I Am Just One Person
November 15, 2020
I have let the Elena Ferrante books sit unread on the bookshelf, partly because reading fiction has seemed a bit frivolous these last four years, and instead have plowed through piles of books like Arlie Hoschchild’s Strangers in Their Own Land, Sarah Kendzior’s Hiding in Plain Sight, Nancy MacLane’s Democracy in Chains, trying to understand how America got to this place. Like a student, I underline, take notes, check sources.
I took a break from all that non-fiction right before the election and let myself read My Brilliant Friend, the first of the Ferrante books, that covers the childhood of the two friends, Lila and Elena. Their neighborhood in Naples is unhappy, angry, and violent, and they wonder why. Their friend Pasquale shocks them with his revelation of the roots of corruption and struggle for power in the neighborhood. Lila is dumbfounded. She wants to know who are these fascists,
Communists, monarchists that Pasquale speaks of so angrily?
Pasquale explains. He explains who in the neighborhood was what, who did what, and as a consequence, who had power, who did not, and how that made the neighborhood the hellhole it is. Suddenly there was a face on the dark force that ran through their world. And Lila wanted, now, to know and understand everything.
How strange, I thought, that Lila, incredibly bright, the best in her class, does not know the history of her own country? It’s 1958, thirteen years after the end of World War II. How can she not know what fascism is, since fascism was born in Italy with Mussolini?
But I didn’t know so much either when I was Lila’s age. I didn’t know that Prince Edward County, one county over from ours, where my father had grown up, had shut down the public schools rather than integrate them. Or that the Prince Edward case was later incorporated into Brown Vs. the Board of Education. I didn’t know that when the county sought to collect taxes to pay for a white-only private school, Prince Edward Academy, that my grandfather paid up but my uncle refused. I, like Lila, had no idea of the dark force that ran through my world, or what part my family played in it. But now I know. And so what do I do with that, now that I know?
I am just one person. And sometimes I despair about what effect I can have.
Gretchen’s mother, who passed away last year, never let that hold her back. She had a clipping on the side of the refrigerator that said “I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.”
Gretchen’s mother did plenty for one person. She didn’t wait around for anyone’s permission. And so today my gratitude is for Georgia Paulig, who didn’t just tape advice to the fridge, she followed it.
I’m hoping to follow in her footsteps.
©2021 Joy Cunningham