A Witness in Red Stockings

Abstract

"There’s no pain on earth that doesn’t crave a benevolent witness,” says eleven-year-old Sarah Grimke in Sue Monk Kidd’s (2014) The Invention of Wings after she is humiliated at the hands of her mother. The benevolent witness is a ten-year-old slave named Handful. Although Monk’s novel is not intended for young readers, she has crafted a beautiful, singular phrase that transcends genre. The world of young adult literature is filled with benevolent witnesses. Armed with an unvarnished honesty, they describe the indescribable, take us to places we would otherwise never reach, lift the lid on bitter truths that cannot and should no longer be contained. They inject their insights with humor, a directness that can make us squirm or laugh or stop us in our tracks. Sometimes benevolent witnesses step forward decades after a scarring experience that has seared their soul and left a stain that no amount of revision-ism or skepticism can scrub away. It can take years before the world is ready to open its ears to cries that were initially muted, stunned into silence. Bodies of literature that are, in essence, testimonies-as-art aren’t simply hatched; those who live to chronicle the unspeakable must first believe they have the legitimacy to share their stories, and that journey can take a long time. A benevolent witness has to be ready to speak; the world has to be ready to listen.