When I was 17…
When I was 17 and stupid, I worked at a bookstore in small, suburban Anywhere, USA and I received a copy of a picture book the Arrival by Shaun Tan – okay, to be honest, the book sat all lonely on the Advanced Reader Copy table for weeks until I felt badly for it and picked it up.
I read it as best as one can ‘read’ a book without words and didn’t get it. Maybe I flipped through it too quickly, or just concentrated on the form of the images and not their content or connection to one another. I don’t know. I was more concerned with graduating high school, boyfriends, hanging out – all the oh-so ‘important’ things when you’re 17-and-stupid-and-privileged but don’t even understand the concept of ‘privilege’.
Don’t forget the questions
So recently when I went to Visual Journeys at the Hillhead Library, it was with an air of sheepishness. I was embarrassed that children had collected such understanding and meaning from what I, years ago, saw as mere pictures. The meaning that they gathered had the smell of childhood. The straightforward innocence, the random imagination that’s both funny and somehow nostalgic, the curiosity – wanting to know ‘what’ and ‘why’, over and over and over again.
Take a journey of understanding
I think that me at 17-and-stupid is a lot of people. They just don’t see them: the refugees, their stories, the whats, and the whys. So I hope that more 16-and-stupid people and 37-and-stupid people see the work of the children who took part in Visual Journeys and learn as much as I did.
Attend the Visual Journeys workshop
There is a free workshop taking place on the 21 June at the Hillhead Library about the project behind the Visual Journey’s exhibition.
