The Opposite of Hate: Learning to Find Commonality in a Divisive World

The Opposite of Hate: A Field Guild to Repairing our Humanity by Sally Kohn was a hard book to read, delving into the roots of hate, and yet I was given hope by stories of recovered haters and the offered toolkit of how to move beyond hate.

I was a freshman in high school in 1967 when my Civics teacher Mr. Warner taught us that there is no such thing as 'race', that we are all one 'race'--the human race. I was a sophomore in college when Dr. Sommers told my anthropology class the story of a community who believed they were God's Real People and across the hill lived sub-human others. Two stories that succinctly sum up social conflict: are we connected or are we disconnected?

In my late 20s, working in an all black office, I learned that, even raised in a home and school culture that did not teach hate towards perceived 'others', hate is so ingrained in our society that one cannot escape it. To rise above hate one must be on perpetual guard, thoughtful of our unvoiced thoughts and emotions as well as our spoken words and deeds. We all hate. It is a choice every day what we do with this knowledge.

Kohn reflects on her own childhood acts of bullying and her training as a community activist who found hate was a "useful tool in their civic-engagement tool belt." Catching herself in hateful hypocrisy made her reflect on hate--its universality, its manifestations from name calling to hate crimes, and how the dehumanization of  'others' creates a deadly climate.

Kohn sat down and talked to people who held beliefs that were diametrically her opposite, learning their story. We all know how hard this is to do. We cut off Facebook friends and even relatives, and avoid certain gatherings were we may run into people whose opinions we object to--even hate. Kohn shares a technique from Compelling People by Matt Kohut and John Neffinger. Instead of arguing or telling folk they are wrong, follow ABC. Affirm: find a mutual concern; Bridge with an 'and' statement and follow with Convince, in which you present your view. She calls it connection-speech, a friendly and respectful way of communicating.

Several times over the last year I have found myself fumed at something an acquaintance has said. I stated my case and apologized if they felt attacked, saying I feel passionate about the issue. Reading ABC makes me recall a professor, who when a student said something he did not agree with, calmly said, "that could be" or "that is interesting" and then stated his convincing argument. I have been forgetting to affirm.

Each chapter addresses aspects of hate:Why We Hate, How We Hate, Hating Is Belonging, Unconscious Hate, When Hate Becomes Pandemic, Systems of Hate, and The Journey Forward.

The opposite of hate, Kohn contends, is not love or even liking those we don't agree with. It is not giving up one's passionately held ideals. It is connection--treating others with respect as fellow human beings.

I appreciated Kohn's honest confession, how she drew lessons from the people she interviewed, and especially for a blueprint of how to overcome America's most dangerous threat.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Opposite of Hate: A Field Guide to Repairing Our Humanity
by Sally Kohn
Algonquin Books
Pub Date 10 Apr 2018 
ISBN: 9781616207281
PRICE: $27.95 (USD)

The Heart's Invisible Fury by John Boyne

A novel can be transformative, for it has the ability to condense our experience and reflect what we knew back in a way that we recognize as true while enlarging our understanding and engaging our heart.

The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne tells the life story of Cyril Avery, spanning seventy years between 1945 and 2015. It is the story of a young man growing up, a good but passive man who is not allowed to be a real son, an honest friend, who makes mistakes and survives horrible losses. In the end he discovers his true identity and is able to rectify relationships.

The story has its terrifying and violent moments. The dark humor brought out-loud laughter. And it has sorrows that brought tears to my eyes.

It is a compassionate book. It is a work which unsparingly attacks hypocrisy and double standards in society and the church. The worst people can do, the violence and hate crimes and prejudice is all revealed. As is forgiveness, understanding, and the vision of a state of being that will recompense our earthly losses.

I was totally unprepared for this book when I chose it as my Blogging for Books read. It was one of those happy accidents of a book finding its right reader.

The novel opens in Ireland at a time when the church controls social mores and with a harsh hand ferrets out illicit sexual activity, unwed teens and homosexuals especially.

Cyril Avery, 'not a real Avery' his adoptive father reminds him, was born to an unwed mother who was rejected by her family and parish. His birth came in a moment of terror. His self-absorbed adotpive parents gave him a home but no affection, yet he loved and accepted them. His childhood and university friend Julian was beautiful, brash, and self assured. Julian, like his father and like Cyril's father, was sexually promiscuous from an early age. He became the secret object of Cyril's affection, which Cyril does not reveal until the morning he was to marry Julian's sister.

"What was I even doing here? Years of regret and shame began to overwhelm me. A lifetime of lying, of feeling that I was being forced to lie, had led me to a moment where I was not only preparing to destroy my own life but also that of a girl who had done nothing whatsoever to deserve it."

I recalled a minister friend from long ago, smart and fun and capable, and his wife who like me was an English major at university. At annual conference we would met up and talk. Years passed and the wife was expecting their first child. The husband told her that he was in love with someone else and that he was gay. Our denomination would not appoint a homosexual, and to this day will not appoint a homosexual unless they are celibate. So, he had married a woman he loved deeply, and pretended to love her sexually as well. It was devastating, the wife faced with raising a child as a single mother, the husband waiting to hear if his career would be taken away. What that taught me was not to hate my friend but the evil that forced him to deny who he was, unable to live honestly and wholly.

"I can't excuse my actions," Cyril tells Julian's sister years later, "but I didn't have the courage or maturity to be honest with myself, let alone anyone else."

And I recalled another friend, a young man grappling with his sexuality during the early days of AIDS, whose self loathing and fear of family rejection kept him not only closeted but even dating. In these days, a woman told me she hated picking up a phone that had been used by another gay friend,  an otherwise intelligent woman.  Boyne's book addresses this too, as Cyril volunteers to visit AIDS victims and experiences the hatred and blame put on gays for the disease.

Near the end of his life, Cyril meets his birth mother and learns his story. "Maybe there were no villains in my mother's story at all. Just men and women, trying to do their best by each other. And failing."

His mother looks at her home village's graveyard and says, "All these people. And all of that trouble. And look, they're dead now. So what did it all matter in the end?" She wonders, "Why did they abandon me? Why do we abandon each other? Why did I abandon you?"

Why do we allow ourselves to be led into hate and violence? How can we look at a son or daughter, a friend or schoolmate, and allow some idea to alienate us, so we do not see the person we know but a vision of something frightening?

In the flawed, humane, and tempest-tossed Cyril perhaps we will recognize we are all fallen creatures tyring to just get through life, hoping for a moment's affection and love.

I received a free book through Blogging for Books in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Heart's Invisible Furies
John Boyne
Hogarth Books
$28 hard cover
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6078-6

Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell and the Manchester Cotton Mills

Elizabeth Gaskell, like Charles Dickens, wrote novels that addressed the social and economic issues of the Victorian Age with the intent of humanizing the plight of the poor and changing hearts and policy.

In 1832 the beautiful young Gaskell married the minister of a Manchester church and together they worked among the poor in the heart of the city, teaching reading and writing through the Sunday school.

The Industrial Revolution spurred the development of a huge cotton mill industry drawing workers from the countryside to cities like Manchester. The infrastructure could not keep up. Workers housing was in short supply and living conditions were unhealthy. As economic pressures closed some mills the workers were left without a safety net. The poor helped the poorer as families died of disease, starvation, and exposure. Meanwhile, industrialists and capitalists had become rich and isolated themselves from the harsh realities of the suffering around them.

Gaskell published her first novel, Mary Barton, anonymously in 1848. The novel is at once a social commentary and a traditional romance. Gaskell went on to publish North and South and Cranford. She became close friends with Charlotte Bronte and Charles Dickens recruited her work for his magazines. We may not be as familiar with Gaskell as Dickens and Bronte, but her impact was important.

I love that Gaskell as a clergy wife did not shy from controversy. Gaskell was progressive for her time and I am very sure she upset quite a few in her husband's church. Unitarians did not believe women should submit to their husbands and Gaskell's husband not only shared her values but supported her work. She did not take on the traditional role of clergy wife, concentrating instead on relief work, visiting the prisons, and teaching.

Mary Barton begins with an idyllic holiday in the countryside outside of Manchester. With lovely, poetic language Gaskell extols the beauty of nature. Two families meet and return to have a late tea at the Barton home. It is a quaint and sweet vision of working class hospitality.

Gaskell then shows us the life of the mill workers in the city. It is not very pretty. Children 'clem to death'--starve-- before parent's eyes. The community helps those in dire need as best they can, visiting the damp and unheated basement rooms where parents and children are dying of disease and starvation, the ill tossing on damp beds under piled clothing for lack of warm blankets, the baby playing on brick floor damp with effluvium.

Mary Barton is the daughter of a mill worker. They have a respectable life and a comfortable home with the luxury of a cheap enameled tea tray and tea caddy and a small deal table. Then the mill burns down and her father is without work. He wants no charity; he wants to earn his bread. They sell off their little niceties. Luckily, Mary is apprenticed to a milliner, She works for free in exchange for her training but her meals are provided. Her father becomes bitter and turns to opium to numb his hunger pains. He is involved with the Chartist Movement and goes to London with other mill workers to present their concerns; they are rejected, unheard.

The honest Jem loves Mary, but she shuns him because she has been secretly meeting the mill owner's son and has dreams of becoming a rich man's wife. Mary rejects Jem's offer of marriage only to learn her rich beau had not intended to marry her. Too late she realizes she did love Jem, but he is pursuing his career abroad. The domestic story becomes melodrama, but the ending brings understanding.

My Greenwood ancestors were from just outside of Manchester, and include generations of mill workers. My great-grandfather Cropper Greenwood worked in a quarry as a mechanic, but his parents and grandparents and siblings were mill workers. When Cropper met my great-grandmother she was a domestic servant working in Manchester.

Cropper and immigrated to America with women from his home town. The women were joining their men who immigrated to New York State for mill jobs. The pay and living conditions were much better than in Manchester. Cropper was hired as a chauffeur and sent money for his fiance to join him in America. They married the next month.

My great-grandfather Cropper Greenwood is the young man on the far right.
His father and siblings worked in cotton mills. 

Cropper's father William Greenwood was a sizer when he married Elizabeth Ann Hacking in 1875. William's father Hartley Greenwood was a weaver when he married; the 1861 census shows he was a cotton warp sizer. And his grandfather was a weaver.

William Greenwood

One of Cropper's younger sisters had worked in the mill doing a very dangerous job. She had to get on the floor under the machines to clear away the lint.

Reading Mary Barton helped me connect with my personal family history. The novel also addresses the continuing problem of capitalism and industry: why do the owners get rich and the workers languish and struggle and live in want? And it embodies Gaskell's Unitarian beliefs and her desire to spur Christians to change their hearts toward the poor, hoping to lead to reform.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Mary Barton
Elizabeth Gaskell
Dover Publications
EDITION Paperback
ISBN 9780486812496
PRICE $7.00 (USD)