My Father Always Said, Fittings, and The Ashes of August

I related to each of these memoirs in different ways. Because I'm Jewish, the one that affected me most was "My Father Always Said." I've known holocaust survivors and children of survivors, so I read this memoir as another testimony to the horror of what happened then. On a more personal level, my father died when I was very young. I experienced the ritual of going to visit his grave, and pay respect to his memory,until my mom died. She always insisted that I find a stone and place it on top of his tombstone. I never knew why. I just did what my mom told me to do. I was moved by Schwartz's interpretation of the stones placed atop tombstones in a Jewish cemetery. It made me want to go to visit my parents graves, and it made me think about all those who perished in the holocaust -- and the way those who survived embraced life.

My uncle died of Alzheimer's disease. The last time I saw him, he thought I was my mother, his sister, so "Fittings," also personally affected me. I liked the way the author made something so tragic more accessible by using humor.

"The Ashes of August" brought back to mind a few trips west I've had -- the heat, the dryness, the awesome beauty, the people, as rugged as the landscape and as fragile.

"Independence Day..."

I've always been so focussed on the racism in this piece that I never noticed that the mom in the piece wasn't acting very momlike ...Maybe all the emphasis on the narrator's age, only 12 years old, was also meant to make us think about how maturity is not just measured in years. The mom may have been older, but maybe she wasn't acting so maturely... Anyway, Jillian's post made me think about that and the memoir in a slightly different way than I have in the past.

Someone else in class ... can't remember who it was... commented on how surprised she was that anyone would move to Alaska, a place she thought of as so "boring" in comparison to California. That struck me... because in the piece, it turns out Alaska isn't much different from California. The family lived in a dangerous neighborhood, riddled with violence... but if a reader doesn't know about that neighborhood, then I suppose she wouldn't understand why anyone would want to get away from it.

Another thing I thought about this time I read this memoir was the significance of the title: "Independence Day ...." The narrator is a twelve year old and twelve year olds are always struggling to assert their autonomy, their independence. They think of themselves as "grown up." This is a kind of "coming of age story," in that the narrator is forced to grow up because of the racism she confronts.

"Teacher Training"

I never thought about how a teacher's training begins the moment one steps into a classroom for the first time. I thought about the "lessons" I've learned from my teachers over the years. Miss Moynihan, my Latin teacher. She made her students stand to recite their conjugations and declensions. If someone made a mistake, they couldn't sit down. I remember some days by the end of the period, everyone -- but Miss Moynihan -- was standing. I learned to push myself in Miss Moynihan's class -- and I learned I could master anything I set my mind on mastering. I learned teachers can push students ... maybe should push students ... set the bar high...Miss Moynihan expected greatness from her students...I suppose some students hated Miss Moynihan and were "crushed" by the rigor of her classroom, but hers was a classroom where I flourished. Of course, I'm not Miss Moynihan, and it's not my style to make students stand to recite, but I do try to have high expectations for my students -- to push them to achieve greatness, the way Miss Moynihan pushed me.

The Things They Carried

The first time I read this book was shortly after it was published and I was still recovering from what had happened during the Viet Nam war. I was so sure our country would never get embroiled in another war like that one, but when the fatalities and atrocities of the Iraq war started to mount -- and the revelations about how our government had lied to us and the world to justify pushing us into the war -- I was reminded of this book -- and I reread it, and have reread it again and again over the last few years. I think of the vets who've been in my classes recently and their stories of the things they've carried home from the Iraq war. And I know Tim O'Brien told the "truth" in this book, and I want to tell him that he succeeded: he did make the dead come alive through his writing. And I won't forget them.

Blogging

Before this semester, I've never had my own blog, but for the past couple of years, I've been reading the blogs of friends of mine who are Peace Corps volunteers in South Africa, and also the blog of a friend volunteering on a kibbutz in Israel where he's been learning how to build self-sustaining ecosystems.

I couldn't believe how easy it was to set up a blog, but I must confess I'm a little ashamed of how plain my blog looks. I'll have to go in a edit the layout, so my blog looks a little jazzier.

I have published several memoirs, and I'm always working on writing memoirs, and reading published memoirs. This sumer I read about 15 memoirs. The best one, The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls, -- and the one I recommend to everyone -- was recommended to me my a former English 192 student of mine.

I look forward to reading and writing memoirs with you this semester.