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First Annual George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in British Columbian Literature, June 2004
The Oriental Question: Consolidating a White Man's Province, 1914-41 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2003), a tightly written work of historiography by Patricia E. Roy; Field Day: Getting Society Out of School (Vancouver: New Star Books, 2003), a polemic on education by Matt Hern; Burning Vision (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2003), a committed drama in four movements by Marie Clements; and, Missing Sarah (Toronto: Penguin, 2003), a non-fictional narrative of recuperation by Maggie de Vries, are the four finalists for the inaugural George Ryga Award. The difficulties for the shortlisting committee (John Lent, Ken Smedley, Mary Ellen Holland and Nancy Holmes) must have been immense, given the open-ended nature of theme and genre. These four works, covering racism in politics and society; ideology in education; racism and nuclear threat; and race, ideology, narcotics and the sex trade, all demonstrate social awareness and are worthy titles for the George Ryga Award.
Jerry Wasserman comments on Ryga's Ballad of a Stone-picker (1966) thus: "Composed of fourteen anecdotal stories ... the novel has the effect of a ballad as the narrator interweaves tales about the agricultural community he has never left with confessions of guilt and resentment concerning his dead brother and parents. [It is] both a plaint for and a celebration of the brutality of life."; Of the four shortlisted works, in terms of technique, social awareness and engagement, one work stands out, eloquently.
In Prometheus Bound , George Ryga presents the following:
Prometheus: In the fever of reshaping destiny
I ignored this time, this place,
And the possibility that I might occupy
The chains of others
Whose names and faces
Were unknown and of no concern
To me ... so return to work, friends,
And think of troubled days to come.
Have compassion but not pity for me.
No apologies or compromises (129-130 emphasis added)
These lines speak equally from the voices of Sarah de Vries and her adoptive sister Maggie. They also speak to the oftentimes unwittingly callous nature of society as we participate in the treadmill of existence. Compassion, though, is the goal here, from Maggie de Vries for her sister Sarah specifically, for Women more generally, and for those commemorated throughout the text with a simple eloquence as "last seen"; or "identified by DNA";. As the cases mount, "Missing Persons"; become "Missing Sex Workers"; (104) become, in Sarah's ironic echo of military terminology, "Missing in Action"; (159), and belatedly "Missing Women"; (192)-terminological shifts that reflect the glacial pace of social response and judgment to the fate of human beings. The individual story of Maggie de Vries and the connected story (recuperated from notebooks, journals, letters, memories and conversations) of Sarah de Vries are important, but more significant to social awareness is Maggie de Vries' empathy throughout for human beings (outside the petty and insidious labels we use that permit compartmentalization, separation, distance, apathy). We can and do "occupy the chains of others";, whose names are known here, whose fate must be our concern. For, if they (Dedication: "sex workers everywhere";) are missing, then the social fabric is threadbare, an ongoing state of loss is emphasized. We are missing something.
The end of Maggie de Vries' book, "In my heart, she [Sarah] rests already"; (267), is a testament to the fact that in the face of the human madness of the Pickton Pig Farm, through an empathetic act of our own, we can better society: initially by opening our hearts. Maggie de Vries' book offers further means to agency for us. The process toward its (agency) attainment is clarified in a comment: "'... What matters isn't the effect it has on you, but what you do with the effect it has on you. ... '"; One act is to ensure, as Maggie de Vries is careful to, that we "remain an organic part of an ongoing experience in society: of the poor, the disadvantaged, the voiceless, the unrepresented, the powerless. These are equally concrete and ongoing; they cannot survive being transformed and then frozen into creeds, religious declarations, professional methods.";
Maggie De Vries' aim in Missing Sarah is clearly set on provoking compassion for and passion about others; Sarah de Vries is not a black, an adopted child, a runaway, a prostitute, a drug addict; rather, she is "a young woman of great beauty and with enormous potential for love and caring for others"; (64). Missing Sarah is an act of recuperation and an example of empathetic social beings.
It is this year's George Ryga Award winner.
Jerry Wasserman comments on Ryga's Ballad of a Stone-picker (1966) thus: "Composed of fourteen anecdotal stories ... the novel has the effect of a ballad as the narrator interweaves tales about the agricultural community he has never left with confessions of guilt and resentment concerning his dead brother and parents. [It is] both a plaint for and a celebration of the brutality of life."; Of the four shortlisted works, in terms of technique, social awareness and engagement, one work stands out, eloquently.
In Prometheus Bound , George Ryga presents the following:
Prometheus: In the fever of reshaping destiny
I ignored this time, this place,
And the possibility that I might occupy
The chains of others
Whose names and faces
Were unknown and of no concern
To me ... so return to work, friends,
And think of troubled days to come.
Have compassion but not pity for me.
No apologies or compromises (129-130 emphasis added)
These lines speak equally from the voices of Sarah de Vries and her adoptive sister Maggie. They also speak to the oftentimes unwittingly callous nature of society as we participate in the treadmill of existence. Compassion, though, is the goal here, from Maggie de Vries for her sister Sarah specifically, for Women more generally, and for those commemorated throughout the text with a simple eloquence as "last seen"; or "identified by DNA";. As the cases mount, "Missing Persons"; become "Missing Sex Workers"; (104) become, in Sarah's ironic echo of military terminology, "Missing in Action"; (159), and belatedly "Missing Women"; (192)-terminological shifts that reflect the glacial pace of social response and judgment to the fate of human beings. The individual story of Maggie de Vries and the connected story (recuperated from notebooks, journals, letters, memories and conversations) of Sarah de Vries are important, but more significant to social awareness is Maggie de Vries' empathy throughout for human beings (outside the petty and insidious labels we use that permit compartmentalization, separation, distance, apathy). We can and do "occupy the chains of others";, whose names are known here, whose fate must be our concern. For, if they (Dedication: "sex workers everywhere";) are missing, then the social fabric is threadbare, an ongoing state of loss is emphasized. We are missing something.
The end of Maggie de Vries' book, "In my heart, she [Sarah] rests already"; (267), is a testament to the fact that in the face of the human madness of the Pickton Pig Farm, through an empathetic act of our own, we can better society: initially by opening our hearts. Maggie de Vries' book offers further means to agency for us. The process toward its (agency) attainment is clarified in a comment: "'... What matters isn't the effect it has on you, but what you do with the effect it has on you. ... '"; One act is to ensure, as Maggie de Vries is careful to, that we "remain an organic part of an ongoing experience in society: of the poor, the disadvantaged, the voiceless, the unrepresented, the powerless. These are equally concrete and ongoing; they cannot survive being transformed and then frozen into creeds, religious declarations, professional methods.";
Maggie De Vries' aim in Missing Sarah is clearly set on provoking compassion for and passion about others; Sarah de Vries is not a black, an adopted child, a runaway, a prostitute, a drug addict; rather, she is "a young woman of great beauty and with enormous potential for love and caring for others"; (64). Missing Sarah is an act of recuperation and an example of empathetic social beings.
It is this year's George Ryga Award winner.
Submitted on July 13, 2004 in By David.
