Words by Heart by Ouida Sebastyen - Book Review

A little black girl with Magic Mind is a wonder to behold; an oriental child with an amazing penchant for math is prodigious; a white boy with a scientific aptitude to shame Harvard Ph.D.'s is amazing; an Indian child with the scent perception of a cougar is incredible. Race makes no difference. The color of the prodigy in no way affects the way the genius of the individual should be perceived. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a Spaniard, won the Nobel Prize for Literature. So did Jose Camilo Cela, another Spaniard. Brilliance does not reside in skin pigmentation. It grows from the essence of the inner self no matter where that individual was born or from what racial derivative. Lena's father knew the meaning of integrity and self-esteem: Rewards don't prove you're somebody, Lena. When you're somebody inside yourself, you don't need to be told. (page 14)

All too often, people need to express their achievements in terms of awards and prizes as a reminder to themselves and an indicator to others that they, as persons, are important. The really important persons do not need tangible reminders to reaffirm the existence of their particular talents. To uncertain others, the gift does not exist without the reminder. He iterated this same ideology with: Nobody's better than anybody else. The Lord has a special need for all of us, or we wouldn't be here. But the thing you want to strive for, always, is to be better than yourself. (page 18) If everyone adhered to this belief, there would be no violence based on the precept that there are those who are better than others. Racial, social, political, and religious bias would be eliminated.

When Lena's father stated that he didn't think killing people was any way to solve problems (page 22), he trapped himself in the universal conundrum of Biblical references that urge reserving vengeance for the Lord, turning the other cheek versus the proposition that justice demands an eye for an eye as retribution. It is a paradox that exists even today with murderers being released for good behavior while the victims remain incarcerated in their irrevocable tombs. I was affected by Claudia's thought that her husband had forty years of history to give to Lena and had failed to do so. Her words reminded me that I have a half century to give my children and that it is not too late to start, especially since one of them is not here, yet. (page 23)

That is one of the reasons I have not given up on writing because through what I write, for whatever it is worth, my legacy is left, a documentation of my perceptions of life through my eyes, another medium with which they may be able to understand a complex universe.

I also understand how parents, spouses, and good friends could easily forget the Biblical restraint of Thou shalt not kill and religiously exterminate with no regrets any person who poses a threat to their life, family, or property. Lena's father struggled with those bipolar choices (page 29) as I have. My earliest beliefs were pro-life, but they changed as the prospects of survival diminished in direct proportion to the decrease in the age of criminals and the statistical data verifying the increase in untimely deaths at the hands of those who didn't value life for the precious gift that it is.

Ms. Chism's suggestion that books were of no value to Lena because of their content (page 35) reminded me of the value I always placed on books to enable me to vicariously experience conflicts and their resolutions without ever having to leave the comfort of home. It started with comic books (the Classic variety) and hadn't stopped since. The content has changed within the same forms, but the opportunity to grow with literature, art, music, and philosophy lives on. Ms. Chism portrayed that kind of unhappy person I would never want to be or see. The fact that she wants to take it all with her reveals a selfish character whose anger slowly erodes the fabric of the soul. But, she does show some willingness to relent by allowing Lena to not only read but, perhaps, even own the books she so coveted. (page 37)

After the mysterious death of Bullet and the devastating picture of the dying bird, Lena expressed her feelings that I share and would fear to suffer: Everything had to die... it hurt her when death came without the healing of love and kind regret. (page 46)

Since I travel so much, every day I face accidental death at any moment. It is 30 miles each way to school on the interstate. It is 1200 miles to where I travel each month or so. Death is just a heartbeat away. I know that. I am terrified of being a statistical casualty without having finished what I started more than half a century ago - life. I am not ready to die -- not yet. There are too many things that I must do. My being decimated carnage splattered on interstate concrete wrapped in colorful steel rubble embedded in my ripped flesh clinging to shattered chunks of pulverized bone with only curious strangers to look pitifully upon my open, sightless eyes with an empty prayer on my bleeding lips is not my idea of dying in peaceful repose. I am just not ready.

Lena's father enjoyed the living works of Whitman reinforced my own concept that poetry, as literature, should speak to the reader as if he were there. When I write, I try to keep that in mind more stringently, especially when I think that my writing is the mirror of my mind and some readers don't want to see either my writing or my mind. (page 53) Lena's father mentioned that books are worth being scared for (page 69) and I stay scared, watching you grow up with that good mind all hungry for learning and nothing to feed it with. I want you to know things and do things. Use your talents, pour yourself out. I want you to believe you can do anything you set out to, if it's good....And I wanted those books for a beginning. I'd go further (sic) than Hawk Hill for that -- I'd go around the world. (page 70)

My two-year old is bilingual and I feel I cannot teach him fast enough all there is for a youngster like him to learn. It is twice as hard because he has a double vocabulary base for a single set of referents. I want him to read soon because through reading now he will establish a pattern of behavior that will look upon reading as a natural byproduct of living. The sooner he starts, the easier it will be for him to want to continue. The world can be his library, and through books, he can feast on the buffet of the world. Lena's father's submission to the precept that there is nothing wrong with working for others, that some of the greatest people served under others, makes me more determined to maintain my sense of individuality. That's really why I became a teacher. Although I was responsible for a group of students and accountable to superiors for the programs I utilized in the teaching process, I really was responsible only to myself to face the immediate task of addressing the needs of my students.

Ouida Sebastyen knows well how to describe the life of the slave and what it is like to spend a lifetime picking cotton, a task of drudgery to which few today are willing to or are able to relate. It wasn't so much the work itself but the attitudes of the white overseers who saw the black laborers as insignificant others. Lena's perception that there were those who had to put others down and make them feel inferior just to bolster their own sense of inadequacy. (page 90)

Winslow Starnes, who was clearly beaten in the Bible Bee,showed hope for the Caucasians as he emerged from the well of hatred unscathed deep inside, though he was dictated to by those in control of his behavior rather than his thoughts. He recognized the ultimate inconsequentiality of color as the criterion for admirable achievement. But, I thought it perspicacious of Lena to wonder if, punningly, Winslow were trying to rub the color out of the blackboard (page 99) much as he may have been trying to rub the prejudice out of his existence.

Lena's sense of responsibility was emphasized with her determined and successful effort to locate her father who was mortally wounded in an altercation with Tater Haney. Yet, his lessons to her were not in vain. She and Winslow both grew in the recognition of their responsibilities and were able to face the consequences of their actions. Even the elder Haney learned to live with the decisions he caused to be made. So also do I recognize that I have to live with the decisions I had made in the past that put me where I am. From there, I can look forward to the future and prepare myself for new conflicts, new decisions, and unforeseen consequences that I will have to deal with then, God willing I survive my many more northward treks with the promise of imminent and total annihilation. I knock on wood, cross fingers and toes, make signs of the cross, touch a rabbit's foot, and am subtly aware of black cats crossing my path. Shouldn't that be enough?