Ruth Norman Mason

I love reading, always has been one of my favourite rabbit holes and quiet processing times. I’m reflecting on all the amazing books I had time to read over the summer and wanted to recommend one of my favourites. The Movement (The Movement: how far will she go to make herself heard? – Ayisha Malik – Google Books) gave me time to dig in deep to binary thinking.

It’s a beautifully creative story which describes the ultimate in binary thinking and the connection with individual and community silencing. Malik creates a world which splits into two groups – the verbals and nonverbals. The main leader, who never wanted to be, she just made a choice one day to stop speaking, is a writer whose words become meaningless to her, in a world of words when words can become so misinterpreted. I loved the process of change in this book, how the main character came past words to express emotion, how at times of real emotional depth words can feel predictable and that sometimes silent presence can say so much more and how she found a way to recover the literal power of speaking your truth, even when it can feel impossible to do so. 

This book started so many thoughts for me about the power of silence, about when speaking is essential and it raised the question about whether it can ever be ethical not to speak. One of the main character’s best friends is furious with her silence, her behaviour towards her friend’s silence really showed me the pressure that we place on representative voices. How one woman can be appointed by forces outside of her control to speak for a generation, a race, a community. And ultimately how silencing that pressure can be.

It made me more compassionate and thoughtful about the complexity of who gets heard, and why. It made me more interested in finding ways out of binary thinking, about being aware of noticing when I’ve backed myself into a corner with an either/or choice and the freedom that comes with multiple right solutions, and the dimension of time – this choice for now, not forever.  In traumatised binary thinking spaces I feel like the dimension of time often gets lost, decisions feel like cages and become forever decisions, when really they can be a “for now” place. The movement helped me to think about how the decision to speak or not speak is a moment by moment process and showed how delicate, individual and powerful it really is.