“we are not Kleenex people"

Apparently, I don't post much in April. I had to go back to 2009 to find this flashback. Enjoy! 

She had me from “we are not Kleenex people.”

What’s not to like about a woman who soaks up her divorce tears with a roll of Charmin? After the last tear has been absorbed, Amy Dickinson and her daughter move out of her sister’s house in Freeville, New York to Washington, D.C. No matter where her physical address is, however, home is always Freeville.

One’s true home is an integral theme to Dickinson’s memoir The Mighty Queens of Freeville.

 Although she is a single mother, raised by a single mother, both she and her daughter are always surrounded by an extended family of close sisters - who still meet once a week for a diner breakfast even though they see each other every day anyway.

Her life experiences in and around Freeville read like letters to an advice column:

Dear Amy,

My ex-husband is allergic to cats…

Dear Amy,

My father has just married his fourth wife…

Dear Amy,

My Sunday school student ate Peanut Jesus…

Perhaps this illustrates why Dickinson was chosen to take up Ann Landers’ pen in her advice column "Ask Amy."

If this wasn’t a library book, I would have been tempted to add marginalia like “so true” and “!” throughout chapters entitled “Falling Up” and “Dork Like Me.” However, I wouldn't have wasted any ink on a rather long chapter about her cat Pumpkin.

While I consider subscribing to a newspaper that carries Dickinson’s column for more of her wit and wisdom, I’ll just have to settle for listening to her on NPR. And of course I’ll be on the lookout for the cookbook her mother has always been meaning to write: After the Cat has Licked It.

No Complaints

Two weeks without assigned reading has left me scrambling to read as many page-turners as possible. In no particular order, these did not disappoint:

The High Season by Judy Blundell

“Maybe all relationships, friendship, partner, parent and child, were held together by the things you did not say as much as the things you did. The unsaid was the keystone in the arch. Once you kicked it free, you had nothing that held you up.” 

I Liked My Life by Abby Fabiaschi 

“Never complaining, I recently learned, is different from having no complaints.”

Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell

“That was how she’d once viewed her perfect life: as a series of bad smells and unfulfilled duties, petty worries and late bills.” 

The Singles Game by Lauren Weisberger

“If the US Open was a two-week trip to Ibiza, Wimbledon was a meditative hike through a scenic national park.” 

And I was even able to check off a reading challenge - an epistolary novel. 

Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher

“But there are other faculty here on campus who are not disposed to see notable scholarship ignored; and let it be known that, in the darkened, blood-strewn caverns of our offices, we are hewing our textbooks and keyboards into spears.” 

What if

 Do you ever think about how you ended up where you are? How many decisions, large and small, culminated in the now? What if I had gone to that college in another state, left that party 20 minutes earlier, waited another year to have a child? Caught that train instead of the next one?

This week’s challenge opened up a whole new genre for me, and I’m hooked. Alternate history.

It also reintroduced me to Jo Walton -whose novel The Just City I read for the challenge in 2016.

My Real Children is a tale of two Patricias. In one life, she says yes to her first proposal. In her other life, she says no. As elderly woman struggling with dementia, she remembers both just as vividly. In her life in a loveless marriage, she found her passion in advocating for peace. In her life spent with her true love, she must deal with a world plagued by violence.

Walton includes just enough detail from our own historical reality for discrepancies to be shocking. For example, when I read that Jackie Kennedy died along with her husband, I thought at first it was a rumor spread by the British newspapers.

The message of the novel seems to be that we’ll find love and adversity no matter which life we’ve chosen. So if we can’t change the past, it’s fun to imagine the possibilities in store for our future.     

Lucky Broken Girl

Although it’s almost March, I’ve succeeded in reading exactly one book from this year’s reading challenge. I went for what I thought would be an easy task: read a middle grade book that has won a diversity award.  Lucky Broken Girl by Ruth Behar is a quick read, but psychologically, it's a challenge.

Ruthie Mizrahi and her family are living in New York City after leaving Castro’s Cuba. Ruthie studies hard at school so she can go to the “smart class” and earns the respect of the neighborhood girls with her hopscotch prowess.

However, just as she is starting to fit into her new home, the family gets into a car accident. Ruthie wakes up to find she’s in a body cast from the waist down. Her world instantly shrinks to the confines of her bed. Although the cast is doing its job, ultimately it’s reading books, writing stories, and painting pictures that does the true healing.

When the cast is finally removed, Ruthie must learn to walk again. And the bedroom that once seemed like a prison cell now feels like a sanctuary she doesn’t want to ever leave. A strong-willed nurse insists that she try.

“The only way to deal with fear is to treat it like an unwelcome guest,” Amara tells Ruthie.  “If you keep entertaining it, you'll never be rid of it.”

Adam and Eve

Over the holidays I slowly made my way through Ahab’s Wife. I say slowly because there’s much to savor in Sena Jeter Naslund’s writing. However, when my professor referenced #3 on this list in his lecture last night, I wondered if cannibalism counts.  

In preparation for last week’s snow storm, yes, we did get bottle water. But more importantly we stopped at the library to stock up. So while the temperatures dropped, I found myself in a Middle Eastern oasis while rereading Naslund’s Adam and Eve.

Here’s what I said about this book in 2011:

Your mother is always right. Well, at least mine is. She's been recommending Ahab's Wife forever. And I keep relegating it to the bottom of the to-read list. But then I came across Sena Jeter Naslund's new book, Adam and Eve.

Lucy is a recent widow. Her late husband was a physicist studying extraterrestrial life. His work threatens those who believe proof of alien life forms would debunk their own creation myths. Just before his death, he leaves Lucy his flash drive containing his latest proof. Shortly thereafter, one of her husband's friends recruits Lucy to fly an ancient codex out of Egypt. Her enemies now have two reasons to find her.

Adam is an American soldier living in Eden. Having survived a brutal beating, he has made a primitive home for himself in a lost corner of the Middle East. His prayers for a companion are answered when Lucy's plane crashes into his midst.

Naslund's description of Adam's awakening breathes new life into the story as old as Genesis. Other authors have tackled the subject, but placing the characters in a future world reminds us we probably always strive for the forbidden fruits. And after we've taken the first bite, a mother will be there to say "I know." Then you will listen.

International Day of Prayer and Awareness against Human Trafficking

In honor of St. Josephine Bakhita's feast day today, I'm re-posting about two books which address human trafficking.

Sold as a Slave by Olaudah Equiano, an excerpt from a longer work published in 1789 called The Interesting Narrative, recalls Equiano’s capture in Africa, separation from his sister, and service –as a slave – in the royal navy, and treatment under various owners. He writes, “Every circumstance I met with served only to render my state more painful, and heighten my apprehensions, and my opinion of the cruelty of the whites.”

The mature tone of the narrative makes the reader forget that at the time these events take place the writer is not yet 12 years old. Remarkable is the number of times he mentions a kindness of his masters. After converting to Christianity in his later years, he seems truly puzzled that any man could think that holding himself above another was what God intended.

Tragically, this practice persists today. Kevin Bales in his TED talk "How to Combat Modern Slavery" tells us this:

“The average price of a human being today, around the world, is about 90 dollars. They are more expensive in places like North America. Slaves cost between 3,000 to 8,000 dollars in North America, but I could take you places in India or Nepal where human beings can be acquired for five or 10 dollars. They key here is that people have ceased to be that capital purchase item and become like Styrofoam cups. You buy them cheaply, you use them, you crumple them up, and then when you're done with them you just throw them away.”

Read more in Bales’ book Blood and Earth: Modern Slavery, Ecocide, and the Secret to Saving the World.

Dear America

Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

After living in Japan for a year, I flew home to Texas. While I was waiting in the “U.S. citizens” line to get through customs, I “saw” for the first time what a motley crew we were. It served in stark contrast to the faces I saw waiting in the citizens line at the Japanese airport.

What does it mean to be American?

That’s the question Jose Antonio Vargas poses in his book Dear America, Notes of an Undocumented Citizen. Born in the Philippines, Vargas was sent to live with his grandparents in California when he was 12. It wasn’t until he tried to get a driver’s license that he realized his papers permitting him to live in the country were fake.

With the help of friends and family, he manages to go to college and work as a journalist despite not having proof of citizenship. In 2001, he published his story in the New York Times.  

This memoir chronicles what his life has been since he “came out” and especially the uncertainty he’s faced after the most recent presidential election. Part of his mission, promulgated through the organization he founded called Define America, is to use “the power of story to transcend politics and shift the conversation about immigrants, identity, and citizenship in a changing America.”

That conversation starts with a few simple questions:

Why do people come to this country?

What does it mean to be undocumented?

What does it mean to be a good citizen?

What does it mean to be American?