February 22, 2011

On February 22 of 2010, I was visiting Christchurch, New Zealand, when the city and surrounding area experienced a devastating earthquake. When the quake hit, two friends and I were in the great cathedral, the heart of the central downtown area of Christchurch. Sound was the first sensation, followed quickly by the switching back and forth of the large stones of the floor of the cathedral and the sound of falling stones from overhead. The earthquake was shaking the great Doric columns of the structure, crumbling the walls, and blinding us in the dust of the cascading mortar and stones. The cathedral had no pews that might offer protection—only folding chairs with attached kneeling benches. As quickly as possible, we tried to pull the chairs over our heads as protection from the falling debris.
The story ends miraculously for us, for within what seemed an eternity but was in reality less than ten minutes, a beautiful young woman appeared in the central doorway of the cathedral, spotlighted by the brilliant sunlight behind her. We heard a voice calling “Anyone there? Call out quickly, quickly.” Realizing that we had escaped serious injury and could move, we called out. She began to climb over the rubble toward us, all the while imploring us to “Hurry, hurry, you must get out.” Guided by the light from the open doorway, we pushed the debris from us and made our way toward her. She held out her hand to each of us in turn, pulled us up over the piles of stones, and led us out to safety. We never learned her name; we were never able to thank her. We numbly watched as she kept going back into the cathedral to rescue others. She and all Christchurch residents knew there would, in all likelihood, be aftershocks that could be worse than the one we had just experienced. Already the top of the tower and one side of the cathedral had collapsed, and another quake would surely bring down the rest.
I begin this, my first blog, with this story, not only because of this anniversary, but because such a near-death experience reminds anyone that not only is every day (and every rescue) a gift, but also every story stretches out its fingers of meaning to listeners and readers with differing degrees of connection.
My new book, Words at work and play: Three decades in family and community life, the sequel to Ways with words (1983/1996) had gone off to the publisher just before I left the US for the hiking and sightseeing trip to New Zealand. This new book tells story after story of the children and grandchildren of the original families of Ways with words. I weave the stories together to tell something of what I learned by following these families through thirty years, as they traveled far from the Piedmont Carolinas where we had first met in the 1970s. The loss of manufacturing and agrarian life, along with the double-dip recession of the early 1980s scattered the families of Roadville and Trackton, first to nearby southern states, and then in the early 1990s, to western states when the IT revolution attracted the children of both communities who had by now completed not only secondary school but also college or university. Their stories became interwoven with the creative revolutions in technology, education, entertainment, child-rearing, and family life taking place as the 21st century opened.
Ironically, Words at work and play: Three decades in family and community life (2012), arrived in the United States for distribution on the one-year anniversary of my earthquake rescue. Now finally available (the intervening year had in many ways seemed exceptionally long!), the new book is out there to take on its own life.
In the next two months of blogs, I take up questions that I think readers may logically ask about the book. Readers are also welcome to send me their own questions, and I will respond. Sure to be controversial—even more so than was the case with Ways with words when it was published, this new book raises issues that cannot be explained away with labels or easy explanations. Ways with words gave readers concepts and explanations that related to the dramatic effects of the intersection of cultural histories and social class in the socialization of children, black and white, brought on by the tumultuous changes of the Civil Rights era. This new book does the same for the infinity of small moments of interaction in family and community life brought about by these changes.
Words at work and play picks up the stories of descendant families of Roadville, a white working-class community in the 1970s and early 1980s, and Trackton, a nearby black working-class community in the same period. By the mid-1990s, most of these families saw themselves as mainstream and middle-class. With this change of self-perception of socioeconomic status, what happened to child socialization, family life, and intergenerational communication around work and play over the next three decades? These families vowed to give their children “every opportunity” to succeed in school and to look ahead to lucrative careers. Yet as the new century opened, the influence of new technologies on patterns of space, time, and relationships in families intensified. Explosions of wide-reaching change in socialization erupted within all these families. This book tells the story of where these blasts took children and their parents year after year, as they followed new jobs, created new homes, adopted new habits, and adapted almost unknowingly to remade self-images.
Check this blog again for answers to questions readers are likely to raise as they begin to read Words at work and play. Questions likely to come will ask: “How typical might these families be? What implications follow for parents and teachers from the stories of the descendant families of Roadville and Trackton? Do you see socioeconomic forces as more emphatic and unyielding in their influence on children’s development than factors previously attributed to cultural differences?”