Comments on: Young Traveler–Gold Winner: The Road from Ruhengeri

By: Eoin Meany

Eoin Meany — Fri, 14 May 2010 11:02:49 +0000

I also spent the summer of 2007 in Ruhengeri, working with Cathy and I must say how I think this piece thoroughly misrepresents everything about Ruhengeri and Rwanda. Although Rwanda is most certainly poverty stricken, I found it to be a joyous and upbeat country, full of energy and enthusiasm, and also and extremely safe country.
Although all writing is going to have an element of subjectivity and of course everyone’s experience is going to be different, I do feel that the writer has a pathological fear that may be part born out of a nervous disposition, but is at least in part born out of ignorance, and yes, racism. Fear of rape pervades the piece, like when she writes “I know if I go out into the darkness alone I may be kidnapped or raped.” and writes of her fear that Dusi is going to sell her to the soldier. Africans are portrayed as something close to apes, such as when she writes “He stares unafraid or intimidated into their eyes and this strikes me as such a deep animal instinct”. Does the writer have such fear when she steps onto the street in New York?
While this is an atmospheric piece of writing and not without some merit, I feel that the piece is so skewed that it should in no way be described as travel writing which as a non-fiction genre demands at least some measure of objectivity which is entirely lacking in the piece.
If you want to find out anything about what a trip to Rwanda is like, ignore everything you have read in this piece!

By: Dennis

Dennis — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 23:23:57 +0000

My heart sinks reading your comment, Simon. I also feel the need to respond.

As a writer, you can’t take away the experience of another person as they lived it. You have no right, and no warrant. You have obviously read the story and commented with the intention to defame the writer, on difference of experience alone.

As the teacher who watched her develop this piece for five months, I can also say you missed the entire point of the story: falling to her own fears. A fear s deep in a place unexpected, she was afraid of the slithering black bug, in the way she was afraid of every face she met in the night. She was so emotionally unprepared for the experience, that she let let the fear permeate her spirit, and literally her vision.

I fail to understand your own rather ignorant observation of deeming her as racist and ignorant. Because she found a weakness in herself? This is meant to strip away the layers of a person, to get to the heart where at once, it is human to be afraid of the unknown, in a place unknown to you.

As a human, the writer is one of the most human, and kind people I have ever known, and not to mention one of the most intelligent. She tried to paint here her own obvious faults. As a writer, I say, judge as you may. Her ability to write is undisputable. You were not in her shoes. Her ability to be able to show anyone exactly what she experienced, well those experiences are always impossible to translate.

Truth be told, question any writer of nonfiction. Ask them if they’ve ever been put in the position you have put her in here: the questionning of her own credibility and voice. In the end you cannot write for anyone but yourself. And, the best writing creates controversy. It should permeate your own mind.

By: Simon Ransom Joyce

Simon Ransom Joyce — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 18:03:20 +0000

I felt I had to comment on this piece of work. As someone who has just spent the Summer working with Ms Emmerson I have to entirely disagree with the description of the situation in Ruhengeri. As a human being I must register my revulsion at the racism and ignorance of the writer. This is sensationalist, harmful & utterly unnecessary, hardly the kind of writing that should be winning awards.