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Bone to Pick: Of Forgiveness, Reconciliation, Reparation, and Revenge

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Overview

In a world riven by conflict, reconciliation is not always possible -- but it offers one of the few paths to peace for a troubled nation or a troubled soul. In Bone to Pick, bestselling author and Newsweek editor Ellis Cose offers a provocative and wide-ranging discussion of the power of reconciliation, the efficacy of revenge, and the possibility of forgiveness. People increasingly are searching for ways to put the demons of the past to rest. That search has led parents to seek out the murderers of their children and torture victims to confront their former tormentors. In a narrative drawing on the personal and dramatic stories of people from Texas to East Timor, Cose explores the limits and the promise of those encounters. Bone to Pick is not only the story of victims who have found peace through confronting the source of their pain; it is also a profound meditation on how the past shapes the present, and how history's wounds, left unattended, can fester for generations.

Editorial Reviews

Newsweek contributing editor Cose (The Envy of the World) examines a broad spectrum of responses to the pain and trauma of personal violence as well as national tragedy. He visits American families victimized by crime and the World Trade Center attacks, consults a range of literature (e.g., Bernhard Schlink's The Reader and Laura Blumenfeld's Revenge) and travels around the world to see how ruptured societies cope with past human rights violations. While Cose meets several victims who agree that forgiveness helps them cope, he acknowledges that, for some, the return of normalcy and security remains a first priority. And forgiveness is not always forthcoming; Cose finds those molested by priests can forgive the molestor more easily than they can those who didn't stop him. While Cose acknowledges that some relatives and friends of homicide victims feel relief at the murder's execution, he's more inspired by those who transform wrath into "something more ennobling." He concludes that the truth and reconciliation commissions in South Africa and Peru provided more of the former than the latter; a Peruvian tells him that reconciliation must be rooted in fundamental change that has so far not been forthcoming in that country. Cose looks at reparations cases from Maori in New Zealand to Japanese-Americans interned in the U.S. during WWII. He contrasts the response to 1920s mob attacks on blacks in Tulsa, Okla., and Rosewood, Fla.; in Rosewood, unlike Tulsa, officials have supported restitution. As for reparations for American slavery (a book in itself), Cose acknowledges that the case can't be won in court, but makes it clear that the issue is still hovering and doing damage. The scope forces Cose to touch lightly and then move on, but the book gives readers a substantial nudge toward exploring the lessons of recent history. Agent, Michael Congdon. (Apr. 6) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Ellis Cose

Ellis Cose is a columnist and contributing editor for Newsweek. He began his journalism career at nineteen as a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. He lives in New York City.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Pocket

Filesize

769.59 KB

Number of Pages

224

eBook ISBN

9780743488846

Awards

  • Hurston/Wright Legacy Award

Excerpt from: Bone to Pick by Ellis Cose

INTRODUCTION
HONORING THE PAST, HEALING THE SOUL

Choose life goes a popular saying, expressing a sentiment that is undeniably noble and good. Yet in fact, we have little choice in the matter. For life is a gift -- one that chooses us. Our decision is in what we do with that life, with how we endeavor to lead it -- with how tenaciously, and wisely, we defend it; with how well we cope with its tragedies and hardships.

In the course of researching this book, I listened to countless personal narratives, many of them either heartrending or shocking, a fair number of them inspirational. Perhaps the most powerful was the story shared with me by a poor peasant woman from a tiny village in Peru.

She was snatched from her home for no apparent reason. Then she was shot in the back of the head at point-blank range and tossed into a river and left for dead. Somehow she survived. And she managed to get on with her life.

Her ordeal (and I will tell her story in more detail later) was unimaginably horrific -- infinitely more so than anything most of us are ever likely to go through. Yet, in a sense, her challenge is one we have all faced -- albeit on a markedly lesser scale. For we have all been unjustly harmed. And somehow we manage to deal with it.

Much of living, as we all learn, is about dealing with pain caused by others, about accepting the pain or getting past it, about reconciling with -- or trying to move beyond the reach of -- those who caused it. The child eventually accepts the loss of a parent; a parent even accepts the loss of a child. And in time a people, individually and collectively, fashion lives no longer quite so focused on the horrors of apartheid, the genocide of Rwanda, the hell of the Holocaust, the mass murder of Armenians, or the devastation of September 11.

Yet to deal with pain or trauma, to "get over it," is not the same as being free of it. An abusive lover may get so deep under your skin that you find it nearly impossible to let go. An unforeseen tragedy may so shake your faith that years later you curse the capriciousness of fate. Or question the goodness of God. Injuries take on a life of their own. So even when the wound seems all but healed, the pain and the memories linger -- sometimes for days, sometimes for months, sometimes for generations.

Psychologist Robert Enright found that nearly half of a group of over two hundred seven-year-olds he worked with in Northern Ireland were clinically depressed. The reason, he speculated, had a lot to do with the centuries of suffering the people of Northern Ireland have endured. Somehow the parents transmitted their trauma to their children. "When husbands and wives marry," observed Enright, "they bring what they learned from their mom and dad.... They bring in the wounds of the earlier generation, which also brought in the wounds of the earlier generation." At a 1997 conference on Northern Ireland at Georgetown University, political scientist Paul Arthur made much the same point. "This sense of memory, I think, has been one of our deadliest problems."