I remember reading the essay On Seeing England for the
First Time by Jamaica Kincaid, and that essay touches on all that she
inherited (or didn’t) from her parents. One of the things they try to give her
is their love of England, a place that (a) they never visited, (b) hadn’t given
them anything, and (c) she rejects the first time she sees it. After reading
Kincaid’s ode (or if you prefer, a fast eulogy) to England, I read Amy Tan’s essay
Mother Tongue, which is also about the author’s parents. In Mother
Tongue, Tan’s mother is taken for a fool when she doesn’t use English, when
in fact she is quite shrewd. She uses the façade to trick snotty Anglo-Saxons
into dropping their guard. In every memoir I’ve read, the author’s parents are
a strong influence (for better or for worse) and in this collection, 25 authors
recount their experiences with their parents. Yet in each essay, the influence
can be one of acceptance or rejection.
Not all of the
essays in this book give much in the way of literary value, but the one by
Angelique Stevens really got my attention. Her family moved constantly (like
Jeanette Walls in The Glass Castle) and her mother an avid reader, yet she spent most
of her daughter’s life in the looney bin (like Allen Ginsberg’s mother) in
Rochester, New York. Now for those of you unfamiliar with Rochester, it’s a
run-down and crime-ridden city in Upstate New York, right on Lake Erie, a prominent
member of America’s Rust Belt. Like Swansea was to Dylan Thomas, Rochester is “the
graveyard of ambition” on most levels. The author’s family lies in that
graveyard, as her father was a lifelong alcoholic, and her sister became a prostitute
to pay for a crack habit, but at least the author went to college at age 27.
Her adult life consists of dealing with her parents’ breakdowns, and when they
die, it’s of no issue to her; she treats her father’s burial as though she were
giving away an old sofa. When her mother dies, she barely mourns, yet she is
surprised by the great books found in the apartment – Hemmingway, Twain,
Baldwin – that her mother kept on the shelf all her life. The first irony is
that these cheap little books are desired by ragpickers more than clothes or furniture.
The second irony is that all those writers came from dysfunctional families.
Just like hers.
Some of the authors, like Avi Steinberg,
question their family traditions. Steinberg’s family moved around a lot (am I
seeing a pattern here?) including a stay in Israel, where his mother was a
zookeeper. She was also a bit of an underachiever, never staying in any place
long enough to make a career for herself. Now here is where the author is
unsure: was she a restless adventurer, or was she trying out every kind of job
to find one that suited her? Then he goes into how Judaism is patriarchal, and
the idols that the Rabbis despised were often female (okay, most Semitic deities
are female) and it was the men who made the decisions. He uses, as an example,
Rachel refusing to get off her seat because she was menstruating (another
irony, because in biblical times, menstruation was the only excuse a woman had
to disobey her husband). The author’s mother came from an abusive home, so the
constant moves may have been a way to avoid structure and control. Both Stevens
and Steinberg are the product of crazy intellectuals.
I’m not so sure if
it’s worth having Kyoko Mori’s essay in this collection, as she has written two
books on the same story already. The first was her autobiography, published in
the 1990’s, and then a teen novel, which was basically a fictionalization of
the autobiography. She doesn’t offer much in the way of new insights into her
abusive childhood, which I will not spend time going into. Most of the authors
included in this book had a lousy experience while growing up, but so did a lot
of other great memoirists. Tobias Wolfe wrote about his horrible childhood, and
it became the 1988 memoir This Boy’s Life, now considered a classic.
Jeanette Walls recounts her crazy childhood in The Glass Castle, and the
recent memoir titled Educated, by Tara Westover, is all about growing up
in a survivalist family in the mountains. Andre Dubus III (son of the great
Andre Dubus II, and neither are featured in Apple Tree) wrote in his
memoir about how his college professor father left the kids to suffer in a
violent town. The memoir, titled Townie, is full of fights, parental
neglect, and deprivation. Same thing with Riad Sattouf’s The Arab of the
Future. Same thing with David Smalls’ Stitches.
In the grand scheme
of memoir, I assume that a lousy childhood makes for great writing. But are
there no writers out there with great childhoods? Is there no great memoirist
whose life wasn’t stinky? Lucy Knisley’s Relish (okay, it's a comic, but it's still about her life) is a great celebration of food and eating. She
learned good things from her parents, and while her childhood had ups and
downs, the contrast between the enjoyable and the lousy were part of the
learning. The contrast between good and bad creates a greater dynamic, and
contrasts and conflict are a major part of literature. The great memoirs, like This
Boy’s Life, are not just about having a lousy life, but surviving one.
Stories that are only
about bad things are not interesting, nor can we learn from them. You can’t
know your life is bad unless you see a good one too.
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