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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [154 Line —— -3.0 —— Norm PgEn [154 bruce allen Facing the True Costs of Living Arundhati Roy and Ishimure Michiko on Dams and Writing A popular saying has it that today we know the price of everything, but the value of nothing. To refine this a little we might say that today we know the price tags of many things, but not the full costs we pay for them, and therefore we do not know their real values. For today it has become difficult for most of us to be sufficiently aware of the full extent of the costs incurred on our immediate lives and on the larger world by the many things we use—be they computers or cars, books or bombs, drugs or dams. Ishimure Michiko from Japan and Arundhati Roy from India, however, are two Asian women writers who are directly facing and writing about the true costs and values of things close to our lives—physically, culturally, environmentally, and spiritually. In this essay I discuss the writing and social-environmental activism of Ishimure and Roy, focusing particularly on their common concern about the effects of dam construction on culture and environment. I relate this concern to their ideas about the power of stories in counteracting the destruction they see occurring and to their views on the interrelationships between fiction, nonfiction, and activism. There are a number of striking parallels in the life work and art of Ishimure and Roy. Both women have integrally combined social-environmental activism and writing in their lives. Their writings show a particular sensitivity to the fundamental relationships between places and culture. Both have faced considerable literary and social ostracism for their activist involvement and for their writing about it. And both have created new directions for literature that is rooted in the traditions of storytelling and that affirms a belief in the spiritual and redemptive powers of words. The trajectories of the writing careers of Ishimure and Roy show an inverse symmetry. Ishimure was first recognized for her writing about an environmental pollution issue and for her social activism related to this cause. This writing employed an unconventional mixture of nonfiction reporting, 154 Facing the True Costs of Living 155 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [155 Line —— 0.0p —— Norm PgEn [155 narrative history, autobiography, and social criticism. Later she broadened the focus of her writing to include fiction, poetry, and drama. Roy, in contrast , was first recognized as a novelist but has since been working in social and environmental causes and has been concentrating on nonfiction. Both Ishimure and Roy, however, have successfully woven together the threads of their literary and activist lives to develop a strong body of writing that defies sorting into traditional categories or literary genres. Ishimure Michiko first became well known in Japan with the publication in 1969 (revised, 1972) of Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow: Our Minamata Disease (Kugai jodo: Waga minamata byo). This was an artistically courageous book, steeped in Ishimure’s equally courageous life of social activism. Paradise brought the world’s attention to the industrial methyl mercury poisoning incident that occurred in Minamata, Japan. This poisoning was the cause of Minamata Disease, which tragically affected the lives of tens of thousands of victims and continues to be a source of suffering and protest today . Ishimure’s book had an effect similar to that of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) in waking up the public to the dangers of environmental poisoning . The impact of Ishimure’s writing, like that of Carson, was rooted in the combination of accurate environmental reporting with the highest level of literary expression. Indeed, Ishimure has frequently been referred to as the Rachel Carson of Japan. Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow was a genre-defying work, bringing together diverse elements of nonfiction, contemporary reportage , local mythology, and storytelling. In the opening chapter Ishimure speaks directly of her attitude and goals in writing this book: As a native of Minamata, I know that the language...

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