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Writing about children and war: Guest post by J.L.
Powers
By lynmiller-lachmann on 2013-03-24 11:51:21
Something we often forget when we talk about war is how it affects not just the current
reality but reality from then on. Wherever it goes, and whatever it touches, it permanently poisons. Since children are the
most vulnerable citizens of any society, it seems rather obvious that they are the citizens most likely to be negatively
affected by war. Until very recently, however, the world has paid scant attention to what happens to children in war. It is for
this reason that, together with my publisher_Cinco Puntos Press , I decided to edit an anthology of memoir essays by people
who came of age during a time of war: That Mad Game: Growing Up in a Warzone, an anthology of essays from around the
world (Sept 2012). On March 7, 2013, I hosted a panel on children’s experiences in conflict zones in Boston, Massachusetts
at the Association of Writing Program’s annual conference. Four of the anthology’s writers participated on the panel: Aria
Minu-Sepehr, whose family fled Iran after the 1979 Revolution; Marnie Mueller, born in a Japanese internment camp to
white activist parents; Peauladd Huy, who survived the Khmer Rouge regime of terror in Cambodia; and David Griffith,
who experienced war vicariously as a teenager growing up in the U.S. during the highly televised Gulf War. I wasn’t taking
extensive notes, since I was listening to the writers speak, so this is just a smattering, a small taste, of the things the writers
revealed during the course of the panel. Marnie Mueller’s responses happened to be written out so I have more extensive
quotes from her than the others. Question: Charles London, author of One Day the Soldiers Came: Voices of Children in
War, points out that there have been 14,000 wars in the last 5600 years, and at least 160 wars since 1945. Currently,
approximately 1 billion children under the age of 18 are growing up in regions affected by conflict. Children are far more
likely to experience war at some point during their childhood than they are to grow up without it. Since this is the case, why
have writers been so reluctant to address the experience in literature, particularly in non-fiction and memoir? Aria Minu-
Sepehr: Those of us who experienced war as children feel as though we were “tarred and feathered” by the experience of
war. The grief is difficult to handle. In many cases, kids who experience war are kept from owning the experience by the
adults around us. Adults assume children aren’t affected in the same way, that we didn’t “lose” our lives and culture and
place the way they did, that we didn’t experience trauma the way they did. Peauladd Huy: In my case, in Cambodia, our
elders told us to forget, that we have to move on. So I tried to forget. It wasn’t until I had children and they asked me about
their grandparents that I had to start thinking about it again. David Griffith: Many of us wish to forget...and writing is a
way to not forget. Marnie Mueller: Children feel unconsciously tainted, a shame at being victims. This is carried into
adulthood. I once heard the story of a Nisei woman who had been in a camp as a young teen. When she went back to the
university as a 50-year-old woman, she was asked by her sociology professor if she would be willing to write about her
experience in camp. She thought it would be easy, having remembered the experience as non-traumatic once they’d arrived
in the camp. “I began to write the essay,” she said, “but as the days went on I had a harder and harder time with it.” At this
point she began to choke up. Her husband, a Caucasian man, stepped in to help. “She would be up all night writing, trying to
find a way to tell her story. It was very painful to witness, but finally she completed the assignment.” By now the woman
had collected herself and could continue. “Yes, I did,” she said, “but in the process all my hair fell out.” Question: In my
introduction, I state that, “war occurs because of the stories we tell ourselves about the world we live in or the world we
want to live in.” By this, I mean that narratives serve to justify and perpetuate war. For example, during the Rwandan
genocide, a million people were hacked to death in ten days because Hutu militants were widely disseminating a story about
how the Hutu had long been oppressed by the Tutsi. Tens of thousands of ordinary citizens took the narrative to heart and
participated in the killings. What are the stories that shaped the war you experienced as a child (even if that war was from a
distance, as in David’s case)? How did those stories shape you? Aria Minu-Sepehr: The Iranian Revolution was a test case
for this war of narratives. In many ways, what the Shah lost was a PR war. Peauladd Huy: I don’t feel like my experience
was shaped by narrative but rather by a lack of narrative. To this day, I find it hard to believe all of it happened. The
disappearance of my father—I never knew for sure that he died. To this day, I will go to Asian markets and search the faces,
looking for him, looking for my mother. It is hard to believe even in their deaths. David Griffith: What was amazing was
what didn’t get said, what didn’t get talked about. My teachers in high school didn’t talk about the Gulf War. She didn’t pull
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down a map and show us where the war was taking place. arnie Mueller: Conflicting story
lines were the various reasons given for the incarceration of Japanese Americans. In one version it was said that they were
sent to internment camps to protect the country from their possible treasonous acts during the war. Another version said they
were interned to protect them from possible violent acts of Caucasian Americans. What this taught me was to be skeptical of
the actions of government, despite their fine rhetoric, and to be suspicious of extreme nationalism and patriotism, in any
guise. Question: A collective theme I noticed in just about every essay I read, including those that didn’t end up in the
anthology, was the experience of exile. Every writer felt the bitter pang of exile—exile from home, country, family, or, in
some cases, his or her remembered self. Can you talk about this apparently universal experience of war? Are there ways to
move past the feeling of exile and into a feeling of belonging once again to a community? Aria Minu-Sepehr: My parents
have kept everything exactly like it was in the 1970s such as food, dress, music, even Persian rugs. It’s as if the world
stopped at that time and nothing has changed. Also, this question of exile is passed down to the next generation, which
doesn’t even experience exile. I’ve noticed it even in my daughter when we moved from Pennsylvania to Oregon. She was
moving from one place in the country to another—and yet her experience of it was bitter beyond what it should have been.
Peauladd Huy: I feel a deep nostalgia for what I never had. It feels like I’m missing a stage in my life. My parents are—.
[PAUSE.] You see, I even use the present tense to talk about my parents. It’s hard for me to talk in the past tense about my
experiences or the people I lost. It’s still real. Marnie Mueller: I find myself attracted to people who grew up on the wrong
side of history, people who feel they don’t fully belong in their country of choice, nor in their country of birth. I can never
feel like a patriotic or flag-waving American. In the anthology piece, I wrote, “As with 120,000 people of Japanese heritage,
I too had gone from one America into another, a displaced person in my own land. This isn’t to say that people don’t carry
on, that they sit around depressed about the old wounds. On the contrary, those who have gone through war traumas often
work harder to make a good life to compensate for the sadness and devastation they’ve seen. They work hard at putting bad
experience behind them.” J.L. Powers is the award-winning author of This Thing Called the Future (2011), a coming-of-age
novel set in post-apartheid South Africa, and editor of That Mad Game: Growing up in a Warzone (2012). Her forthcoming
novel, Amina, about a girl graffiti artist growing up in Mogadishu, Somalia, will be published by Australia’s Allen & Unwin
as part of their series on children and war, Through My Eyes. She blogs at www.jlpowers.net and reviews books for The
Pirate Tree at www.thepiratetree.com.
