Colin Smith: Heroes and Healing—Sharing Our Stories with South African Literature
The following abstract was adapted from Colin Smith's full-length paper, which was submitted to The Forum on Education Abroad.
We can all be healers—this is what the children in South Africa taught Colin Smith when he studied there through a Brigham Young University-structured program. Studying the relationship between stories and identity among the Xhosa of South Africa, Colin realized the reconciliatory power of relating personal experiences in the face of oppression and divisiveness. “Whatever the forces that afflict and torture us, there is a simple beauty in sharing our loads with others,” he writes. “Though our tears are of sweat and blood, we can find profound solace if our mouths meet the ears of a friend.”
Colin studied the significance of stories while working independently as a teacher at Daily Bread, a home for AIDS orphans, abuse victims, street kids, and kids from financially destitute homes. “Some were traumatized from witnessing violent beatings and murders; others were trying to come to terms at the beginning of their lives with the disease that would end them; a few felt humiliation for their young pregnancies; all suffered from being marginalized in society,” writes Colin. He was surprised by his students’ “amazing resilience” and acceptance of one another.
Through his interactions with the children as well as his academic research, Colin learned that much of his students’ strength was inspired by their ancestral stories. Stories provide a common cultural heritage that has long been an important unifying model of perseverance and healing for Xhosas, especially as they resisted the divisive powers of apartheid. Like their fathers and forefathers, Colin’s students looked to the heroes of their myths as models for perseverance and healing.
Colin also observed that the telling of those stories was just as important, if not more so, than the heroes of the stories. Building on the findings of scholars and his own observations, Colin realized that stories help facilitate self-expression, allowing individuals to purge feelings of victimization by recounting their struggle-filled pasts. “Especially now with the recent demise of apartheid and some of its effects lingering on,” he writes, “the need for expression about past sorrows through stories is greater than ever before.”
Children in particular derive a sense of dignity from therapeutic storytelling. Colin met a boy named Lindile who, at age 12, was one of a number of children beaten by mercenaries for protesting corruption. Despite the trauma, Lindile told Colin that recounting his personal story had transformed pain into peace of mind.
“I’ve told that story so much and now I know that on that day those who were the most wounded were those mercenaries,” Colin reports the boy saying.
Seeing the way his lessons “tended to overemphasize the importance of looking to the past,” Colin also helped his students “see that the past does not resolve itself and that it depends on the vision and drive of real heroes who step up to solve the problems.” He began teaching them about present-day heroes through a series of lessons about politicians and activists who have fought against apartheid.
Q&A with Colin Smith
AV: How did your research focus on storytelling in South Africa develop?
Colin Smith: Any research questions that I came up with about "literature's power" always seemed too fluffy and irrelevant to real academic pursuits. Then I came upon the narrative written by a white reporter who covered the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that the new democratic government organized in attempts to address the human rights violations under apartheid. Her epiphany as a writer during the proceedings became the thrust for most of the subject and scope of my research: stories told from the mouths of the violated to the ears of the violated gestures toward a profound connection and reconciliation between the two divided sides.
AV: What helped you to overcome challenges?
CS: The excitement of working and playing with the kids was enticement enough to dwarf my obstacles. The language and cultural barriers made most of my interactions with adults awkward and uncomfortable until we could get to know each other. But the kids showed little resistance to my work there.
AV: Were you pleased with how your research turned out?
CS: After writing five or six papers, of course I still don't feel like I've said enough about what I learned and discovered with the help of my children and friends in South Africa. My focus shifted significantly as I was leaving to come home. I had recorded several interviews with the kids and was planning to analyze and discuss their experiences. After the unsettling realization that that would be manipulation and exploitation, despite my best intentions, I decided to discuss the catharsis that the children experienced by being heard, and the literature we studied to assist that, instead of the specifics of their personal pains and histories.
AV: How did your research experience affect your educational and professional goals?
CS: I came home and applied for Teach for America to equip myself to handle the things I felt so powerless to confront in South Africa. I am teaching first grade in a school set up for New Orleans evacuees, giving me the unique and wonderful opportunity to engage my children once again in literature to discuss their own painful histories and be validated by an audience.
AV: What advice do you have for others hoping to embark upon an independent research project abroad?
CS: Know when to privelege bodies over books, and that will be often. The powerful insights come when you have a firm context of genuine relationships from which to draw your perspectives.