Archives

1916: Books and Literature

Sep26

Seventeen A Tale of Youth and Summer Time and the Baxter Family, Especially William by Booth Tarkington; illustrated by Arthur William Brown, published by Harper and Brothers, 1916, is a humorous novel about a seventeen year old boy’s first love. Mr. Tarkington’s novels were very popular in the first part of the twentieth century.

Listen to W.B. Yeats’ poem, Easter, 1916 about the Irish Uprising that occurred in Dublin, Ireland on Easter Monday of that year. The rebels proclaimed Irish independence and an Irish republic, but they were forced to surrender to superior British forces on April 29, 1916. Over 300 Irish died, and over 2000 were imprisoned by the British.

Here’s the last verse of the poem which celebrates those Irish heroes who died in the Easter Uprising:

'Thomas MacDonagh - Easter Rising 1916' photo (c) 2008, William Murphy - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven’s part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse –
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Reading about The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Sep10

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City on March 25, 1911 caused the deaths of 146 garment workers, who either died from the fire or jumped to their deaths. Most of the victims were recent Jewish and Italian immigrant women aged sixteen to twenty-three who generally who worked nine hours a day on weekdays plus seven hours on Saturdays. Many of the workers could not escape the fire because the managers and owners had locked the stairwells and emergency exits.

Here are a few fiction books that dramatize and memorialize this horrific tragedy:

For children:
Lieurance, Suzanne. The Locket: Surviving the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire (Historical Fiction Adventures).
Eleven-year-old Galena and her older sister, Anya, are Russian-Jewish immigrants living with their parents in a one-room tenement apartment in New York City. Six days a week the girls walk to work at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. Each morning Galena asks to see the pictures of family members inside the gold locket Anya wears around her neck before she and her sister part to work on different floors.
Littlefield, Holly. Fire at the Triangle Factory. (A Carolrhoda On My Own book).
In 1911 New York City, Jewish Minnie and Catholic Tessa can only be friends at the factory, but this friendship pays off when the famous and tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire takes the lives of many of their coworkers and threatens theirs.

For Young adults:
Auch, Mary Jane. Ashes of Roses.
Sixteen-year-old Rose Nolan and her family are grateful to have finally reached America, the great land of opportunity. Their happiness is shattered when part of their family is forced to return to Ireland. Rose wants to succeed and stays in New York with her younger sister Maureen. The sisters struggle to survive and barely do so by working at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.
Davies, Jacqueline. Lost.
Essie, 16, sews all day for pennies at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory to help feed her fatherless family and now to forget her little sister’s death. Then the fire happens.
Friesner, Esther. Threads and Flames.
Raisa has just traveled alone from a small Polish shtetl all the way to New York City. She finds work in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory sewing bodices on the popular shirtwaists. And she falls in love. But will she survive the fire?
Haddix, Margaret Peterson. Uprising.
Ms. Haddix gives the story a human face by making it the story of three girls: Bella, an immigrant from Southern Italy, Yetta, a Russian Jewish immigrant worker, and Jane, a poor little rich girl who becomes involved in the lives of the shirtwaist factory workers in spite of her rarified existence as a society girl. Semicolon review here.
Hopkinson, Deborah. Hear My Sorrow: The Diary of Angela Denoto, a Shirtwaist Worker, New York City 1909. (Dear America Series)
Angela and her family have arrived in New York City from their village in Italy to find themselves settled in a small tenement apartment on the Lower East Side. When her father is no longer able to work, Angela must leave school and work in a shirtwaist factory.

For adults:
Weber, Katherine. Triangle.
Not only about the famous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, this adult novel is also about music. And it’s a history mystery. Recommended.

Texas Tuesday: Oh, Those Harper Girls! by Kathleen Karr

Sep6

A few years ago I read Kathleen Karr’s The Great Turkey Walk out loud to some of the urchins, and I remember us deriving immense enjoyment from the humorous story of a simple boy named Simon and his turkey drive across the Midwest. Well, I would love to read this book, Oh, Those Harper Girls!, to my younger children sometime when we’re studying Texas history. I’m sure they would love getting to know the six Harper sisters: March, April, May, June, Julie, and Lily. (Lily, the youngest was born in April, but that month had already been taken. Hence, Lily.)

The Harper girls live in Texas, in 1869, just after the Civil War, with their refined mother and their ne’er-do-well daddy on the Double H Ranch. Unfortunately, the bank is going to foreclose on the Double H if the Harpers can’t come up with enough money to pay off daddy’s bank loan. Fortunately, Daddy H has a plan. Unfortunately, the plan involves rustling some of the neighbor’s cattle and re-branding them with the Double H brand. Fortunately, the girls fail at cattle rustling. Unfortunately, Daddy has another plan . . . etc, etc, etc.

Oh, Those Harper Girls! is a wonderful comedic farce set in frontier Texas. I think kids and adults together could read this one and enjoy the broad humor as well as the subtle touches or irony and understated absurdity. For instance, the Double H, which is falling apart and mortgaged to the hilt, has a backyard full of “black ooze that kept creeping up around the plants no matter what Mama did to get rid of it. Disgusting, thick, sticky stuff. . . Wouldn’t you know her daddy would pick just such a site to build his ranch on. Poor Daddy never did do the right thing.” Only thirty years too soon.

For some Texan hijinks with a little comedic romance and jail-breaking and a stage tour and stagecoach robbery and even a foiled bank robbery all thrown in for free to keep the story moving along, you can’t go wrong with Ms. Karr’s portrait of six sisters trying to survive and thrive in heat- and poverty-stricken Central Texas. Near Fredericksburg. But the sisters eventually get to go to New York and go on stage at Tony Pastor’s Opera House. (We’ll join the Astors at Tony Pastor’s/And this I’m positive of/That we won’t come home/That we won’t come home/No, we won’t come home until we fall in love!)

1909: Books and Literature

Aug31

Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter was published in August, 1909. It tells the story of Elnora Comstock who lives with her widowed mother Katherine on the edge of the Limberlost, a marshland in Indiana where Elnora plans to catch moths and other nature specimens to sell to collectors to finance her continued high school education.

Elnora and her mother have a troubled relationship. Katherine Comstock blames Elnora for the death of her husband, Elnora’s father, in the swamp many years before. A young man, Phillip, comes to the Limberlost, and he and Elnora become friends and work together to explore and to gather Elnora’s moths.

Nature lovers should enjoy this lovely story in spite of the somewhat high-flown and archaic language. In fact, what with the modern environmental movement, I would think A Girl of the Limberlost is poised to make a comeback. Maybe as a movie or a simplified or updated ebook? It’s in the public domain, and you can download it to your favorite ereader here. The movie’s been done a few times, but I’ve not seen any of the versions. Any recommendations?

Selma Lagerlof, a Swedish novelist, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1909. Her most famous novel, Jerusalem, tells the story of a group of Swedish Christians who went to Jerusalem to join The American Colony, a Christian religious community whose members believed that if they were to do acts of service to humanity (feeding the hungry, caring for orphans, etc.) in Jerusalem it would hasten the day of Christ’s return. The leader of this community (before the Swedish Christians came to join) was Horation Spafford, the man who wrote the much beloved hymn, It Is Well with My Soul.

Two YA Books by Sarah Dessen

Aug12

Gina at The Point: Youth Reads asked me to review the new Sarah Dessen book, What Happened to Good-bye. I agreed for a couple of reasons: my teen and young adult daughters all read Ms. Dessen’s books, and one of them happened to have a copy of the latest. However, said daughter took the book with her to Slovakia for the month of July, and I was without a review copy.

So I decided to read some of Ms. Dessen’s earlier books for the sake of comparison and research. I read This Lullaby and Lock and Key (because those were the ones that were available at the library), and lo! and behold, they turned out to be the same book. Well, they’re not exactly the same, but quite similar in tone and plot. I liked the narrator in Lock and Key better.

Plot: Girl with family problems, messed-up mother, absent father, guards her heart with a hard exterior and a bad attitude. Girl meets boy who breaks through the hard exterior to prove that love is worth the risk.

Theme: It’s a hard world and parents aren’t very trustworthy, but loving someone is worth the risk of having your heart broken.

Tone: Bitter and somewhat romantic. Both at the same time?

So we’re talking chick-lit for young adults, mostly for girls. Ruby, the narrator in Lock and Key, is closed, guarded, ungrateful, and a bit hostile, but it’s possible to see underneath her unfriendliness, a heart and a childlike vulnerability. Remy, the narrator in This Lullaby, is closed, guarded, promiscuous, anal-retentive, and quite hostile. Her surrender to the charms of Dexter, the lead singer in a boy band, doesn’t ring quite true, not as believable as Ruby and Nate in the first book anyway.

Artiste Daughter tells me that these two aren’t the best of Ms. Dessen’s books, so I’m reserving judgement. However, so far I’m not impressed. They’re O.K., but nothing I would recommend or push on anyone. There’s a sprinkling of crude language in both books, not too much, but annoying nonetheless. Most readers probably won’t notice. There’s also an assumption, especially in This Lullaby, that teen, unmarried sex is a given in any dating relationship. It’s only a question of how long after the first date the relationship will be consummated. Although both the language and the promiscuity are probably true-to-life in some circles, I didn’t like it. It always makes me sad to read about girls in particular selling themselves so short.

I did read Along for the Ride, also by Sarah Dessen, a year or two ago, and although I don’t remember many details, I do think I liked it better than I did these two. It’s another girl-meets-boy teen romance, but without the sex, language, and bitterness issues, as I remember.

On August 29 and after, this post will be a part of the new Carnival of Young Adult Literature.

Stolen by Lucy Christopher

Aug4

Is there, can there be, anything redemptive in the story of a girl kidnapped and held captive by a delusional young man? I read these two articles just after reading Stolen by Lucy Christopher, and I’m still not sure:

The Redemptive Narrative in Jaycee Dugard’s Captivity Story by Karen Swallow Prior at Christianity Today.
Jaycee Dugard’s Memoir, An Acclaimed Novel, and the Art of Writing About Captivity by Ruth Franklin in The New Republic.

Both articles refer to captive Jaycee Dugard’s memoir, A Stolen Life, and novelist Emma Donoghue’s best-selling fictional account of a mother and son in captivity, Room. Stolen is a YA novel, and it’s fundamentally different from the memoir and the novel because there is no rape or sexual abuse involved, and consequently no children are born. However, the girl in the story, Gemma, who is kidnapped by a man who has been stalking her for some time, does begin to identify with her captor, just like many real-life captives do.

The New Republic says of Jaycee Dugard and her kidnapper: “she stops short of calling him insane, which he clearly is.” Gemma at first thinks her kidnapper, Ty, is insane, but later she is confused by just how much she identifies with him and how reluctant she is to call him either evil or mad. And Stolen takes the reader step by step into that sort of world where everything one knows to be true is turned upside-down–without using the obvious plot/character device of making Ty into an evil rapist. Ty is delusional, and what he has done—kidnapping an innocent girl–is wrong, but Ty is not evil. Gemma wants to escape, but when she does, she’s torn by her continued concern for Ty’s well-being and her new-found love for wide open spaces. (Ty takes her to the Australian outback.) In other words, it’s complicated.

I’m not sure to whom I would recommend this book. It seems a little scary and other-worldly for most teens, but maybe some would be haunted by it in a good way, as I have been. There are no paranormal elements in the book, except for a little bit of aboriginal mysticism about being part of the land, so those who are looking for vampires and werewolves wouldn’t find them. Adults and young adults who have read and liked Room might like this YA novel, but if the child narrator part of Room was what you enjoyed, you won’t really find that in Stolen. Gemma is young, but she’s pretty much left childhood behind; certainly by the end of the book, she’s an adult with adult problems and issues.

At any rate, I did find Stolen to be absorbing and evocative. The descriptions of the Australian countryside and desert landscape are worth the time, if you like that sort of thing.

Small Town Sinners by Melissa Walker

Aug3

Nominated for 2011 Cybil Awards, Young Adult Fiction category. Nominated by Ashley at Book Labyrinth.

This YA novel featuring small town Christian young people gets many things right. The story is absorbing. The characters are believable and interesting. The themes and issues in the book–teen pregnancy, homosexual temptation, drunk driving, etc.—are issues that young people do face; the presentation is realistic and sensitive. The author shows respect for the beliefs of conservative Christian people. I thought the parts of the book where the main character and narrator, Lacy Anne Byer, is experiencing God through her “prayer language” (charismatic speaking in tongues) were particularly well written and understanding.

However, (you knew there was a however) I am somewhat annoyed by books in which it is assumed that Christians, young and old alike, have never thought about the things that they believe, and it takes some enlightened outsider to bring them to their senses and make them realize their parochialism and blindness. In this book, Lacey’s new boyfriend is that enlightened, understanding, broad-minded outsider who makes Lacey Anne see that the Christian answers that her parents have given her are inadequate and unsatisfying. I don’t have a problem with Lacey Anne questioning the things she has been taught; I would question some of things that Lacey Anne has apparently been taught. And often it does take a new person’s perspective or a new experience to jumpstart that questioning process. Tyson, Lacey’s new friend in the book, is so perfect, however, that his answers seem obviously right and good while Lacey’s conservative Christianity comes off looking ineffectual and untrustworthy.

It doesn’t help that the adults in the book are mostly hypocritical, in a mild, unthinking way. There are no real villains in the book (other than Satan); even the bully is seen to be reacting to the abuse he receives at home from his alcoholic father. However, Lacey’s parents have difficulty dealing with her friendships with kids who are not perfect Christians from perfect families, and Lacey’s dad, a pastor, is quite over-protective. I have dealt with what I consider to be over-protective families in my church and in the homeschooling community, and Lacey’s dad is not uncommon. However, he is something of a caricature and his views on homosexuality, dating, and teen pregnancy are not very nuanced or well articulated.

I also didn’t like the way the book strongly implied that if a guy is a nerd and artistic and creative in his clothing choices, and if he hangs out mostly with girls and gets bullied, then he might be suppressing his homosexual identity. Especially, he might be smothering those tendencies if he has grown up in a small town and been taught that homosexual behavior is immoral. Talk about stereotypes. Artistic men are not naturally gay and do not necessarily, or even probably, have same sex desires. And if one does have those temptations, I would argue, like the people in Lacey’s church, that it’s not a bad thing to reject homosexual behavior for yourself. In fact, I would still maintain that the repudiation of homosex is what the Bible teaches and what is best for a man or woman who is tempted in that way.

Overall, Small Town Sinners is a good book, but it does encourage the view that there are no answers, only questions. And parents are not the ones to go to with your questions; a kid your age from out of town who has experienced so much more of Life is more likely to know the meaning thereof than your small town, uncomprehending parents. My final complaint is that there is very little or no gospel in Lacy Anne’s church or in her ideas about Christianity, only rules. Ty, who encourages Lacey Anne to question that legalism, doesn’t have much concept of what to replace it with either. Forgiveness is discussed, but staying “pure” and avoiding sins (of the flesh) are the main focus of Lacey’s brand of Christianity.

I didn’t even get into the “Hell House” aspect of the plot, which provides an interesting bit of evangelical Americana for those interested, but you can read more about that drama at Linus’s Blanket or at Presenting Lenore. Take it with a grain of salt, and some questions of your own, but Small Town Sinners provides a good story and some challenging ideas for evangelical Christian teens and non-religious ones alike.

The Hardest Thing To Do by Penelope Wilcock

Jul24

I was re-reading The Peacemaker by Ken Sande of Peacemaker Ministries when I received Penelope Wilcock’s new book, The Hardest Thing To Do, in the mail. What a lovely (and convicting) serendipity! Ms. Wilcock’s new installment in the saga of the monks of St. Alcuin’s Abbey is a long time in coming. The original trilogy of books about St. Alcuin’s and Father Peregrine its abbot began with The Hawk and the Dove and continued in The Wounds of God and The Long Fall. These three books were published by Crossway in the early 1990’s.

Now we have a fourth book in the series, twenty years later, and it lives up to the fine standard set by the other three. In The Hardest Thing To Do, St. Alcuin’s has a new abbott, Father John, but the brothers are still serving each other and the same Lord, still living quiet, peaceable lives, still striving to practice the rule of St. Benedict in a fallen world. And of course, as is the way of this world, the brothers have a new challenge when they must decide what to do with a human “wolf” who has come into the sheepfold and who threatens to spoil both their peace and their way of life.

In The Hardest Thing To Do, Ms. Wilcock has dropped the framing story that she used in at least the first book of The Hawk and the Dove trilogy. In that first book, a mother was telling stories about the abbey of St. Alcuin’s to her daughters who were experiencing some of the same growing pains as the monks. The part of the novels that is most memorable, however, is the story of the monks themselves, so it was a good move to drop the frame and concentrate on the abbey.

I was concerned that this sequel, twenty years later, might not live up to the quality and depth of the first three books in the series, but I needn’t have worried. Ms. Wilcock, a Methodist minister, has a fine grasp of human foibles and sin and peace-making and the cost of following Christ in our interpersonal relationships. The book is about radical, costly forgiveness, and it doesn’t sugarcoat the difficulties of such a choice to forgive our enemies. Forgiveness and reconciliation in the face of real hurt truly are the hardest things to do.

Asking for forgiveness:

I am filled with terror lest you turn me away. I long for the beautiful Gospel that has always puzzled me, but that I know has a beacon in the life of this house. For the forgiveness and gentleness I have found, I should like the chance to show my gratitude. For the hurt and anger I have caused, I should like time to try and make amends. And I have glimpsed the face of Christ here. Before that glimpse dims and is smutched and bleared by the sordid life of the world, I should like to try if I might to touch for myself the vision of that fair loveliness. . . compassion . . . faith . . . peace.

I would pray that all of us could be enabled to do the hard work of forgiving and asking and receiving forgiveness because it’s the only way to true heart peace.

Once Was Lost by Sara Zarr

Jul10

Last year I read Sweethearts by Sara Zarr, but I wasn’t that impressed. Maybe the story of childhood sweethearts who meet again but realize that their lives have changed just didn’t hit any of my buttons.

Once Was Lost certainly did intersect with my fascinations. Samara is a PK (preacher’s kid), and she used to think she had a handle on faith. But now Sam’s mother is in rehab dealing with her alcohol problem. And Sam’s dad is ignoring the problem, and pretty much ignoring Sam. And whatever faith in God Sam used to have is getting shaky.

Then, to compound the problems, an abduction takes place in the small town where Sam and her family live, and everyone is so wrapped up in dealing with that tragedy that Sam’s personal grief and confusion over her mother’s illness is overshadowed. And Sam starts to feel like Job, or doubting Thomas, or maybe Lazarus when he was dead and no one was sure Jesus would or could bring him back to life.

This book was so real. The pressures on a pastor’s family to be perfect and have all the answers lest they let the church down or damage God’s reputation were depicted so well. And Sam’s dad, Pastor Charlie, was exactly like other Christian men I know, not a hypocrite or a bad person but just a regular guy struggling to deal with unexpected tragedy and unfathomable pain and questions about where God is all of the suffering. Sam is just a girl, not a perfect pastor’s daughter or an obedient little girl, but a teenager who misses her mom and wants her dad to talk to her and explain what’s happened to their family.

If you’re interested in Christian faith and young adults, or how God really works in the world, or questions about faith, or just a good story, I would recommend Once Was Lost. I read this book last year for the INSPY awards judging, and it’s still with me. It also won the young adult literature INSPY Award last year.