Students in Sarah Sawyer鈥檚 English class have good taste in literature. When acclaimed Irish-born writer Colum McCann visited last week as part of 91大神鈥檚 20th聽Writers鈥 Workshop Series, he asked them to name their favorite books. They listed an impressive array of titles, from J.D. Salinger鈥檚聽Franny and Zooey聽to F. Scott Fitzgerald鈥檚聽The Great Gatsby; from Sherman Alexie鈥檚聽Flight聽to Homer鈥檚聽Odyssey.
鈥淵ou鈥檙e reading in healthy, agile ways,鈥 McCann said. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 good.鈥
Reading others鈥 stories and telling our own鈥攖his practice forms the basis of our human experience, McCann suggested. 鈥淪tories and storytelling is what legislates the world,鈥 he told the 91大神 community later that morning as they gathered in the Phillips Stevens Chapel for an assembly. People鈥檚 stories include great joy and suffering, and聽we must key into both. 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 refuse the world,鈥 McCann explained. 鈥淵ou have to embrace the world in all its darkness, and beauty. As a writer, you have to open yourself to experiences.鈥
McCann has followed his own advice. Trained as a journalist, he spent two years living with and learning from people who live in the train tunnels under Manhattan.聽For six weeks he lived with Roma families in Romania. He biked across the U.S.聽listening to people鈥檚 stories. This massive gathering of聽lives has informed a body of work that include a book about聽Philippe Petit鈥檚 1974 tightrope walk between the twin towers (, for which he won a National Book Award; 2009, Random House) and 2015鈥檚聽聽(Random House), in which he elaborates on the theme of perspective.
His writing seems of a piece with the nonprofit he cofounded,聽, which pairs people who learn about one another, then tell one another鈥檚 story鈥攁 way to heighten empathy, to access our collective humanity. The process has been used to open channels of communication between the extremely polarized groups for and against guns (read a moving聽听颈苍听New York聽about that experiment), between Jews and Palestinians, and throughout the U.S., in Ireland, and in Rwanda.
鈥淲e can use the power of imagination to be somebody else,鈥 he said. 鈥淭he more we tell our stories and listen to the stories of others, the more we engage, the bigger we get, the more complicated it gets.鈥 The complexity, and the texture it creates, is good. It defeats the simple, the flat. That鈥檚 the power of writing and reading, too.
