By Rebecca Dwight
Bruff
How do we become empathetic beings? And how do writers help that
to happen? I believe fiction, perhaps more than anything else, fosters and
cultivates this essential human capacity.
Fiction, by
definition, is imaginative invention. If we only read about people like
ourselves, we simply reinforce what we already know or believe about ourselves
and others. And if we only write about people like ourselves, people with our own
characteristics and experiences, then it’s neither imaginative nor inventive.
It’s also not very interesting.
When I began writing Trouble
the Water, I tried to follow the common advice, “Write what you know.”
But the story is Historical Fiction. What did I know about
living in South Carolina in the 19th century? What did I know about the
life of the enslaved, or the motivations of the slave-holder? What could I
possibly know about feelings,
motivations, challenges, hopes and fears of a 20 year-old enslaved African
American male?
Imagination – the
extraordinary human capacity to explore ideas or concepts external to ourselves
– invites us to consider what it’s like to be another person. Imagination opens
us to wander through another person’s world and ask the important questions:
What is this person feeling, thinking, hoping?
Imagination opens the
door to empathy.
Empathy is the ability to sense or consider
other people's emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else
might be thinking or feeling.
Stories teach us, shape us, inspire us, warn us, and stretch
us. Literature gives us empathy for those unlike ourselves.
Can a novelist legitimately tell the story of a person from
another place, time, culture, nationality, religion, ethos, sexual orientation?
Of course. If, as an author, I fail to explore the depths of human nature –
motivations and emotions, desires and dark secrets, hurts and hopes, fears,
loves, lusts, all of it – then I’ve not given my best; I’ve failed to honor the
story.
Fiction is essential,
a critical and necessary door into the otherwise walled-off world of thinking
about “other” – other places or times or possibilities, other ideas, other
people, other ways of being human together. Fiction and its requisite
imaginative endeavor foster our shared humanity.
Sue Monk Kidd said that in writing Invention of Wings, she was inspired by the words of Professor
Julius Lester, which she kept on her desk: “History is not just the facts and
events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are
able to make another’s pain in the heart our own.”
Empathy connects us
across emotional and cultural distances. This
is the privilege of the writing life. Part Two will appear on Monday, October 28, 2019.
Rebecca Dwight Bruff is the author of the award-winning Trouble the Water: A Novel, inspired by
the life of Robert Smalls: http://www.koehlerbooks.com/book/trouble-the-water Rebecca
heard Smalls’ story on her first visit to South Carolina. She was so captivated
that she left her job in Dallas, TX and moved across the country to research
and write this book. Bruff earned her Bachelors degree in education (Texas
A&M) and Master and Doctorate degrees in theology (Southern Methodist
University). In 2017, she was a scholarship
recipient for the prestigious Key West Literary Seminar. She volunteers at the
Pat Conroy Literary Center in Beaufort, South Carolina. She’s published non-fiction, plays a little
tennis, travels when she can, and loves life in the lowcountry with her husband
and an exuberant golden retriever. Visit
Rebecca at her website: https://rebeccabruff.com
and Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robertsmallsnovel,
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RebeccaBruff
or Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RobertSmallsBook
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