Books Before Crooks

Sara Halimah's Story (District 4)

I owned this book when I was younger, I’ve read it a million times over. This single object has greatly impacted/influenced many aspects of my character.

First of all, this is a book of (mostly) european fairy tales/stories (with a few of american, middle-eastern, ancient greek, or questionable origin). the stories inside were:

The Ant and the Grasshopper

The Twelve dancing princesses

The Brave little tailor

The City mouse and the Country mouse

Saint George and the Dragon

The Golden Goose

Demeter and Persephone

George Washington and the Cherry Tree

Thumbelina

A Brer Rabbit story

Androcles and the Lion

The Brownie of Blednock

Icarus and Daedalus

The Wild Swans

Ali Baba

I am a Palestinian American. My “heritage-package” comes with folk tales and epics of its own. I have never heard them. These are the stories I grew up with, along with other fables (like The Fox and the Stork, Dragon Rider, The Anybodies). I grew up on Cinderella and Snow white and a million versions of Rapunzel.

I got this book at least 9 years ago, at Walmart or Kmart or Brand Name Deals. It is kind of a rip-off version of all these fairytales; they condense and summarize the plot in not so many words, and tack on a moral lesson to the end.

What drew my eye to this book in the beginning was the cover. Fancy, cream-colored, square, gold-edged pages, it has the makings of a grand tale. A talking cat and mouse grace the cover, with a ship sailing off into the blue and a castle where our hero/heroine lives. It shouts ‘magic’, ‘fantasy’, and ‘marvelous adventure’. These images and feelings this book gave me made part of my history, it affected the way I think about and classify happenings, affected the books I read, the genres I'm interested in, the career i want, and the values I have, the way I perceive others.

This collection of children’s stories reinforced my attachment to the fantasy, and to books in general. I was the biggest bookworm alive, and all the books I read had the same formula: grand adventure, young hero/heroine who is an outcast, magical talents/ clever-supersmarts. It all stems from reading the stories in this book and familiarizing myself with each character, each archetype.

My loves of fantasy and storytelling translates into my daily life, in the way I think and characterize people and happenings. It leads to love of other literature, such as Shakespearean plays. I have a few favorite shakespearean characters, as well as fantasy archetypal characters, that I always remember and compare others to. There is this one kid in one of my seminars I call “the little fairy princeling” in my head because I don’t know his name and he looks like Hamlet and Puck at the same time (he’s got the waif-prince-philosopher thing going on and he is a mischievous little twerp). This shows that the archetypal fantasy characters that I was introduced to in this book still follow me, in that they show up in how I classify the people I interact with as well as affecting how I think about, “brand”, and approach different situations.

Michelle Anindya's Story (District 1)

My childhood was filled with stacks of Manga comic books. Detective Conan, Doraemon, Sinchai, but one of my favorite Manga is called Kodomo no Omocha and Tokimeki Tonight (I can’t find the right English translation to these title, sorry).  And I still absolutely love it until now. I would read comic books for hours till my eyes hurt, finishing many books in just one sitting.

Tokimeki Tonight

Kodomo no Omocha

Looking back, perhaps the biggest factor that pulled me into this hobby is its fame among teenagers in Indonesia. Not having many entertainments in the city, sitting at home and reading comic book sound like a viable and fun idea. And that was why it spread like a disease, keeping children occupied and most important of all, happy.

But what is so special about Manga? It's not a real literature and their story is pretty much very simple (girl meets guy, girl and guy fall in love). So what is it? As a young adult, I can tell that its exaggeration of expression and the randomness that the characters are what spoke to many children. (For a disclaimer, I understand I can’t speak for all Manga comic books, since they are all different in style too)

Example 1:

Do you see how the curly haired girl (Yoko) bites the other girl's (Ranze) hair?
Have you ever seen that in real life?

Example 2:

Pay attention to her hair. She is one of my favorite characters ever. Her hair is bewildering yet fascinating. It makes her a ‘character’ rather than just another human being. (these two pages are not consecutive)

Their facial expression, the things they say, their spontaneous reaction towards something is so outrageous, odd, ridiculous, and hilarious. As a kid, I wasn't aware of these factors that kept me hooked.

Growing up, some people like to call me 'random' for throwing out weird sounds out of nowhere (Fyi, I don't do this daily). It happens almost instinctively. Being random is just fun!

One time when I was studying in San Francisco, I would go out with this Tiger hats. It wasn’t for parties, just for getting some stuff from Walgreens in the neighborhood on Thursday night. I wasn’t exactly sure where I picked up this behavior but perhaps Manga was the one who introduced me to this. As a kid, me and my friends always idolized the characters. We cheer for them, we cry for them, we defend them, we want to be like them. Perhaps, their quirkiness and their randomness feel so liberating for a culture (Indonesian culture) where expressiveness is oppressed and people are expected to act in a certain way on the street. For instance, in the picture below you will see the Mother (with the weird, dark hair) says “I love danger” when her daughter was disturbing the driver, possibly putting them into danger for a second.

A statement like that would sound obnoxious in my culture, especially if it’s said by a mother. Of course, it is dangerous and nobody should celebrate that. But when I looked at that particular column, I was just giggling because I wished I had the gut to say that! They are crazy in an awesome way!

Now, I know I’m not the kind of person who like to live a life in a clean, straight way. I question what’s normal, because maybe what we call normal is just social construction and perhaps it will change in the future. I express this attitude in how I talk, what I say, how I think, how I live my life, my taste in music art movies, among all others. Now, I don’t think Manga change my life or affect my personalities really greatly. But there's definitely a reason why manga is still special until now. It’s a literature where I see myself ‘fit in’, a place to escape from the strict expectations (sometimes ridiculous) of the society. Thus, even until now, Manga is irreplaceable by any sorts of genres or literatures.

***

For both of us, our childhood choices in literature are important to us today in many ways.

Manga comic books affected Michelle’s sense of self in that it represented her place of belonging, her ‘ecological niche’, you will. It influenced the way she perceives the world and the ‘norms’ constructed by society. Michelle’s way of seeing the world is expressed in her every action and thought, so the tidbits of thought and sentiment that reading Manga  impressed upon her history expresses itself in her daily life as well.

Childhood fairy tales influenced the way Sara organizes her thoughts and labels figures in her daily life. It even affected the way she told her history: in a sing-song, conversational fashion, almost as if she thinks she is talking to the reader face to face, telling them a campfire story.

In other words, childhood literature in our histories motivated our self-images and our thought processes today.