On suffering

Courtesy of Beliefnet:

"Suffering, pain, sorrow, humiliation, feelings of loneliness, are nothing but the kiss of Jesus, a sign that you have come so close that he can kiss you. Do you understand, brothers, sisters, or whoever you may be? Suffering, pain, humiliation—this is the kiss of Jesus."

--Mother Teresa

Couldn't resist ...

After living under a pop-culture rock for much of my life, I discovered who Mr. T was about two years ago. I have the convert's enthusiasm for all things Mr. T now, so without further ado, I share with you this commercial I saw tonight. (This is not an endorsement of the product).

Happy Thanksgiving!

Among the many things I'm grateful for: family, friends, health, my job, my education, my kitty, a place to live, all five senses working (as in, sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch), and freedom (a big thank-you to all the troops sacrificing this time with their families to serve our country).

Not included in that list, but vital to the holiday is ... food! So I share this:

A gripping escape

I finished Kathryn Stockett's debut novel The Help at 4:30 this morning, refusing to spend another night not knowing how the plot would conclude. I will say that I loved quite a few things about it:

• Getting to glimpse 1960s Mississippi from the perspective of three women (two black maids, one white woman) Every few chapters, the narration switches between the women. While the chapter that changes from one woman to the next is named after the woman speaking, the label was really just a gesture because Stockett did an excellent job of distinguishing the three voices.
• Seeing life in those times (shockingly recent) from an under-reported perspective: the non-white view. To quote one of the main characters in the book: "Everyone knows how we white people feel, the glorified Mammy figure who dedicates her whole life to a white family. Margaret Mitchell covered that. But no one ever asked Mammy how she felt about it." 
• Digging into the complex relationships and social conditioning resulting from the absurd idea of segregation.
• Gaining Stockett's insights to human nature, relationships and life that are surfaced periodically in the thoughts and words of one of the three women. She manages to include them without making the narrative feel contrived -- something few authors who wax philosophical do well, in my view.

My critical opinion of the book is shaped by the following three factors:

• Experience: Given that Stockett drew on aspects of her own life as the foundation of this book, she is able to create a much more compelling situation and cast of characters than someone like myself who never lived in the Deep South during that period or who never even had a maid at home. That being said, the novel was still written by a white author putting herself creatively in two black women's shoes. I have to wonder how someone who had been in that situation would assess the characters and the reality conjured by the book. 
• Doubt: Stockett does an excellent job of incorporating real-life figures such as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. and real-life events such as the Birmingham church bombing, Kennedy's assassination, and the march on D.C. as a means of situating the reader within a familiar context. She also uses some of the characteristic violence of organizations like the KKK to reinforce the high-stakes gamble the characters brave in embarking on their communal project. That being said, I was (relieved but) skeptical when I finished the book that we the readers hadn't seen more of that behavior shatter our characters' worlds.
• Oomph: Finally, I felt the book had progressed at such a steady clip, unfolding with such gripping conflict and suspense, that the ending, while logical, underwhelmed me. I had glimpsed Stockett's genius laid bare on the pages leading up to it, I wondered if she couldn't have left the reader with a more dynamic finish.

Overall, though, I found myself fading from my own world's parameters and inhabiting Miss Skeeter's, Aibileen's and Minny's realities with an increasing eagerness as I worked through the book's 464 pages. Having walked with the women through their struggles and triumphs, I closed the book's cover with a renewed faith in humanity's capacity for nobility and absurdity, and a profound love for three women I had had the honor of getting to know in the previous pages.

A favorite commercial ...

Unfortunately, embedding is disabled but if you're interested in checking it out, you can see it here. You go girls! :)

Humanity between two covers

I've always believed that books choose people, and reading Kaye Gibbons' A Virtuous Woman only convinced me of that further.

I picked the book up back in May at a used book sale benefiting a D.C. library. It was one of two dozen that I carried out in a 11" by 15" cardboard box provided by the volunteers when they saw me struggling with my newly purchased loot.

There was a rawness that resonated with me from the back cover's description: 

 "When Blinking Jack Stokes met Ruby Pitt Woodrow, she was twenty and he was forty. She was the carefully raised daughter of Carolina gentry and he was a skinny tenant farmer who had never owned anything in his life. She was newly widowed after a disastrous marriage to a brutal drifter. He had never asked a woman to do more than help him hitch a mule. They didn't fall in love so much as they simply found each other and held on for dear life."

I didn't reach for the book until last night and finished it this morning. Gibbons allocates alternating chapters to Jack and Ruby's reminiscences of their lives before and with each other, told at various points of time -- and in the case of Ruby, from the grave (something the reader discovers on the first page of the first chapter).

Gibbons' book feels less like a novel and more like time spent chatting on the porch with someone you've known most of your life. Her writing in a consistent Carolina dialect, her attention to detail in constructing a believable world, and the complexity of her characters' emotions in the face of life's heartaches allow them to step off the page fully formed.

The conclusion of the book, though moving and somewhat satisfying, felt rushed and tacked on to the otherwise thoughtful narrative, however. The entrance of an omniscient narrator who had never appeared before the last chapter was jarring and the last few pages felt as if Gibbons ran out of steam in trying to tie up the loose ends. A reliance on an increased amount of internal dialogue also was introduced in the final chapter, adding to the reader's disorientation. Lastly, the book seems to be set in the peak of 1950s life in the South, which includes allusions to racial inequality and prejudice that offends modern sensibilities. (I understand it was written to reflect realistically that time period).

Those weaknesses aside, A Virtuous Woman is worth reading. The themes of struggling with man's quest for immortality and wrestling with society -- both in trying to conform to its demands and in aiming to beat its expectations -- were portrayed with vulnerability that comes from a compassionate author's alertness to human nature and the world around her.

I'm richer for having been picked by this gem of a book.

Blowing the dust off the blog ...

During my blogging hiatus, I put reading on pause, too. Between giving up writing and reading, well, you can imagine I felt like a stranger in my own body. But sometimes, you get so busy living, thinking and observing that you have to step away from what gives you security in Life and just follow your Self's lead.

The tidal flow of expression in my life is something I long ago had to accept. There are times when my thoughts crash upon the shore with a steadiness and reliability in the rhythm that it's hard to imagine that ever changing; but then, just like that, the waters calm and I know I'm in the resting phase when it's time to go out and seek inspiration in the world around me before my next creative phase comes.

Thank you for not giving up on me. Here's to the past and future.