Cathy + Heathcliff Forever

Charlotte Bronte wrote: "Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I don't know. I scarcely think it is."

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If you're not familiar with Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, allow me to sum it up for you:

1. Guy and girl are in love.

2. Guy is bad for girl due to his general monsterness.

3. Guy protects girl from himself by being mean to her and running away.

4. Girl goes with other guy out of desperation and isolation.

5. She is miserable. Spends lots of time in the rain contracting weather-induced diseases.

6. First guy comes back for her and she sees that his skin is sparkly in the sunlight.

7. He is too late.

8. She dies of a weather/child induced illness.

9. He vows to make everyone's life miserable for like, forever.

10. Done and done.

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Let me tell you, those Brontes must have been a riot to live with. Unrequited love, dreams of death, crazy people abounding. No wonder it is Bella and Edward's favorite book...

The Flight of Summer

We got home from vacation late last night and when I woke up this morning, School was waiting for me. Kind of like when my almost-4-year-old comes in in the middle of the night and stands as close as possible, silently waiting for me to wake up and soil myself. Her good morning message: "I know you and Summer have had a nice fling, but let's be honest, it's not serious and we are getting back together." She's a bossy little thing, but I love her. This post is dedicated to my sweet Summer, who treated me like a princess this year.

It was a great summer for reading and I feel satisfied reflecting on the literary places I've been over the past two months. The quick and dirty shortlist:

Homer and Langley by E.L. Doctorow

In March of 1947, emergency crews responded to a report of a strong odor coming from a brownstone on 5th Avenue and, upon arrival, were met with a wall of junk. Crews were forced to pull things out onto the sidewalk in order to get into the house. After breaking into an upstairs window and crawling over debris for two hours, one police officer discovered the body of the elderly Homer Collyer. His brother Langley was nowhere to be found. Police eventually removed 84 tons of rubbish and debris from the house, only to find, almost a month later, the body of Langley Collyer who had apparently been crawling through a tunnel to bring food to his blind and paralyzed brother when one of his contraptions fell on top of him and killed him. Homer is said to have died of starvation days later. This novel is E.L. Doctorow's fictionalized account of how they got to this point.

The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett

Sabine has been in love with Parcifal since she began working as his assistant 20 years before the start of this story. They eventually marry, Sabine knowing full well that Parcifal is gay and dying of AIDS. After his death, Sabine embarks upon a journey of discovering who Parcifal really was that leads her from her comfortable California mansion to a bitter and brutal mid-western winter. Here she learns that, just like any good magic show, there is always more to the magician than what you can see.

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

A ghost story and a love story about a twin who leaves her apartment across from Highgate Cemetery in London to her twin nieces whom she has not seen since infancy due to a falling-out with her sister. Elspeth haunts the strange girls while they develop relationships among her closest living friends both in the apartment above and the apartment below. Niffeneger is best known for The Time-Traveler's Wife, which I loved. Somehow this story was quite a bit weirder...

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

DO NOT tell my AP Lit. students that I read this book for the first time this summer. They are of the impression that I am a long-studied expert on this classic Russian tale. Do you know the story? The crime: murder. The punishment: six hundred pages of the guilty conscience of one Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov.

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

I am a big fan of Anderson's powerful YA books (Speak, Catalyst, Twisted), but this one was really tough to finish. Inside the mind of an anorexic teenage girl, the reader truly sees the struggle caused by this disease. Scary. And so sad.

The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder by Rebecca Wells

I happened upon this book while browsing the shelves of the library and was so excited! I love Rebecca Wells, who wrote The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood series. She has a way of creating a setting that makes you want to move to a place, even if that place is the Louisiana bayou. She also writes strong and vibrant female characters the reader can't help but fall instantly in love with. This book rivaled Half-Broke Horses for page-turner of the summer as it is the alternately hilarious and heartbreaking story of Calla Lily Ponder as she grows up, leaves home, and discovers the world her mama would have wanted for her.

Now I'm off to make calendars, set up my classroom, copy my syllabi, and update my school website...

Horses and Heroines

When I read The Glass Castle a few years back, I was sucked into a world so unbelievable and riveting I had to cancel all my goings-on and close myself into the bedroom until every last page was turned. And when I have that kind of connection to a piece of writing, to a story, it can sometimes make me reluctant to read other works by the same pen--for fear she can't possibly do that again and I wouldn't want to ruin her high literary standing in my internal critic's shop.

That being said, Half Broke Horses is brilliant. It's the life story of Lily Casey, Walls' maternal grandmother, told in first person the way only Walls can tell a life story: in short yet voluminous vignettes. Lily Casey was a woman not always dealt the best hand in life, but who always knew how to bluff her way to victory or to work her way out of a debt. She was fiercely ambitious, which often led to disappointment, but she always had a plan for what to do next. This is the kind of story you want to tell your daughter, whom you believe will be the first female president of the United States, to remind her that it's OK to want everything in this world.

I grew up with a fiercely strong and independent mother whose voracious belief that I would one day be the president was not to be extinguished. She also believed I would be a doctor and a lawyer; a teacher and a graphic designer; a famous artist and a famous writer. I'll never forget the Christmas of my 6th grade year. I was going through a phase where my dreams included Harvard Law School and my mom found a Harvard sweatshirt at the local department store. When I opened it Christmas morning she relayed the story of its purchase and the conversation she had with the clerk about her daughter who was going to be going to Harvard. "Wow! Congratulation, that is quite an accomplishment!" the clerk exclaimed, "What will she be studying?" "She thinks law," my mom replied, "but she may change her mind by the time she gets there."

This overwhelming belief that I was rocket-scientist material made me the dreamer I am today. It gave me confidence through adolescence and college--something a lot of women don't encounter until later and then, to some, it is fleeting. Even now, as a 31-year-old, there have been times I've overheard my mother boasting to another relative about some accomplishment of mine the way I might describe my own son's first steps or how he is surprisingly verbose for three. She is a great teacher of many things (hard work, follow-through, and weed-pulling to name a few), but the two most important lessons she has taught me in my life are how to believe in myself unwaveringly and how to believe in others the same.

Lily Casey was a believer and a dreamer. I like to think, if asked about the aspirations of her granddaughter she would have replied, "She will probably be one of the most profound memoirists of her time. That or the president of the United States."

"Anyone who thinks he's too small to make a difference has never been bit by a mosquito."--Lily Casey Smith

Help Yourself

As an English major in college, my focus was American Literature--more specifically Early American Political Rhetoric. Plainly speaking, I studied the struggle to create and form an American Voice. It seems kind of dramatic now, 10 years removed from the world I was once submerged in--looking for America, but I was truly in love. The idea that social injustice was confronted head-on in this new land was fascinating to me. I found myself drawn to eras in which the oppressed would rise against opposing forces and make the world a different place. A better place. The Help catapulted me back into that college mindset, made me want to know more about this particular atrocity that took place in my America.

Kathryn Stockett, a white woman raised by a black maid in Jackson, Mississippi, wrote this story in an effort to seek absolution from the past sin of passivity. The novel follows two African American maids in the 1960s and the white women they work for. The white women who have fallen so neatly into the role of "master" to these black women who raised them and whom, in childhood, they had loved like mothers. It is also the story of Miss Skeeter, who I imagine is none other than Miss Kathryn Stockett herself, a young white woman and a charter member of the Jackson Junior League. Skeeter does what Stockett did not (in her youth) and begins to empathize with these maids and the injustices they face in the 1960s South. She wants to tell their story.

This is my book club pick for April and I am geared up for an array of Southern food tonight including fried chicken, cornbread and chocolate pie. I think I will wear an apron.

Oscar WOW

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This is the kind of book that you can just tell probably ripped the author up to write. Controlled his being to the very core of his soul. Like he tried to write a work of fiction but could not avoid brutal autobiographical practices.

Told in a vibrant mix of ingles y espanol, The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao would be a dura read for anyone not in possession of a working knowledge of el idioma espanola. It is the sad and brilliant tale of Oscar and the Dominican-American generations that preceded his existence. It schooled me historically on the plague of evil dictatorship in the Dominican Republic over the past century and had me asking my dad (the words leaving my mouth as the realization of their idiocy hit me) what year the Dominican Republic became a self-governing territory of the United States (shame on me and my Spanish endorsement!/sorry Puertro Rico!).

The Carribean culture being steeped in the supersticious, the root of the story revolves around a family curse (or fuku) that just keeps coming back. A curse that affects Oscar, his beautiful sister Lola, their mother Beli, her parents (dead under the rule of Rafeal Trujillo, Evil Dictator), their relatives, various neighbors and boyfriends and possibly any family pets that may have, unluckily, been adopted into the curse. Set alternately in New Jersey and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, the book employs a literary technique I love called "en media res"--Latin for "into the middle of affairs"--in which the story begins in the middle or at the climax, fills in details from the past, and resolves after having done so (side note: this technique is also one of the reasons I love the show Southland).

Years after the publication of The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver is said to have, in press conferences, responded to questions about the novel by saying, "I gave ten years of my life to that story and I no longer have anything to give." I imagine this must be what Junot Diaz feels about the story of Oscar. An immense sense of pride (very Latin) and a constant, suppressed terror at the thought of returning, his heart heavy with apologies, to the narrative.

*The black, white and red cover is most familiar to me and the one mass-marketed in the US, but I think this one is a better representation of the story:

Habitual Hobby Hobbit

I've mentioned before (here) that one of my favorite hobbies is taking up new hobbies. With Spring Break coming up, I was bound to be on the hunt for something new to do and, alas, the inkling to pick up some knitting needles nestled it's way into my subconscious like a...

Anyway, I had just finished reading The Friday Night Knitting Club--a good story about women and craft--and they just made it seem so simple! So I checked out some books from the library, got myself some cheap needles and a skein of yarn from Walmart and embarked upon my soon-to-be new favorite hobby.

Seven hours and two blistered pointer fingers later I had successfully completed five two-inch scarves. Since I couldn't figure out what to do when I messed up, I kept starting over. I was pretty sure I was only a couple of years away from making this (my original inspiration)...




...when I decided to check on Etsy and see how much these suckers were going for. $12! I could buy this hat for $12 and I had just spent the equivilent of an entire work day making knitted scarves for mice! Plus, I could not do anything whilst knitting. I tried to knit during family movie night while the boys watched Wall-E, but I had to sit in an entirely auxillary room because I needed a virtual spotlight on my fingers.


Women who knit: I applaud you. It is a beautiful craft. But I am moving on...

Still Waiting After All These Years

I've been sluggishly working through Fumiko Enchi's The Waiting Years (Japanese title: Onna zaka or 女坂) for a couple of weeks now in anticipation of tomorrow night's book club meeting. I love a Japanese translation as much as the next person, but...I am going to have to put some time in tonight to finish.

This novel--a glaring social critique about the lives of Japanese women--was first published in 1958 and won Enchi Japan's highest literary award. The story follows Tomo, the wife of a high-ranking and politically shameless government official, as she goes about the daily affairs expected of a woman in her social position. Things like scouring the country in search of the perfect concubine to bring home to her husband. All in a day's work, Tomo!

It is heart-wrenching and frustrating to read about Tomo's ultimate submission and her husband's hatred-inducing oppression of all women. I'm looking forward to the conversation we'll undoubtedly have tomorrow--a group of college-educated, working wives and mothers--about the self-deprecating Tomo. I don't see myself entering into a friendship with someone as pitiful as she is, but then, I suppose that's what literature does, right? Exposes us to things we would not normally choose to give the time of day. Stay tuned for a re-cap of the evening's festivities.

On the menu: sushi and man-bashing.