Mirrors, Body Image, our Stories, Art, & Beyond

     “I belong to a people so wounded by betrayal, so hurt by misplacing their trust, that to offer us a gift of love is often to risk one’s own life, certainly one’s name and reputation. I do not mean only the Africans, sold and bought, and bought and sold again; or the Indians, who joyfully fed those who, when strong, gleefully starved them out. I speak as well of the shadowy European ancestor, resentfully denied, except that one cannot forget the thatched one-room hovels of old Europe, put to torch by those who grabbed the land; and the grief of the starving, ashen ancestor, forced to seek his or her lonely fortune in a land that seemed to demand ruthlessness if one intended to survive.
     I belong to a people, heart and mind, who do not trust mirrors. Not those, in any case, in which we ourselves appear. The empty mirror, the one that reflects noses and hair unlike our own, and a prosperity and harmony we may never have known, gives us peace. Our shame is deep. For shame is the result of soul injury. Mirrors, however, are sacred, not only because they permit us to witness the body we are fortunate this time around to be in, but because they permit us to ascertain the condition of the eternal that rests behind the body, the soul. As an ancient Japanese proverb states: when the mirror is dim, the soul is not pure.
     Art is the mirror, perhaps the only one, in which we can see our true collective face. We must honor its sacred function. We must let art help us.”

       Walker, Alice. “The same river twice. Honoring the difficult.” Pocket Books, NY, 1996. 

     See also: http://www.bodymonologues.ca/Home.html

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