"All Over but the Shoutin'": A Tribute to a Selfless Southern Momma

Sometimes books are like candy to read - sweet and a little indulgent.  Sometimes they are like an enticing snack - you can think of little else other than having more.  Sometimes they are like a fine dining cuisine - so refined and cultured that they make you sit up straight when you read them.  And then there's Rick Bragg's memoir "All Over but the Shoutin'" which to me was like a home cooked, heavy, stick to your ribs, Southern meal prepared lovingly by your mom.

My good friend recommended Bragg's book to me after I told her that "All the Light We Cannot See" was so well written that the writing almost made me cry.  She handed me Bragg's 1997 memoir and said, "The writing in this book is beautiful.  You have to read it." I knew after reading the prologue where Bragg explains why he wrote this book in the first place that I would love it.  He reasons, "This is not an important book.  It is only the story of a strong woman, a tortured man and three sons who lived hemmed in by thin cotton and ragged history in northeaster Alabama, in a time when blacks and whites found reason to hate each other and a whole lot of people who could not stand themselves." I was captivated and feel like I learned about the underbelly of Southern society - the poor whites who self destruct in their houses with no plumbing but plenty of alcohol, the people who work in the cotton fields and wear their shoes until their toes stick out of the ends, whose teeth rot and fall out because who has the money to pay for dental care?  And sometimes, there are people like Bragg who find their way out and even more importantly can illuminate what it was like to grow up in rural, northern Alabama and educate the world.

Bragg doesn't whine about his upbringing or his history.  He tells it honestly with all it's ugliness and torment. As he bravely tells about growing up with so little that often they wouldn't have food to eat, he pays close attention to his mother's perspective.  Her selflessness saved him and his brothers from his violent, drunken father, helped him find a sense of normalcy in the poverty and maybe even gave him the courage to get out.  Bragg eventually got a job writing for a local newspaper (he only got the job because the other person it was offered to decided to take a job at KFC instead), and went on to get a Harvard fellowship, and eventually win a Pulitzer Prize for his New York Times journalistic work.

At times the memoir is heartbreaking and beautiful simultaneously, but other times, I have to admit that I got lost in middle of the heavy Southern meal with all of the detail. I forged through the middle and when Bragg wrote about his journalistic work in New York City, Haiti and covering stories of human suffering, I reengaged.  I don't know what that says about me, but it seemed like he was reengaged at that point in the book as well.  He made keen observations about his motivations as a journalist reasoning that "You pour it all into your stories, as your fingers hover above the computer keyboard, but when you get up, when it is done, you block much of it out.  You have to feel for the people you write about or the words don't amount to much, but you learn to put it down." That is his gift - to attach to the humanistic aspect for the story, but then be able to detach from the suffering and move on to the next story.

My favorite part of the story was when he convinced his mother to accompany him to the Pulitzer Prize award celebration in New York City.  She had never traveled outside of Northern Alabama and her experiences just traveling to the city were touching.

This book ultimately pays homage to Bragg's mother who suffered but never complained.  Although he talks about all of his accomplishments in writing, his biggest accomplishment came when he was able to buy his mom a home with cash - a real house that she could love, a house that had all the modern amenities so she wouldn't have to struggle so much.

It's a fitting book to finish on Mother's Day weekend as we think about our own mothers - their struggles, the sacrifices they made to help us be who we are, and mostly who we are because of who they are.

Happy Mother's Day.

"Delancey: A Man, A Woman, A Restaurant, a Marriage": Be ready to crave pizza

"There is something about Delancey that, to me, matters just as much: We get to make people happy.  We get to give people a good night. We get to spend our days doing work that we can be proud of, and when we're done, there's all the pizza you can eat."

I'm pretty sure I was the only kid who didn't go crazy over pizza.  Whenever my parents wanted to have a pizza night, I nicely requested for them to get me a sub instead.  I even lied in my 3rd grade class when I was interviewed by a high school student assigned to write a book about me.  The personalized book would include all of my favorite things.  When asked what my favorite food was I lied and said, "pizza" just because I knew that saying shrimp scampi would sound weird.  My parents owned a fine dining restaurant when I was in 3rd grade, so when all my friends were loving macaroni and cheese, I grew up on lobster tails and filet mignon.

Pizza was just never my thing, until I moved to the Chicago area and discovered the joys of Georgio's deep dish spinach pizza.  OMG.  It's glorious with just the right amount of cheese, and a thick layer of bright red sauce.  The spinach and onions offer a beautiful balance and the crust is light even though it's a deep dish. Something about the baked in cheese on top of the crust and then the layer of spinach,  topped by the sauce makes it irresistible.

I didn't know pizza could taste like this, but now that I know, I can't un-know it.  I'm still a liar when it comes to my 3rd grade biography, but at least now I get what all the fuss is about, so when I read Molly Wizenberg's memoir "Delancey: A Man, A Woman, A Restaurant, A Marriage" I could relate and even crave the perfect pizza that her husband, Brandon set out to create.  Wizenberg is the critically acclaimed author of The New York Times bestseller "A Homemade Life" and she also created the blog "Orangette" voted the best food blog in the world.  In her memoir "Delancey" she reveals the back story of when she and her husband conceived the idea to open a restaurant, and not just any restaurant, but the perfect place to eat pizza that didn't feel like any old pizza joint, but felt instead like a dinner party with farm fresh ingredients and a simple menu.

Although Wizenberg didn't believe her husband Brandon would ever go through with his idea to open a restaurant and even supported his dream, when the reality of the hours, the unreliable employees, the pizza flour that got everywhere and required late night cleanings, the stress of not sleeping and having to contend with payroll and food ordering and pleasing the public set in, she understandably fell apart. I loved her candor about wanting to be involved in the kitchen and forcing herself to be who she wasn't and how unhappy it made her.  The tension between her and her husband grew thick, and only until they devised a transition plan to get her out of the kitchen did things start to gel.

Daunting.  That's the word I thought about when she described those unsure days after they opened their restaurant's doors to a pizza hungry crowd.  I was part of that as a child as my parents tried to run a successful fine dining restaurant.  The hours were crappy.  My two older sisters and I never saw them.  They were always stressed.  The employees stole food and whatever else they could get their hands on when my mom and dad weren't being vigilant, and the public is hard to please on a consistent basis.  Not knowing what you are doing and opening a restaurant are a lethal combination (if you ever watch Kitchen Nightmares or Restaurant Impossible, you know what I'm talking about), but Brandon and Molly stuck with the idea, figured out their roles (after trial and error) and went on to create a successful restaurant and even open a companion bar / restaurant later on.

Was it easy? No way, but nothing worth doing is ever really that easy.

If you know a foodie or a pizza lover or maybe even someone who really wants to open a restaurant, Wizenberg's candor and wit and especially her descriptions of the pizza pilgrimages she and her husband took across the country as research for their restaurant will entrance you and probably entice you to seek pizza either during or right after reading.

Happy reading and eating (pizza).

"Life, Animated": Hope in the spectrum

It's hard to review a book that took so much courage for one of my favorite authors to write.  Any author who chooses to reveal the struggles of his or her family in the hopes that their story might help other families dealing with the same difficulties, makes my heart open to that author.  The reason I love memoirs so much stems from this simple fact - sharing your story honestly will make others care. It will connect you to people who have had similar struggles. It will increase empathy and understanding.

That's why it's even harder for me to admit that I didn't love Ron Suskind's book "Life, Animated: A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes and Autism"  about his family's struggles and triumphs with their autistic son, Owen, who started as a relatively normal boy and retreated into autism at age 3 after the family moved to Washington, D.C..  I wanted to love it and wanted it to teach me more about autism, but I found the repetitive nature of the book which explores Owen's eventual connection to Disney animation as a communication bridge a bit tedious (sorry Mr. Suskind).

To be completely honest, I am in awe of Suskind's work.  "A Hope in the Unseen" ranks up there with my favorite all time books.  The story of Cedric Jennings and his harrowing journey out of inner-city D.C. and away from the "dream busters" who didn't believe he would be able to make it to the Ivy League, made me reexamine everything I knew about education and the Oprah "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" mentality that anyone can make it if they just try hard enough.  Knowing that as Suskind wrote "A Hope in the Unseen" he simultaneously struggled with his own version of "dream busters" in his personal life with his son Owen, makes me love "A Hope in the Unseen" even more.

Just like when I read "A Hope in the Unseen," The hair on my arms did stand up in certain points while I read "Life, Animated." In the very beginning after Owen is diagnosed as PDD-NOS (Pervasive Developmental Disorder- Not Otherwise Specified) and before the family starts using the daunting word Autism, Suskind thinks about, "how many wild-eyed expectations you carry around about your kids, especially when they're young. Presidents? Nobel Prize winners? Global celebrities? Super Bowl quarterbacks and prima ballerinas? It could happen" and then thinks further about the "damaged goods" kids like Owen and the "new planet" they have arrived on where expectations shift of your child's future, and where the goal on many days is to find a way to ease the frustrations of both the child and the family members.

I also got teary eyed when the person who Owen idolizes, Jonathan Freeman (a.k.a. the voice of Jafar in Aladdin), calls Owen at the prompting of Ron Suskind's letter.  When Freeman asks Owen what the real meaning of Aladdin is, Owen replies, "I think it's about finally accepting who you really are, And being okay with that." Even the man who did the voice for the evil Jafar gets a little sniffly with that profound statement.

The highlight of the whole book for me wasn't the ending (very unlike a Disney ending where everything works out beautifully since Owen's future still remains uncertain), but when Owen gives his graduation speech from KTS.  Instead of an impressive guest speaker at this monumental occasion, each of the 18 graduates prepared a speech about the lessons they learned at KTS.  "Each speaker simply says the truest thing they know. And that's why there are so many awed faces looking up toward the stage, waiting for their moment to express the truest thing they know: that, yes, each graduate is more than worthy.  When the crowd gets a chance at the end to cheer, they won't stop. They can't."

I wanted the whole book to feel that way - the not wanting to stop cheering at Owen's triumphs over the dream busters (like that horrible kid who threatened him in music class), but I didn't feel like that most of the way through.

Don't get me wrong, Suskind is brilliant, and this book definitely goes to the heart (unflinchingly) of Autism's impact on an entire family.  I just wanted less of it rather than more, which means to me that although I love Suskind and Disney, too much of a good thing can feel over indulgent and a little bit disappointing.

I go back to my original point, though, of how amazing it is when a person opens the vault of their personal lives for the world to see, prod, pick apart and internalize in their own way.  Telling the truth of your life (especially the truths that hurt to tell) takes courage, and that's what Suskind showed in writing the story of his son, Owen who is a true hero.

'The Answer to the Riddle is Me: A Memoir of Amnesia' : A construction of self in the wake of forgetting

When I was in college at the University of Minnesota, I took an Honors Seminar class that focused on memory and the construction of self. We met on Tuesday and Thursday mornings at 8am, and took turns leading discussions and bringing breakfast.  I've always been fascinated by the role that memories serve in shaping who we are as people, and during those discussions, I found myself questioning how I constructed my own identity.  What memories shaped who I am? What else shaped me into the person I am?

So what happens when you wake up on a train platform in India without the slightest idea of who you are or how you arrived at the train platform in the first place? No memories at all.

David Stuart MacLean's debut book "The Answer to the Riddle is Me: A Memoir of Amnesia" answers the above mentioned question with articulate prose and profound self discovery.  On October 7, 2002 when MacLean woke up and "could feel a heavy absence in [his] brain, like a static cloud" on the train platform in Hyderabad, India, he sobbed as a kind officer took him to a halfway house assuming that he was just another American tourist who was addicted to drugs.  MacLean ends up in a mental institution where he regains some memories, but mostly fades in and out of short bouts of waking and sleeping nightmares.  As he realizes after his parents arrive, his memory loss stems from a severe allergic reaction to the anti-malaria drug Larium (which was routinely prescribed by his doctor after David received a Fulbright scholarship in India).

MacLean's short, choppy chapters of hallucinations, recovery and missteps take the reader on a journey as he rediscovers who he is and asks the questions that my Honors Seminar class asked - what makes us who we are? How do our memories create our present?  What do we remember and what do we forget, and what if we forget everything and need to be reconstructed by the stories from our friends, family, girlfriends, students, and photographs.  David even tries to find who he is / was by reading the marginalia he wrote in books.  As he tears through old email correspondences, he finds aspects of himself that he likes and others that he doesn't.  When he tells people about his Larium induced amnesia, some are reluctant to believe him because he was the type of guy who would make up a practical joke like that.

Along with MacLean's harrowing journey to remember who he was and construct a present forward life, he includes the history of the drug Larium that stole his memory.  The frightening aspects of this legal drug shocked me.  Even more shocking is the fact that people who are endemic to India or other malaria susceptible areas in the world have built up a natural immunity to malaria.  David makes the point that "malaria separates the native form the visitor . . . When we travel to places we don't belong, even our blood is conspicuous."

The power of the book resides in the first half while David fluctuates between psychosis and clarity.  His darker hours before his parents arrive and when he first returns to Ohio led me to read on, but as the book progressed David's very understandable depression, alcohol soaked evenings, vacillation between good and bad choices and self discovery felt a bit monotonous.  I still can't explain why.  Maybe MacLean isn't a very likable guy - neither the guy he was before Larium claimed his memory nor the guy he becomes after his recovery are particularly endearing.  There are tender moments and moments of writing brilliance as David navigates his new life.  In one chapter David and his girlfriend, Emily, come upon a motorcycle accident, and Emily, without hesitating leaps out of the car to help the people injured in the accident.  In retrospect he reasons, "In the chaos of this world, where we carom and collide in the everyday turbulence, there's something about the specific gravity of the helpless individual, the lost and the fractured, that draws kindness from us, like venom from a wound." And that drawing of kindness mirrors David's experience with "Josh" the kind policeman who helped him from the platform and all the friends and family members who help him to answer the riddle of himself regardless of what kind of wise cracking fool he was before he woke up without him memory.

That helplessness and vulnerability that he shows in his memoir gave me just enough to like it and keep reading his metaphor heavy writing.  At the end, though, I wish he would have spent more time with the questions that we asked so many times in my Honors Seminar.  How do we construct our sense of identity? How much of our lives are built from memories?  What memories are worth holding onto and which are worth letting go? And when we don't have a choice of holding on, how do we construct a new sense of self?

Coming Clean: A Memoir

Dirty Secrets Exposed

Coming Clean by Kimberly Rae Miller 

"What shames us, what we most fear to tell, does not set us apart from others; it binds us together if only we can take the risk to speak it." - Starhawk

When I taught Creative Writing for 10 years, my students always struggled with what they should write.  I often gave the advice, "Write what makes you feel like you are swallowing glass." These are the stories that we hide, the essence of who we are, how we have become who we are.  Sometimes (and more often than not) these are the ugly truths of our existence that we draw the blinds on, shove under our beds or even rip out of our journals for fear of being found out.  The odd thing about these "glass swallowing stories" are the ones that others need to hear to, just as the quote at the beginning of Kimberly Rae Miller's memoir Coming Clean says, bind us together.  Taking the risk to speak these truths or even more write them down for others to read takes bravery.  Kimberly Rae Miller's memoir showcases her courage and her devout love for her parents.

Miller's father is a hoarder.  She lets us into this dirty little secret (which is actually a dirty, big problem) in the first chapter via the nightmares she suffers from in her adult life because of the way she was raised in a hoarder's pile infested house.  Her mother makes excuses, is plagued by medical issues, and provides Kim with much needed love and fights for her daughter to live some semblance of a normal life beyond the stacks of papers, unopened boxes, and rotten food in her home.

I loved this book (HOORAY!), and I finished it in a day.  I gaped in horror at Kim's descriptions of the house when it was at its worse (flea infestation, animal feces on the carpets, doors that could not be open, unusable kitchen, no running water), and I cried as she nursed her mother to health, and stood by her parents even when they were unable to stand up for themselves.  I cringed when Kim's face burned with shame as she employed the help of friends and even her friend's parents to help dig her parents out when they were moving.

Somehow she emerged from the filth and the bugs and the stacks, and she emerged into a successful, professional woman who has blossomed into a blogging icon who comments on fitness and body image, and as a writer of truth.

What I loved the most about this book was Kim's loyalty to her parents and her furious love for them.  She says, "I do not hate [my mother] or my father.  Sure, I remember the dirt and the rats and squalor, but I also remember parents who loved me.  Doting, fallible people who gave me everything they had, and a whole lot more." The massiveness of the "more" could confound anyone who has never loved a hoarder or had a hoarder as a family member, neighbor, or friend.  Miller uncovers hoarding and those the disorder smothers in this touching memoir about family bonds and growing up despite the dirty, big secrets behind closed doors and drawn curtains.

A search for a father, a search for self

After Visiting Friends by Michael Hainey

 Our parents create a huge part of our identity.  From their personalities to the environment they make our home, to the way they punish and reward, to the way they are involved or not involved in our lives.  Parents help us to create our sense of self.  But other things help us to reinvent who we are, or become a different version of our selves.

I remember this class I took at the University of Minnesota which was about the construction of self and how our memory plays a key role in who we believe we are, what we know about ourselves and our identity.  It was an Honors Seminar with a long gray haired professor and only 8 girls.  Every week, one of us was assigned to lead discussions and to bring in some sort of morning snack.  It was an 8am class and I remember the other girls struggling against the early wake up time.  They seemed slug like, puffy and gelatinous in the morning.  I, on the other hand, am a morning person - biking to class, feeling the cold Minneapolis wind on my cheeks and coming to class fresh and crisp.  Even in my sharp morning mood, I was almost a mute in this class at first while the slugs could talk and analyze and discuss and quip.  At that time in my life, I had issues with speaking in classes.  I was worried that every word I spoke would be dissected by others, made fun of, that my voice wasn't important or that my thoughts were ridiculous.  It was this class that helped me (forced me) out of my quiet prison.  Every day, I would go into our dark little classroom which was held in a side conference room of one of the beautiful old halls at the UofM with a goal of speaking at least 2 times during class.  On the days I had to lead discussion, I would craft careful notes and speaking points, knowing that I had to speak way more than my goal of 2 times.  Somehow through my class centered on identity and memory, I cautiously began to emerge as a new version of myself.  Someone who spoke in classes and didn't care if my thoughts were perceived as silly or wrong.  My thoughts were part of me, and I mattered.  I realized during this class that I had been told to be quiet so often in my life - from my parents, to my teachers, to adults that finally I started to listen, and this class somehow helped me break out of that. I decided that the voice in the back of my head telling me to talk and move forward regardless of how I was raised or socialized was the voice I needed to listen to and in some ways it is that voice - the one that tells you to find a new truth is the same that Michael Hainey had to turn way up to complete his quest and write his memoir, After Visiting Friends (A Son's Story). 

After Visiting Friends centers around Michael's search to find the truth about his father's death.  He follows his instinct that he never knew the whole story, that something didn't seem right, and he does not relent until he tracks down every lead, every angle, every possibility that could help him recreate not only the story of his father's death, but also the story of who his father really was.  His mother didn't talk about his father's death or his father after he died.  Michael recalls, "After he died, silence descends.  Silence and fear.  My twin poles: My binary black holes.  I live in fear of upsetting my mother, of even uttering my father's name.  I believe that even by saying his name, I might kill her.  Or she might kill me."  Turning to his mother yielded heartbreaking silence, so he searched on his own for the truth and uncovers the code of newspapermen, marriage, and friendship.  He finds a way to himself and finds the courage to tell the story that might hurt those involved.

I picked up this book because Amazon.com named it as one of the top books of 2013 (so far) and one of the best memoirs of the year (so far).  I agree.  At first I had to get used to Michael's storytelling - bits and pieces of the past blended with his present day searching for his father.  He reconstructs how things could have been based on his searching, interviews, tracking down bits and pieces from the morgue reports to the obituaries in various papers, to relatives and past coworkers of his father, and he constructs his own truths based on the evidence he uncovers.  I was engrossed in his search for his father, and his search for himself.  Everyone tells him along his journey how much he looks and acts like his father and at times (like when he goes to his father's high school reunion) people who knew and loved his father seem comforted by his presence because he is so much like his father.

I cried a little at the end of this book because Hainey has a beautiful style that slowly unfolds his journey home - his discoveries and how he chooses to internalize and externalize them.

We all search for our self - whether it is finding a new voice in an Honors Seminar class, connecting with our past,  re-inventing our futures . . . we have a deep need to find truths and a deep need to turn away from the truth of how we have been shaped into the people we are.  Some of us are brave enough to tell the stories that have shaped us, like Michael, even if it did take the cajoling of Jan, the prophet and morgue worker, to help him realize how important his story is to tell.  After his visit to the morgue, Jan calls him almost an entire year after and says, "We are waiting for you to tell this story. . . There is a new person in you, trying to be born.  He's just barely peeping out of the box.  Are you going to slam the lid down on his fingers, or are you going to throw the lid off that dark box and come out fighting?" Hainey finds the courage to throw the lid off the box and tell his story much to the benefit of anyone who reads After Visiting Friends.