the table will be. We have become afraid to not be invited, rather than to step forward with courage.

What are individuals to do when they see their country falling apart? And what are they to do when looking at their country’s regression from some distance, as members of the global Canadian diaspora?

A compelling example is given by the philosopher Robert Adams in his retelling of the story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer, a German theologian, left for New York on 7 July 1939, where he was received by American friends providing safety from Nazism.

Yet, within days Bonhoeffer found his time in New York “almost unbearable,” noting that “If trouble comes now, I shall go right back to Germany. I cannot stay out here alone; I am quite clear about this, for after all, over there is where I live.”

Bonhoeffer later reflects “I have made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period of our national history with the Christian people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people.”

Adams uses Bonhoeffer as an example of vocation, highlighting belonging, caring and participation in social processes as key elements of a vocation. Returning to Germany was not necessarily what was best for Bonhoeffer (he would later die in the waning period of the war in Germany, while he would have carved out a prestigious academic career in America). But Adams notes that Bonhoeffer would have felt it wrong had he not returned.

In short, Bonhoeffer belonged with his democratically minded neighbours in Germany. He cared about the restoration of his country. And he knew that he must participate in the fight against evil enveloping Europe.

It often takes leaving your own country to understand it more clearly. I have learned during my time abroad that Canadians are understated and yet highly competent, open-minded and hopeful.

Canada has a powerful diaspora, whose global influence is well captured by former Globe & Mail newspaper editor John Stackhouse in his book Planet Canada. Years ago, the “Canadian Mafia” was the tongue-in-cheek name given to Canadians who simultaneously led multiple major British institutions such as the Bank of England, University of Cambridge, Royal Mail, Wimbledon, Associated British Ports, UK National Lottery, Heathrow Airport, and Canary Wharf, not to mention leading the BBC’s International reporting.

In recent years, many age-mates and friends served in leading roles in top think tanks and UK institutions such as No 10 Downing Street, helping to design and implement UK technology innovation policy, or crafting health and social care policy while helping spearhead the UK vaccination campaign to hard-to-reach minority groups.

The senior-level of Canadian leadership in the UK was followed by many early or mid-career Canadians serving in influential UK leadership roles.

But just as Bonhoeffer returned to Germany, or as Israelis returned immediately from jobs in technology, finance, academia and other sectors in America and the UK to serve their country in the fight against terrorism, now is the time for many within the Canadian diaspora to return to Canada.

Such is the damage that has been inflicted on the country over the last decade, and the future plight, should Canada’s brightest not dedicate themselves fully to the Canadian cause as part of defending the long-term good in the wider world.

It often takes leaving your own country to understand it more clearly. I have learned during my time abroad that Canadians are understated and yet highly competent, open-minded and hopeful. There is a palpable energy and desire to contribute meaningfully – not apathetically – among Canada’s Gen Zers.

Canada’s young people balance their own diverse ethnic origins with an abiding love of Canada. They want to make Canada better.

Canadians must not only show up at the table but contribute – with confidence – when at the table. The focus must be to participate, and then win the prize.

Just as the narrator ends on a high in “The Boys of Summer” – saying “I can tell you, my love for you will still be strong/After the boys of summer have gone” – there remains considerable hope for Canada.

But this hope must translate into critically minded participation in Canadian life. This critical spirit toward leadership and institutions is one part of courageous, confident and sometimes even assertive action in the world.

On assertiveness, Canada can learn from its ally Israel. In his recent speech to U.S. Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke boldly on behalf of the rising scourge of antisemitism facing the Jewish people. He highlighted the nefarious influence of totalitarianism.

Most importantly, he highlighted our shared democratic struggle. Indeed, Israel’s success in the fight against evil in the form of totalitarianism is a precursor to the success of other democracies such as the United States, Canada and the UK in the same fight: “Our enemies are your enemy, our fight is your fight, and our victory will be your victory.”

Whatever one thinks of Netanyahu, he stood up forcefully for his nation and for the Jewish people in the face of evil seeking to undo the values underpinning our democracies.

While likely to be more moderate in tone, Canadians must nevertheless participate boldly in the world, regaining our characteristic courage.

In reflecting on his tenacious service, St Paul asks “Do you know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it.”

Canadians must not only show up at the table but contribute – with confidence – when at the table. The focus must be to participate, and then win the prize.

Canadian renewal is possible, but this demands that Canadians abroad return home – like Bonhoeffer – bringing their experiences, learnings and networks acquired as members of the Canadian diaspora with them. Indeed, these help form the basis for courage.

This return is one key step in Canadians contributing to victory – along with British, American, French, German, Israeli and other allies – in the fight against darkness. We must light our lamps within the darkness, keeping awake at home in readiness to put out the fires coming our way from over the foothills.