fiction · middle grade

Book Review: Out of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper

Stephanie5 Comments

I’ve read Sharon M. Draper before. Both Copper Sun and Fire from the Rock were on my reading list when my son was younger and I enjoyed them both. But several people from my parenting group had raved about her Out of My Mind (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2010), and the premise sounded fascinating to me, so I knew I had to read it. Onto my list it went…and there it sat. Seriously, I propose we add like five extra weeks per month where we all just sit around and read. Maybe then I could actually make a dent in this TBR…

Melody is wildly intelligent. She remembers everything- literally everything- that has ever happened to her, and she remembers everything she reads and hears. But no one knows this, because Melody is eleven years old and has never spoken a word. She has a form of cerebral palsy that has made her body almost entirely uncooperative and makes her dependent on her parents and other caretakers for nearly everything. Her parents know she’s smart, as does Mrs. V, her neighbor and babysitter who has dedicated herself to educationally challenging Melody. Her teachers and classmates, however, have no idea, and continually dismiss Melody as barely functional.

Everything changes, however, when Melody receives a Medi-Talker, a device that, for the first time, allows her to have a voice. She can make requests, answer questions (in a much quicker manner than spelling out single words on the board on her tray), make jokes, tell her parents out loud that she loves them. Finally, people at school begins to realize there’s more to Melody than what they expected. But it’s not quite perfect- even girls who act like her friend can’t fully commit to treating her like a regular girl in front of the Mean Girls at school. And teachers- TEACHERS!- are just as bad as some of those Mean Girls. When Melody makes the Whiz Kids Quiz Team, she begins to think that maybe she’s finally got an in on normal life, but as it turns out, despite her importance to the team, even the smartest kids in school and their teacher aren’t fully ready to accept her as a regular kid. A near-tragedy puts things into perspective, and Melody, voiceless no longer, has no problem telling everyone exactly how she feels.

I really enjoyed this. Ms. Draper, who has a family member with cerebral palsy, doesn’t shy away from the difficult reality of severe disability- both from the person who has the condition and from that person’s caretakers. The heavy lifting, the bathroom duty, the drooling because bodies don’t cooperate (as I sit here with my back spasming and my bones burning, I tip my metaphorical hat in sympathy. Bodies are stupid), it’s not an easy life, but Ms. Draper goes above and beyond to show the wonders of such a life as well. So much to learn. So much to experience. Heartfelt connections to be made with the people who are willing to take the time.

There are scenes with Melody’s history teacher, who runs the Whiz Kids team, that will have you seething. I saw some serious red while reading his scenes and was whisked back to my senior year Algebra II class, where a fellow student was bullying a friend with CP, just constantly running his mouth at my friend in a way that the teacher 100% heard him. She didn’t care. She occasionally said things to my friend that I, at 17, knew were unprofessional. I was really shy and quiet in high school and was the kind of kid who wouldn’t say boo to a fly, but after this kid, who was a football player (which was a BIG DEAL in my town *eyeroll*) had ran his mouth for long enough, I slammed my book down and yelled, “Oh my God, just leave him alone!” The football player’s eyes flew open. He turned around back into his seat and never said a single word to my friend in that class ever again. The teacher didn’t say anything then, either.

My point in sharing this story is not to make myself out to look good- I really should have said something earlier; these days, I would, but I’m also a lot older, more mature, and have lost 99% of my chill, so come at me, bro- but to point out that teachers like Melody’s exist. They’re out there. They can be nasty and straight-up let more powerful students bully the less powerful. Remind your kids that this is unacceptable. Believe your kids if they come home telling you that this is happening. Let your kids know that you’ll support them and stand behind them if they stand up and let everyone know that that kind of behavior isn’t okay. Teach them to use their voices for those who can’t.

This is a triumphant read, in the end. Melody is proud of who she is, of what she’s accomplished despite so many people not believing in her- she has enough people who DO, and that’s enough. But it’s also a great message. Be a believer, be one of the people who make life better for Melody and everyone else out there. We’re all struggling in some sort of way, but uplifting each other makes so much of a difference.

Such a great book. I thoroughly enjoyed this. And there’s a SEQUEL coming in November 2021 entitled Out of My Heart. The year is looking up! 😊

Visit Sharon M. Draper’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

fiction · YA

Book Review: The Henna Wars by Adiba Jaigirdar

Stephanie3 Comments

A while back, there was an epic Twitter thread on all of (or at least, a LOT of) the books by South Asian authors coming out in 2020, and hoooooooooooooo boy, did a lot of books get added to my TBR that day! One of those books included The Henna Wars by Adiba Jaigirdar (Page Street Kids, 2020). This book has it all: South Asian characters. LGBT rep. Strong sister relationship. Drama with the parents. Set in…Ireland??? NEAT! It’s been a while since I read fiction set there. Anyway, I finally got to it on my TBR and enjoyed the long days of reading it on my backyard swing (while sweating half to death, of course, because it’s super gross out here right now).

Nishat has come out to her parents, with less-than-stellar results. While there’s no screaming, no threatening, no plans to send her away, they’re cool, chilly, unable to understand why she can’t just change everything about who she is. Unexpectedly, Flávia, a friend she hasn’t seen since early grade school, shows back up in her life, and suddenly, Nishat’s in love. Only there’s a slight problem: Flávia turns out to be the cousin of Nishat’s archenemy at school. Ugh. No worries, though. Nishat’s not even sure if Flávia likes her that way, although signs are pointing to yes…

A business class project has the students forming their own businesses and competing over whose is more successful. Nishat decides, as a nod to her culture, to begin doing henna (painting henna designs on hands). She’s horrified to learn that Flávia, who is not Bengali (she’s Brazilian and Irish), has planned to do the same. Holy cultural appropriation, folks! Sabotage. Theft. Underhandedness. Destruction. Things get a little out of control in this competition, and Nishat isn’t always the person she wants to be. Nishat and her classmates have a lot to learn about and from each other, and maybe Mom and Dad will learn a few things as well.

There’s a lot going on in this story- Nishat’s relationship with her sister Priti, the pressure of exams at school, trying to maintain a relationship with a grandparent over Skype, race-based bullying, fighting with a friend group, a strained relationship with parents over cultural issues, cultural appropriation- but somehow, it all works. Nishat is a typical teenager who doesn’t always make the best choices; she’s impulsive under pressure, a little selfish at times, and occasionally leaps to conclusions. But she’s also dedicated and optimistic, and all of this makes her a well-rounded character.

Her relationship with younger sister Priti, who is sometimes the more mature of the two, is the kind that will make you wish you had a younger sister (if you don’t. I do not). Priti stands by her side no matter what, is always there to support her and offer up whatever Nishat needs, and calls her on her selfish behavior when the situation warrants it. Priti is very much the voice of reason here, and I loved her.

The bullying is painful to read. There are obvious content warnings here for racism and homophobia, and one for a forced outing, which can be upsetting (kudos to Ms. Jaigirdar, who has this warning written into the opening pages. I love that these kinds of heads-ups are becoming the norm). When you’re able to handle these topics, this is a kaleidoscope of a novel, with all the issues moving and sliding around each other to become one colorful design that fits together perfectly.

Super fun YA with great multi-dimensional characters in an interesting setting. I’m looking forward to reading more from Ms. Jaigirdar.

Visit Adiba Jaigirdar’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

fiction · YA

Book Review: Piecing Me Together by Renée Watson

Stephanie6 Comments

I don’t remember how Piecing Me Together by Renée Watson (Bloomsbury, 2017) ended up on my TBR. Likely, it was from another book blogger (thanks, whoever you are!), because I had three of her books on there- one down, two to go! The other two are available at my library; I’m pretty sure at least one of them is available only in ebook form- which is totally fine, but I just don’t get to the ebooks as quickly as I do the paper copies. Which is odd; I love ebooks and reading on my kindle, but I guess I enjoy the trip to the library and being able to see that new stack of books even more. 😉

Jade is a Black student at a nearly-all-white private school, a situation that has provided her with a great education, but which has made for some uncomfortable situations, and about which she often feels guilty when she’s hanging out with her neighborhood friends. So often, the opportunities she’s offered at this school feel…demeaning. Like they’re not seeing Jade for who she is, but just someone to help so that someone else can feel good about themselves. It’s not great.

The new program Jade’s been invited to be part of, Woman to Woman, fits into this category. Her new mentor, Maxine, is Black, but she’s privileged in ways that Jade has never been, and that makes it hard to relate to her. The program, if completed, comes with a promise of a college scholarship, but at times, Jade’s not sure it’s worth suffering the microaggressions, the assertions that girls like her need to be different, that who they are isn’t enough already. But Jade comes to understand that there are lessons to be learned in every situation, that her voice is powerful and ready to be used, and that by using it, she can make changes for herself and for other girls that stretch far into the future.

I really enjoyed this. Jade knows herself well, which is always great in a YA character (I sure didn’t have that kind of confidence when I was young, but I was also wracked with anxiety and depression, sooooooo). She just needs a gentle nudge here and there and to be pointed in the right direction. A little encouragement goes a long, long way, and this story is a good reminder not only of that, but of what teenagers are capable of. I really wish our society weren’t so willing to write them off as ridiculous and unformed, because honestly, teenagers are pretty darn awesome.

Something I really enjoyed about this book was Jade as an artist. Her medium is collage, something I’ve come to enjoy after noticing how often it pops up in the children’s books I’ve read with my daughter (Victoria Kann of the Pinkalicious books and Eric Carle, may his memory be a blessing, are some popular ones, but I even noticed it in a nonfiction book we read yesterday). Jade used items like newspapers, with their painful headlines, and turned ugly things into beauty. This kept my brain working, trying to figure out what her pieces might look like. I draw from time to time, but collage is beyond my ability, but I really like the idea of a teenager viewing the world like this and expressing herself through this medium. I’m going to have to keep an eye on the local high school’s art shows when those start happening again, because I’d really enjoy seeing more of how kids like Jade see the world.

This is a quick read, but it leaves the reader with a lot to consider: how are you treating the disadvantaged kids in your life? As full people who have their own ideas and connections to the world, or as empty vessels to pour your own points of view into? What kind of microaggressions have you been responsible for, and how will you work to remedy that? I’m looking forward to reading the other books from Ms. Watson on my list, because, as always, I know I have a lot to learn, and she’s an excellent teacher.

Visit Renée Watson’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

blog tour · fiction · YA

The Write Reads on Tour Presents: Instructions for Dancing by Nicola Yoon

Stephanie1 Comment

Ahoy, mateys! Welcome to the latest stop on The Write Reads Ultimate Blog Tour for Nicola Yoon’s Instructions for Dancing! Get ready to slam that BUY NOW button on the bookselling website of your choice (support your indie booksellers, folks!), because this book is Nicola Yoon at her very best.

I’ve read Nicola Yoon before; you can read my enjoyment of two of her other books here (if you note the date on that post, you’ll realize I never got to attend Ms. Yoon’s local appearance. THANKS, PANDEMIC!!! I’m crossing my fingers that she’ll make her way back here at some point when it’s safe). So when The Write Reads announced, in conjunction with Penguin Books, a blog tour of her latest YA novel, Instructions for Dancing (Penguin, 2021), I knew I wanted in. Ms. Yoon writes such interesting, multi-dimensional characters and drops them into situations that force their growth in lively and moving ways. Yup. Sign. Me. Up.

In Instructions for Dancing, we meet Evie as she’s clearing her shelf of romance novels, her favorite genre of book, set on giving them all away. Uh-oh. Turns out Mom and Dad got divorced a while back, and while Mom and sister Danica seem to have moved on from this, Evie can’t, because she’s the one who caught Dad cheating. Yikes. Love is dead, and Evie no longer believes it’s possible. A stop at a Little Free Library to unload her books (and take one home, a strange book entitled Instructions for Dancing) finds Evie in a chance encounter with a mysterious woman who seems to have granted Evie the ability to see how every relationship will turn out- while watching couples in love kiss, she sees the beginning, middle, and end of that love story. Not exactly a great superpower for someone already struggling to believe in love.

After a friend encourages her to visit the dance studio where the Instructions for Dancing book came from, Evie takes a chance and signs up for a trial dance lesson, where she meets X, short for Xavier. Tall, hipstery, and too good-looking for anyone’s good, X, a musician, is trying to ramp up his career in LA while mourning the death of his best friend. His philosophy is nearly the mirror opposite of Evie’s: take chances. Say yes. Live every moment of life and feel it deeply. Before Evie knows it, she’s signed up to participate in a local amateur ballroom dancing competition with X as her partner (the studio seems like it could use the publicity, honestly), and the two of them edge closer to a deep, meaningful relationship.

But, as always, there’s the struggle with Evie’s strained relationship with Dad, along with those visions, which have started to affect her relationship with her best friends. When a vision shows her the truth of her relationship with X, Evie’s not sure how she can go on. But with a little courage, some help from her friends, and a whole lot of heart, Evie learns she has what it takes to keep dancing through life no matter what.

This.

Book.

My God.

I blasted through this in a matter of hours, all in one sitting (with a pause to put my daughter to bed and read some Anne of Green Gables to her). And as I finished, I felt like I’d been gutted with a fish knife. Nicola Yoon has a way of worming inside a reader’s soul and just destroying it, and this is the best piece of writing I’ve ever read from her. This book is everything.

Evie is so fully developed as a character. She’s hurting badly over her parents’ divorce and the way her father betrayed the family. He’s not who Evie thought he was. Infidelity is a tough subject to tackle, especially for younger readers, but Ms. Yoon handles this with delicacy and class. Never does she fully drag Evie’s dad, but she presents him in a way that shows that human behavior and emotion are deeply complex and deserve to be examined on a level that delves far below the surface. Her mother is the same way: while she’s hurting, she puts on a brave front, and this is examined from both Evie’s and her perspective later on in the book. As a child of divorced parents who split in a somewhat similar fashion when I was a teenager, I really appreciated this honest and accurate look at a complicated and painful situation.

X is a beautiful character (and not just physically!). His grief over the loss of his friend is raw, but he lays it all out there and doesn’t try to couch his emotions or pretend to be fine when he’s not. His seize-the-day attitude is exactly what Evie needs at this moment in her life; he provides such a lovely balance to her cynicism and anger. And the dancing! I’m not super into watching ballroom dancing, but I kind of love reading about it, and it was so fun to vicariously twirl across the dance floor with Evie and X and feel the growing tension and attraction between them.

The ending of this book will rip your heart out, stomp it flat like a pancake, and slip it into the paper shredder, then pulp the remains. But after all that, you’ll still be left with a sense of hope, that buried somewhere inside of us all is the strength to keep going, to live deeply, cherish every moment, then take what we’ve learned from everyone we meet- no matter how painful- and keep dancing through life.

This is a book you can’t live without. This is Nicola Yoon’s best.

What a beautiful, soul-stirring book. I’m so glad I signed up for this book tour, and I hope I’ve convinced you to spend some time with this novel. I honestly feel I’m a little bit different now after reading it, and I don’t think it’s something I’ll ever forget. Ms. Yoon has imparted some serious life lessons here.

HUGE thanks go out to Dave at The Write Reads, Penguin Books, and Nicola Yoon for allowing me to participate in this blog tour!

Visit Nicola Yoon’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

Follow TheWriteReads on Twitter.

Follow TheWrite On Tour!

Follow PenguinPlatform for more amazing YA reads!

fiction

Book Review: It’s Always the Husband by Michele Campbell

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My mom sometimes brings me books.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate it. I do. It’s very sweet and thoughtful of her, and I love that she thinks of me. But there’s not a ton of overlap in my mom’s and my taste in books. I’m not sure she’s ever read a nonfiction book as an adult, and she loves Nicholas Sparks way more than I think is healthy, but I still always read the things she brings me (eventually!) even if they’re not exactly my taste. Because that’s what daughters who love their moms do. 😊 And that’s how I ended up with a copy of It’s Always the Husband by Michele Campbell (St. Martin’s Press, 2017). It’s been sitting on my shelf for about two years, and I’m trying to read from that shelf in particular in order to make room to display some of my Jewish books. Thrillers aren’t necessarily my favorite genre, but I don’t mind them now and then, and this was okay.

The story features three friends who couldn’t possibly be more different, all starting out at one of the most prestigious colleges in the country. There’s Aubrey, who’s had a rough life and who’s looking for her time at Carlisle College to provide her with a better future; Jenny, a townie, cynical yet ambitious; and Kate, a ne’er-do-well daughter of privilege, for whom things always seem to work out, no matter how deep she gets into the muck. The three are assigned to room together; Aubrey’s naïve enough to buy whatever anyone is selling, but Jenny’s not as easily pulled into Kate’s vortex as everyone else around her seems to be. She still gets caught up in it, though, as Aubrey and Kate begin to spiral into some harmful behavior, and before they know it, a boy lies dead in the river, and another is left barely clinging to life, with no memory of what happened. All three girls were involved; no one is talking, and the cover-up, orchestrated by Kate’s influential father, is swift and all-encompassing.

Twenty years later, they’re all back in town again, back together, and suddenly there’s yet another body washed up in the river. Who is this woman? Who killed her? Long-buried secrets might unravel everyone’s lives. Friendship can be deadly…

So this was a decent thriller. I liked it, didn’t love it, but I feel that way about most thrillers, so that’s not particular to this one. What I did love, however, was how well Ms. Campbell crafted her characters. What was most remarkable to me was how deeply unlikeable almost every character in the novel was (there’s a female police officer whom I liked. That was really about it!). Aubrey is a social climber and desperate to sink her claws into Kate and what Kate’s status can bring her, and she doesn’t bother developing her own personality because of this. Ew. Jenny has her sights set on certain goals and allows herself to be manipulated in order to reach these goals (although there are some circumstances which make this a little more understandable), but she’s also willing to hide and destroy certain things in order to maintain a certain image. Ugh. And Kate is possibly one of the most manipulative characters I’ve ever read, and her pathetic, weak-willed boyfriend-turned-husband Griff had me rolling my eyes every time he opened his mouth. Gross. They were all such horrible, awful people that I was truly marveling at Ms. Campbell’s skill at creating a world filled with such unlikeable characters (and I swear, this is not sarcasm! This takes some serious skill as a writer and I’m in awe).

It was to the point where, by about three quarters of the way through, I wasn’t sure I cared whodunnit (meaning, which character in particular), because truly, everyone was so very awful that they all deserved some time in the slammer for various reasons! And the ending…predictable, yes, but honestly, it was pretty satisfying. I stayed up late to finish it, almost midnight- which is NOT something I make a habit out of; sleep is something I take pretty seriously after spending several years being dangerously sleep-deprived when my daughter was a baby- and was pretty happy with the way things wrapped up.

So if you’re looking for a decently-paced thriller stuffed with well-written, unlikeable characters you’d never want to hang out with in real life, It’s Always the Husband makes for a quick and fun read with a gratifying ending. Thanks, Mom!

Visit Michele Campbell’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

Monthly roundup

Monthly roundup: May 2021

StephanieLeave a comment

Finally June! My swing is out, warmer weather is here (we’ve had some 90-degree days here, followed by a few in the 50’s- I have no explanation for Illinois weather…), and virtual first grade is DONE DONE DONE!!!!!!!! I’m sure I don’t have to tell all of you how exhausting this year has been. We’ve had some rough school years around here in the past, but I don’t think I’ve ever looked forward so much to summer break. I seriously need a good long streak of weeks without having to listen to the iPad blaring away all day long. (I am infinitely grateful to our school district for offering virtual learning all year long and I adore my daughter’s teacher, but I’m just plain worn out.) Bring on the long days of summer reading!!!

I’m sure you’re needing a break too, wherever you are. I haven’t put in too much thought about my summer reading; I don’t know that I’ll have any kind of a plan for it at all. I’ve been doing a better job of reading stuff from my own shelves, so that’ll probably be a higher priority for me. Other than that, I’ll just wing it. 😉

Let’s get this recap started, shall we???

What I Read in May 2021

1. The New Jew: An Unexpected Conversion by Sally Srok Friedes (no review)

2. Browsing Nature’s Aisles: A Year of Foraging for Wild Food in the Suburbs by Eric and Wendy Brown

3. Chaos on CatNet (CatNet #2) by Naomi Kritzer

4. What’s Your Pronoun?: Beyond He and She by Dennis Baron

5. Fog Magic by Julia L. Sauer (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

6. Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America by Heidi Waleson

7. Gateway to the Moon by Mary Morris (no review; I thought I had one for this! Super weird. It was a really good book!)

8. The Bible Doesn’t Say That: 40 Biblical Mistranslations, Misconceptions, and Other Misunderstandings by Joel M. Hoffman

9. Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk About Being Jewish by Abigail Pogrebin

10. The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

11. Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

12. Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

13. TREYF: My Life as an Orthodox Outlaw by Elissa Altman

14. The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man by Abraham Joshua Heschel (no review)

15. Here and There: Leaving Hasidism, Keeping My Family by Chaya Deitsch

16. All About Sam by Lois Lowry (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

17. Case Closed: Holocaust Survivors in Postwar America by Beth B. Cohen

18. It’s Always the Husband by Michele Campbell (review to come)

19. Piecing Me Together by Renée Watson (review to come)

Phew! Pretty decent month. Lots of reading to my daughter- four of these were read out loud to her. Eleven of these books came from my TBR; four of the adult titles came from my own shelves! (The kid titles that I read out loud quite often come from our shelves here at the house, but I never count those, since we usually keep them. The fiction that I read from my own shelves usually gets passed along.) I won’t have quite as many read-aloud kid books next month; my daughter and I have embarked upon her first journey through Anne of Green Gables, so that’ll take some time to get through. I’m hopeful that she’ll love it as much as I did when I was young.

Reading Challenge Updates

I finished my parenting group’s reading challenge, and now I’m just trying to read some of the books from my own shelf. Four this month!

State of the Goodreads TBR

Last month, I was at 176, this month it’s at…177! I told you, it just never seems to move from around this number, dangit! Even after reading ELEVEN BOOKS OFF THE LIST!!! *hysterical sobbing*

Books I Acquired in May of 2021

I actually have books to list here this month!

I hit up the used bookstore for the first time in over a year and bought myself some Mother’s Day gifts (someone should do it! It’s been a year plus of serious intensive mothering…). Included in this stash is The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man by Abraham Joshua Heschel, Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk About Being Jewish by Abigail Pogrebin, and Bet is for B’reishit by Linda Motzkin. I had worked my way through her Aleph Isn’t Tough just before the pandemic hit- an interlibrary loan copy that I had requested in order to see if I wanted to purchase my own copy. I did, and I used an Amazon gift card this month to purchase both Aleph Isn’t Tough and Aleph Isn’t Enough (I’ve worked my way through this last one before, but I’m going to go through it again as a refresher before moving on to the other two). Now all I need is Tav is for Torah and I’ll have the full set! I can read Hebrew, but I’m slow and I’d like to improve, so I’m going to work my way through these books. Excellent month for obtaining books!

Bookish Things I Did in May 2021

Another excellent month in this category. My library was part of a group of libraries that virtually hosted author Alex Kotlowitz. He’s best known for his classic, There Are No Children Here, and I read and loved his An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago. It was wonderful and thought-provoking to listen to him speak of his experiences writing these books, and how things have changed, and how they haven’t.

AND…my synagogue virtually hosted author Marra B. Gad, author of The Color of Love: A Story of a Mixed-Race Jewish Girl, which is just such a powerful book. She spoke of her experiences with racism in Jewish spaces, and of how much better we need to do. It’s painful to hear of how much hurt she’s suffered, and it was an excellent reminder of the importance of standing up and saying something when those around us make racist comments (and of checking in on your Black and brown friends when these things happen. Make sure they know you’ve got their back and give them the listening space they need to vent their feelings when these things happen. It’s so important). She is a massively intelligent and thoughtful woman, and I deeply appreciated the ability to learn from her.

Nothing scheduled in June, but that’s okay. It’s nice to have a month off!

Current Podcast Love

I’m a little podcast-burned-out, to be honest. My brain is just kind of tired, and I’ve been needing a break, so lately I’ve just been turning on BBC News World Service radio at night as I fall asleep. There’s something so soothing about listening to hushed British accented-voices that knocks me right out!

Stephanie’s Read Harder Challenge

On hold until life goes back to normal!

Real Life Stuff

Finally, summer break!

I have big plans to keep my daughter learning, so we’ll do a little bit of schoolwork during the week. I’ll definitely have her read and do some math and writing most days, and we’ll do a lot of reading together. It’ll probably be a little more intense than if things were normal, but I want to keep her brain growing and primed for whatever this school year looks like. We’re not sending her until she can be vaccinated; if this means I have to homeschool for a few months, so be it, so I’d rather make sure she’s not losing any learning over the summer.

Speaking of vaccines, I’m now fully vaccinated! My son and I got shot #2 mid-month. He was fine; I had about 24 hours of feeling like feverish, achy, chilled garbage, and then I got up the next morning and was totally fine. It wasn’t even bad enough to keep my husband home from work; I was still able to supervise my kiddo’s distance learning, I just felt gross while doing it and went to bed when he got home. No biggie. We’re still maintaining a ton of caution due to my daughter, though, so really, not much has changed. ☹

I may have something good to report in a bit, but I’m sitting on that for a while longer until everything is confirmed. 😉

Other than that, not really that much going on here! I’m just deeply grateful for summer break and already dreading the return of school in August! I’m sure I’ll be ready for it then, but right now, I just want a whole lot of quiet lazy days filled with great reading.

Wherever you are, whatever your plans are, I hope you’re finding some peace. I’m glad to be fully vaccinated, but I’m deeply uncomfortable with how unequal the vaccine rollouts have been worldwide. We’re all in this together and I’m so upset about the rise in cases in India, Vietnam, Malaysia, various places in South America… I think I’ve signed a few petitions trying to get more vaccine equity around the world, because it’s so necessary. Everyone deserves a chance to protect themselves from this. If you’re not yet vaccinated or you live in a country where it’s been difficult or impossible to get access to a vaccine, my heart is with you. Be safe and hang in there.

Whatever the weather is where you’re at, whatever season you’re heading into, I hope your June is filled with wonderful reading. Keep working for a better world, folks. It’s up to us.

nonfiction

Book Review: Case Closed: Holocaust Survivors in Postwar America by Beth B. Cohen

Stephanie3 Comments

There are a lot of myths surrounding the Holocaust survivors who came to America after the war. They worked hard, they learned English easily (so eager were they to move beyond what had happened in Europe and forget their pasts), they integrated well into society, and they didn’t talk about their experiences. Right? Not exactly, says Beth B. Cohen, author of Case Closed: Holocaust Survivors in Postwar America (Rutgers University Press, 2006). There are a lot of stories Americans like to tell themselves that gloss over the gritty truth, and this is one of them. I knew I had to learn the whole story, and onto my TBR this book went. Thanks, interlibrary loan! (Seriously, is it not the greatest?)

Think back to what you learned about those fortunate few who survived the massacre of European Jewry during the second World War. What did you learn about what happened to them? Some of them came to the US, some of them made their way to the new country of Israel, maybe a few stayed in Europe or went elsewhere. And then what? They worked hard to assimilate and make new lives for themselves, had families, started over. Sure, that was true for some of them, but not all- maybe not even the vast majority. The agencies in the US tasked with helping them rebuild their lives had an agenda, and too bad for anyone who didn’t fit into that agenda’s narrow confines. The displaced persons who came here had one year to become self-sufficient. Health problems, emotional problems, mental illness, language difficulties, having watched your entire family murdered and being the sole survivor after having ended your education at age 10, none of that mattered. One year, and then your case was closed.

Not surprisingly, a lot of people struggled with this. The trauma the survivors had suffered was summarily ignored; work would be what cured them (…sounds familiar, doesn’t it?). Orphaned teenagers were looked at not as victims of unspeakable horror who needed specialized assistance, but as self-absorbed narcissists who expected everyone to cater to them. The physical trauma people had suffered was dismissed as being psychosomatic and a sign that these were lazy, lazy people who didn’t want to work. How dare they expect any different treatment than other newcomers to America?

Ms. Cohen delves into the difficulties different groups faced: the religious Jews who struggled to find their place in a country that didn’t respect their beliefs and way of life; the unaccompanied minors who seemed to be almost universally looked upon by both agencies and their own extended families as massive burdens; the newly-formed families fracturing under the weight of all the burdens they carried. Occasionally an understanding caseworker would come along, but the majority of them seemed to resent their clients.

The style of this book is heavily academic; it’s not a long book, but it’s packed with information and a complex understanding of the survivors’ plights via how the agencies treated them and less via their personal and emotional struggles, and thus it’s a bit of a slow read. The horror is there, though it’s often couched between the lines, but Ms. Cohen doesn’t shy away from calling the agencies and caseworkers out as insensitive and uninformed. The United States has always been a hard country that seems to view the existence of a social safety net as a weakness and a moral failure, but this book really makes it seem as though this country delights in making every situation as difficult as possible for people who have already faced some of the worst situations imaginable. I’m guessing things have not gotten much better for new refugees from places like Syria, who have witnessed terrible nightmares of their own.

If you don’t mind the more academic style, Case Closed is a really eye-opening book. It highlights the insensitivity Holocaust survivors faced from basically every corner. They did make connections amongst themselves, amongst other survivors who understood and could relate to what they’d been through, but others didn’t seem to want to listen for a really long time after the war. It’s a heartbreaking book that tells a story that shouldn’t have happened this way, a story that disappointed me, but that didn’t really surprise.

Be kind to each other, people. It’s tough out there.

memoir · nonfiction

Book Review: Here and There: Leaving Hasidism, Keeping My Family by Chaya Deitsch

Stephanie2 Comments

Another memoir! I’ve been reading off of my TBR as usual and have been ordering a bunch of these memoirs from interlibrary loan. I’m wondering if I had found a list of Jewish-themed memoirs and that accounts for this streak in my TBR. Probably! Anyway, that’s likely how Here and There: Leaving Hasidism, Keeping My Family by Chaya Deitsch (Shocken, 2015) wound up in my reading pile. The publishing world has seen quite a few memoirs written by people who have left the Haredi world, but honestly, I’m not tired of these at all. There’s something that fascinates me deeply about the hows and whys of people who radically change the way they live- whether it’s going from living a strict religious life to a more relaxed one (or the other way around!), leaving a terrible relationship, going from rags to riches (or the opposite way around!), moving to a new country, all of these scenarios intrigue me. I’m so grateful to all the memoir authors who dig deep and allow us to take a peek into their lives and hearts and minds.

Chaya Deitsch was raised in a not-terribly-strict Lubavitch family. Lubavitchers are best known these days for Chabad houses and Mitzvah Tanks. If your city has a yearly giant menorah for Hanukkah, odds are that Chabad is responsible for it (Nashville used to have one down on Broadway by the river; it always used to make me smile when I’d drive by it every November/December). Over Chaya’s life, the movement went from being more kabbalistic and hyperspiritual to one more focused on outreach and bringing secular Jews back into regular observance. Chaya’s family lived in New Haven, Connecticut, outside of the Lubavitch center of Crown Heights, New York City, and thus, with the eyes of the community not on them full-time, the parents are more relaxed and Chaya and her sisters are allowed more freedom than most other Lubavitch girls.

From an early age, Chaya knew that life as an adult Lubavitcher wasn’t for her. The early marriage, soon followed by an ever-increasing pack of children, wasn’t what she wanted for herself. The restrictions on female worship- being separated from the men by a sheet or a mechitza (or being tucked away altogether upstairs in the balcony), not being allowed to sing, not being allowed to fully study or engage in religious debates- grated. The focus on modesty and gender-based dress standards irritated her. None of this was what she wanted for her life, though in her late teens, she made a last-ditch effort to please her parents by attending a strict British seminary (a post-high school year or two of religious study for Orthodox students).

There’s no set moment where Chaya decides to walk away; there’s no big moment where she dashes away in the night or blows up her life by making a single decision that will take her away from the fold altogether. Rather, she slowly moves away from her strict Orthodox standards, small step by small step, into a life that feels more authentic to her.

If you’re looking for major drama, you won’t find it here, but you will find a story of a woman who understands both she and her parents tried their best, and that there’s no set way to live that works for everyone. Unlike most other stories of people who have walked away from Haredi or Hasidic families and who are summarily shunned, Chaya still manages to maintain a good relationship with her family. They may not fully understand her, and she may not fully admit to them all the parts of her new life that don’t jive with how they live, but they’ve kept each other, a testament to the strength of their bond and the unconditional love of her parents. This is a really big deal and I have to say I was extremely impressed with how understanding her parents are. I hope I can always accept the choices my kids make with such grace.

This is a really lovely memoir of a woman who recognizes early on that what she’s raised with isn’t right for her- not because she wants to act out or defy anything in a religious sense, merely because it’s just not a good fit, and I find that incredibly admirable.

Follow Chaya Deitsch on Twitter here.

memoir · nonfiction

Book Review: TREYF: My Life as an Orthodox Outlaw by Elissa Altman

Stephanie1 Comment

Sometimes it’s hard to write a review of a memoir. The best memoirists are able to craft a narrative of their lives that centers around a theme, that has a direct story arc that continues throughout the story and wraps up in, if not a full conclusion, then an understanding that makes the whole story make sense, that shows the growth and maturity the author has experienced. This is what I hope for from every memoir I delve into (and I read a lot of them; it’s a genre I enjoy, because I appreciate the glimpse into someone else’s life), but I had a harder time with this in TREYF: My Life as an Unorthodox Outlaw by Elissa Altman (Berkley Books, 2016).

The definition of ‘treyf’ is something that is unkosher and forbidden. Ms. Altman writes a lot about what made her family treyf, and what made her treyf: her family’s departure from the religious and ritualistic aspects of Judaism; their consumption of unkosher foods; her preparation of pork products in her deceased grandmother’s kosher kitchen; the dawning realization that she’s not entirely straight (a much bigger issue in the 80’s and 90’s than today).

Despite its occasionally focus on unkosher foods, this is really a memoir of a dysfunctional family. Mom and Dad’s marriage was strained and unhealthy. Mom pushed her daughter towards seriously unhealthy eating habits. Grandma had some seriously repressed sexuality. The creepy neighbor moved away quickly after it became known that he had a thing for little girls; Ms. Altman alludes several times that she was one of those little girls, as well as being molested by a teenage neighbor (neither is written about in graphic detail, but heads up if this is a difficult topic for you). The family is close but struggles in a lot of ways, for a lot of reasons, and their struggles are common to both families from that era, and to families who have survived trauma or who have recently immigrated in the past few generations.

The memoir ends on a depressing note; Ms. Altman remarks that she is exactly the person her family made her to be, and that if you belong everywhere, you actually belong nowhere, a thought that gave me pause. Who do we become when assimilation is the end goal? Should assimilation be a goal at all? Why? Are we stronger instead as separate pieces of a mosaic?

I enjoyed this book as a story of a family with its own deep-seated difficulties, but that wasn’t what I had expected going in. The use of the phrases ‘treyf’ and ‘unorthodox outlaw’ had me expecting a memoir akin to Deborah Feldman’s Unorthodox, but instead, this was more along the lines of a random family that just happened to be Jewish and who rarely interacted with the religious aspects of it (which is fine! I’m not at all judging that, to be clear. I had just expected a memoir about a woman who had moved away from the religion she had been raised with, and instead found a story where her father fed her canned Spam as a girl).

So I didn’t dislike this, but I didn’t love it, either. Her descriptions of her grandmother’s goulash sounded incredible, however (even though I don’t eat meat!). Food is always better when it’s cooked with love, and it sounded like Ms. Altman’s grandmother packed that dish full of it. 😊

Visit Elissa Altman’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

fiction · historical fiction

Book Review: Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

Stephanie1 Comment

Who doesn’t love reading about a good plague? (Just open any news site, and…) I was waiting for my next interlibrary loan holds to arrive and grabbed a book off my own shelves, one that’s been sitting there for quite a while (as have most of them, sadly!). The book happened to be Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks (Penguin Books, 2002). I’d barely gotten into it before I realized the story was set in a small English town in 1666…during the time of the Bubonic plague. Yiiiiiiiiikes. I momentarily considered choosing another book- haven’t we had enough plague already???- because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to handle it, but I decided to keep going, and I’m glad I did. I’d read and enjoyed Ms. Brooks’s People of the Book a few years ago, and I’m pleased to say that my enjoyment of her writing as a whole continues. Despite its heavy subject matter during these times, Year of Wonders is a beautifully written novel.

Anna Frith is a young widow, living in a small English village with her two young boys in 1666. Cobbling together an existence from her flock of sheep and her work as a servant for one of the wealthier families in town and at the rectory, she finds joy in her sons but keeps mainly to herself. She takes in a boarder, a young male tailor, in order to supplement her meager income, and just as it seems as though the two of them might have a future together, he succumbs to a terrible illness. Soon, as more people fall ill, rumors begin swirling that people are fleeing the bigger cities, trying to outrun this deadly disease, and the town’s minister helps the townspeople come to an agreement: they’ll seal off the town and remain within its borders in order to prevent the spread of disease to the towns and villages beyond.

What follows is a tale of terror and exhaustion, one far too many of us know well after this past year, of death beyond measure, of people acting hysterically and abandoning their fellow man in his hour of need, of taking advantage of others’ fears and pain. But it’s also a story of bravery, of care and love beyond what could possibly be expected, of pushing ourselves to the point of exhaustion in order to provide what others cannot. Anna’s deep friendship with Elinor, the minister’s wife, provides moments of solace and hope; her growth throughout the novel reminds readers of what they’re capable.

This is a beautifully written book. Normally, I tend to shy away from novels that skew more toward the literary end of the spectrum, but with Year of Wonders, I can confidently call myself a fan overall of Geraldine Brooks. Her skill in immersing the reader in the year 1666, of painting such vivid pictures of the landscape and houses and possessions of the people who lived at this time is remarkable; this is an easy book to get lost in, and the amount of research necessary to so fully recreate such a world must have been staggering. What a gift Ms. Brooks possesses.

I worried that the exhaustion of the past year would have made this difficult to read, but there are enough differences in the behavior of today versus the behavior of Anna’s fellow townspeople that I needn’t have been concerned. Over half the people in Anna’s town died, and they do so at home, in full view of those who live there, compared with today, where we tuck the sick away and have laws about patient privacy (and thus we haven’t seen much of what Covid wards actually look like, which conceals a lot of the horror from Covid deniers). Regular townspeople are tasked with burying the dead; there are no crematoriums on the edge of town that people can ignore and pretend aren’t in operation day and night in order to keep up with the exploding death toll. In some ways, perhaps forcing people to confront the reality of the situation is a more effective means of dealing with a deadly epidemic (although, given the article I saw where a woman shrieked at the medical staff on the Covid floor where her husband had just died, that they were all a bunch of crisis actors and Covid wasn’t real, perhaps not…). There’s a bit of a twist at the end that I didn’t quite see coming, but that I felt fit in well with the rest of the story, and it wound up making the ending much more pleasant than I had foreseen.

I never expected a book so full of terror and death to be so beautiful, but Ms. Brooks’s writing makes it so. This is only my second Brooks book; I’m looking forward to reading the rest of her books, because I’ve enjoyed the two that I’ve read so very much. The Secret Chord is specifically on my TBR, so that’ll probably be my next of hers.

Visit Geraldine Brooks’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.