Russell Banks, “Who Will Tell the People” (2000)

Banks, "Who Will Tell the People?" (2000):  A prize-winning American novelist, Russell Banks pleads for a more ambitious "American" literature because he sees most current American literature as "balkanized" -- segregated along racial and ethnic lines, and telling the story merely of the known and the narrow.  In other words, American literature is not yet truly "American" since it does not tell the story of the whole nation, in all its glorious and unglorious complexity.  Meanwhile, writing segregated literature limits our willingness to grapple honestly not only with differences between various races and ethnic groups, but also our ability to appreciate similarities between people in a way that might work toward a more inclusive "American" identity.  Like residential and other forms of segregation, literary "balkanization" limits not only people's experience of other races and ethnic groups, but also their ability to imagine lives both different from and similar to their own.  The price is to impoverish American culture, and every single person living within it.

How does Banks explain how one might write about people whose life experiences are ostensibly completely different from one's own?  How might might find similarities even while acknowledging differences?

In insisting upon leaps of imagination, Banks's essay is insightful, but it has also become dated, given its still-narrow emphasis on hyphenated Americans.  What about a more global perspective on American identity, culture, and literature?

David Grossman, “Writing in the Dark” (2007):  A prize-winning Israeli novelist, David Grossman writes similarly to Russell Banks about human segregation and alienation:  an inability to imagine other kinds of lives.  If Banks writes about this dilemma mainly in cultural terms, Grossman adds structural terms --  not just cultural difference, but political conflict.  For Grossman, because everyone is trapped in the same global context of violence and suffering, and because everyone seems equally unable to overcome that overwhelming trap, this might be the basis for empathy.  As a writer, Grossman begins with attending to the importance of language and its potential to convey connection rather than alienation, empathy rather than animosity.  For the moment, though, language seems debased -- another structure which tends to entrap people inside alienation, animosity, violence, and suffering -- which, in turn, prolongs these miseries in the world.

So, what kinds of choices and steps does Grossman take as a person and citizen, engaged in politics, even when politics seem hopeless?

What kinds of choices and steps does he take as a writer, even when writing seems trivial?  What does he believe writing can do to counteract the political conflicts and mental traps of the world?  (Like Banks, Grossman is insisting upon the power of leaps of imagination.)