Let's Pretend This Never Happened, AKA Stream of Consciousness I Actually Liked

Ok, I suppose that technically this book is not actually written in purposeful, literary stream of consciousness, but Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir is so full of the rambling thoughts of the author, Jenny Lawson, that it may as well be.  That sentence actually makes that sound like a bad thing, but in fact Lawson's book is a hilarious look at the inner workings of a very intense, interesting mind, and the outer ramifications of those thoughts entering the world through word or deed.

Let's Pretend This Never Happened details Lawson's rather, shall we say, unconventional upbringing in west Texas, her journey to adulthood, and her relationship with her husband over 15 years of their marriage. There's taxidermy, animal attacks (real and perceived), disastrous dinner parties, awkward conversations, vultures, homemade colon cleanses, and a five foot tall metal rooster.  Luckily there are photos to prove some of the more fantastic stories-since frankly no one would probably believe them otherwise.

If you are a fan of Jen Lancaster's books (Bitter is the New Black, My Fair Lazy, etc...), then you will probably love this book.  Lawson had that same brand of snarky, sarcastic humor, which is only not obnoxious because most of the time she turns it against herself.  Her relationship with her husband, Victor, reminded me so much of Jen Lancaster's husband Fletch that I am almost convinced that there is a secret group of men out there who are tasked with marrying women who will need to be talked down off the metaphorical ledge on a daily basis.  Unlike Lancaster, however, Lawson has the most bizarre life history of any real person I can think of.  And she the most hilarious parts of the book come from the fact that she is basically a social cripple-if her stories are to be believed, she is pretty much incapable of having a normal conversation with someone she's just met, or her husband's co-workers, or pretty much anyone in real life.  There are many examples in the book, and most of them seem to involved using the word vagina...a lot!  IN the end, Lawson concludes that it is not the triumphs in life that define us, but those moments we'd just like to pretend never happened.

Cross-Blog Pollination-I am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced

I posted this review first on my children's and young adult book blog, Second Childhood Reviews this morning, and while I don't usually review the children's and YA books I read here on this blog (after all, that's why I have two!), this book is worth sharing with a wider audience.  I imagine my own daughter at 10, and can only feel rage at a society that allows-hell, encourages-the sexual assault and physical abuse of young girls.


Summary:  (from publisher)
Forced by her father to marry a man three times her age, young Nujood Ali was sent away from her parents and beloved sisters and made to live with her husband and his family in an isolated village in rural Yemen. There she suffered daily from physical and emotional abuse by her mother-in-law and nightly at the rough hands of her spouse. Flouting his oath to wait to have sexual relations with Nujood until she was no longer a child, he took her virginity on their wedding night. She was only ten years old.

Unable to endure the pain and distress any longer, Nujood fled—not for home, but to the courthouse of the capital, paying for a taxi ride with a few precious coins of bread money. When a renowned Yemeni lawyer heard about the young victim, she took on Nujood’s case and fought the archaic system in a country where almost half the girls are married while still under the legal age. Since their unprecedented victory in April 2008, Nujood’s courageous defiance of both Yemeni customs and her own family has attracted a storm of international attention. Her story even incited change in Yemen and other Middle Eastern countries, where underage marriage laws are being increasingly enforced and other child brides have been granted divorces.


Review:
Nujood's story is simply but powerfully written.  Detailing a loss of innocence that was made all the more brutal for coming from the betrayal of her parents, I Am Nujood is both an easy and a difficult read.  While the sexual assaults that she endured daily are only described in much detail once, the effect of it on her is both tragic and ultimately redemptive.  Despite all teachings to the contrary, Nujood refuses to accept that her fate as a woman is to be beaten and raped by her "husband", showing a bravery that not many adult women in repressive societies do.  Her determination to move forward and help other girls is an example to any survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, whether from countries where the practice is societally supported or from more "enlightened" countries like America, where supposedly we value women more.


But this book is much more than one personal story of survival and redemption.  This book can be used to highlight the very real problem of forced child marriage that exists in parts of the developing world.  Unicef estimates that in Africa, there the practice is prevalent, 42% of girls will be married before the age of 18, many without their consent.  This means that a lack of formal schooling and a separation from the rest of society will only lead to a perpetuation of the cycle for their daughters.  Child marriage is most often the result of poverty combined with a  rigid sense of honor.  This sense of having to "honor" the family by putting up with abuse is pervasive and makes girls in this situation feel ashamed of their desire not to be married.  There is much work to be done to help women world-wide gain the education and rights necessary for them to have true self-determination, not to have to choose between the equally unacceptable alternatives of staying with their family and starving or being forced into a marriage with an older man and enduring whatever abuse he chooses to throw her way.  


While the reading level for this book is quite low, the content is mature, and should it should be read with guidance by younger teens.  I believe that it could be a very powerful book to use in the classroom, however, not necessarily for its literary merit as much as for the issues it raises about human rights.  While the description of Nujood's rape on the first night of her marriage is disturbing, it is not graphic in nature in terms of language.  I believe that it would make an excellent addition to any high school literature or social sciences curriculum, and that it could be used as a jumping-off point for a unit on the status of girl children throughout the world.

Haven't I Heard This Somewhere Before?

In Running With Scissors, Augusten Burroughs gave us a hilarious and horrifying look into his early life.  When his parents divorced, Augusten's mother signed over guardianship of him to her psychotic psychiatrist.   Refusing to go to school, he spent his days drinking or getting high with this foster sister, and being preyed upon by a 33 year old pedophile.  It was a story like no other-hopefully because no one else has ever lived through that particular brand of hell.

Dry picks up the story of his life as an award winning copywriter at an ad agency and raging alcoholic. After a particularly disastrous business meeting, his company gives him an ultimatum-go to rehab or lose his job.  He enters rehab determined to treat it as a spa vacation, only to be confronted pretty quickly with the strange world of group therapy and the 12 steps.  He leaves rehab determined to stay sober, but the pressures of real life threaten his fragile sobriety.  And this, this is a story I've heard before.


Granted, Dry is told with Burrough's usual wit.  I admire his ability to laugh at himself, and unlike some recovery memoirs this one is not preachy or sentimental.  But it also doesn't really have anything new to say on the subject of addiction.  He was a drunk, for understandable reasons, but still a drunk.  He nearly ruined his own (and a few other people's) life.  He met some unusual characters in rehab, had difficulty re-entering the "real" (read: sober) world, etc...etc...If you are a fan of Augusten Burroughs, it is probably worth reading just so you can say you've read the "complete set", so to speak, but if you've never read his books before, start with Running with Scissors-much more compelling story.

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress

Imagine the most embarrassing thing your parents ever made you wear or do.  Now multiply that by 10 and you may have some idea of Rhoda Janzen's childhood.  In her memoir, Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, Janzen tells the story of growing up in the Mennonite community in California, and going back to that community at 40 in the wake of a divorce and major health crisis.

Janzen's father was a leader in the Mennonite community, traveling the world and converting non-believers.  Her mother was the backbone of their family.  She was the one that made their lard sandwiches for their school lunches (yes, I said lard), and sewed mismatched strips of fabric at the bottom of their pants when they got too short (you begin to see where the embarrassment comes in).  Rhoda and her sister are very close, and both of them left the community for college.  Their three brothers married nice Mennonite girls and settled down to raise nice Mennonite children. 

Janzen describes her family and her life as an adult with humor, which is good, considering how challenging some of it was.  She was married for 16 years to a man with bi-polar disorder, and like many people in her situation she rationalized away much of his behavior, telling herself that he really loved her underneath all of the cruelty and obsessive behavior.  What she couldn't rationalize away was Bob, the man that her husband met on Gay.com.  Despite having become a non-believer herself, when she goes home to heal after her divorce and a major car accident, she finds herself comforted by how little has changed.

Janzen is an English professor, and you can tell.  Her vocabulary is impressive, though it can be disconcerting to read a story about some rather mundane aspect of life and have to look up a word to understand her point.  Despite my rather frequent trips to websters.com, it was an easy, enjoyable read.

Nice to Meet You, Literary Blog Hop- Charmed, I'm sure!

Welcome, lovers of literature, to my first adventure in Literary Blog Hopping.  I've been remiss in my blogging of late-I blame those pesky little things called working and going to school.  Darn that need to make money anyway!  But I digress...The Literary Book Blog is hosted by the The Blue Bookcase, and is defined as...

How do I know if my blog qualifies as "literary"? Literature has many definitions, but for our purposes your blog qualifies as "literary" if it focuses primarily on texts with aesthetic merit. In other words, texts that show quality not only in narrative but also in the effect of their language and structure. YA literature may fit into this category, but if your blog focuses primarily on non-literary YA, fantasy, romance, paranormal romance, or chick lit, you may prefer to join the blog hop at Crazy-for-books that is open to book blogs of all genres. 

If you're interested in my cogitations about whether I am "literary" enough for this hop, you can find them in my post Does It Matter What We Read?
 

This week's question is:
Is there such a thing as literary non-fiction? If so, how do you define it? Examples?

While I admittedly don't read a ton of non-fiction, I can say with certainty that the answer is yes, there can be literary non-fiction.  If you consider the many definitions of literature, they often contain a reference to the aesthetic or structural nature of the work.  Non-fiction writing can be transcendently beautiful, incredibly heartbreaking, lyrical and gritty-the best non-fiction doesn't just inform you about the chosen topic, but about life and love and pain and joy and sorrow.

There are a few examples I can think of for the subcategory of literary non-fiction.  Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, considered by many to be the first in the true crime genre, comes to mind.  The writing is spare, the mood evocative-sounds literary to me.  There's also Maya Angelou and Alice Walker, both of whom wrote about their lives in a way that transcends mere navel gazing and speaks volumes to larger truths. 

An author not as well known but whose books I believe fit in this category is Rick Bragg.  His memoir of his mother, All Over But the Shoutin', is one of the best non-fiction books I've read (which is a much smaller number than my fiction total).  It is a loving, almost reverent look at his childhood with his mother at the center.  Growing up poor in rural Alabama, Bragg took his experiences and used them as a journalist to bring humanity to stories on issues such as urban poverty.  This line from the book, describing the small town where he grew up, is an excellent example of why he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1996: 

"This is a place where grandmothers hold babies on their laps under the stars and whisper in their ears that the lights in the sky are holes in the floor of heaven. This is a place where the song 'Jesus Loves Me' has rocked generations to sleep, and heaven is not a concept, but a destination."

Bobo's Daughter: One Woman's Journey to Find Hope, Healing, and the Father behind the Face Paint by Bonnie Barnett

ISBN-13: 9780984235872
Publisher: Synergy Books
Published: September 2010
232 pgs
Source: Publicist

When the publicist contacted me and asked if I was interested to review Bobo's Daughter, I was skeptical at first because I rarely read memoirs. However, I was attracted by the gorgeous cover but what most intrigued me is this memoir is about the relationship between the author and her father, who makes his career as a clown. I've to admit I wasn't a huge fan of clowns since young; while some children think they are funny I often thought of them a bit creepy and intimidating. I've to blame it on the bright paints that they put on their faces.

Now as an adult and though my feelings towards them hasn't changed, I've grown to respect and admire their zest by always putting on a smile and their best performance to their audience. Bobo's Daughter chronicles author Bonnie Barnett's journey of getting to know more about her father and searching for him as he travels to places as a circus clown.

Bonnie first met her father, Chester "Bobo" Barnett, at the circus when she was 4 years old. She knew nothing about him, and her mother did not mention much about him considering he had chose to leave them behind for his career as a world famous clown. Despite that, Bonnie was mesmerised after watching her father's performance, and she told herself she would like to get to know him better. Needless to say, her mother didn't share her sentiments and felt somewhat betrayed that Bonnie wanted to meet him. Nevertheless, Bonnie never give up her intention of reconnecting with her father throughout the years and this book is the result whereby she shares with her readers about her struggles growing up, and finally finding peace and forgiveness after what she's been through.

This memoir also covers the relationship between Bonnie and her mother, who used to be a girl clown and how she gave up her clowning career to raise Bonnie all on her own. I really appreciate the author for including a few pictures of her parents and herself in between the chapters as they enable me to glimpse more deeply of the life she's been living on top of her written words. In a nutshell, Bobo's Daughter is only only a moving memoir about reconciliation and forgiveness between a daughter and a father, but also about having hope and the courage of finding oneself and learning through experiences without giving anything up. Today, Bonnie works as a Marriage, Family, and Child Therapist and Life Coach near Durham, North Carolina.

About the Author:
Bonnie Barnett currently lives in Durham, N.C., where she owns a private, in-home outpatient therapy practice. She also works at Agape Corner where she helps at-risk children and families living below the poverty line. She holds a bachelor’s degree in fine arts with a minor in psychology from California State University at Los Angeles and a master’s degree in clinical psychology from Pepperdine University.

(Many thanks to the publicist, Lindsay Marshall for sending this book to me for review.)

Big Hair and Popped Collars

Anyone coming of age in the 80s probably has fond memories of big hair, parachute pants, and popped collars.  In Jen Lancaster's last book, Pretty in Plaid, she recounts her metamorphosis from small-town Midwestern girl to fashion-forward, Prada-loving businesswoman.

The book begins when Jen is still Jenni, and she is living with her family in New Jersey.  It is the late 70s, and she is rockin' a retro-60's vibe in her hand-me-down fringe vests.  Before long, her father moves the family to a small town in Indiana because of his job, and her high-style Eastern-seaboard existence comes to a screeching halt.  Throughout the rest of the book she shares tales of her trials and triumphs through the clothes that signify each period of her life-jeans and t-shirts in elementary school, preppy khakis and polos in high school, sorority sweatshirts in college, and frumpy business suits at the beginning of her career in business.

I should start the review portion of this post by saying that I love Jen Lancaster.  I firmly believe that we are meant to be best friends and go out of fancy martinis while we snark about all of the ridiculous things in the world.  I have read two of her other books, Bitter is the New Black and Such a Pretty Fat, and other than the fact that she is a Republican I felt like I was reading something my businesswoman alter-ego (if I had such a thing) might have written.  That said, I did not enjoy this book as well as her others.  Not because of the focus on fashion, which is why one friend of mine did not like it, but because I think that I prefer the fully-formed Jen to the still-developing Jenni.  I still laughed out loud more than once during my read.  Her footnotes add to the hilarity rather than distract from it.  As someone who was a teenager in the 80s myself, I was transported back to my own big-hair days.  I too was one of those obnoxious know-it all honors students who wanted to run the world.  I too got to college and lost my mind for a while (though I took way less than the 11 years to finish that it took Jen).  I too waited tables for many years trying to keep my head above water.  I too had big curly hair that frizzed when it was humid.  Overall, while I wasn't quite as over the moon about this book as the others, I still loved it, and can't wait for her to write many more!

Admit One: My Life in Film by Emmett James

ISBN-13: 9780984258109
Publisher: Fizzypop Productions, LLC
Published: February 2010
216 pgs
Source: Online Publicist

I have to admit I rarely read memoirs or autobiography and tend to be choosy even if I do so. When Lisa of Online Publicist contacted me for a review of this book, I have to say yes because this is a book about movies (who wouldn't love watching movies, right?), but most of all I am intrigued by Emmett James' journey into the film industry.

In Admit One, Emmett James tells his story about his childhood days in England (where he share with us bits of his relationship with his family and friends) as well as how he has stepped into the film industry through hard work and not to mention his creativity mind. I like the idea that he cleverly crafted each chapter with a movie title which has somehow made an impact of his life at that point of time, which I find this to be refreshing and in line with the subject of the memoir.

Reading through these chapters made me think of some movies I had watched when I was a teenager (e.g. Star Wars, E.T., Ghostbusters, etc), while some movies remind me a certain phrase of my life. I may not have watched all the movies he listed, but then I was intrigued and amused by his witty style of writing. Let me show you an example of his writing style (I am afraid the passage is a little long, but I liked it because it made me chuckle):

Throughout my life I have tortured myself by watching certain films over and over again purely for the thrill of being terrified. The Amityville Horror, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Psycho, Carrie, The Exorcist, Halloween, and Poltergeist were all very dodgy films for a kid to be sat in front of, but films that every kid has sat in front of. There was always the distinct possibility that seeing these types of movies as a child could turn you into a person liable to break into little bits upon seeing a priest clutching a Bible or if you witnessed another child place their hands on a television screen. Certain films cause universal reactions no matter where in the world you were born or bred. If you have seen Jaws, you have done the bloody music while flailing around in the ocean. It's a 100 percent certainty. And if you're as stupid as I was, you have attacked your unsuspecting family members with the double whammy - the stupid music and your arm stuck vertically out of the water replicating the fin, cunningly disguised as an arm (and just as deadly). ~ Chapter Eleven, The Amityville Horror (1979), Pg 78

I think my favourite chapter among all has to be Titanic, a blockbuster which I enjoyed immensely and one which still touches my heart to this day. Reading about Emmett James' role in this film has allowed me to get a glimpse of the artiste's life in general and how they had worked hard to perfect their roles to meet the expectations of James Cameron, the well-known director who also received much praise on his recent work, Avatar (I was totally wowed by the special effects).

There are, of course, many more chapters that I enjoyed in this memoir but like movies, it is always best to experience that feeling for yourself. That said, I shall end this post with a few passages taken from the memoir which I think is so true:

People in general want to be moved when they buy a ticket to a film. They enter the cinema with an open heart and mind hoping to be in some way emotionally affected, an openness that is unfortunately rare in today's cynical society... ...There was never any judgment passed by society while within those hallowed walls.

Film holds the power to alter a person's thinking, juxtaposing the huge world and one's small place in it... ...Most intriguingly, though, it holds within its transfixing, flickering light the possibility of pure imagination. Nothing could be more important.

(Please click here to read what other readers have said about this book.)

The Art of Cooking Dangerously

I suppose part of the reason for a joining a book club is to be forced (in the nicest possible way, of course), to read books that you would not otherwise have picked up on your own.  So it was with my books club's October selection, Julie and Julia by Julie Powell.  Admittedly, I tend to shy away from non-fiction in general.  When I read in my rather small amount of spare time I am usually trying to escape the stresses of everyday life.  Somehow reading the lates treatise on the war in Iraq or the inspirational story of some celebrity's battle with shoe addiction does not quite scream "relaxation" to me.  So whenever my book club chooses a non-fiction book I cringe a little.  However, my rather narcissistic insistence on being considered well-read usually overcomes my inherent reticence (with the notable exception of Sin in the Second City...it takes real skill to make the history of prostitution in my own city so boring and lifeless).  And at least this particular non-fiction book had the benefit of being made into a major motion picture that I actually wanted to see.

Julie and Julia turned out to be every bit as charming a book as the trailers make the movie out to be.  Julie Powell is someone I can relate to.  A democrat in a republican controlled world (though that particular nightmare is over for both of us at the moment).  A woman with ambitions who feels thwarted by circumstances completely (or mostly) outside of her control.  A person who takes on a crazy project just because she can (can you say "second masters degree"?).  And she is funny-with a kind of sarcastic wit that I appreciate (and sometimes indulge in myself).  The icing on the gateau?  Her obsession with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which I share, thanks to my best friend Rachel.

Reading the book at times made me question the sanity of my French forebears.  What sort of deranged person is the first to decide that boiling down calf hooves in your kitchen, and then eating the resultant gelatinous concoction was a good idea?  I mean really, who looks at a cow's feet and think "delish"?  Some sort of bovine fetishist, I can only assume.  But while the food often takes center stage in this book, with long descriptions of aspics and veal brains and deboned ducks, it is really the story of a dissatisfied secretary finding a way to create meaning in what appeared to be a rather meaningless existence.  The fact that she starts her journey on the heels of 9-11 only served to underscore the point.  I think that we as a country were struggling to find meaning in the wake of that tragic day, and deciding to take on a chaotic cooking project as an attempt to bring a modicum of control into a world that felt suddenly unmoored makes perfect sense to me.

The irony of me writing a book review on a blog about a book that was written because of a blog is not lost on me.  I think that it is one of the remarkable things about the way that we communicate in the 21st century.  Fifty years ago, this book would not have been published.  Fifty years ago, it wouldn't even have seemed strange for a woman to take on learning the art of French cooking.  In this beautiful myth we've created for ourselves about the American housewife of the mid-20th century, we would have nodded our heads in approval and felt guilty for not doing it ourselves.  Today, I can be glad that Julie blanched, sauteed, and pureed her way through Julia Child's masterpiece of home cookery.  The fact of her doing it, and writing about it in such an entertaining, self-deprecating way, means that now I never have to.  Trust me, reading about how to saute lamb kidneys in a red wine reduction sauce was enough for me-I'll leave the actual cooking and, more importantly, the tasting of it to the few, the brave, the Julie Powells of the world.

Sky Burial: An Epic Love Story of Tibet

ISBN-10: 0099484927
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2005
164pp
Translated by: Julia Lovell & Esther Tyldesley

First sentence: When I was five years old, I heard a snatch of conversation on a Beijing street that lodged in my mind and would not leave: 'The Tibetans cut his body into a thousand pieces and fed it to the vultures.'

In 1994, the author, Xinran travelled to Suzhou from Nanjing to interview Shu Wen after she received a call from one of her listeners at a nightly radio programme she presented. Piqued with curiosity, Xinran decided to interview Shu Wen, a Chinese woman who had spent years searching for her missing husband, Kejun, after she had learnt that he died in Tibet during his service as a doctor in the People's Liberation Army.

Just newly married for less than a hundred days, Shu Wen could not accept the news of his death and thus, she decided to leave her homeland to Tibet so that she could find an answer of her husband's disappearance since the Army could not provide any information regarding his cause of death. She was determined to join her husband's regiment and using her qualifications as a dermatologist, she managed to join the army as they were desperately short of doctors and many soldiers in Tibet were suffering from altitude sickness.

However, all the hardship she endured did not waver her determination in searching for her husband. There, she rescued a Tibetan woman named Zhuoma and was later separated from the army after they were ambushed by some Tibetan rebels. Left alone with no one except each other, Shu Wen and Zhuoman trekked on the vast landscape until they stumbled upon a nomad family who was kind enough to offer them their tents as shelter. The two women learnt a lot about each other during their stay with the Tibetan family; and the family treated them as members of their own as the time passed by. She then returned home only after she had found the answer she had been searching for during the years.

Sky Burial is a heartwrenching love story, filled with descriptive details of Tibetan history and culture. The story is so powerful and haunting that I was left speechless after reading this memoir in one sitting, for my mind was filled with vivid images of Shu Wen's drastic life as portrayed under Xinran's skilful writing. I have nothing but great admiration for Shu Wen's courage and determination, for who would think a woman of her age at that time would go to such extent to search her husband and stayed in Tibet for about thirty years?

After the end of this memoir, Xinran had written a short letter to Shu Wen, asking where she is and hoping that they would meet again as she still has a lot of questions to ask from her. I hope she managed to get in touch with Shu Wen.

Note: A BIG thank you to Marny of Traveling Bookworm for sending this book and a bookmark band to me.