Stories Worth Hearing by Katherine Govier

I’ve been a full-time writer for over 30 years. I don’t teach and I don’t have another job. So I like to have a project going, alongside my novel-writing.

Usually my project involves helping beginning writers. I do it because I love it, and because I crave the contact with people. This little third floor office gets lonely.

Lately I’ve worked with immigrant women who write. Maryam was a cultural critic in Iran. Nada is a painter who came from Croatia twenty years ago. Freweini is a high school student who recently fled Eritrea with her family; her father was a journalist who became a target for the government. Filiz is a psychotherapist newly arrived from Turkey.

Some of them have been turned away from writing workshops. “This isn’t the right place for you: you have ESL problems,” (English as a Second Language) Yoko was told. Elizabeth’s freelance stories are sent back by editors who say they just can’t deal with the grammar mistakes. Or, “the English is garbled so we can’t trust the facts”.

And I understand that. I want to keep our published English at the highest possible standard. But the stories are worth hearing. Who will spend the time with non-native English speakers to help them achieve not just functionality, but mastery of our language? They have a lot to contribute to the national conversation, whether it is as a journalist or a speaker or a community organizer or a parent helper at the local school. Some learn quickly. Others settle for a level of written English that in no way conveys their complexity. They tell me they feel “ like children”.

So the twelve of us work away together on flights of imagination, grounded with sentence structure. I remind them that one says “a view of” not “a view on” while I’m hearing about the new studio.  I endlessly fix subject-verb agreement and ask writers to do six drafts of an 800-word memoir. It’s worth it to me when Nada says she has learned about transitions—she knows how she makes them in painting but she can suddenly see it in her essay. When I read Maryam’s account of the identity questions that still plague her 10 years after coming to Toronto. When I can picture the dating agency Tanya worked in, in Odessa.

People from other language bases use English differently than we do. Their writing can be fresh, original, and surprising. Sometimes- most of the time, in fact- they need a little explanation, and some practice to get there. But it’s so rewarding when they do. It’s a grand moment when a woman—my group is all women, this time- discovers the dexterity in English to give us a glimpse of who she really is.  When members of the class show compassion and a desire to help fellow immigrants from widely diverse backgrounds, that is even better.

So lucky me, doing literary writing with “ESL” students. I bask in the warmth of other cultures. I learn about life elsewhere. And when I return to my desk I am happy to think that we’re enlarging the numbers of literate, curious Canadians.