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April 24, 2001
Zadie Smith
I'm reading Zadie Smith's White Teeth. It was reccommended by my friend Amy. She said:
Have you read Zadie Smith's "White Teeth"? A really great book, I think you'd enjoy it a lot, especially since there is a nutty Jehovah's Witness sideline to the story. Check it out if you haven't already.
I went out a few days later and bought it. While walking about the bookstore, two people stopped me to tell me what a great book it was that I was carrying around. One said, "Holy crap! That's a great book!"
And it is, aside from a few mistakes the author made.
You see I was raised a Jehovah's Witness. My mother converted in 1973, and then fell out in 1976, and then back in around 1980. I spent my youth walking from door to door in my neighborhood hoping that my classmates wouldn't open the door on which I was knocking. Invariably, they would.
I know there are a lot of us out there, the Jehovah's Witnesses who left as soon as they were of an age to do so. I rarely find one, and when I do it's usually followed by an exhausting comparison of notes on what it was like, remembering the terminology, and comparing how we left and what the aftermath held. That's why I'm so hyper-critical of books that deal with Jehovah's Witnesses.
I go into reading them excited to find a person with a similar background, and usualy find myself disappointed thinking "that's not how it was... they got the doctrine wrong.. Jehovah's Witnesses don't use the King James Bible." Still, it's nice to read about experiences, accurate or not. And, of course, it is a work of fiction.
The book is great, a story of intersecting lives, which at the beginning explores people living in the Witnesses mistaken prophecy of the second coming of Christ. Folks waiting for Armagheddon on News Years Eve 1974. Of course, it didn't happen (in real life and in the book).
It's also nice to read about people who have been indoctrinated with the idea that this world is not for long, and going on to live lives that are independent of a savior or of a pathway out of here. It's almost like learning a new perspective on life. Twelve years out of it, I'm still not entirely free of the fears and the doctrine. I often find myself watching the new reports about earthquakes, wars, hostage crisis, economic hardship, etc., and wondering if I had made a mistake with my departure so many years back. Of course, my rational side knows it was the right thing. My rational side also tells me that there have ALWAYS been earthquakes, wars, hostage crisis, economic hardship, etc. But it's that inner voice, the worrisome one, the irrational thought that makes me wonder.
Posted by tdotjay at April 24, 2001 9:32 AM
