New Hampshire Humanities Council Dinner

Cary and I were fortunate enough to attend the NH Humanities Council annual dinner last night and hear the keynote address from Salman Rushdie. He began by expressing some doubt around whether authors should be allowed to speak in public, and then he hooked the audience thereafter with the following thought - “I won’t say a lot about my little disagreement with the Ayatollah Khomeini, except that one of us is dead. Remember, the pen is mightier than the sword.” You could not help but be impressed with the man’s courage, yet before too long you got the clear sense that he also takes a certain delight in being a provocateur. For instance – “The Nobel Peace Prize was recently given to your President for the enormous achievement of not being the previous President.” He got some laughs, and he made the point that novelists have to be truth tellers, regardless of the consequences.

Toward the end of his talk he returned briefly to what he learned from the fallout of the Satanic Verses. While the book was published 20 years ago it seems that the fatwa — a death sentence — against Rushdie for allegedly blaspheming Islam in the novel remains in effect – at least according to Iran’s hard-line Revolutionary Guard, who recently described the order as “irrevocable.’’

He said the central question that emerged from his experience was “who should and does have the power over the story?” This matters because, in his view, what makes us distinctly human beings is our capacity to tell stories. Thus, power over the story is power over our humanity. He makes a compelling case.

The sentence in his closing thoughts that caught my attention, however, was almost a throw-away line: “When you know the stories, you belong.” This further clarified the purpose of a question I have asked many people in our community this year – what are the distinctly Derryfield stories that we need to share? What are the stories that speak to our mission, that illustrate our values, and that capture the soul of our school?

While stories can illustrate our mission and values, and tend to make us feel good, he revealed another result for me from the telling – stories create community by promoting a sense of belonging. Thanks, Salmon – your courage and clarity re-energized me around telling Derryfield’s stories.