I just read that three women- President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, Leymah Gbowee of Liberia, and Tawakul Karman of Yemen- have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. This is stupendous on a number of levels, so much so that I would have done a jump for joy if I wasn’t so tired (and in public). But on a more personal level, I have decided that this event is worth writing about for this site after several weeks of dealing with more “practical” (read: stressful) matters and doing more creative writing (mainly to distress).
President Johnson Sirleaf is the first women elected head of state of an African country, so it’s not shocking that she would be a contender for the prize. I imagine that the Committee has had her on a longlist for a while and was waiting to see how she would perform as president before finally deciding on her. Notably, she is the second African woman to win the prize (after the recently departed Wangari Muta Maathai) and the first sitting African head of state to win (F.W. deKlerk shared the prize with Mandela in 1993while he was in office, but does that count? And Mandela won it several months before he was elected President of South Africa in 1994). Regardless of your opinions on who bears responsibility for the political environments in sub-Saharan Africa- Is it the colonialists? The banks? The dwindling middle class?- President Johnson Sirleaf’s election as President of Liberia almost a decade ago marked a milestone in African history (yes, there is one) and a challenge to leaders across the continent and around the world. Would the West be more forgiving, in debt and other matters, of a female-led country? Would President Johnson Sirleaf’s counterparts in other countries give her due respect? And would this President, recipient of instantaneous international adoration, be able to maintain a base in her own country that she could use to get things done? In a struggling country where former warlords and perpetrators hold Senate seats and Charles Taylor walked free, the learning curve for the newly-elected president was steep. Today, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is still in office, still leading the recovery of her country, and still the toast of international policymaking circles, although she is facing an election on Tuesday. If she loses, any positive appraisal of her efforts will die down, but regardless of what happens next week, today the Norwegian Nobel Committee selected a personality who should inspire passionate debate- among academics, politicians, and her own people- about her worthiness for the prize, and her efforts as president. In contrast to the snooze-inducing choices the Committee has made in the past, I welcome such debate.
The Committee’s choice to choose three woman also makes a statement that should resonate with citizens around the world: that nonviolent movements can succeed, and that the cause of women’s rights are not separate from, but a part of, any human rights agenda we have. Disparities in income, educational attainment, access to medical care, physical security, and domestic obligations affect women adversely, but considering that these affected women are our mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters, these disparities hurt us too. I remember once hearing that if you educate a woman, you educate a family, so for those of you skeptical of high ideals and noble causes, remember who taught you to count, write, and read. And after you remember that, remember why.
The designations of Ms. Gbowee and Ms. Karman are also noteworthy in their own ways. While President Johnson Sirleaf has utilized a platform given to her by her high position, here you have two women, with no formal position and living in patriarchal societies, who summoned their strength and the strengths of others to build movements. In these days of increasing drone attacks and an Arab Spring, Yemen has seen its larger neighbors dominate the front pages of newspapers, so advocates and activists there should take some solace in the recognition of one their own. I only hope that attention will continue to be paid to a Middle Eastern country that is not as large as Algeria and Afghanistan and not nearly as oil-rich as Libya and Iraq. Ms. Karman’s efforts are a direct repudiation of the image of Arab women as quiet and the image of Arabs in general as unwilling or unable to participate in a democracy. From an American to an Egyptian to a North Korean, we all know what dignity and equality are even if we don’t have the vocabulary to articulate it.
This year’s choice has done what I’ve felt the Nobel Prizes in Peace and Literature should do: shine a light on people, causes, and regions that are not familiar to the West. A prize of the wealth, scale, and influence of a Nobel Prize should educate even more than it rewards, and the Committee has been more willing to heed that principle when it comes to deciding who “...shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses” (from Alfred Nobel’s will). We saw that with the selection of Al Gore for his environmental efforts, which made us see that efforts to secure a sustainable future must now be executed with as much fervor as efforts to halt the spread of nuclear weapons or negotiate peace treaties. And that’s what the Nobel Peace Prize should be about: assigning a high value to something that is intangible or hard to grasp in statistics and charts. We could all agree that these women have done great work, but their selection gives us the space to research and debate the real value of their work, especially in comparison to their peers. I only wish that the Swedish Academy would apply that same fervor to their selections for Nobel Prize in Literature.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m sure Tomas Transtromer is a talented writer (he’s actually on my reading list), and based on what I’ve read about his work, his evocations of the Swedish landscape are worthy of praise. But did he really need the prize? He’s won so many others, and with a prize like this, one that guarantees sold-out books and an international legacy, one should need it as much as they deserve it. Considering that the Swedish Academy is, well, Swedish, my first reaction was that this was a lazy choice; I think the Academy should be more cautious in ensuring some kind of geographic balance in winners, and a Swedish literary body choosing a Swedish author for a global prize seems unfair. Of course his win is much less controversial than Elfried Jelinek’s win in 2004, but it’s obviously more comforting for the Academy to choose European authors because they’re more accessible, in the way that Hemingway and Roth are more accessible to me as an American. But it’s for that reason that the Academy should avoid doing that. Plainly put, the Nobel Prize in Literature is Eurocentric, and even when they show signs that they’re not- look at Jean-Marie Gusatv LeClezio and Mario Vargas Llosa- it seems like too little too late. I don’t want to sound like one of those people who thinks that the Swedish Academy will forever live in infamy because Borges didn’t win before he died and Achebe will likely never win (I know that extra-literary concerns are always a factor in who does or doesn’t win a literary prize), but there are many authors, in the Americas, Africa, the Middle East, and throughout Asia that are worthy of recognition, and the selection of authors from many industrializing countries would be a boon to national pride and help bring about some sense that the “international community” doesn’t only include the G8 and the European Union. What about Carlos Fuentes? Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o? Pramoedya Ananta Toer before he died? Are you telling me there are no other Chinese authors worthy of recognition besides Gao Xingjian? Do you really think, especially with what’s been going on, that no author is documenting Middle Eastern life as well as Naguib Mahfouz did?
The value of literature is subjective and it’s possible that the authors mentioned above were or were not chosen based on the personal preferences of Swedish Academy members. That would be fine if they were choosing what to read in their own time, but they’re not. If this is a matter of personal taste, then the members have to questions their assumptions and realize that there is much to be read outside of Europe. Literature is a means of recording life and illuminating truth that is much less alienating than non-fiction. Literature does have an anthropological purpose to it, and to disregard authors from whole regions is a disservice to the millions of readers, in Scandinavia and beyond, who use the Swedish Academy’s choice as a guide on what’s worth reading. And if you’re saying a region isn’t worth reading about, then why should it matter to us in any other way?
For more information and access to video: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/08/world/nobel-peace-prize-johnson-sirleaf-gbowee-karman.html?ref=world
To read an excerpt of Leymah Gbowee's Liberian Civil War memoir, Mighty Be Our Powers: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/10/07/leymah-gbowee-mighty-be-our-powers-excerpt-my-vanished-liberia.html
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