Since 1985, Let’s Talk About It has served a dual purpose in Maine: strengthening the state’s small libraries and their communities by bringing people together in open conversation around books. Scholars facilitate this free program and help create new series. Series are comprised of five topically grouped books that are loaned to program participants. Themes suit all tastes: 20th century detective fiction, literature of post-war Japan, the Gilded Age, or the experience of wilderness. Go to www.mainehumanities.org/programs/talk.html for a complete list.
After Let’s Talk About It created the series “The Japanese Family in the 20th Century,” staff sought facilitators with an in-depth knowledge of Japanese culture. A suggestion sent us to Patricia Parker, who had been a literature professor in Hiroshima and had led reading and discussion groups there for seven years.
“What has been really interesting to me is that the small town of Cornish was the first to request this particular Let’s Talk About It series, and many of the participants were not actually residents of Cornish but drove sometimes 20-30 minutes to get to their library. That speaks admirably for the people in small Maine communities!”
In some ways, the differences between the people in Pat’s Japanese groups and her current participants in Maine were not great: “Those Japanese women, like the Let’s Talk About It participants, were educated, good readers, and eager to learn. They wanted someone qualified to lecture on American literature but they also wanted to talk and tell each other what they themselves thought about the books under discussion.”
But the cultural differences provided fascinating insights in the Let’s Talk About It series, which was, after all, about families, individuals, and relationships. In Japan, “the group members had known each other for years and had established their pecking order, had set up competitions between themselves, and they did not want me to upset their relationships. I had to figure out who were the ‘leaders,’ who felt she had to talk more than anyone else at each session, who preferred to sit quietly and say little. The American Let’s Talk About It participants came as strangers to each other, felt little or no competition, and were far more open to the idea of listening to each other and to me.”
Let’s Talk About It participants began the series with little knowledge of Japan (none had ever even known a Japanese person). They initially interpreted stories based on their own experiences, finding commonalities between the Japanese characters and people in their own lives. But as the series went on, Pat saw participants begin to view the novels through their emerging understanding of Japanese culture. By the end of the series, “participants felt much more comfortable interpreting the novels, I think. They enjoyed the last novel, partly because they felt that finally they had enough background to really understand.”
It is that understanding of different worlds and different perspectives that Let’s Talk About It aims to encourage with series like this.
Major support from the Maine Community Foundation, the Maine State Library, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
