I started and finished A Sense of Direction in one evening; I couldn't really stop thinking about it, so I couldn't put it down. I found it...
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Sherman Alexie seldom disappoints, and I am glad I stumbled on this, one of his more fastasy-tinged and, ultimately, more hopeful books. Alexie takes several genres: the wounded, troubled, soft-hearted streetwise juvenile narrative, the magical time-travel near-death reverie, the Rashomon different-perspective shifting focus, the American Indian Tales of Shame manifesto - and somehow works them into a nearly seamless set of surprises including an unusually happy ending to an impossible and yet credible tale. No one is all-villain or all hero in this disturbing yet encouraging novel, easy to read in an afternoon, with ideas that will keep you thinking long after the final page.
This was one of my favorite books as a child, and now I'm in my fifties and it still holds up. ELizabeth Ann, an orphan at what is around the turn of the 20th century, is suddenly taken from her portected life in an unidentified Midwestern city to live with relatives on a Vermont farm. She has been treated as a hothouse flower by her previous guardian, Aunt Frances, and is fearful of what will await her on the Putney farm, where perhaps they exploit children. Instead, she finds not only love and acceptance, but a sort of redeeming self-reliance. I loved this book partly because it dealt adeptly and without didacticism with the difficult parts of social life, including alcoholism, parental illness and death, cultural differences between rural and urban children, and the balance between mothering and smothering, as we might call it now. We make the transition along with this frightened child as her Cousin Ann moves almost imperceptibly from being an intimidating authoritative presence to serving as a model of practical self-reliance. The redemptive value of a child who overcomes hardship and learns her own strength in the country is a common theme in 20th century children's literature. Dorothy Canfield (who re-published this book for a later generation as Dorothy Canfield Fisher) pokes gentle fun at an overprotective approach to child-rearing, and eventually invites the children following Elizabeth Ann's transition to a strong farm girl named Betsy to share her compassion and appreciation for the foibles of all these adults.
A stunningly beautiful book of, and about, the hybrid Western/Japanese watercolors of a UC Berkeley art professor during a special study trip to Yosemite. historically as well as artistically important with some sad notes; Obata, like other "persons of Japanese ancestry", was interned at one of the infamous relocation camps during the Second World War, and the correspondence includes his letters from the desert camp where he was a civilian prisoner.
This is among Marge Piercy's most ambitious novels,and one of her strongest. It is bitingly political without resorting to polemics; it is a highly readable and engaging story about despair, power, love, and violence of many types. The protagonist is a woman striped of legitimacy in society: a Mexican-American living in New York City who has been labeled as mentally ill. She has lost her much-loved daughter to the child protection system and her lover, the tender blind pickpocket, to the penal system in which he has died. And her version of the truth abnout the worldin which she lives, where her sister is being abused by a pimp, is discounted by all -after all, she is a mental patient and a convicted "child abuser."
Somehow, she is contacted by a utopian agrarian non-hierarchical society in the next century who treat her far better than anyone has or will treated her in her everyday life. These people are themselves in danger from invasion from a parallel-universe dystopian group. Their struggle to survive mirrors Connie's more personal battles,and she becomes a heroic figure while fighting for her own dignity in a system that is designed to strip her of exactly that.
Woman on the Edge of Time is a moving tale with the ring of authenticity about psychiatric power and its devastating effects of the poor and marginalized, alongside its science-fiction elements. This book was written decades ago, and its environmental and human rights messages ring at least as true today. Highly recommended.
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"Voices from the Farm" is a worthwhile patchwork of exactly what the title claims: tales told by individuals who lived together in southern Tennessee on the most ambitious and long-lasting countercultural spiritual community in recent history in the US. WE hear from everyone from the founding spiritual teacher, Stephen Gaskin, on such entertaining topics as "Our FBI Man" and how the community eventually built a trusting relationship even with their local spook, to then-teenagers doing their best to make sense of an alternative structure that had its own rules and idiosyncracies, to hilarious descriptions of the "ripe, borderline poopy aroma" of the dryers at the community laundromat built with recycled military discards, and the truth-telling "sort out" sessions between two diaper-washing residents that might make everyone have to wait even longer to deal with their own smelly laundry.
We hear little from the Farm midwives, who are featured prominently in the Farm's ongoing best-selling, and most influential, title, "Spiritual Midwifery>" Voices include EMT and gate crew members, visitors who came to gain "relativity" on their own (non-Farm) home lives, and a description of the closed-circuit-broadcast event that was probably the deciding factor in the Farm's be-collectivization when the head of the farming crew (a founding member of the community) challenged Stephen's authority during Sunday services; enough poverty was enough, and there it was in Sunday meeting for all to see.
Insightful, entertaining, and cautionary all at once, this small volume is well worth reading.
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Flight: A Novel by Sherman Alexie
yipslsquirrel, July 7, 2011
Sherman Alexie seldom disappoints, and I am glad I stumbled on this, one of his more fastasy-tinged and, ultimately, more hopeful books. Alexie takes several genres: the wounded, troubled, soft-hearted streetwise juvenile narrative, the magical time-travel near-death reverie, the Rashomon different-perspective shifting focus, the American Indian Tales of Shame manifesto - and somehow works them into a nearly seamless set of surprises including an unusually happy ending to an impossible and yet credible tale. No one is all-villain or all hero in this disturbing yet encouraging novel, easy to read in an afternoon, with ideas that will keep you thinking long after the final page.yipslsquirrel, June 20, 2011
This was one of my favorite books as a child, and now I'm in my fifties and it still holds up. ELizabeth Ann, an orphan at what is around the turn of the 20th century, is suddenly taken from her portected life in an unidentified Midwestern city to live with relatives on a Vermont farm. She has been treated as a hothouse flower by her previous guardian, Aunt Frances, and is fearful of what will await her on the Putney farm, where perhaps they exploit children. Instead, she finds not only love and acceptance, but a sort of redeeming self-reliance. I loved this book partly because it dealt adeptly and without didacticism with the difficult parts of social life, including alcoholism, parental illness and death, cultural differences between rural and urban children, and the balance between mothering and smothering, as we might call it now. We make the transition along with this frightened child as her Cousin Ann moves almost imperceptibly from being an intimidating authoritative presence to serving as a model of practical self-reliance. The redemptive value of a child who overcomes hardship and learns her own strength in the country is a common theme in 20th century children's literature. Dorothy Canfield (who re-published this book for a later generation as Dorothy Canfield Fisher) pokes gentle fun at an overprotective approach to child-rearing, and eventually invites the children following Elizabeth Ann's transition to a strong farm girl named Betsy to share her compassion and appreciation for the foibles of all these adults.Obata's Yosemite: The Art and Letters of Chiura Obata from His Trip to the High Sierra in 1927 by Chiura Obata
yipslsquirrel, January 16, 2011
A stunningly beautiful book of, and about, the hybrid Western/Japanese watercolors of a UC Berkeley art professor during a special study trip to Yosemite. historically as well as artistically important with some sad notes; Obata, like other "persons of Japanese ancestry", was interned at one of the infamous relocation camps during the Second World War, and the correspondence includes his letters from the desert camp where he was a civilian prisoner.Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy
yipslsquirrel, April 13, 2008
This is among Marge Piercy's most ambitious novels,and one of her strongest. It is bitingly political without resorting to polemics; it is a highly readable and engaging story about despair, power, love, and violence of many types. The protagonist is a woman striped of legitimacy in society: a Mexican-American living in New York City who has been labeled as mentally ill. She has lost her much-loved daughter to the child protection system and her lover, the tender blind pickpocket, to the penal system in which he has died. And her version of the truth abnout the worldin which she lives, where her sister is being abused by a pimp, is discounted by all -after all, she is a mental patient and a convicted "child abuser."Somehow, she is contacted by a utopian agrarian non-hierarchical society in the next century who treat her far better than anyone has or will treated her in her everyday life. These people are themselves in danger from invasion from a parallel-universe dystopian group. Their struggle to survive mirrors Connie's more personal battles,and she becomes a heroic figure while fighting for her own dignity in a system that is designed to strip her of exactly that.
Woman on the Edge of Time is a moving tale with the ring of authenticity about psychiatric power and its devastating effects of the poor and marginalized, alongside its science-fiction elements. This book was written decades ago, and its environmental and human rights messages ring at least as true today. Highly recommended.
(1 of 1 readers found this comment helpful)
Voices from the Farm: Adventures in Community Living by Rupert Fike
yipslsquirrel, April 7, 2008
"Voices from the Farm" is a worthwhile patchwork of exactly what the title claims: tales told by individuals who lived together in southern Tennessee on the most ambitious and long-lasting countercultural spiritual community in recent history in the US. WE hear from everyone from the founding spiritual teacher, Stephen Gaskin, on such entertaining topics as "Our FBI Man" and how the community eventually built a trusting relationship even with their local spook, to then-teenagers doing their best to make sense of an alternative structure that had its own rules and idiosyncracies, to hilarious descriptions of the "ripe, borderline poopy aroma" of the dryers at the community laundromat built with recycled military discards, and the truth-telling "sort out" sessions between two diaper-washing residents that might make everyone have to wait even longer to deal with their own smelly laundry.We hear little from the Farm midwives, who are featured prominently in the Farm's ongoing best-selling, and most influential, title, "Spiritual Midwifery>" Voices include EMT and gate crew members, visitors who came to gain "relativity" on their own (non-Farm) home lives, and a description of the closed-circuit-broadcast event that was probably the deciding factor in the Farm's be-collectivization when the head of the farming crew (a founding member of the community) challenged Stephen's authority during Sunday services; enough poverty was enough, and there it was in Sunday meeting for all to see.
Insightful, entertaining, and cautionary all at once, this small volume is well worth reading.
(1 of 1 readers found this comment helpful)
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