Perspective

I recently finished reading What is the What with some of my 12th-grade English students. The book, written by Dave Eggers, tells the tortuous life story of a Sudanese refugee. The man, named Valentino Achak Deng, survived unspeakable horrors during the second Sudanese civil war. Valentino fled to Ethiopia by foot, then on foot again to Kenya, before making his way to America after more than a decade in refugee camps. After experiencing so much suffering and pain, Deng still found the strength to tell his story to Eggers, who turned it into a work of both witness and of art.

The courage, perseverance and dignity of Valentino is astounding to any reader, but particularly so to suburban American teen-agers. His is so unlike most of the stories they read or view in today’s news outlets. There are no tabloid romances in here. No tales of steroid use among ballplayers. No billion-dollar bailouts. Valentino’s story also takes us about as far away from our distracting, multi-media world as we can get. There aren’t any iPhones, PlayStations, Blu-ray movies or text messages in this book. It’s a lot simpler, a lot starker, and a lot more sobering.

Time and time again, many of my students talked about how distant this story felt from the lives they have led so far. Yet, they also spoke of the perspective and deeper insight they had gained from reading it. Having read the book twice myself, I can certainly echo my students’ wise words.

Sudan has experienced a nearly unfathomable degree of suffering and injustice in recent decades. My students are aware of Darfur, and they’ve connected the suffering there to that found in the Holocaust literature they’ve read. But they also know that there is plenty of suffering much closer to home, from families who lost their homes in New Orleans, to individuals suffering from loss of jobs, to those who don’t have enough money for food and shelter. As they reflect upon this book, and as they prepare to enter the world beyond high school, I can only hope that my students remember Valentino’s experience when the opportunity to serve others presents itself.