Hanna's Daughters: A Mother's (Lack of) Voice

This week's book was Hanna's Daughters. The most interesting thing about this one was not the plot; it focused on three Swedish women, and to be honest, at times the characters were kind of flat and the plot trudged along.

What interested me, though, was what the book seemed to be saying about mother-daughter relationships. By the time you were 2/3rds of the way through the book, you realized that all of the plot, all of the descriptions of Hanna and her daughter Johanna came from Anna, Johanna's daughter. You see Anna involved in writing the very text you've already read, and you come to realize that she is an unreliable narrator; nothing that you've already read had came from the women it directly involved. At the time it's written, Hanna has passed away and Johanna is suffering from either Alzheimer's or something similar, and has no way to communicate. Both have lost their voices and are only capable of speaking of their histories through their relative.

This implies that Anna has inherited her mother and grandmother's voice. There are pieces of the text that only either woman would know, tied together with pieces that clearly could be family legend. How Hanna felt being raped would be a perfect example of the first (we learn that Johanna didn't realize this piece of her mother's history until she was an adult), and the fact that Hanna could only cry from joy for much of her life seems like a legend.

Yet how accurate can a daughter or granddaughter's interpretation be? We are so tied in by our own definitions of our relatives and the roles they have played regarding us. Anna remains bitter about her mother's acceptance of her father's treatment;given this, how can she provide a clear view? Her grandmother, she admits, she hardly knew and didn't particularly like, and her portion of the novel seems based on letters and those family legends.

What, then, is Frederickkson trying to say? The title defines the younger generations by their relation to the older, but the youngest is the only one with a voice. Do we, as a society, as daughters and sons, define how our parents and grandparents are remembered? Are we rewriting their lives simply because we outlive them? And by becoming parents, do we lose our own voices to those of the later generations?

The book ends after Johanna and her husband die, and when Anna finishes her book about her family. Only then, is she allowed to leave the bonds they had wrapped around her behind, and move on. Yet we see scenes of her with her daughters, suggesting that the cycle is continuing. Suggesting, in fact, that a new series is beginning, one that could leave her voiceless, defined by her daughters and granddaughters.

Seeing a Whole New World

I've always had a fascination with travel. If you ask me what I'd do if I won the lotto, my response is "travel for six months to a year. And then save money for later travel. and then buy a house." I hear about exotic places and I think, "I want to go there. I want to see that, experience that." I blame my childhood.

See, when I was little, we traveled a fair amount. My dad was in the air force, so we could fly really cheaply and we were stationed abroad for a couple of years. I still remember wondering around Japan, going into alleys full of shops. (And you will pry my kimono and slippers from my cold dead hands. I don't care if all that fits now is my right arm.) We hit several countries, all of which have moments that stand out for me. The bird sanctuary we went to, the giant Toys R Us (although they didn't really have different toys, just *more* of them). Even when we were in the States, we hit a lot of places. I have memories of wearing my poor dress, known to me as my spill dress, which I could never wear without some disaster happening. It had pink sparkly balloons and a teddy bear on it. We were on our way to Yosemite the first time I wore it; we'd stopped somewhere and I'd left McDonald's orange juice in the car. When I got back in and picked up the cup, the oj had soaked through the cup, and the whole thing dumped on me. I remember watching Ol' Faithful, and making fun of the smell. We went camping and skiing and biking, and just explored.

Eventually, we wound up in a small town in the south. Many there (and many of those I graduated with) stayed local and mostly vacationed in Florida. Whereas my mom has never been to Florida, and I only went for the first time because my dad wanted to go to a fly in. Instead, we vacationed in Seattle or San Francisco or Colorado or, later, in New York. In high school, I went abroad again, hitting four countries with my girls choir.

So when I read a book like The Historian, while I feel like I should focus on the plot, instead I focus on the descriptions. Kostova describes Budapest, and I try to sync that with my memories (one of the high school choir trips) and make plans to go back. The plot has the main characters bouncing around Europe, going into Soviet territory, all while going through horrible things and living in fear. Yet... all I can think is, "I want to SEE that." In all aspects, it's a good book. The plot is intriguing (though the ending is rather abrupt), the characters are fleshed out enough, and much happens. But I would mainly read it again for travel ideas.

Stressfully Paranoid

So despite the fact that I finished this week's book on Sunday, and mentioned it in last week's post, I never actually talked about it (although that is where the chaos part of last week's title came from). And Falling Under is one of those books that taps into my neuroses in a way that makes me feel normal.

See, when I hit a certain level of stress, I get anxious. Like insanely so. It's somewhat of a vicious cycle; the more stressed I get, the more I freak out about things that have very little likelihood of happening. The worst was last summer. We launched a major project in May. The week before it launched, I worked 70-80 hours, and was so incoherently exhausted it routinely took me several minutes to answer basic questions. All coworkers not so involved in the project avoided those of us who were, and I've been told we were particularly mean. I honestly barely remember that week, which was not surprising since I'd worked 17 straight days and god knows how many hours. After launch, we went to a happy hour with the consultants who worked with us on it, and I'm pretty sure I misunderstood half of what everyone said, because I didn't have the capacity to understand context or make logical connections. (Particularly awesome, since I hadn't met a lot of the team before in person. Yay for good first impressions!)

What was worse was that the launch wasn't really the end of the project; in many ways, it was the beginning for us. My coworker took a much-needed week off a couple of weeks later, and the work load plus the stress led to me having one of the most random breakdowns of my life, in which I made it home (at like 9) before I started crying, but then just couldn't stop. It's not like one of those sessions when you are thinking sad things, so you keep crying. I was sitting there, deciding what to make for dinner, with tears streaming down my face.

Then we had several other mini-launches that lasted the rest of the summer. My coworker E and I (two of the people most involved in the launches) both had physical effects from the stress levels that for me lasted until I went on a 10-day, out-of-the-country vacation in August. (This is also a warning for all of you. Stress is bad. You should try and work somewhere that will prevent stress levels that mean three days into a week off, you're getting random bursts of adrenaline flooding through you. That's no fun and makes you cranky for no good reason.)

Before my August vacation, I freaked out. First I was convinced that I was going to forget something. then I was convinced that something horrible would happen to my cat. Then I was convinced that I was going to die of an embolism on the plane, or that the plane would crash, or that something would happen to one of my family members while I was gone and no one would be able to reach me. Walking to the metro to go to the airport, I checked for my passport, my sunglasses, my wallet, my passport again, my sunglasses again, my wallet again, my chapstick, my umbrella, cycling through until I got to the train.

And my paranoia is not only tied to things like planning trips. When I'm that stressed, I lie in bed, thinking about how the floor of my bedroom is slanted and wondering if that part of the house could just fall off, and if so, should I move the stuff I love into a different room, and would my cat know in time to get out. I avoid grates on sidewalks, because what if they broke? I worry about tripping and falling onto the metro tracks, about a light pole falling and hitting me, a gas leak, my couch being too close to the radiator and catching on fire. I worry about others, too, frequently focusing on my cat, because I am responsible for her, but also family members, friends, and people just around me. "What if that person fell right now?" I wonder, and think about how quickly I'd be able to call 911, and if there is someone else around who looks like they might be better than me in an emergency.

Which leads me back to the book. The main character in Falling Under has some major psychological issues mostly stemming from a traumatic childhood. On a normal day, she is even more paranoid than I am on my worst. She too avoids grates, but she also is so paralyzed by fear that she can barely drive, barely cross the street, barely leave her apartment. Since the book is narrated from her viewpoint, though, such fears start to seem not necessarily ordinary, but understandable. I liked the narrator. I'd want to be friends with her. It kind of reminded me of how I felt reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. We all have instincts that lead us to look for patterns, to think that something beyond our control is a sign, just like we all worry about irrational things from time to time. But the beauty of books is that we can see these impulses from another angle, and understand another person's viewpoint. And maybe feel a little more normal.

And for myself? I think I'll go do some yoga and take a bath and just not worry about anything for a while.

Living, Literature, and Chaos

Between Friday night and Sunday night, I finished both my book for last week, Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi, and this week's, Falling Under by Danielle Younge-Ullman. Because I am just that awesome.

It was a compacted week, not because I didn't plan ahead, but because I'm not enjoying the book I was reading, Illusion by Paula Volksy, despite the ringing endorsement by Anne McCaffrey. It's a little too much of a political commentary buried under fantasy; I like some of that and think playing out possible scenarios in a fantasy world can be fascinating, but I feel like I'm being hit on the head with it. Plus I don't like any of the characters, and it's over 600 pages. I may or may not finish.

But Reading Lolita in Tehran... it was everything that I liked about being an English major. It had social commentary, literary analysis, the examination of power structures, all wrapped up in a beautifully written text. I remember having read an article on how liberal Iran had been. It's hard to imagine, both from the viewpoint of our current political climate, in which Iran is constantly posturing against the West and working toward gaining more power through developing a nuclear weapon, and from the humanistic standpoint of putting myself in the place of those who lived through the transition. How does one go from living in an atmosphere where you are free to think, to opine, to teach what you want, say want you want, write what you want, to one in which merely having been associated with the wrong person at any point in your life means that you can be arrested, or blacklisted, or killed?

One of Nafisi's points was that by fighting so hard to control women, the Iranian regime was in fact admitting that those women had the power to destroy the regime: "Does she realize how dangerous she can be when her every stray gesture is a disturbance to public safety? Does she think how vulnerable the Revolutionary Guards are who for over eighteen years have patrolled the streets of Tehran  and have had to endure young women like herself  and those of other generations, walking, talking, showing a strand of hair just to remind them that they have not converted?" (pg 27)

The fact that many of these battles, these fights for power, occur over control of the female body shows how powerful that body can be, something that despite having written my thesis on it, I still feel needs more exploration. Possibly because I don't quite understand it in this day and age. I mean, as far as ensuring the continuation of the species, having more women than men is important, since one man can. But we are no longer threatened. In fact there are too many of us. Why are women who can dress and think and act however they want so terrifying?

The women in Iran are defined by the state, a state that refuses to see them as individuals with hopes and dreams. Nafisi, in her discussion of Lolita, discusses how Humbert uses Lolita as a prop, a fantasy for him, but never seems to see her as an actual living, thinking human being. While Nafisi refuses to simplify the complicated power structure in Iran by strictly comparing the government to Humbert, she does point the reader to the similarities, as the women struggle to define themselves within a system that has taken away their voices.

But beyond that, the book shows the power of literature. The Iranian population is so tightly controlled; the government censors movies, book, art. But the people in this book escape that. They explore what it means to empathize, how to define morality, how to connect with those who seem to have nothing in common with you. Literature becomes the way that the characters can escape the strict confines of their current life. A weekly book discussion becomes far more than it may seem; it is in fact a rebellion.

Writing, and Living, Bird by Bird

I've always wanted to be a writer. Well, that's not true. There was an odd period when we were in the Philippines when I was planning on being a dishwasher. (No, I don't remember what I liked about it, or why I fixated on dishwashing. But despite the fact that I now hate washing dishes, some days it still seems like a valid option.)

But then in second grade, my teacher not only gave me special projects (I spent several days once painting a diorama of Amelia Bedelia. It was awesome.), but gave us writing assignments and then, most importantly, told me I was good at it. I'm not surprised. I found my report cards from elementary school, and the military teachers? Kind of in love with me. Reading some of them, I felt like they were close to stealing me away and raising me as their own. Luckily, we were on a military base and that doesn't fly there.

I've always loved being good at stuff. So much so that I have to force myself to do things which I don't have a natural talent for (my foray into ultimate frisbee springs to mind). Being good at stuff is just about tied with being right in the list of things that I love. So my teacher told me I had a talent, which combined with my love of reading, and boom. The problem of what I want to be when I grow up was solved. You know. Until I actually became an adult and realized that writing is hard and making money at it is even harder. You have to be driven and motivated. And so I went into the non-writing world.

Despite that, I still think someday I'd like to write. And so, every once in a while, I read books on writing, despite the fact that I have done no real fiction writing since college. (I do write poetry. Don't judge.) Which leads to this week's book, Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. I've never actually read any other books by her, and I only have this one because I stole it from my mom. Who actually is the source of most of my "how to write" books.

My favorite parts of the books were less about writing, and more about being human. A. she's crazy. And the more stuff I read by people who are amusing, the more I realize that we are all crazy. And that makes me feel less alone. B. There was a part about how people use work or drugs or life to lull themselves to sleep. To live in a fog. Given how much and how hard I work, and how foggy that can make me feel... it hit a little close to home (ignoring how much my office drinks to deal with the stress).

Ironically, the human parts were also my least favorite; it's a book on writing, stop proselytizing at me. I know Anne's a Christian. Her new book is on faith, and got rave review from my pastor. But. That's not what I'm looking for in a book on writing. I loved Stephen King's On Writing. It equally dealt with humanity, but I didn't feel like I was being lectured to, or more accurately, like there was a subtle hint of "you should be Christian." I'm not sure why that bothers me. It's a non-fiction book and her faith is obviously an important part of her life. Why would she not include it in a book that talks about how she deals with the pressure of being a writer? But still. It annoyed me.

And yet we'll see. Maybe I'll actually start writing again. Maybe I'll just keep blogging (did you know, I apparently used to update it three times a week?). If that's all that it gets me to do, it was worth reading.

Dodging Reality

I finally finished last week's book, Dodger by Terry Pratchett. I love Pratchett so hard. Last year, I spent a few months reading all of Disc World (which I think got better as you go through the series. The first were good; the last were AWESOME).

Though I have to be honest. I enjoyed the book, but I'm not blown away. Maybe I'm looking for something more from the books for the next year, but the only one I've really felt like satisfied me was Pretty Birds. Dodger was good; it had Charles Dickens as a character, and an engaging main character. But shouldn't this be challenging? I mean, reading a lot has never been an insane challenge. Yes, I missed finishing a book for one week, but that just means I didn't have the like five hours finishing a book usually takes. (Yes, I'm bragging. No, I'm not actually exaggerating, although obviously it depends on the length and complexity of the book. And I was knitting a ridiculous pair of direwolf mittens for a coworker, and had very little free time. PS. Those are awesome.)

I want books with a social commentary, not just ones that I can check off a list. I tried with The Light Years. But it was just a narrative about the life of the upper classes before the start of WWI. Which had potential. I mean, I love Downton Abbey, which is essentially the same thing but more full of cheesy drama. But nothing ever happened. There was no real character growth, no change. No message.

So now I must decide. Is a new year's resolution worth spending time reading books that I'm not sure are worth it? Do I spend more time to try and find the best books of the ones I currently own? I kind of wish I'd thought through this earlier. Then I could have prepared a list: "Books you should read." Instead every time I finish a book, I haphazardly dig through my piles and try and find something interesting. Is it worth reading mediocre books for the sake of being able to give them away?

Pretty Birds: 3 down, 49 to go

This year, for New Year's, I decided on a new resolution. Rather than make vague promises about what I would like my life to be in the next year, or changes that I would only be able to keep up for a day, a week at most, I decided that I had too many books. Too many that I had been carting around. There are books in my apartment that have been moved 6 times and never read. To change this, I'd read one new book per week, 52 books total.

Some of you may think this isn't a challenge for me. And in some ways, it's not. I love to read, and I do it quickly. I can start a book on Friday night and finish it by noon on Saturday. But I also use it as my escape. I tend to stay away from books that hit too close to the heart; I want to be moved, but not depressed. Satanic Verses, Skinny Legs and All. Even Virginia Woolf's novels. I can be challenged intellectually, but not emotionally.

But. Many of my books don't do that."Funny, but tragic. You'll laugh while you sob." And I have been a coward in avoiding them. My first two books did not challenge me. One was a fluffy romance, so horribly written it gives me hope of ever being published. The second was The Lost Gate by Orson Scott Card. And it was thoroughly enjoyable, but in my usual style.

This week's, though... Pretty Birds follows a young teenage girl in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War. The text shows her and her family learning to cope with the horror, to accept the death of loved ones, of innocents. Most of all to survive.

The thing that hit me hardest about this book (except for the ending, which truly was heart-breaking) is that I remember studying this. I was in elementary school when it was a humanitarian crisis. I remember learning about ethnic cleansing and the numbers of dead. And while I can't blame the 10 year old me for not understanding, not really caring, it makes me sad for both myself and the world. Because how many other atrocities go on today, when I can no longer hide behind innocence and youth? Look at Syria. How many innocents have died there, how many starve and plead? And they are not alone. People in countries around the world are suffering. And yet I still don't know what to do. Does anyone, though?

In the book, the people of Sarajevo mock the United States (although not as much as the UN), mourning the lack of interest. No one cares, no one stops the deaths of innocents.

While the book ends with some hopeful signs, I find myself wondering still. What can and should we be doing? Is it enough to donate money. To try and work in something that has meaning, betters the world? How can we change something that has been happening for centuries?