Inventory
When I was young I read with greater variety. I grew up in a house that valued reading and education. My mother was a teacher and read to us every night. She read to us “All of a Kind Family” and “Little Women,” I don’t think she realized she was instilling in her children strong feminist values, but that was the takeaway I had from those books. I begged her to read “Squirrel Nutkin,” and “Mother Gooses Nursery Rhymes,” I loved the lyrical quality of those books and the sound of my mother reading them.
My mother loved the library and took us regularly. I always chose fairy tales, but unlike most kids I wanted to hear the Hans Christian Anderson and Grimm brothers versions. I think even then I didn’t want to be sugar coated with a happy ending. I loved especially, “the Little Mermaid,” well before Disney made it a happy musical. I didn’t mind the mermaid dying, when she was thwarted by the prince. I loved the sisters, the heartache. I then went for years not really loving to read. I liked Shel Silverstein , because his poems were short and funny. The book that really changed me into a reader I can’t even find. I don’t even remember the title, and believe me I have looked. I was in the fourth or fifth grade when I read it and it was a dramatic story about a girl, and a boy who had hemophilia and drove a motorcycle called Jane Fonda. It was on the “older kids shelf” at our library and I loved it. I read it several times and then I became a real reader. For my tween years, I read a book called “Witch of Blackbird Pond,” it was a historical romance about a girl who grew up in Barbados and then moved into a Puritanical village. I loved the adventure of a girl at sea. The way the story opened up to show the contrast of the life she was living in next to the luxury of her childhood. I also really loved the idea of the romance at that point. When I was a young teen I fell in love with the Outsiders and then became obsessed with SE Hinton. I resonated most with the story of Rumble fish. At that time I was realizing that I was one of the wealthier kids in our neighborhood. I was starting to realize the kinds of oppression I was reading about, were the kinds of things my friends were dealing with. I saw the characters as a way to relate to my friends. It resonated with me the idea of the Rumble Fish, that they couldn’t live together in a small bowl but if you released them in a bigger place, perhaps they could live in harmony. In some ways I saw this as a message of escapism from the blue collar neighborhood I grew up in. When I moved into high school, I basically read everything anyone told me to read. I loved reading really dramatic books like V.C. Andrews wrote. Ones filled with soap opera page turning, sex, lies deceit, incest, romance. I know I read a lot of them but I’m not really sure they shaped me in anyway. I loved To Kill a Mockingbird, around the same time I read that I started noticing Racial Disparity in the world and had to question my own beliefs. Mississippi Burning had come out and there had been a cross burned on the front lawn of an African American family in our neighborhood. (Yes this happened in the northeast in the late 80’s early 90’s—not just deep south in the 60’s.) I had also witnessed a black teen being chased by a car full of white boys yelling THAT word. I then read the Color Purple. These were the books that helped to shape the way I thought about diversity. It really rings true to that idea of distinction. Would I have marked these books in my mind if I had not been struggling with these ideas? Or would I have never struggled with these Ideas if I hadn’t read these books? I don’t really know as I can’t recall which came first but just that they were around the same time. In Freshman year one of my friends struggled with Anne of Green Gables. I read it so I could explain it to her. I made notes and pointed at themes. My friend was in a lower track then I was, so I could break it down really easily for her and I really worked with her to get her essay to where it needed to be. I loved that book, even though it was an easy read for me because it helped me to flex my natural “teachery- muscles.” It also was one of those times where I realized I saw things differently than other people, it made me start experimenting more with my writing. Later in high school, I just started tackling Classics, either because we were assigned it, or because someone told me I should read it. I was only a so-so student (I know hard to believe) so I couldn’t take AP English Lit. So instead I decided to on my own read the same books they read. I read Wuthering Heights in a day and then memorized the character name map and re-read it several times. One of the books from this time period that still resonates and mesmerizes me is Ibsen’s “A Doll House.” My sister brought it home from college and made me read it. I remember reading it again and again through my life at different points, and still I “went from being my father’s daughter, to his wife and their mother.” Always knowing at 15 I said I would never do that. I remember being so angry when I read that little blurb in the back that in order to get it published and performed Ibsen had to change the ending that Nora leaves to her coming back. I always read it that she leaves and never read it another way. I hated the idea of being some man’s silly little bird. In my twenties I read mostly Mary Higgens Clark and Maeve Binchy Novels. I wanted to read stories with some element of mystery. But mostly it was the romance and the idea that I knew what I was getting with each of them. I also read things I wouldn’t have chosen for Book Club. Some of it was Chick Lit, Like Secret Life of Bees. I was forced into reading The Dubliners by my Aunt who thought we should because we were Irish and it made me want to renounce all my Irish-ness. One of my other aunts made me read “Life of Pi” and between the two of them I wanted to leave book Club. Then in my late twenties, I read a lot of Chick Lit. I mean a lot. But also some really great books like “Waiting for Snow in Havanna,” “Water for Elephants,” and “The Lovely Bones” which made me really start to see people from totally different perspectives. I remember in …Havana, I was shocked because a boy admits being raped by an older relative. It gave not only the flavor of Havana, or the life of a kid who took a Peter Pan Flight, but the confusion of a victim. In Water for Elephants I remember feeling so stuck in the old man’s body knowing he could remember being capable but the loss of mobility was so great. It made me think more compassionately. “Lovely Bones,” was a particularly hard read for me in witnessing the rape/murder from the girls eyes. Also,, seeing her family changing and falling apart from an outside ghostly voice. In my thirties, I began reading more to my kids (You know more than Good night moon- which I too could write an essay on.) But I read Narnia, and American Girl stories, and Coraline and really anything I thought would hold their interest. I still read to them at 7 and 8 even though they can read. I also changed my reading to include YA Lit. When I was told I had a young adult voice over and over again- I decided perhaps my teachers were right. I loved nearly every book I read from the YA genre. My favorites have to be “Feed” because I love how M.T. Anderson created a dystopian society and had something to say. His book is political, and driven against consumerism, it isn’t just another love story. I also really loved Eleanor & Park, again having an underprivileged person in a story might mean I will read it, add to it that she is also being sexually harassed makes me want to read it even more. But what I actually loved most about it was the way that Rowell could take a story where not that much happens and capture that longing of a first love where you can feel them breath. |