Holiday Gift Ideas for Everyone on Your List

For the reader and literature fan:

People are abuzz over the new Raymond Carver biography written by Carol Sklenicka. Carver is considered the father of the modern short story. His biographer has shed some fascinating light on his writing and on the editor who made him famous. An avid fiction reader would enjoy a collection of Carver stories and this biography. Read all about it in this great interview by writer and IU Journalism professor emeritus Carol Polsgrove and in this NY Times article.

For your favorite feminist:

The New York Times op ed columnist Gail Collin's new book: When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present looks like a fascinating modern history of people and events that happened just before I came of age. Our aunts and mothers and grandmothers fought battles to end sexual discrimination in the workplace, to be able to have their credit cards in their own names, or to be payed equitably with their male counterparts. This book should be must read for all of us. It is on my Christmas wishlist and I am 15th in line to get it from the library. Thanks for the recommend Marsha!

For those who like their narrative in graphic form:

American Widow looked like a compelling memoir of a pregnant woman who kissed her husband good-bye on September 11, 2001, as he left for his first day on the job with Cantor-Fitzgerald, and never saw him again. I ordered it in hardback from Amazon.com without looking at the fine print. The book is beautiful, but surprised me when it turned out to be a graphic novel. Alissa Torres's story is told frame by frame with speech bubbles and handwritten voice over narration. Not my favorite read of the year, but it may have been that I did not appreciate the format. You may have someone on your gift list that does and it is a unique way to tell the sad and tragic tale.

If you want to send a taste of Bloomington, Indiana to someone:

My favorite local book this year was Susan Brackney's lovely little story of beekeeping which I reviewed a bit earlier this year. She got a mention on an Oprah website as well. How about sending this fine book to friends along with some Southern Indiana honey?

And of course there's this little gem which includes many of my favorite writers in Bloomington. Get it on Amazon.com.

For the tween girl on your list:

Before you let your tween break open the covers of the latest vampire romance, give her this great story of Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh. Harriet loves to spy and makes honest observations about her friends in her writer's notebook. She wants to be a writer when she grows up. Harriet inspired me to start a journal at age 11. She will always be a very important character to me.

Add a beautiful pen and a nice handmade journal to the gift. Tell her that in the olden days, when we wrote our secrets and thoughts, they were kept private and not broadcast over the internetz for everyone to read and talk about.

For the transformational leader on your list:

Women Writing for (a) Change is a grassroots movement that uses writing

as a tool to craft a more conscious life. Started by feminist, leader, and former English teacher

Mary Pierce Brosmer, the school has spun off 8 affiliate schools, dozens of teachers, and

programs that give voice to young women and girls, men, incarcerated women, and anyone who

has lost their voice. I'm a believer. When you give this book to anyone include a candle

and an invitation to a writing sampler class like this one.

A delightful choice for your mother or great aunt:

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer is doing the go around at book groups this year. This clever piece of historical fiction and epistolary novel will be beloved by your grandmother, so if you need to buy her a gift look no further. The history of the Channel Islands during WWII is not very well known so the setting and place and time is fascinating to learn about. It's set in the past where we accomplished everything by writing letters, and I know grandmothers love to read and write letters and talk about the era before we were all facebooking and texting and communicating via the internet. It is also just a clever, albeit a tad predictable, tale of a woman who finds her true community in this odd little place in history.

A Copy of this in Everyone's Stocking:

On January 20th, 2009 Elizabeth Alexander made history by being the 4th person to write and read a poem in honor of a presidential inauguration. I fear that given the way people rushed off after President Obama's oath and inaugural speech many did not hear this woman's very beautiful tribute to a very important day in history. Praise Song for the Day is available as a chapbook from Graywolf press. It would make a nice addition to a stocking this holiday. I have read and re-read and written about this lovely poem. I am putting it on my list as well.



Esmerelda is going to take a few days off to get ready for the holidays and read some more. She will post again about great reads after January 1st. May your holidays be filled with poetry and good good stories.

Driving with Dead People by Monica Holloway

As many of you know I like cemeteries and funeral homes and obituaries. I am not all that morbid, I have simply discovered that the things that represent the end of life often have the most powerful stories contained within them.

When I picked up this book with a cursory glance at the back cover, it seemed to be about a young woman's coming of age as she worked at a small town mortuary and drove a hearse. About three quarters of the way through the book, while very compelling, I realized that this was more about a young woman's survival at the hands of abusive and neglectful parents. Although there was a thin thread running throughout this memoir about her friendship with the family who owned the mortuary and how she spent weekends driving a hearse to pick up bodies, the book really did not focus on that at all. It seemed a little like a bait and switch. What drew me to the book was not what kept me reading.

The beauty of this novel was that as more of Monica's life unfolded and the more you learned about her childhood of horrors, the more you realize on how many levels the family was and is Driving with Dead People. You realize that even though the thread of her job and the antics at a mortuary are only small stories in her memoir, they represent the happiest times of her life.

The writing is very compelling. It took me a few days to get into it, but overall, it reads very quickly and you will really root for the narrator and her sister. They are the true survivors and have managed to make it through the storm.

This book will remind readers of the Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. Their style and storytelling abilities are quite similar.

A fine first novel

Thanks to the recommendation of a friend and fellow reader (thanks M.) , I decided to check out The Outlander by Gil Adamson. Ms. Adamson is a poet by trade, so I figured that her prose would be magical. I find most poets know how to string words of prose together better than any writer. They have a real sense of rhythm and timing and cadence.

A widow is on the run from some menacing brothers after committing a crime. She manages to elude them and have some great adventures and find peace and contentment in a mining camp. She falls in love, makes great friends, and contemplates her sad childhood and even sadder marriage.

M summed my feelings for the book best when she said, "you just feel as though you want to keep following her on her adventure." You want to know what happens next. How will the widow escape? Will her true love find her? What lies in wait for her and the dwarf (yes, there is even a dwarf) as they head further west into the Yukon?

This is a perfect escapist read. A page turner and adventure about a strong woman and a very different time. Oh, and Ms Adamson's prose is like poetry. Every page feels perfectly narrated and perfectly told.

I don't read much fiction anymore, but I am very glad I took the time out for this one. It will stay with me for a long long time.

Our book has arrived!

I raced to the Poplar Grove school house last Sunday to be one of the first people to see the book that we have put together celebrating 5 years of Women Writing for (a) Change in Bloomington. Women with Wings features many women from the Bloomington School and from the circles we hold at the Monroe County Corrections Center for incarcerated women.

One of the exciting things for me was how much a labor of our community the book became. In addition to all the contributions by all the fabulous writers and getting the opportunity to work with Lauren (my co-editor) and Beth (the owner of the school who gave gracious blessings to our project), our cover designer and cover artist were both writers from the community. Thanks to Kim Evans and Yvonne Wittmann! Rebekah, Wednesday night writer, helped us with the books and accounting. The publishers, Paul and Dee Burt from Pen and Publish, helped us bring this book to reality. The day it was set to arrive from the printers fellow writers Kim and Greta tag teamed staying at the schoolhouse to make sure UPS didn't send it back to the warehouse. David and Joan Foor White from New Leaf; New Life very generously donated money so that each women from the corrections center who had a piece in the book could have one of her own . Deb Morrow, also from New Leaf; New Life, helped me track down all the women from the jail so that I could write them and thank them for their contribution and send them the book. Rachael, of Rachel's cafe, is catering a fabulous party for us in celebration of our 5th anniversary. Beth's husband Dan is going to play piano for us at the party. Friends are stepping forward to buy books. The list of support in this town is endless.

I feel so proud to be part of such an amazing community where writing and arts are part of everyone's life and where people care for each other and hold each other up to celebrate. Thanks Bloomington. Thanks Women Writing for (a) Change. Happy 5th Birthday to the Bloomington School. I look forward to many more years of writing in community with some of the finest women and men I know.

Please drop me a line if you would like to purchase a book. They are $15 plus tax and any money we make over and above the cost of the book will help us pay for scholarships for girls and women.

Write me at: amy@womenwritingbloomington.com

A three dog life by Abigail Thomas

I was introduced to Abigail Thomas when doing research for a memoir writing class I led earlier this semester. She has written several small volumes (less than 200 pages) of memoir and a book about writing memoir.

She calls herself a memoirist.

Ms Thomas has an amazing ability to weave a coherent story out of beautiful fragments or short essays that loosely weave everything together. In this case, Thomas's husband Rich is in a horrible accident that leaves him permanently brain damaged. She spends the next 5 years reflecting on this and adjusting to her new, and she hates to admit it, lovely life which involves buying and moving into a house in upstate New York so she can be close to him in his nursing home, and keeping company with 3 dogs.

This is the type of book that you wish you had written. Ms Thomas is simply very adept at observations about life and making writing seem absolutely effortless. Even as she is a memoirist, you never get the impression that she is telling all or that she is narcissistic. In fact, upon reading some of these lines you become so wrapped up in her prose, that you feel certain she is writing about you.

Here is an excerpt from one essay that is written in second person. It was one of the many enjoyable moments in the book:

After 5 or 6 minutes you will tire and stand back from your work.

A tiny patch has been thinned. Perhaps you will now make coffee

and bring the cup outside. If all goes well, a perfect pink peony bush

will be revealed by lunchtime. There will be slim yellow irises too,

and the big throaty purple ones that remind you, alas, of an old man's

scrotum, but you will weed there too. By early afternoon the sun may

burn through what has been a heavy mist, and should you not be ready

to be dazzled, do not fret. It is time for a nap anyway. Inside you may

notice that what you thought was dust is instead a layer of golden pollen

blowing through the open windows. If only life were more like this, you

will think, as you and the dogs traipse up to bed, and then you realize

with a start that this is life.

She has a gift of storytelling and honesty that will take your breath away. Curl up with a cup of tea on a rainy Sunday with this one.

Hiding in the Spotlight by Greg Dawson

Hiding in the Spotlight has a local connection to Bloomington. The author, Greg Dawson, grew up in Bloomington and the subject of this book, his mother Zhanna Arshanskaya Dawson, was a music professor at the Jacobs School of Music.

As an adult, Greg was astounded to discover his mother was a Holocaust survivor, a secret she kept his whole life simply because she did not wish to talk about it. "Why would you tell your children such horrible things?"

Zhanna and her sister Frina were musical prodigies and managed to escape the fate of their Ukrainian Jewish countrymen by changing their identities and playing the piano for their would be executioners.

Her tale of war, survival and eventually arrival in America had me crying throughout the last dozen chapters. Her tale is one of happiness in light of so much horror and sadness and the written story of this tale was heart wrenching. I could not put it down. Mr. Dawson honors his mother and her family through this investigative memoir.

Mr Dawson interviewed some of the key players in their story. He and his family traveled to the Ukraine to see his mother's town and his grandparents gravesite, Drobitsky Yar, which is now marked with the names of all who perished there. In a chilling post script, he describes seeing his mother's and his aunt's names on that memorial. All believed they had perished with their family.

Mr. Dawson is a columnist for the Orlando Sentinel and Zhanna Dawson is alive and well in Atlanta. This is a beautful story of survival.

All Over but the Shoutin' by Rick Bragg

Every so often I read a book that reminds me of why I want to write. Pulitzer Prize winning news writer, Rick Bragg, wrote a memoir about growing up poor in the South, and how he escaped poverty by writing and storytelling and pure dumb luck. All Over but the Shoutin’ is Bragg’s tribute to his mother and his southern roots and his story of 20 years of writing for different papers.

Part I of the memoir is the story of his youth in Piedmont, Alabama and the very best of the writing. He tells of his father’s abuse and drinking and repeated abandonment; his mother’s hard work and how she always ate last to make sure her growing sons had plenty of meat. Of her picking cotton for hours and hours just to earn a few pennies. Of going hungry and being given corn by neighbors on the street—who were black—in an era when most black neighbors did not have enough to eat. His prose is so rich and so beautiful, I am afraid I cannot do it justice. It felt southern and very full of the bittersweet marrow of life, but ringed in hope and love and also, this cannot be said enough, rooted in exceptionally strong and vibrant storytelling.

Part II continues the tradition as Mr. Bragg leaves his home to follow his journalism career. He eschews love and marriage and family of his own to chase the story for a series of better and better papers until finally he reaches the holy grail of newspaper journalism: the New York Times. In each place he writes stories about the worst of our society, the homeless, the victims. He spends time in Haiti and is witness to the horrors of a society gone mad with cruelty and killing. Each tale he tells in this section is the story behind the story, what he saw and what it taught him or how it helped propel him forward and what he gave up to pursue his life.

As he tells these tales he remembers his mother and he makes a promise to himself about her, and he also works very hard to overcome his prejudice about who he is and whether he fits in. As his career progresses he finds he does not fit in anywhere. He is embarrassed to be at home because people don’t know him or understand what he is doing, but he also does not quite belong in the exalted corridors of the NYT with all the “fancy people.” It is a familiar theme expertly rendered.

The shortest part, the end, tied it all together. He is able to fulfill his promise to his mother (even as he doubts his motivation for fulfilling the promise). He wins a coveted Pulitzer Prize, and in a three Kleenex chapter takes his mother to the awards ceremony in Manhattan where she rides in her first elevator and gets her first room service.

Rick Bragg spoke in my town last night, I couldn’t go, but I understand he is an even better storyteller in person that he is in print. That would have been quite a show. He has several other memoirs and books in print, and I am not sure if I could read them. I can’t imagine he could top this one.