Joan Didion, the Memoir, and the Second Great Depression
Let me begin by stating that Joan Didion’s 2005 memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, is almost unbearably brilliant. It won the National Book Award in November 2005 and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. In clipped, precise sentences, Didion describes the sudden death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and the harrowing grief she endured in the following year — during much of which the couple’s only daughter was hospitalized with what would prove to be her own fatal illness. Intertwined with Didion’s own experience is a line attributed to Sir Gawain of King...
Read MoreReview: A Whale’s Tale
Combining fiction with zoological information, in A Whale’s Tale, Daniel S. Janik explores the undersea world of the Pacific Humpback whale. The book is described on the back as a “Read-Aloud, Color-Me-Please Book.” It follows a particular whale from his birth until he begins his own family. The idea for this book is a noble one: to interest children in the natural world through a character with whom they can identify. The narrative, however, could pose problems for young readers, whether they’re reading it themselves or listening to an adult. Some of the...
Read MoreReview: Chansons of a Chinaman
As he writes in the poem “The Calm Clam,” poet Changming Yuan yearns “to be a voice empowered / For all around me.” In his collection, Chansons of a Chinaman, he strives “To translate my loud pain / Into a muted pearl,” to reconcile his Chinese ancestry and his American life. To do so, Yuan, whose work has appeared in Wild Violet, draws from history, mythology and natural imagery. In natural images he finds personal comfort and resonance, as demonstrated in the poem “Name Changing.” Here, he defends his choice not to Anglicize his name, which...
Read MoreReview: A Tiara for the Twentieth Century
Write what is hardest to say, my poetry instructor in grad school used to urge us, and Suzanne Richardson Harvey does precisely that. In A Tiara for the Twentieth Century: The Collected Poems of Suzanne Richardson Harvey, the poet tackles subjects ranging from motherhood, family relationships and aging to bulimia, AIDS and homelessness. Whether approaching a big issue (such as the aftermath of Chernobyl in “The Wheat Fields of Chernobyl”) or celebrating small marital moments (in “The Merits of Dining at Home”), her phenomenal word choice enables her to find the...
Read MoreReview: Idol Musings
If you like humor, real-life stories or just plain good writing, you will enjoy Idol Musings: Selected Writings from an Online Writing Competition edited by Sophie N. Childs. Idol Musings includes some of the best entries from LJ Idol, an annual online contest for Live Journal modeled after American Idol. Entrants come from a variety of backgrounds and experience. Some are established writers and some have never been previously published. What they do share is a love of blogging. Childs has included entries on a variety of topics; there is something for everybody. While there some humorous...
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