Recently Read: Books that Wrecked Me

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My fiction professor asked us last week if we have read any books that wrecked us. Everybody raised their hands. The first two books that came to mind were The Book Thief and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. Now I can add two others to those books: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr and The Book of Secrets by Elizabeth Joy Arnold.

Of course, I don’t mean that they completely destroyed me. What I, and my professor, mean is that I felt sad, moved, and most of all, changed in some little way.

All the Light We Cannot See follows Marie-Laure, a French blind girl, and Werner, a German orphan, before and after WWII. It often seems like there are too many WWII/Holocaust books. And to be honest, when I first picked it up, I thought it was going to be yet another casting of that horrible time period.

But it isn’t. It isn’t a typical war book because it actually follows the life of one who became a Nazi because he didn’t have much choice and also because it speaks at length about what happened afterwards to each character and how the war affected them.

It wrecked me because: Its brutal honesty. Its realism. Its simple and beautiful language. And because it showed how much human beings impact each other for better and worse.

The Book of Secrets begins when Chloe Sinclair, after twenty years of marriage, comes home to find that her husband, Nate, is gone. As Chloe tries to figure out what has happened and what is troubling her husband, she revisits her memories of meeting and growing up with her husband and his family.

Throughout the book, Arnold alludes to a plethora of books in telling how Chloe and the Sinclairs grew up and coped with the difficulties of life and each section is named after a book, not necessarily because that particular book is featured in that section, but because of themes and ideas that they share with each section.

It is difficult to say what wrecked me without giving up any specific plot details. It wasn’t the language because while it flowed and was beautiful, it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Instead, it was the realistic, albeit tragic events that were relayed. It was the feeling that everything could have happened in reality.

Creative Nonfiction vs. Fiction

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Creative nonfiction deals with memories, but in an unique way. Since memory isn’t perfect, cnf allows the writer to relate a memory that they may not remember completely or not at all. It also allows the writer to bring in different point of views to make a whole memory or idea.

Sarah Dessen, in her novel Just Listen, describes this aspect through the reflection of her main character, Annabel: “So many versions of just one memory, and yet none of them were right or wrong. Instead, they were all pieces. Only when fitted together, edge to edge, could they even begin to tell the whole story.”

While the majority of creative nonfiction conveys at least one version of the truth, fiction does not. Fiction may be based on a conversation you had or heard, a dream remembered, or a person you passed on the street, but it is not the truth. And from a reader’s perspective, fiction is what you read when you want to travel the globe or even to another world.

As my readers have most likely figured out, I love creative nonfiction and I mainly write in the genre. This semester, however, I am taking an intermediate fiction class. I like writing fiction, but I don’t feel quite comfortable with it.

It’s taken me a while to realize why that is the case. I figured it out quite recently: I haven’t discovered my fiction voice even though I started writing fiction before anything else. To contrast, I easily discovered my creative nonfiction voice. Of course, I’ve been assuming that those voices are as different as the styles are.

But, what if they aren’t?

What if I applied my concise, sometimes blunt style of writing to my fictional stories? And conversely, what if I tried introducing more exposition and detail to my cnf?

What if?

I am always ready to challenge myself as a writer. This might be one of the biggest challenges that I’m going to face: figuring out my voice in each style. And it might be one keeps on pushing me.

As always, thank you for reading. Please comment your thoughts.

A Walk in the Dark

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I have been on a plethora of walks in my life. Some with loved ones, a few with near strangers. Some surrounded by wild flowers, a few surrounded by dry grass and bare trees. Some have been enjoyable, a few have been long and perhaps a little tortuous.

I am not sure exactly why I am so fond of walks/hiking. I like the exercise, yes, but I like the opportunities for sunlight, nature, and the presence of God. I don’t particularly like to hike when it’s hot (who doesn’t?), but I do love when I feel the wind.

Because as John 3: 8 (New American Bible) says, “The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” I like when I feel the wind because I am reminded that God is with me, even (or, especially) when I can’t feel him or when I don’t have hardcore evidence.

What follows is a short reflection on a recent walk taken at dusk with my roommate. During this walk I noticed the wind as well as a few other things. Not all my walks are profound experiences as this one was, but not every one can be. But it goes to show that ordinary events can often become quite extraordinary.

Enjoy.

 

The trail rose in front of us, glowing in the dark. It was our flashlight and our plan for the immediate future.

It was past sunset in that eerie, but illuminating time of day. The trees on the top of the bluff were silhouetted against one of The Painter’s favorite shades of blue. Every branch was discernible and I could imagine running my fingers across its sharp needles.

We paused at a clump of sunflowers, perfectly formed, albeit small. Their yellow petals were bright despite the absence of sun. Their scent was like the promise of rain after a long, hot Colorado week.

On our way back to the car, I felt no prickling fear at my back. When my roommate switched the flashlight on, I wiggled my fingers in the beam, knowing for certain that there were no monsters behind or before me. For I knew the Spirit, who resides in the wind, had a hand on my shoulder.

 

Recently Read

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Last Christmas I asked for memoirs and I got a plethora of them from my brother. My favorite one was The Girl Got Up by Rachel M. Strauss, but I’m not writing about it today. Instead, I am writing about A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband “Master” by Rachel Held Evans.

I heard about this memoir a couple years before on NPR. Then, I misinterpreted her intentions and thought of her as a woman who was playing into outdated notions of the subservient and house-keeping woman. When my brother gave it to me, I sadly still held that position and so refused to read it at the same time as I devoured the others.

Last weekend however, I needed something to read on a plane trip and I picked it up.

To my surprise, I fell in love with it during the introduction. Her language is extremely witty and near perfect. Her experience of living a year of trying to live like a biblical woman would have is well executed and researched heavily. Ethos and logos down. Now for pathos: her experiment, or journey if you will, and her struggles on that journey are surprisingly relatable and are at some times profound.

I don’t feel myself changing with every book, but I did with this one. I didn’t change dramatically, but I now have a different view of many of the women of the bible and I have an even greater appreciation for the different cultures she encounters.

I will not say much about this amazing, spectacular, and beautiful book because it deserves to be read instead of written about.

I will share my favorite quote from the end of the book after she attended a Quaker meeting: “In silence, I had found a reservoir of strength that, If I could just learn to draw from it, could make my words weightier. In silence, it seemed, I had finally found my voice.”

I hope that like her, I will find my voice. I hope that like her, I will undergo a project/experience that will change my life as thoroughly as her journey did for her.

Recently Read

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I love public libraries. I love the thrill perusing the shelves gives me. I have a plethora of childhood memories of me returning a fair pile of books and then walking out a few minutes later with another pile of books. Some of them were books I’ve already read before, but at least one of them was new. Now that I’m a college student, I’m not able to go to the library as much as I when I was a kid. But this summer, I am taking liberty of my library card, which is handily dangling on my key ring.

Libraries have a variety of books available, which means that they have both good and bad literature. Last week, I had the unfortunate pleasure of picking up and starting The Living Room by Robert Whitlow. While the novel has an interesting premise of a novelist whose dreams starts becoming reality, it is not written well in the slightest. I made it through 100 pages before finally giving up (and I don’t typically give up on books). A critic’s praise on the back cover says that Whitlow has “deft sleight of hand, wonderfully characterization, and carefully layered plots.” It seems like the author of this statement didn’t actually read the book because the characters are weak and one-dimensional, the language is often cliche and exaggerated. Whitlow doesn’t have deft sleight of hand in anything. The book has a Christian message, which I’m all for, except that it is constantly shoved at the reader, so much that its holding back the plot from continuing on.

For a contrast, I also read a terrific book at the same time that I could finish: A Thread of Sky by Deanna Fei. In her novel, she tells of three generations  of women who take a tour of  China. At the center of the novel is Irene, who emigrated from China when she was young and whose husband has just died, and her three daughters who all have varying emotions toward their mother as well as secrets of their own. Joining them are Irene’s sister and mother. Through the tour, they attempt somewhat unwillingly to reconnect with each other.

The novel is separated into chapters told in each woman’s perspective. Sometimes when an author attempts this narrative of style, they have a difficult time making every voice sound different. Fei does not seem to have this struggle, though sometimes the voices did sound slightly similar at times, if only because the characters are family and share some characteristics, whether they like it or not. What I loved most about the novel was its realism. Its dialogue was realistic and the events which happened also quite realistic. Fei did not try to make every thing seem beautiful and orderly, but she somehow told her story in a lyrical and striking fashion.

An author (it might have been Mark Twain) once wrote that to be a writer, one needs to read both awful and wonderful fiction (I am paraphrasing). I wholeheartedly agree with that statement. And while I don’t want to read bad literature, I will continue to take healthy doses (small doses, hopefully) of it because it could help me improve.

Of Summer

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Lately, I’ve been reading Game of Thrones, the first book in the Song of Fire and Ice series by George R.R. Martin. In the land that it is set in, summers and winters last for years. It would be beyond strange to have a summer last nine or ten years, especially since I live in Colorado, a state with definite seasons. Summer would mean something absolutely different than it does now.

Because to me, summers mean:

1. No school

2. Traveling and visiting family across the country

3. Eating Otter Pops while reading a book in the sun

4. Iced tea

5. Hiking

6. Camping

7. Going swimming outdoors

8. Kicking off my blankets at night because I’m too hot.

9. Family barbeques/picnics

10. Sleeping in.

Of course, now that I’m an adult and I have a job, summers do not quite mean all those things. I haven’t been camping in a while, I can rarely sleep in, and I can only go on one short vacation. But it is still summer. I’ve been hiking and I’ve been reading (and writing) in the sun while drinking iced tea and/or enjoying a popsicle.  And I’ve been reveling in not having to go to school (about a month and half more!).

What would summer be like if it lasted for a few years instead of a few months. It could be beautiful, I’m sure (as long as it rained). It could be amazing, but winter would be a bigger threat as summer would become almost normal. Harsh winters can be bad enough for livestock, mental health, and general livelihood.  Imagine if a winter, no matter if was harsh or not, lasted for nine years. No wonder why the Stark motto is “winter is coming.” They love the summer, but they know full well that winter is going to come again and it will seem like summer never existed.

As for me, summer is only a few months long and the rest of the seasons are tinged with varying amounts of cold and that’s the way I like it. Summer may seem fleeting, but it is constant. Winter may seem long, especially when I have to regularly drive in snowy conditions, but I know for certain that summer will be coming soon.

What’s in a Name?

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I recently read some comments on an article about the Charleston shootings that were debating on whether the event should be called a hate crime or domestic terrorism. Yesterday, I was half-watching Daniel Boone at work. I saw how one of the characters was acting and I thought, “I bet he has multiple personality disorder.”

These two incidents are extremely different from each other. Indeed, it might seem strange that they are included together. The question that pulled them together in my mind was: What is in a name? Why must human beings always have names for everything?

One answer: order.

We give our children names so we can tell them apart and to help their identity along.

We name buildings and streets so we travel easier.

I acknowledge that knowing whether something was a hate crime or domestic terrorism will be important is sentencing the perpetrator, but I feel like a heinous crime does not necessarily need a specific name. It is a heinous crime no matter what it is.

I also acknowledge that psychiatry has progressed tremendously in the past few decades. No longer are mental disorders lumped into “nervous conditions” or “insanity.” And partly because of the new names and knowledge, mental asylums are the thing of the past. But when behaviors of children are constantly analyzed and given names, it makes me wonder if we are starting to over name parts of the human condition.

Is it possible to be overly “name happy?” or is right to categorize each and everything, let alone each and every person.

 

Recently Read/Watched

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When I was in early high school, I watched a BBC miniseries called “North and South” (made in 2004). Back then, I did not completely understand what was going on.

Just a couple weeks ago, I saw it on Netflix and loved it. I realized that the reason behind why I did not grasp all the events going on is that they dealt with politics and different societal expectations in a country not my own. But since I’ve learned more about England’s history in my literature classes, I comprehended everything. Instead of being confused, I could enjoy and analyze (after all, I am an English major) the story.

To this American, the title “North and South” immediately evokes thoughts of the Civil War. The title, however, refers to the north and south of England. The protagonist, Margaret Hale, has lived in the south for her whole life (it does not give her age) and is forced to move to Milton, an industrial town in the north after her father, a pastor, removes himself from the Church of England. Throughout the story, she and her family gets involved in the lives of the cotton mill workers, Mr. Thornton, who is Marlborough Mill’s manager, and Mr. Thornton’s family.

After watching the miniseries, I learned that it is based off the novel of the same name by Elizabeth Gaskell and immediately checked it out from the library.

From the miniseries, I expected the novel to read like one of Charles Dickens (who, incidentally, published Gaskell’s works in his newspaper), but the style of writing seems a bit like Jane Austen. The subjects broached in the novel more similar to Dickens than Austen in the sense that Gaskell paid attention to the entire human experience instead of one aspect of life. For example, Gaskell writes about worker’s unions as well as Margaret and Thornton’s attraction to each other.

One thing that I noticed in both the miniseries and the book is that when Margaret is in Helstone, her home in the south, everything is idyllic. On my computer screen, the scenery at Helstone was lush and green and always tinged with a delightful yellow. On the pages, the flora and fauna are given wonderful descriptions. In both the original and adapted versions of the story, Milton is gray and unwelcoming. This is a perfect example of one movement (Romanticism) transitioning into another (Realism). I love Realism and I don’t particularly like Romanticism, so I absolutely loved when the novel became more realistic.

Enough of heavy English major talk!

I actually liked the miniseries infinitesimally more than the book. Strangely enough, it added more depth to each character than the author was able to. But for the most part, the miniseries and the novel were similar plot-wise (although the miniseries added scenes and information that wasn’t provided by the book).

I only have one complaint: I didn’t like the ending of either one. Without giving away what happens, the miniseries ending was not realistic for the Victorian era and the book ending was rather abrupt.

Despite that one misgiving, I definitely recommend both versions of “North and South.” While I may not like Elizabeth Gaskell’s writing as much as Charles Dicken’s, I do appreciate that the product of her pen and mind reveals more of what its like to be human.

A Sensory Map

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This post is inspired by Poets and Writers‘ online “The Time is Now” creative nonfiction prompt for last week:

“This week, write a map leading to where you live. Start as close or far from your home as you wish and trace the paths, obstacles, and landmarks that lead you to your door. Think about who you’re creating this map for and when they would have an occasion to use it. How would you describe the geography of your neighborhood to someone who’s never been there? Consider the elements that are special to you and make where you live feel like home.”

Instead of writing the map leading to where I live, I want to write a map of sorts from where I live.

The first step to getting out of the door is making sure that I have everything that I need. Then I say goodbye to Belle, my cat and my roommate if she’s there.

While closing the door, I am aware of the red and white “Welcome” mat often gets stuck. It doesn’t this time. Once I lock our light green door, I am in the hallway.

And in the hallway, my senses are flooded. I see how the lights make everything slightly yellow, I smell the Indian food that seems to perpetually come from my neighbors around the corner, I hear the dogs from across the way barking and their owner yelling at them, I feel my knees bending as I walk down the steps, and through my shoes, I feel when the carpet ends and turns into tile as I approach the front door with its cold, black, metal handle.

I don’t always have time to appreciate my view, but sometimes I stop to consider. Directly in front of me and to the east is another building, its yellow paint cheerily echoing the paint on my own, and two trees flanking the sidewalk that leads to the parking lot. I know that the mountains are behind me, but I don’t see them. I just have faith that they are there because I saw them when I woke up in the morning.

To the south is the path to the shopping center where I go to lunch sometimes. That path also leads into a much longer trail by a creek. This path has a good view of  various roads. The highway and the train disappear before reappearing, but the mountains and the creek are always consistent.

To the north is usually where my car is, parked wherever I could find a spot the last time I drove. I walk in the grass to get to my dark green vehicle. In the winter, it is haggard looking when it is seen. When snow is covering the ground, I delight in the crunching sound my shoes make even while I’m dreading the possibility of scraping ice off my windows. Right now, in late spring, I enjoy trudging through the green grass, which is usually wet from the rain Colorado has been getting lately or from the sprinklers.

I temporarily forget about my surroundings as I sit in the car, turn it on, and select my music. But as I reverse out of my space, I look to the north, take a breath, and feel right at home because no matter what direction I’m facing, no matter what the weather is, I know where the mountains are.

Creeds

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This is taken from a journal entry that I wrote while I was listening to Contemporary Christian music. I wish I remember what songs I was listening to in particular, but c’est la vie… Looking back through my journal, it touched me. I hope it touches you too.

I believe in God. I believe in truth. I believe in justice. I believe in life and death, but not in dying prematurely. I believe in fellowship, but not conversion. I believe in free will. I believe that we should touch souls, but not control them. I believe in the silence and the quiet noise. I believe in harmony and human beings. I believe in flowers and soot. I believe in faith in times of shaking foundations. I believe in the phoenix.

Ad majorem Dei gloriam

We dedicated all our thoughts, words, and actions to the greater glory of God.

Wordlist

majesty

praise

refuge

name

You know all of our names, the name of the stars, the name of the sheep. The name of the lost and the found. Our brain holds onto your name for a second and then it disappears. Oh that we could hold onto your name, your beautiful name. For ever.

Wordlist

whisper

you break me

speak

Who am I?

Who am I to speak? A different question than “Who am I?” How do I dare? How dare I? How do I even dare to lift my eyes to the heavens. I am a pebble compared to the glories of heaven and the grace that you repeatedly have showed me. Showed me? You have touched me. You have built and taken down icicles on balconies. I squint and I see your sunlight and I am honored beyond knowledge and speech.

I am thankful for my feet on the ground, even if they are not employed by dancing. I will forever be dancing.

See ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, then all the doors shall be opened unto you. Hallelu Hallelujah.

I believe in crying silently alone. I believe in weeping with others. I believe in letting the tears glint in the sunrise of your glory.