One of the books that was required reading in college was Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives. I was intrigued because he was a photojournalist in the late 19th century, and I was a journalism major with a life-long love of photography and an innate interest in people’s lives and their stories. His book explores the lives of those living in New York slums. I don’t recall much about how the professor used the book for any sort of enlightenment for the students. I don’t recall whether the book was for political science or American history.
The opening sentence to the introduction of Riis’ groundbreaking book states, “Long ago it was said that ‘one half of the world does not know how the other half lives.’” That is still true today despite the plethora of story and image outlets, cameras and microphones, media channels and social media. Knowing how others live is quite different than seeing how they live. His book reminded me that there are always other stories to tell from the side of life each of us rarely, if ever, sees. No matter what station you have in life, you are largely ignorant of how others live, whether above or below your position. I wrote Discovering Mississippi, Discovering Myself as a non-academic, non-genealogical attempt to understand the poor, working roots from which my dad grew. No one I met on the journey was living in the conditions of those of my dad’s generation and before, but they had stories. I learned of how they lived in previous generations, but I did not see it.
The closest that I came to “learning how the other half lives” came from an experience in eighth grade. Unlike all that I have read in stories or seen in images since, this one will never leave my awareness.
There were about a half-dozen of us kids, maybe more, standing in a man’s one-room apartment near downtown Houston. We were delivering food and a cooked holiday meal. Our guide spoke Spanish to the man who laid in the bed. Two years into Spanish classes, and I could not make out a word that was said between the woman and the man. While she spoke, I took in the sights of the small place the man called home: bed with basic sheets and a blanket, refrigerator, small counter space and small table, and a single light bulb at the end of a cord that hung from the ceiling and stopped a few feet above the bed. From the bulb hung a string to pull to turn the light off or on. My visual tour stopped when the voices of the man changed. He spoke between being choked up. A few tears appeared on his cheek. The woman translated for us: “The man said thank you very much. He asked that we leave a bit of food out for him to eat after we leave, but to put the rest in the refrigerator because otherwise the rats will come down the light cord and get on the counter to eat it. He cannot get up to chase them away.” To this day, I try to imagine laying in bed, watching a rat come down an electrical cord and jumping on the counter to eat what was to be my next meal. I can’t.
None of us know how the other half lives, how the other 10% lives, the other 1/100 of 1% lives…we don’t really know how our neighbors, friends or relatives actually live. Not really. Not fully. It seems the world would be a better place if we admitted that truth and had the grace to be more patient, understanding, caring, empathetic and helpful to those in need, which is, ultimately, every human being for one reason or another. To see how others live is not to know how they live.