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Memoirs
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Tuesdays with Morrie: An old man, a young, and life's greatest lesson
By Mitch Albom
Book description:
The 14 Tuesday visits that followed their reunion took Albom � and
will take listeners with him � on a journey of reawakening to
life's best rewards. The story is told in a journalistic style
that never crosses into pathos. That a professional writer can
write well is not surprising, but Albom also reads well, with
clear enunciation and a talent for mimicry. Another reader might
have interpreted the professor's aphorisms as droll humor or wrung
a wrong note at an inappropriate moment, making the story a
maudlin tearjerker; instead it is read for what it is, a tribute
to a remarkable teacher
Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher, or a colleague. Someone
older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young
and searching, helped you see the world as a more profound place,
gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it.
For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college
professor from nearly twenty years ago.
Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your
way, and the insights faded, and the world seemed colder. Wouldn't
you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that
still haunt you, receive wisdom for your busy life today the way
you once did when you were younger?
Mitch Albom had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the
last months of the older man's life. Knowing he was dying, Morrie
visited with Mitch in his study every Tuesday, just as they used
to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one
final "class": lessons in how to live.
Tuesdays with Morrie is a magical chronicle of their time
together, through which Mitch shares Morrie's lasting gift with
the world.
Book review:
No one but Mitch Albom could have read Tuesdays with Morrie so
effectively. As the author of this inspirational true story, Albom
uses verbal inflection in exactly the right places to evoke humor,
empathy, and emotion. It's an honest reading, and the underlying
timbre of private memory pushes it past mere recitation to pure
storytelling.
The titular Morrie was Morrie Schwartz, Albom's university
professor 20 years before the events being narrated. An accidental
viewing of an interview with Morrie on Nightline led Albom to
become reunited with his old teacher, friend, and "coach" at a
time when Albom, a successful sportswriter, was struggling to
define dissatisfactions with his own life and career. Morrie, on
the other hand, after a rich life filled with friends, family,
teaching, and music, was dying from Lou Gehrig's disease, a
crippling illness that diminished his activities daily. Albom was
one of hundreds of former students and acquaintances who traveled
great distances to visit Morrie in the final months of his life.
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The diving bell and the butterfly: A memoir of life in death
By jean-Dominique
Book review:
We've all got our idiosyncrasies when it comes to writing � a
special chair we have to sit in, a certain kind of yellow paper we
absolutely must use. To create this tremendously affecting memoir,
Jean-Dominique Bauby used the only tool available to him--his left
eye � with which he blinked out its short chapters, letter by
letter. Two years ago, Bauby, then the 43-year-old editor-in-chief
of Elle France, suffered a rare stroke to the brain stem; only his
left eye and brain escaped damage. Rather than accept his "locked
in" situation as a kind of death, Bauby ignited a fire of the
imagination under himself and lived his last days � he died two days
after the French publication of this slim volume � spiritually
unfettered. In these pages Bauby journeys to exotic places he has
and has not been, serving himself delectable gourmet meals along the
way (surprise: everything's ripe and nothing burns). In the simplest
of terms he describes how it feels to see reflected in a window "the
head of a man who seemed to have emerged from a vat of
formaldehyde."
Book description:
In 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby was the editor-in-chief of French
Elle, the father of two young childen, a 44-year-old man known and loved
for his wit, his style, and his impassioned approach to life. By the end
of the year he was also the victim of a rare kind of stroke to the
brainstem. After 20 days in a coma, Bauby awoke into a body which had
all but stopped working: only his left eye functioned, allowing him to
see and, by blinking it, to make clear that his mind was unimpaired.
Almost miraculously, he was soon able to express himself in the richest
detail: dictating a word at a time, blinking to select each letter as
the alphabet was recited to him slowly, over and over again. In the same
way, he was able eventually to compose this extraordinary book.
By turns wistful, mischievous, angry, and witty, Bauby bears witness to
his determination to live as fully in his mind as he had been able to do
in his body. He explains the joy, and deep sadness, of seeing his
children and of hearing his aged father's voice on the phone. In magical
sequences, he imagines traveling to other places and times and of lying
next to the woman he loves. Fed only intravenously, he imagines
preparing and tasting the full flavor of delectable dishes. Again and
again he returns to an "inexhaustible reservoir of sensations," keeping
in touch with himself and the life around him.
Jean-Dominique Bauby died two days after the French publication of The
Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
This book is a lasting testament to his life.
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Hunger of Memory: The education of Richard Rodiguez
By Richard Rodiguez
Book description:
Hunger Of Memory is the story of a Mexican-American Richard
Rodriguez, who begins his schooling in Sacramento, California,
knowing just 50 words of English and concludes his university
studies in the stately quiet of the reading room of the British
Museum.
Here is the poignant journey is a "minority student" who pays the
cost of his social assimilation and academic success with a
painful alienation � from his past, his parents, his culture � and
so describes the high price of "making it" in middle class
America.
Provocative in its positions on affirmative action and bilingual
education, Hunger Of Memory is a powerful political statement, a
profound study of the importance of language... and the moving,
intimate portrait of a boy struggling to become a man.
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Life and times of Michael K
by J. M. Coetzee
Book description:
In South Africa torn by civil war, Michael K sets out to take his ailing
mother back to her rural home. On the way there she dies, leaving him
alone in an archaic world of brutal roving armies. Imprisoned, Michael
is unable to bear confinement and escapes, determined to live with
dignity. This life-affirming novel goes to the center of human
experience � the need for an interior, spiritual life; for some
connections to the world in which we live; and for purity of vision.
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Meeting Sophie: A memoir of adoption
By Nancy McCabe
Book description:
Here is a story of a single professional woman adopting a baby
from China, losing her father to cancer and moving on after being
denied tenure at a conservative Southern college. But it's also a
meditation on the meaning of family: blood family, adoptive family
and even the dysfunctional family-like structure of a college
English department. It begins with McCabe's (After the Flashlight
Man) first moment with her new baby in a Chinese hotel. As she
gradually fills in the details of before and after, the
unlikelihood of this adoption attests to McCabe's near-mystical
desire for a child. A feminist liberal at a church-affiliated
college, McCabe is ill-suited to her new department, whose members
patronize her and hound her to act more like them: "Southern
ladies." This attitude strikingly mirrors her role in her own
family, where she was cast early on as "the dumb one" and a
selfish outcast, despite her good grades growing up in the Midwest
and her adult attempts to help out when her father is ill. The
family myth shows its effect as McCabe doubts her ability to care
for her baby until, seemingly through intuition alone, she
guesses, contrary to the opinions of doctors and adoption
professionals, her new daughter's allergies (to lactose and
antihistamines), which are serendipitously similar to her own. As
a new mother and grieving daughter, McCabe struggles poignantly
and triumphantly to maintain her own identity as she creates her
place within family. Her tale will be familiar and inspiring to
those interested in delving into their own family relations, as
well as to single women considering adoption.
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Finding fish: A memoir
By
Antwone Q. Fisher
Book description:
Thank goodness Antwone Fisher's story has a happy ending �
otherwise, his searing memoir would be nearly unbearable to read. His
father was killed by a gunshot blast shortly before he was born in 1959;
his 17-year-old mother gave him up for foster care. Unfortunately for
Antwone, his foster mother was as successful at browbeating and
demeaning her many wards as she was at lying to the Child Welfare
authorities. His working-class African American neighborhood in
Cleveland became purgatory for a sensitive, intelligent boy who quickly
turned into a withdrawn underperformer at school. In Fisher's
blow-by-blow account of his childhood, his sexual abuse at the hands of
a female neighbor is hardly more horrifying than his foster mother's
relentless cruelty � especially because respectable, churchgoing Mrs.
Pickett justifies it all as due to the boy's wicked faults. Readers will
be relieved when she dumps 15-year-old Antwone back at the Child Welfare
office, even though he will endure homelessness and a scary spell of
criminal employment, before an 11-year stint in the Navy provides him
with a way forward. Grim though his tale is, Fisher displays throughout
it the grit and stubborn integrity that kept him sane. He musters up
some understanding (not forgiveness) for the dreadful Mrs. Pickett, and
his eventual meeting with his burned-out mother is painfully poignant.
He certainly deserves the beautiful wife and cute two-year-old daughter,
cooking pancakes for him in the book's closing and redemptive scene.
Book review:
"An unflinching look at the adverse effects foster care can have on a
child's life, this stunning autobiography rises above the pack of
success fables from survivors of America's inner cities. Born in the
1950s to an underage single mother serving time in prison for murder,
Fisher was placed in the home of a staunch minister and his wife, who
appeared to be a loving couple to the series of foster care workers who
monitored their home in one of Cleveland's working-class neighborhoods.
Writing in a deft mix of elegant prose and forceful dialect, Fisher is
especially adept at dramatizing the tactics of control and intimidation
practiced by his foster mother on the abused children in her care, such
as crushing Fisher's self-esteem by calling him worthless, shaming one
girl after she began her period and making the boys bathe with Clorox.
(Fisher supports his detailed recollections with excerpts from the
actual foster-care records.) An added bonus is the author's vibrant
recreation of several key black neighborhoods in Cleveland during the
golden age of the Black Power movement, before the areas disappeared
under the aegis of urban "renewal." If a major feature of survival
memoirs is their ability to impress readers with the subject's long,
steady climb to redemption and excellence, then this engrossing book is
a classic." |
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Life inside: A memoir
By Mindy Lewis
Book description:
In the tradition of Girl, Interrupted and I
Never Promised You a Rose Garden, Lewis details her often harrowing
experiences as an adolescent trapped in a psychiatric hospital and her
more than 30-year recovery and redemption from having been diagnosed
schizophrenic at age 15. Skipping school, experimenting with drugs and
raging against an overbearing mother were Lewis's rather typical acts of
1960s-style rebellion, yet they earned her 28 months of
institutionalization and intensive regimens of psychotropic medication.
During her hospitalization, Lewis was kept in pajamas (to discourage
escape attempts), which only encouraged sexual experimentation with
other patients. Suicide attempts were rife, too, and several of her
closest friends succeeded. Lewis broke free from this maelstrom at age
18, when she could no longer be held against her will. She attended
college, tried various therapies, joined the Mental Patients Liberation
Project, and developed long-dormant artistic skills. She also found
herself caring for her dying father. Jobs came and went, as did her
depression and anger, yet the will to survive never abandoned her. In
the spirit of the work of R.D. Laing and Thomas Szasz, Lewis's story
calls into question the very definition of mental illness and the system
that makes such determinations. After accessing her medical records with
the diagnosis of chronic schizophrenia she declared, "I do not believe
it. I was never schizophrenic. Not then, not now." Now a visual artist
and writer, Lewis provides a moving, poignant and enraging, yet
redemptive, account of one woman's refusal to accept victimization,
powerfully told in vivid, poetic prose. |
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My thirteenth winter: A memoir
By Samatha Abeel
Book description:
Samantha Abeel tells her own story of living with and overcoming
dyscalculia. She describes in painstaking detail how her life was
affected by her learning disability before and after she was diagnosed,
and the way her peers, her family, and her teachers treated her. In
seventh grade, Samantha suffered anxiety attacks as she struggled to
keep up in her classes, to remember two locker combinations, and to deal
with new teachers. Samantha was eventually placed in Special Education
classes in eighth grade, but she continued to feel anxious about her
future.
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Book of Sarahs
By Catherine McKinley
Book description:
McKinley grew up a biracial adopted child in a politically
progressive family, living in a mostly white community in a
working-class Massachusetts town. After discovering that her birth
mother is a white Jewish woman and her father African-American and
part Native American, McKinley finds that she may even have a
sister, possibly a twin, by these same parents. But McKinley's
first burst of happiness at finding her birth parents is
continually punctured: her mother relates to her mostly through
the young daughter of her current relationship and has serious
emotional problems. (The title refers to the fact that Sarah was
the name her birth mother gave McKinley, as well as McKinley's
older sister and her half-sister. So there are three Sarahs: all
related, all from the same mother.) McKinley frets that her
newfound family will disapprove of her lesbianism. By the end of
her journey, she is left with feeling "post-family": "I had been
born into a loss. People were lost to me." McKinley wants a
clear-cut racial, biological and family identity, but comes to the
difficult conclusion that such a thing does not exist for her or
anyone else if they begin looking hard enough. McKinley writes
beautifully in this debut memoir, never resorting to
sentimentality or easy emotions within this tangled web of
emotional and family secrets.
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Restoring the burnt child
By Willem Kloefkorn
Negotiating the no man�s land between ages nine and thirteen,
this memoir of a small-town boy�s life in 1940s Kansas continues
the story William Kloefkorn began in his much-loved volume This
Death by Drowning. With characteristic humor and in prose as
lyrical as his best poetry, Kloefkorn describes the unsentimental
education he received at the hands of the denizens of Urie�s
Barber Shop and the Rexall Drugstore and at the knees of the true
characters who made up his family. From the "firefly" stunt that
nearly burns down his home to the distant firestorms of World War
II, fire holds an endless range of subtle and surprising lessons
for the boy, whose impressions Kloefkorn conveys with the
immediacy, naivet�, and poignancy of youth�and reconsiders with
the wisdom and distance of age.
By turns charming and resolute, funny and moving, Restoring the
Burnt Child powerfully brings to life the lost, unforgettable
world of a boy, and a poet, coming of age in midcentury middle
America.
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