International Journal of Collaborative-Dialogic Practices

Elena Fernández, Vane Manassero, Carmen Manzano, Ale Proaño, Conchita Quiróz,
Nora Renteria, & Ana Lourdes Reyes
Mexico City, Mexico

At Grupo Campos Eliseos (GCE), a postgraduate training institute in Mexico City, we have a writing seminar, Positive Psychology and Expressive Writing from a Collaborative Stance. Seminar participants are therapists and other professionals who are interested in writing. We read various books and articles and discuss our readings, and we consult with each other on our writing.  We do reflective or expressive writing in the seminar, and write from a collaborative perspective. This writing process provides an opportunity for the writers to reflect and collaborate in the writing and in the reading of each other’s writings, an opportunity to reflect, share and develop the issues and topics raised in the writings. This process provides an additional opportunity to learn from one’s experience and that of others, and for the learning to inform practice, widen perspectives and challenge social and cultural assumptions that we often take for granted. In other words, the writing process is a generative one in which new learning and knowledge is communally created.

In the therapy process, for instance, when we co-construct conversations between clients and therapists, our aspiration is to invite different meanings into people´s stories. Writing, like dialogue, makes the transformation of meaning into a different narrative possible, this re-telling attracts shades of descriptions and allows us the possibility to generate new sets of connections and new interpretations of our life stories.

This year we decided to read a fiction selection and open a conversation about it, at least once a semester.  Following are the reflections of some participants in the course on their experience of reading, and the thoughts that were invited by, Room, a novel by the Canadian author Emma Donoghue, published by Ed Alfaguara in 2010.

Inside and outside. The inside and outside in Room … The narrative world of Emma Donoghue involves entering a locked room; there is no escape from this text that is captivating from the beginning to the end. But the room, for the narrator of Room, is the entire world.  Jack is a 5 year old who we would be surprised to know that his mother puts him to sleep in a closet every night before the old man Nick arrives. This symbiotic relationship generated for survival, Jack is nursed until the age of 5, will have to change on the outside. And nevertheless, we will find that the story is also a stifling room on “the outside”.

In Donoghue’s novel, constantly being overlapped are the two contexts in which the mother-child relationship is told.  The inside is the place where the child grows up with his mother, managing to create a relationship as close as the boundaries of the small space in which they live. And the outside is a kind of “new room”, an external world where the mother – child relationship is questioned by strangers, and where the family is exposed to the need to make a radical change. Advised by her lawyer and as a strategy to pay for the education of her son, Ma accepts to reveal herself on television.  The greed of the reporter conducting the interview generates a crisis that will keep the reader’s interest until the end.

There is a passageway between the two spaces that unfolds throughout the novel, a narrow corridor where the lives of both of the main characters are developed. The negotiations between the inside and the outside which involve maternal care, doctors, family members and communication carried out in any mother – child relationship, are taken to the limit in Room by listening to the conversations s  of of several actors, but always in the voice of the child, giving the reader a unique opportunity for reflection.

Ale Proaño

Small spaces It would seem like a horror story, a few meters, a feeling of suffocation, how does one proceed? Is it possible to live like that? The rhe to continueeading takes me back to the past and I remember that I knew girls who lived in such small spaces like the one in Room and there they slept, ate, did their homework. They, ate, did their homework. Them inside their home, and I outside, played post office by exchanging messages under the door, our communication was through babbling incomprehensible words, pretending to use another language, to explain the distance that separated us. The game was to live in two different worlds; not being able to be together was due to the fact that we lived in foreign and distant lands.

The book makes it clear that with certain objects and a lot of imagination one can recreate universes, half playing, half in seriousness. We have all sown adventures, built castles with boxes, airplanes with chairs, cars with accelerators and brakes made from pieces of driftwood, that pass through the city swiftly to get to the desired location. Little by little, we leave the narrowness of the room in order to come to the realization that the world is complex and at the same time simple, at different moments we need to give meaning to our experiences in order to survive.

Nora Renteria

Reality and fantasy. In this novel, Ma depicts a reality to her son Jack. The room exists, what the television projects is fantasy. A world is built in which Jack can live, in which the inaccessible has no aspirations and thus the lack of which does not sadden it.  They are life, it is not permitted that Jack is turned off by consuming television.  Jack is amazed with items that appear in his room, a spider becomes his friend. The television pictures, that take shape and come to life in their world, surprise him.  For Jack, the relationship is not limited to the animate, the objects are another with which to relate, they take on a personality, space in his life and he has affection for them.

Not only does Ma shape the life of Jack yet Jack gives meaning and purpose to Ma’s life.  She stops being a victim to be responsible not only for survival yet to provide quality of life to her son.  She lives there for Jack, not only physically to take care of him, yet to give stimulation, language. That is why only a few times does she abandon herself up to the pain and although she is sequestered, Jack is not.

The characters invite us to reflect on what we value in our lives, about the meanings we place on things, about our prejudices and what we take for granted.  What other ways can the world be constructed? Who do we invite to our lives? What concepts do we accept as real that would do us well to reevaluate? Which ones limit us?

Vane Manassero

Something to live for. It was not easy for me to read this novel, partly because it invited me to reflect on the number of people living such tragic situations. For me this work involves the urge with which a human being fights when one has someone or something to live for, no matter if it is an ideal or another person. The structure that the mother gives the child’s life, in extremely difficult circumstances, stays with me.  Not only does she teach him to walk and talk, yet to make sense of his life.  Having lost a child it is even more important for the mother that Jack survives. When the characters go to this other world and Jack has to manage with the stairs and strange people, he is faced with a new reality; one very difficult. From romance to reality, reality sometimes is disenchantment. As therapists or as readers when we accompany another in the process, those who gain more are us.

Conchita Quiróz

Resiliency.  In a miniature dwelling a world is created. With humble objects, fantasy and considerable love, Ma builds with Jack, her young son-for whom all the opportunities are lacking-an environment of refuge that allows them to survive a tiny contemporary concentration camp.

The narratives, in which that universe is built, range from the sublime to the pedestrian.  Ma and Jack, accompanied by Dora the Explorer, recite poems; some remembered, others invented, or stories of yesteryear such as “Hansel and Gretel,” or more recent ones such as the tragedy of “Lady Di.”  As readers we can see how, with a reduced dose of exercise, insufficient food and much attachment, Ma and Jack remake, renew, and repair that which is familiar to us and they conquer the possibility to survive and even to become resilient characters that recognize the power of language and stories.

Collaborative is emphasized in this novel as an invitation to be and to do in the worst of circumstances and because of it we are encouraged to cherish possibilities in our lives.

Elena Fernandez

The obvious. If Emma Donoghue knew that she managed to transport me to the interior of Room what would she say?  At first I did not understand what was happening, but soon I discovered that the anguish that I was feeling was that of Ma.  I felt a deep admiration for that great woman.  Nobody taught her to be Ma but she became the best mother.

It was marvelous to be able to see through the eyes of a boy; it shook me to have seen how the few objects that made up her world had life.  A chair, a table, they were THE chair, THE table.  Inanimate objects acquired life, it was given to them by Jack and Ma; “the obvious thing” does not exist, therefore one must ask, not assume and less so judge.

Carmen Manzano

Gripping. What would be an appropriate adjective to describe this novel? I cannot find it in my vocabulary. Gripping?? Of course. Would it be difficult for me to express myself by being narrated by the voice of a child?

The splendid narrative of everyday objects fascinates me.  Due to the lack of people, the child converses with the few things that surround him.  With whom do I converse?  I dread to think what I could do with things.  No.  I converse with myself, with others and with the characters of the books.

I wonder of which components it has more, fiction or reality? I know, with sadness, that it is more reality.

Could it be that in my mind I also find myself in a room with Nick who is my self-censor?  Nor am I allowed to leave, to live and to learn.  Many times it threatens me, it disqualifies me, it criticizes me fiercely, it punishes me.  Is it that I want to be brave and dare to escape?  Is it that the world I do not know terrifies and I fear that it will hurt me?  Will it be that I feel more comfortable in my own Room?

As Jack, I’m venturing to learn more about others, discover the differences and revere them, but it is difficult; I tend to believe that we all feel the same and this impoverishes me and makes me easy prey.  Of what is in my Room I know a lot and very little of the outside, because it is huge, infinite. It surprises me to know that at my age I’m just learning something, that I am going to die, if perhaps, with consciousness of my ignorance.  I hope to live and die without fear of my Nick, at least each time with fewer fears. I’m learning to trust, in myself, in others, in life.

I would like to be able to say that I am like Jack’s mom, but I cannot; I do not want to have to be so brave.  I am afraid to think of suffering.  In some way I am Jack, I am Nick, I am the mom, I am the one who judges the different and flees for not wanting to touch the pain.

That happens to me with Room, so I flee from it, it leads me to painful places. Fortunately as in Pandora’s Box, after all the evils of humanity leave, hope remains.

Ana Lourdes Reyes

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