Hannah Farver's Blog

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I’ve shifted my blogging to my business website, Verity Communications. I write on marketing, branding, and give stuff away for free.

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Brand-Building from a Writerly Perspective

If you’re a writer, you might think about how Harry Potter or the Hunger Games defied the parameters of “young adult” genres. Their appeal proved to be enormous…but it all started with the people who were initially convinced to pick them up at the bookstore. It’s tempting to think that whatever we create might have this same raving success. We forget that the marketing of Harry Potter began with…

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You Can’t Cast an Infinite Net (It’s Not Physically Possible)

Alternate Title: Why Limitations on Your Business Aren’t Necessarily Bad If there’s one scenario I get all the time at work, it’s this: Clients come to me with a list of goals and a “target audience” that completely lacks the “target.” Their ambitions are boundless. I’ve been told that the ideal demographic for a certain brand is specifically females “from elementary school to professional age,”…

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Writing Advice from Literary Greats

Writing advice–on the how and the why of it. From those who would know: “One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.” – Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums “To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life.” – T.S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism “There is no greater agony than bearing an…

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Serial: The Jury is Out

Like millions of others, I got sucked into Serial last year. Majorly sucked in. I referred to Adnan and Hae-min by their first names, and began conversations with outbursts of, “So I was thinking about what Jay said…” I contemplated getting a “#FreeAdnan” t-shirt. I was grabbed by Sarah Koenig’s excellent storytelling (of course), but it was Rabia Chaudry’s dogged pursuit of justice that really…

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“I’ve killed you, Scout. I had to.” - My review of Go Set a Watchman.

“But a man who has lived by truth—and you have believed in what he has lived—he does not leave you merely wary when he fails you, he leaves you with nothing. I think that is why I’m nearly out of my mind.” – Harper Lee We’ve been adjusting to our new home in Toronto. The traffic noises, city lights, and a new puppy (who has a particularly affinity for nibbling on toes, rugs, and baseboards) have…

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(Photo from a striking series of portraits, here.)

The North Korean soldier wasn’t what I expected. Hair combed to the side, he wore a polo shirt. He clasped his hands, nervous before the crowd of onlookers. Before speaking, he bowed low to a group of senior citizens who fanned themselves nearby. He appeared neither a buffoon—á la Team America—or cruel. He was flesh and bone. A man.

He bowed again as an interpreter made clear that he would soon be on the move. As one of the highest profile North Korean defectors in recent years, they had been unable to announce his appearance beforehand.

We were told we were about to see his story on screen, a story many North Korean defectors shared.

A projector flicked light onto the wall. The title rolled.

The documentary, 48m, was jarring, depicting the struggles of North Koreans sneaking across the North Korean/Chinese border. In any other scenario, I might have felt manipulated by the violence on screen. But this wasn’t mere emotional string-pulling.

For the North Koreans who attempt to cross the Tumen river, this was not an on-screen drama. This was reality.

We know from the UN, CIA, and Amnesty International, that there are about 200,000 men, women and children in North Korean concentration camps. Satellite photos have spotted them. Google Maps can trace the fences.

Studying the face of this North Korean soldier-turned- defector, I suddenly understood. The numbers of defectors are only symbols. What’s real and vital are the human stories they represent.

The former management chief of Camp 22 once testified about a family taken as test subjects for bio-chemical weapons. Pushed into a sealed plastic room, a father, mother, and two children choked on poisonous gas. Officials stood by with notepads to record the results.

The true result was unchartable. It was a picture of love, the father and mother stooping over their vomiting children, attempting mouth-to-mouth as they themselves fought to breathe. These are the human stories.

Other stories have surfaced in the news, but fail to gain more than fleeting press attention. Among them are reports on defectors who, after making the journey to Seoul, have been unable to assimilate and thrive. A survey conducted by the Chosun Ilbo found that 79% of North Korean defectors settled in South Korea feel “depressed,” and 20% have harbored suicidal thoughts.

Some of this may stem from the stigma faced by North Koreans, whose accents and disparate education experience sets them apart. Scholar Kim Hee-jin of Myungji University reported that while most South Koreans would accept North Korean defectors as friends, “only 10 percent of them would cooperate with defectors as their business partner, and only 7 percent of them would marry a defector.” (NK News)

Hyeonseo Lee, a prominent North Korean defector, wrote in her New York Times editorial: “[North Korean defectors in South Korea] struggle from a lack of education and job skills, discrimination, loneliness and emotional turmoil.” 

But the option of remaining in North Korea, or living in China under threat of repatriation, is also odious. North Korean women in China are highly vulnerable to trafficking, and due to China’s deficit of women, are sold as wives to Chinese men.

And if defectors are found by Chinese authorities, they face “face internment or death… as punishment for their treasonous flight.” (Virginia Journal of International Law) There are reliable reports of North Korean defectors shot on sight, and of the Chinese government installing electronic sensors across the border to aid in capturing defectors.

These are the broad statements of fact. On paper, they easily blur into the swath of other compelling news stories.

But meeting defectors who speak of torture, or of the starvation of their family members, these reports become personal. Defectors are often caught between the paragraphs; their real struggles obscured by the clinical analysis of policymakers, and overshadowed by the threat of nuclear weapons in North Korea.

What is needed in the dialogue about North Korea is an acknowledgement of the human element. Though the Kim regime may not recognize the human rights of its people, nations that respect human rights ought not to ignore the real lives that hinge on the talking points in our diplomacy.

Because behind every news story is a human story. And for everyday North Koreans, it’s their future that’s being debated.

“Like the discovery of love, like the discovery of the sea, the discovery of Dostoevsky marks an important date in one’s life.”

- Jorge Luis Borges, Personal Library

The other day, the typically profound Marc/”Bad Catholic” posted an article about rap. (Due diligence: It’s NSFW because he quotes lyrics.)

Actually, the article was really about how commercializing folk culture kills the community that created that culture.

In short, he says that rap was once a way of expressing the nuances of life in an inner city. “Not innocent in its lyric, but based around positive goods — fiery social criticism and a celebration of a being black,” he says. “Now, in the mainstream, the values it preaches are largely indistinguishable from the values of capitalism and post-Christian, suburban, sexually-liberated, white culture.”

He sums up rap’s jump into “inauthenticity” by saying “Rap is Republican.” And it became that way because a good cultural thing was monetized by capitalists.

But while I typically appreciated Bad Catholic, I’m not satisfied with Marc’s conclusions here. I wrote as much in the comment sections, but he stirred me to thought, so the rest is spilling out here.

First, isn’t it authentic for rappers who make money to rap about how they’re making money? Shouldn’t there, then, be a better diagnosis of the problem than “lack of authenticity?” And I’ve seen plenty of wonderful relics of folk culture corrupted without money as the main factor.

It seems to me that “money always corrupts” is a pretty un-nuanced argument. A cheap-shot, even, because bashing capitalism is forever vogue.

So, I’m thinking there are some other factors. There’s more to the corruption of folk culture than money.

What if the other insidious player here is not so much capitalism—but the cult of Cool? It’s honestly what annoys me more of the two.

Take an example. There’s Molly—the girl tatted her arm because she left a cult, and in the process of growing and healing, there are truths she wants indelibly inked onto her newly redeemed body. Then there’s Meg, who gets the same design inked on her arm because she saw it on Pinterest.

When actions (listening to rap/getting tattoos/going to farmers markets/cooking organic/eating Paleo, etc.) are chosen because it just seems cool, then the act loses its meaning. It isn’t connected to an intellectual decision or because of spontaneous joy the action brings. The act is just a pose.

And, undoubtedly the cult of coolness is fed by social media. “I have to go to a concert so I can Instagram that I was there and people will identify me with this cool music” seems to corrupt many a wonderful experience.

But I’d go the way of babies and bathwater if I blamed Instagram or Pinterest for this pursuit of cool. Instagramming a sunset doesn’t automatically corrupt the view. In the rap narrative, hoping that one day you’ll get a record deal and be able to quit your day job isn’t necessarily a vile ambition.

The problem lies in claiming a thing without loving or enjoying it; following a course of action without conviction. Fakeness isn’t a direct result of money or trying to be cool, but a direct result of life with minimal contemplation and introspection.

“I’ve developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from, except, of course, that some very tedious gentlemen have written books.” - Marilynne Robinson in her book, Gilead