Nadine Gordimer

Nadine Gordimer wrote, "The facts are always less than what really happened," and she admirably shows this in her writing. She is able to so fully capture the world view of a particular narrator, that the reader is offered an empathy with a person who, rationally, he or she would reject. Of course, we admire the heroine in "Amnesty" because she maintains her integrity and never gets bitter, even in the local injustices of her life. She keeps a greater goal in mind, but the reader has to shake his or her head and wonder as the personal sacrifices she is making for her country, which are unsung, not admired, and passed off as "woman's work." It is easy to hate the narrator of "Six Feet of the Country" and pity, in a kind of repulsed way, the narrator of "Good Climate, Friendly Inhabitants." Gordimer is able to put us into the lives of these people who we can claim not to understand, and perhaps, come to a small understanding of the deluded lives they live.

With that insight, can we learn to see our own lives, our own city, that clearly? I look at P&G selling disposable diapers and sanitary napkins in Nigeria. Sure, these things are "liberating", in a way, but what about the cost? What about the way things were working before? What about the fact that Nigeria does not have a waste control system to handle all these new disposable diapers and sanitary napkins? This seems like weird imperialism all over again where the nurse is saying to the mothers, "These disposable diapers will help you child sleep through the night, so he will be healthier." But a wet diaper is not what is causing the high infant mortality rate in Nigeria: it is the lack of access to clean water. Helping these people have access to clean water is not on P&G's list of things to do. They will do what profits them, not the people who they see as a huge market now that US consumers are failing them. On the other hand, P&G is not responsible for waste management in its consumers' countries. Nigeria is responsible for this problem. A company's primary responsibility is its shareholders. While this is true, perhaps there is more profit in sustaining one's population of consumers. There is research to show that ethical behavior can, indeed, be support long term profits.

Gordimer uses the power of literature to create empathy with the bad guys and thus expose their thoughtlessness. She shows how complicated the emotional experience of the facts can be. Gordimer observes, "Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you've made sense of one small area." She makes a lot of sense about how people survive, and this is an important contribution to all of who are still trying to make sense of it all.