New Century Reading

Whhat You Have Heard Is True

Poet Carolyn Forche's memoir of her time spent learning about El Salvador as the country was reaching crisis state in the 1970s requires some patience. There were sections in the middle that felt long and repetitive, and yet I had the feeling that she was building to something bigger. I was right.

It's a story that's hard to believe, in some ways. As a young woman barely started in her literary career, she finds a man named Leonel at her California doorstep one day, with his two young daughters. Forche had worked on translating poems by one of Leonel's family members, and he comes to her with an odd proposition: Come to El Salvador. You're a poet, come and write about it. You wonder how the war in Vietnam started? Well, in El Salvador you now have the chance to see the beginning of that type of conflict.

Forche ended up going, against the advice of most of her friends. There, she finds that Leonel is intent on showing her all aspects of El Salvador, from its military leaders and religious leaders (including then Monsenor Oscar Romero) to the poorest, most wretched members of society. She asks Leonel why he's showing her this, and he replies again and again, you'll soon see, you'll soon understand. 

it's not until a trip to a squalid prison that Forche begins to get it, although describing what "it" is proves difficult. But that trip to the prison is beginning of an avalanche of events that lead to the deadly civil war that went on for 13 years. Her own life is at risk more than once, although nothing like the danger Leonel is repeatedly in. Yet it's Leonel who ends up helping to orchestrate the eventual peace in 1992.

As I said, there are scenes that feel repetitive, and more than once I found myself getting frustrated, both at Leonel for holding so much back from Carolyn, and at her for not forcing the issue, but being so passive. Yet I think in the end, she learned more that way than she might have being pushy. 

The book also serves as a reminder that we really, really don't want the U.S. to become the kind of country El Salvador was then, with people disappearing and either not showing up ever again, or being found brutally tortured and murdered, with no way to lawfully dissent. A timely reminder indeed.

Apple, Tree

I loved this collection of essays by writers about their parents. Let's face it, for better or for worse, we are all formed to some extent by our parents. These essays cover a wide range of results, through a wide range of voices (it's heartening to see how diverse the set of authors is). There are funny essays, warm and loving essays, thoughtful while forgiving essays, and angry essays. Everything from table manners to anger to psychics and tarot readers is included. And from a prestige viewpoint, there are some pretty major writers in here: Ann Patchett, Laura van den Berg, and Jane Hamilton are just a few of the authors collected.

Is it a perfect collection? No. Is there such thing as the perfect anthology? I haven't come across one. But the strong essays in this collection so far outnumbered and outpowered the lesser ones that I didn't care. Some are just breathtaking, but in ways I can't describe without giving spoilers. Read it. Compare your own experiences with your parents (or those with your offspring). See if it doesn't provoke some thoughts.

The Bronte Cabinet

Yes, I'm still on a bit of a Bronte bender. This is another worthy look at the storied (pun intended) family, with a twist: The author has researched not only the family, but objects they used or things that were part of their everyday lives, and then researched the context behind those objects to see why they were important. It sound frivolous, but it ends up being a fascinating take on their lives. 

Using existing biographies and archives, Lutz looks at things as disparate as women's household work, (especially those in the middle classes), lap desks, hair jewelry (usually for mourning, but also to signify friendship or romantic intentions), even the family pets and how pets were viewed in those days. This sounds entirely random, but as the book moves on, it adds to the overall portrait of the Brontes, and usually goes hand-in-hand with Lucasta Miller's The Bronte Myth in dispelling some of the myths around the women. The chapter on lap desks is especially informative, as I had no idea of the importance of those objects. Not just for writing; they were also repositories for deep secrets, and the worst thing someone could do was sneak around in someone else's lap desk--something Charlotte did to Emily.

If you're interested in the Brontes, this is a good contextual piece that adds much to existing biographies.

Evidence of V

Well, this book threw me for a loop. Sheila O'Connor has written a book that I've tagged as both novel and nonfiction, and it is indeed both (and by her own admission). It's the story of her maternal grandmother, V, who got pregnant at 15 and was sent to a "girl's home" in Minnesota, where she gave birth, but was essentially incarcerated until she turned 18, when she was "paroled" into servitude with a family in Duluth. 

V is dismayed at all that happens. But when the baby is born, she falls in love with it and wants to keep it. But she has no say in the matter.

This is, of course, a heartwrenching story that brings up the Magdalene Laundries. Sadly, those weren't contained to Ireland. O'Connor learns that her mother was born to someone other than the woman who had always been presented as O'Connor's grandmother. Her mother eventually takes matters into her own hands, and together they visit the Minnesota Historical Society, where they're able to pull up pieces of the truth.

But here's the thing. The pieces of truth they pull up don't tell a very full story. So O'Connor spent several more years researching this particular girl's home, and girl's home from the times (1930s) in general, to put together a story of what might have happened--to full in the blanks surrounding what is known to have happened.

This book then becomes part novel, part biography, part research document, and even part poetry collection. It's a quick read, but it's also deeply troubling. There were good intentions, of course. But we know the path to hell is paved with those. 

Read this book, knowing it's part fiction and part nonfiction, and see the bigger picture of what happened to so many, too many, young women in the early part of the 20th century--and not just in Ireland.

Take Courage: Anne Bronte and the Art of Life

Wow, did I love this book. It's less of a traditional biography and more of a look at the cultural context that Anne Bronte's literary works are situated in. Admittedly, there's not much known about Anne; for decades, she's been considered the "lesser" Bronte. Author Ellis argues, successfully, that that's a shame, and that Anne deserves more attention and respect. Drawing on her own research, as well as those who have come before, she paints a picture of Anne as not meek or timid, not unquestioningly religious, but a questioner, someone whose eyes were wide open, who had her own frustrations and concerns, and someone willing to stand up to the criticism of her book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall as being far too coarse--especially for a woman writer.

Ellis uses a wide range of contextual materials, many from Anne's time, including magazines and books of the era, as well as visual art, court cases, politics, and the various preceding biographies in their varied accuracy and viewpoints. She also uses contemporary references, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dr. Who, which makes for entertaining reading. She's thoughtful, but also capable of being acidic and funny:

"It's impossible to say exactly what Anne's illness was. In Edward Chitham's 1991 biography, he suggests that it was 'a psychic crisis during which Anne subconsciously understood her feminine role as producer of children, and was both attracted and paralysed by it.' His evidence is that...Anne made, he says 'several' drawings of babies' heads in 1837. Actually, she made three. She also drew an oak, an elm and some wooded landscapes, but no one has suggested she was having a psychic crisis about trees."

Aside from Ellis' humor, though, is righteous indignation at Anne's lack of renown and respect:

"As I sit in the cold Parsonage library, reading in mounting fury, the staff tell me no visitors ever ask about Anne except, sometimes, vague questions such as 'What was the name of the "other" sister?' or 'What did Anne write?' but it's rare for a day to go by without someone asking where Heathcliff is buried. Anne is less solid, less known, than even her sister's fictional characters. She has become a byword for underachievement, neglect and exclusion."

She brings up interesting propositions, including the possibility that Charlotte and Anne were not that close and that, in fact, Charlotte was not exactly a stellar sister, and she makes a persuasive case. I also learned that Anne' scandalous Wildfell novel is today still being published in an abridged form that a scurrilous publisher had done not long after Anne's death, weakening the overall book and diluting its strength. Ellis helpfully notes which editions today have the full text as Anne intended: There's a 1996 edition edited by Stevie Davies and a 2017 edition published by Vintage Classics. This is a lot of indignity for what appears to have been a thoughtful, ethical author who wanted the truth to be told as she saw it.

But Ellis takes some major steps in fixing these indignities. Her passion for her subject shines through from beginning to end. She's making assumptions--a no no normally--but she backs them up as best she can. Even if she's wrong, she makes a compelling case to restore Anne to equal footing with her sisters.

All this is to say: I loved this book, and now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go acquire one of the accurate Tenant editions. I'm long overdue for a reread.

The Only Plane in the Sky

This book. I mean, what can I even say? September 11 is, of course, a seminal event in my life, and the lives of pretty much any American who was sentient that day. I was glued to the news for weeks and months after it happened, and have followed up on the anniversary with watching documentaries and reading new books. So I came into The Only Plane in the Sky thinking I wouldn't necessarily learn much.

Boy, was I wrong. The book is an oral history, and the author wisely lets the speakers tell the story, interjecting occasionally only for context. The book starts chronologically with a nearly minute-by-minute account of what happened that day, gradually spreading out to include the aftermath and things like a chapter focused on what children remember from that day. There are, of course, heart-breaking accounts of people watching others died in front of them, or the man who picks up his toddler from daycare and goes home to wait for a call from his wife, or the various fire fighter and police accounts. There's the man who was at Cantor Fitzgerald that morning, where so many died, and got a call from security that an expected visitor had arrived without ID (remember how before 9/11, ID wasn't all that big of a deal?), and so someone from Cantor needed to come down and vouch for him. The man thought about sending his assistant, but given that it was two elevator rides, decided he'd be kind to her--she was 8 1/2 months pregnant--and go himself. It saved his life, and cost her hers. Or the man that was one of the airline staff that morning who checked in some of the terrorists and cannot come to terms with his guilt, nor does he feel worthy of joining survivors' groups.

I had no idea that the maritime evacuation that day was one of the largest done since WWII. I didn't know that so many fire fighters never realized until much later how bad things actually were. I never knew how the Trade Center security guards, those with low pay and without anything near the training received by the fire fighters and police, stayed on their jobs and tried to help people leaving the towers. These are only some of the things that I learned in reading this book.

I worked in the nonprofit sector for several years, and the mantra there was: the power of the individual story. You can hand people horrifying statistics, but talking about people in terms of numbers rather than flesh and blood doesn't have nearly the impact that giving people one person's story. This book gives many people's story, one at a time, and it's almost overwhelming--but it drives home what the true losses of 9/11 were. It's important. It matters.

It's harrowing. It's the kind of book that's hard to recommend because it's such a brutal read. But it's also essential reading for anyone who was affected by that day--and who wasn't?--and who wants to pay tribute to those who lost so much. 

Five Days Gone

Author Laura Cumming wrote this book about her mother, who has an eerie and fascinating childhood. At the age of 3, she was kidnapped and turned up, 5 days later, in different clothes, but unharmed. Her mother didn't remember this later, but it came out, as family secrets tend to do. 

But that wasn't the only family secret, as it turned out. She'd been adopted, something that wasn't explained to her until she was in her early teens. Even then, most of that story wasn't revealed to her, and she ended up piecing it together over many years, eventually with the help of her daughter (the author). It's a heartbreaker of a story, with twists and turns and unexpected (at least to me) revelations. It's also about what constitutes a family, and how small communities often close ranks to help families keep their secrets. Sadly, it's also the story of an only child, adopted fairly late in life by people perhaps not best suited to raising children. 

The heart of the book is a fascinating exploration of what happened and who was involved, as well as the discussions of families and community. However, the book is longer than it needed to be; it might have been better as a long New Yorker piece. The author is an art critic, and both of her parents turned out to be artists, so she brings in repeated stories of different artworks that she uses to compare her mother's situation to. These become a digression from the main story, and end up feeling overwritten and unnecessary, when the main story itself was so compelling. It slows the book down in places in a way that's unfortunate.

Still, I finished the book and found myself thinking about the author's mother and her strange, often sad, life. I don't regret finishing it.

The Barefoot Woman

The Barefoot Woman is a short, spare memoir of the author's childhood in Rwanda, just prior to the devastating genocide in the 1990s. But even prior to that, her life as a Tutsi made her family and neighbors outcasts, refugees who were uprooted from their mountain home and forced to move to an area of the country that was inhospitable. Yet, thanks to the tenacity of her mother, Stefania, the family survived and rebuilt new lives while never forgetting both what they'd lost and the threat that still existed. 

This book doesn't go into the details of the actual genocide, other than brief references to it. The author left Rwanda in 1992, just two years before the killing began, and she ended up in France. But she lost 27 family members to that devastation. 

But what she does in this book is show us what life was like before the killing, in all its beauty, fear, and daily routines and beliefs. Some of her anecdotes are funny, some are moving, and on occasion, after telling us of some event, she notes who ended up dead. Instead of showing us all the killing, she shows us what was lost. And that gives the book its emotional depth. Why were these people killed? These people, who loved their children and wanted the best for them. People who cared for and watched out for their neighbors, and yes, gossiped about them behind their backs (let he who is without sin throw the first stone...). People who toiled at brutally hard labor to earn a living. People who brewed beer out of sorghum and celebrated when good things happened. People who took pride in their rituals and way of life. People who ended up dead.

I've read other books about the Rwandan genocide, and it's always hard to read about. But this book seemed even more devastating. In the nonprofit world, there's a train of thought that telling a story about specific people and places is far more effective than giving statistics that don't have a face on them. You can read that somewhere between half a million and a million Rwandans were slaughtered. Or you can read about Scholastique Mukasonga's mother, toiling in the fields to be able to send her children to school, carefully allotting bread to be sure all her children got a bit of that treat while eating none herself, acting as the village matchmaker, telling stories to her children by firelight each night, and then know that this tough, shrewd, loving mother died in the genocide. This book is her daughter's loving memorial to her mother. Which is the more moving story?

All the Lives We Ever Lived

What a lovely book this is. Katharine Smyth is an enormous fan (as am I) of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. But her love of the book took on a deeper meaning when her father is diagnosed with cancer and begins a long period of treatment and recovery, recurrence and more treatment, until it becomes clear he's not going to live. She loves her father to pieces, but he's far from perfect, and her parents' relationship has had more than its share of struggles.

So she returns to the Woolf novel, and begins to explore her parents' relationship as well as the nature of grieving, viewing it all through the lens of Woolf's artistic achievement in that slim book. It's not a stretch at all, and Smyth has done her homework, reading not only the novel, but biographical and critical material, which she shares. Yet the book is far from academic in feeling. It's an emotional exploration of a difficult subject, insightful and at times heartbreaking.

I don't know how well this would read if the reader hadn't already read To the Lighthouse. Smyth does explain a great deal of the book (and there are spoilers), but still, I think it'd be easier to read it, as I did, with sighs of remembrance and appreciation.

And now excuse me, for I want to go read Lighthouse again.

The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume 2

I noted in my post about volume 1 of Sylvia Plath's letters that even at a very young age, she wrote letters geared on pleasing her mother, and lord almighty, that continues right down to the last week of Plath's life. Volume 2 is a different animal than volume 1; the first volume left off shortly after Plath had married Ted Hughes and while she was still a student at Cambridge. Volume 2 picks up from there and carries us through to a week before her suicide in February 1963. 

I think it helps to have some familiarity with Plath's life before reading these, otherwise it's far too easy to take her letters to her mother, Aurelia (which make up the bulk of the work) at face value. Plath spends an enormous amount of time painting a beautiful picture for Aurelia: The perfect marriage, the perfect husband, the perfect writer's life, the perfect children, the perfect father of those children. However, in letters to others, Plath lets a few cracks show through, even though she still maintains a sense of idealism about their marriage and relationship. 

Once Plath learns about Hughes' infidelity (which couldn't have happened at a worse time--her mother was actually on a six-week visit with them then), she goes 180 degrees. Then Hughes is the most evil person in the world. Now, I'm not condoning infidelity. But Plath makes a number of incendiary statements in some of these letters that have not been validated by anyone who knew Hughes, including allegations that he told her he wished she'd kill herself, or that she'd had a miscarriage after he'd beaten her. She did have a miscarriage, but in letters from that time, she notes that shortly after the miscarriage, she had her appendix removed and wondered if the two were related. Was she covering up abuse when she wrote that? Or were the later allegations a way of getting back at him for her misery? In much earlier letters, she seemed to romanticize physical violence and mentioned fights with Hughes that turned physical, and she claimed she gave as good as she got. 

She also claims in one letter that she once spent a winter in a lighthouse. Um--no. She never did. How much of what she writes, especially during the last months of her life when she was under considerable mental duress, can readers take a face value? I don't know. I do know that as these letters were being published, there were many who held them up as prime evidence of Hughes' abuse. But I can't bring myself to completely buy into that. I'm also not saying it never happened. What we have here are letters that are incendiary from a tremendously talented writer, and the reality is that we'll never know the truth. 

In the end, the final letters are harrowing and gutting. A week before her death, she wrote letters to several people on the same day, many of which continue to paint a picture of hard times, but with faith in her ability to carry on. One of those letters, however, tells a different story. It's a letter she wrote to the psychotherapist who worked with her after her earlier suicide attempt. In that letter--the final letter of the book--she says she doesn't know if she can survive this. Doesn't know if she has the ability to carry on. And, of course, we know that she didn't.

Plath's and Hughes' daughter, Frieda, wrote an introduction to the volume and talks about learning about the existence of these letters to the psychotherapist late in the process of preparing the letters for publication. She wasn't sure (understandably) that she wanted them included, but sat down to read through them before making a decision. The earlier letters to the therapist are all of the "Ted is perfect" variety, and Frieda gives us almost a letter-by-letter response, right up to the devastating final letter. It's a heartfelt piece of writing from a woman whose entire life has been framed by her mother's suicide and the vilification her father received because of it. She doesn't take sides, except to say that she never saw a violent side to her father. I can't imagine what it took for her to read those letters, then give permission for them to be published. But I think their inclusion makes this volume even more significant than it already was. 

A hard, heartbreaking book.