Gun Violence in Literature - A Sign of the Times?

I've just read both In the Language of Miracles (review here) and Jenny Hubbard's And We Stay. Both books focus on those left behind in a tragedy, and a high school shooting tragedy in particular.

(Fun side note: Jenny Hubbard and I have the same alma mater, Meredith College, and she was an English major like me. You should follow her on Twitter: @hubbardwrites.)

I can't imagine how tough it would be on a girl like Emily, the main character in And We Stay, to witness her boyfriend's suicide in the school library, and within a few days she's been forced by her family to undergo an abortion and has been transported from her school where she knows everyone and where her support system is, to a private all-girls boarding school in another state. She's forced to figure out what about her story to tell and what to keep private. She's forced to make new friends, go to new classes and be away from her family. She's fortunate to land a roommate who respects her privacy and cares about Emily.

But most of this tragedy Emily must bear and sort through emotionally alone. She finds solace in her own poetry writing and that of Emily Dickinson, a former student at , now Amherst School for Girls in Amherst, Massachusetts. As it turns out, Emily Beam is a good poet on her own and is encouraged by her peers and one of her teachers to enter her work in a contest.

It's this support system who helps Emily dig out of her deepest despair, and by the end of the book we get the sense that she'll be OK. 

Our country has experienced some terrible gun violence in recent months. It's my hope that with time, love and support, those affected will all be OK just like Emily and the tragic family in In the Language of Miracles.

Class Reunions

Two books I've just finished, coincidentally, both have to do with reunions. I listened to The Last Time I Saw You by Elizabeth Berg and read The Group by Mary McCarthy. Berg's novel was written from the perspective of several modern-day characters, all convening at their 40th high school reunion. By the time each alumnus arrives at the event, I knew all about each character's background and their various regrets and heartbreaks (there were many).

The Group is structured much the same way, except we meet the seven 1933 Vassar College graduates first at one character's wedding following graduation. Then the rest of the book, until almost the end, tells about each woman's life over the next seven years (most characters interact with at least another friend of two throughout). Then at the end of the book the characters all come back together to attend the funeral of the classmate who married at the beginning. Much like with Berg's characters, McCarthy's women face a variety of issues: marital disharmony, mental illness, aging parents, declining physical health, modern motherhood and careers. I enjoyed both of these books very much, even though they were both, overall, very sad.

I think these books both gave me pause mostly because I've only had two reunions so far (one high school and one college), and another is on the horizon this spring, and I've yet to experience the death of a close classmate (thank goodness). Both the reunions I've attended so far have been overwhelmingly positive and fun, but then, so were my high school and college years. I hope each time I go to a reunion it's the same way. I'm holding out high hopes for my 10th college reunion coming up next month. I had so much fun with my classmates at our five year gathering that it ranks right up there with the best weekends I've ever had, the only better one being when I got married. Here's hoping that my 2001 college classmates are just as great, if not better, than we were when we graduated.

Reading = Good Memories

I've just finished reading a very satisfying book by Lewis Buzbee called The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop. In light of my recent review of The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future, it was especially nice to read a book that celebrates all the good feelings that come with facing down an entire bookstore and choosing something out of all the inventory available to be YOUR book, and later, opening the pages of that book to savor the contents.

When Buzbee began talking about what really made him become the voracious reader he is, it struck a chord with me. He said that rereading a book can take a reader back to where he or she first experienced that book in such a way: "I was ____ years old when I happened on a novel called _____, and within six months I had read every other book by the writer known as ____." As he also mentioned, he can most times remember his surroundings when he read a particular book.

For me, I was 20 years old when I read As I Lay Dying. I was in my sophomore dorm room on the yellow futon and I read all afternoon each day that week while my roommate was in class. That is how I knew I was completely hooked by 20th century American literature. I was 21 and in a course on Shakespeare's comedies and histories when I put on a crown with streamers and read the part of Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream in Meredith College's pre-renovated Joyner Hall. I was 16 and in my junior English class, listening to my teacher read out every word of the first chapter of The Catcher in the Rye. Each of these times, and many more, I knew I was really cut out to be a reader.

And, if I pick up The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop and read through it again years from now, I hope I will remember where I was when I read it: in a rocking chair on the front porch of a beach house while the sun went down for two nights in a row. My favorite place.

Celebrating Women's History Month

Last month, I listed suggested reading to celebrate African American History Month. I'm a little behind in getting this posted, but in celebration of March being Women's History Month, here is some recommended reading that celebrates the female experience:

Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman
Anne Bradstreet poetry
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
A Lost Lady, O Pioneers!, and My Antonia, all by Willa Cather
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
The Road to Coorain by Jill Ker Conway
Unbowed by Wangari Maathai
Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope by Shirin Ebadi
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (You didn't really think I'd leave this one out, did you?)
The Last Girls by Lee Smith
The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells
Atonement by Ian McEwan
The Stone Diaries by Joyce Carol Oates
Anne Sexton poetry
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
One Writer's Beginnings by Eudora Welty
Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
An American Childhood by Annie Dillard

Author News: Lucille Clifton

Lucille Clifton, former poet laureate of Maryland and a National Book Winner, died Saturday in Baltimore after a battle with cancer. I had the pleasure of promoting her visit to Meredith College, my alma mater, as an intern in the Marketing and Communications office. Her visit created a lot of anticipation on campus in the spring of 2000, and she did not disappoint. She was a great speaker and read some of her poetry aloud.

The Canterbury Tales

Thursday night I attended The New American Shakespeare Tavern's adaptation of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, and it was fantastic! The dialogue had been slightly changed, so though I didn't get to recite the Prologue word for word along with the actors, I was so entertained by the beer cans, Converse sneakers, a ballroom-dancing Chanticleer, tour bus, puppets, two added tales and Southern accents to notice.

I went with my friend, Lori, who gets just as excited about books, plays and history as I do. We had a great time, and hope to do more fun stuff in Atlanta soon.

The New American Shakespeare Tavern has occupied its space on Peachtree Street in Atlanta for 20 years, and they are celebrating all season with a winter schedule that includes several great plays still to come: Romeo + Juliet, King Lear and The Taming of the Shrew.

If you have the chance to see a play at this theatre, you just simply must.

Test Your Knowledge of Alice in Wonderland

USA Today has an Alice in Wonderland quiz online. I didn't do nearly as well as I thought I would!

http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2010-01-12-alice-wonderland-quiz_N.htm?csp=books

Whanne that April with his shoures sote...

Every Meredith College student has to take English 111 and British Authors. No matter who teaches your British Authors course, you’ll be required to memorize the prologue to Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. I'm terrible at memorizing lines word for word, but I can still recite the first eight or 10 lines, especially if I’m reciting with a fellow English major (we seem to be the only Meredith alumnae whose eyes start to sparkle at the mention of the Wife of Bath or Chanticleer).

A few years ago, Meredith College gathered up as many students and alumnae possible and attempted to break the Guinness Book World Record for the most people reciting the same lines at the same time (read more about that here).

The New American Shakespeare Tavern in Atlanta has included The Canterbury Tales in its 2009-2010 season, and it is being performed there through the end of January. To learn more, visit the Tavern’s web site.

Author News: Frank McCourt

During my junior year of college I took an Irish literature course. We read Lady Gregory, J.M. Synge, James Joyce and others. When the semester ended I took with me a much better understanding of the Irish, their history, their movies, their religion, their weather, their cites and towns and their tension with England. Having the professor’s British husband audit the class benefited us all, as he often weighed in with his perspective on the Irish.

Two years later I read Frank McCourt’s memoir, Angela’s Ashes, and was absolutely sucked in by the telling of the story from a little boy’s perspective. When I read the first page, I was hooked:

When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived it all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.

People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious alcoholic father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying schoolmasters; the English and the terrible things they did to us for eight hundred long years.

Above all – we were wet.

Angela’s Ashes was awarded the 1997 Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics’ Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Award. McCourt later published ‘Tis and Teacher Man about his adult life in New York City. He stopped at Meredith College during his Teacher Man book tour in 2006.

That same year I watched the film adaptation of Angela’s Ashes. I don’t think I will ever forget the scene where McCourt’s father carried a small coffin carrying the body of one of his children into a bar to rest his pint glass on while he indulges his desperate need for alcohol.

Frank McCourt died yesterday in New York. He was 78.

Summer Reading Programs

Many incoming college freshman will have required reading this summer even before classes begin. Currently, I'm reading Unbowed by Wangari Maathai, the Summer Reading Program selection for 2009 for Meredith College freshmen. Here are what other colleges and university rising freshman are reading this summer:

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: A Home on the Field by Paul Cuadros
Indiana State University: The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
Appalachian State University: Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
Clemson University: The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon
Queens University: In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro: My Freshman Year by Rebekah Nathan
Texas Tech University: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

What will you be reading this summer?

An introduction

I’ve always been a reader. My parents read books to me all the time as a child (favorites include Where the Wild Things Are, Morris and the Disappearing Bag, and anything by Robert McCloskey). My maternal grandmother was a librarian and a children’s literature professor, and she gave me books for birthdays and Christmases (she still does). Later, she’d ask me about them. So from an early age, I got used to reading a book and reporting on it.

I majored in English twice. At Meredith College, I attended lectures by Seamus Heaney, Lucille Clifton, and others. I started going to see authors at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, NC, and saw Amy Tan, Kaye Gibbons, and others. I had to memorize the prologue to The Canterbury Tales in Middle English. I wore a crown to read the part of Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream in my Shakespeare course. I delved into the books and biographical information of countless American, Irish, and British writers. My two favorites were Harper Lee and Willa Cather.

My second English degree is from NC State University. Here, I still focused on British and American literatures, but my interests shifted when I took a course called simply, The Memoir. We read what writers wrote about their writing and their lives, and it sucked me in. I followed that up with a creative nonfiction class and I began to focus on the memoir, autobiography, and oral history. I strayed from a traditional literature thesis and wrote my great-grandmother’s biography. It was the most fun project I’ve ever done.

Now, three years later, I’m living in Atlanta, having moved here after my wedding in 2007. During that first summer I was unemployed and didn’t know many people, so I read. I read so much that I added the book titles to a list when I finished each one. Even now that I’m working, I’m still reading an average of one book a week, and adding it to the bottom of that list. As of today, there are 110 books on that list, just shy of two years after I started it.

Now that I am out of school and free to read whatever I want, I still read memoir and autobiography, bestselling fiction and nonfiction, many things recommended to me by others, and yes, even chick lit. I watch movies that correspond with books, but I always read the books first. I get suckered into mega-bestselling series like Harry Potter (but I won’t watch the movies) and Twilight (I might watch the movies).

Just because I’m no longer in school doesn’t mean I don’t reflect on all I take in. I still think about one book in relation to another, and compare an author's early works to later ones. So consider this my new English paper in a format that works for me. I will talk about what I’m reading, where I’m going, and what I’m watching, all with regard to literature. I’m taking advantage of being a Metro Atlanta resident, where literary events abound, and there are several interstates to take me all over the Southeast as I do some literary traveling.

Keep reading and enjoy.