Last week, I asked writers/readers to watch a video of Chuck Bowden speaking about writing. I invited you to send in your responses. Two came in – each significantly different from the other, each from the writer’s truth. Thank you, Naima Schuller and Kerry Bennett. The video: Chuck Bowden The respondents:
Naima Schuller:
Ciudad Juarez is reality. American Ninja Warrior, while an entertaining show, and representative of many hours of working on ones core muscles, to compete well, is not reality. How do I know this? Because the TV show will fade into the past while the past, present and future of Juarez lives on and on, because poverty and violence stain the human mind and heart.
I lived in Juarez when I was four years old. My mother had made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for my lunch one day and I had the innocence to leave it, partially uneaten on the table, in full view of whomever might walk by the front window of our very modest home. Not one minute later a little girl, in a thin dress, with an old newspaper wrapped around her shoulders for warmth, came by and spied the crusts of bread. She knocked on the door and asked my mother for the crumbs. She gave them to her. A few minutes later the girl returned with her brothers and asked for food. My mother gave it. This continued for a number of days with the crowd growing like a cancer each time we opened the door. Very soon we learned to not open the door. The whole neighborhood must have gotten the word that the gringos living on the corner were rich and could give food away. We attracted a small entourage that followed us through town when we would walk to the local market. I know it broke my mother’s heart to shoo away all those kids like so many flies. To preserve our meager existence we had to turn our back on those less fortunate. Heartbreaking reality.
My experience of domestic violence in that house, and others, mirrors the violence that pervades that border town. Desperation, poverty, helplessness, all these things resided side to side with my knowledge that while we didn’t have much at all, we were the richest folks on the block. These experiences, and more, have shaped how I view reality. Hold tight to the small, real advantages -bread, running water – riches beyond comprehension. Affection from a loved on, unmarred by strings attached? Priceless. The audacity to continue living despite every sign pointing to a dead end.
“A longtime researcher of Ciudad Juarez, Bowden focused on the overlapping an intertwined effects of globalization, free trade, and drug cartel-related violence. Deeply critical of NAFTA and the 1990s era economic relationship between Mexico and the U.S., Bowden also offered clear headed analysis of an impossibly complicated city.
A few years ago when I went to Ciudad Juarez for the first time I brought a copy of Bowden’s 1998 photo book: Juarez: the laboratory of our future. Bowden was among the first researchers to delve into investigating the evolution of Ciudad Juarez at the outset of NAFTA. He introduced many readers to now common images of border fences, migrants crossing the Rio Grande on rafts and police investigators at homicide scenes. His prose is careful, analytical, thoughtful. He describes Juarez as “part of the Mexican gulag, the place for the people no one wants” but also writes “I’ve eaten in Juarez, drunk in Juarez, been happy in Juarez, and been sad in Juarez…I am not sightless. Juarez has a distinct quality. It is the city where people may dream and f*** and drink and sing, but it is not the city where people hope.”
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Kerry Bennett:
Dear Mr. Bowden:
I just heard you died. No matter. Who the FUCK are YOU to judge what I do with my life, with my gift? I’m a court jester? I’ve betrayed my gift by using it to earn money? I’ve sinned and committed a crime by writing advertising jingles? I’m rotting? I might as well be dead? Better that I’d never been born? Bite me, Mr. Bowden.
I never had the luxury of being a purist. And no matter what kind of work you do, if you do your best and take pride in it, it’s work worth doing.
Dropping out of the mainstream is a lot easier, my dear, than dealing with the day-to-day realities most of us face. Sitting in a hovel in the middle of the desert boasting how great you are because you don’t care about material things doesn’t make you better than anyone else.
Let me guess—you had a woman to take care of you while you fiercely, selfishly, sat at your typewriter for 72 hours straight, right? Someone else cleaned your toilet. Someone else made sure you had something to eat when you finally looked up from your manuscript. Someone else ran to the gas station to buy your Lucky Strikes. By the way, you were given the gift of a healthy body. Smoking your health away is, to me, a sin.
And how nice to be able to differentiate every single decision you’ve made based on whether you did it for money. How nice to be able to walk away from a full professorship—chances are, you would have done more damage to your students in the classroom if you had stayed, with your arrogance and simplistic view of the world.
My professors worked hard. They were humble and did their very best. And so have I.
The world isn’t that simple. Don’t you dare judge me by what I do or don’t do with my gift.
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