As a teacher, I've had my own experiences teaching the memoir genre and I have never felt that I was able to accurately describe what makes a memoir powerful. Now, I have the perfect example. Jeannette Walls writes in The Glass Castle of her childhood. What makes it a life-changing experience to read is that her childhood was anything but typical; considering her Park Avenue address and occupation as a journalist help us to assume otherwise.
Walls and her three siblings were raised by nonconformist parents, one of which was an alcoholic and the other a free spirit. I have worked with students that I suspected had rough home lives, but to hear a child's voice describe what life is really like in certain households, made my skin crawl and my temper flare! I had so many emotional responses to this story that my book is literally full of scribbled comments and questions. There were times that I found myself hating the mother and secretly wishing this story was fiction. I tried to disconnect myself from the story several times, but I kept remembering the dirty, skinny, attention-seeking students I've had through the years and wanting to know how each one of them turned out. Did they survive their childhood as Walls did? Did they move to New York City with their siblings and use their amazing academic abilities to land themselves journalism jobs?
The question I keep asking myself is..."How do children survive the abuse, neglect and constant hunger?" These children were subjected to the worst of extreme poverty. They moved constantly, were usually "homeschooled" and kept out of the "system". They were left to fend for themselves. Their mother was often too tired or busy painting to provide food, clothing or shelter for them.
I could write forever about my experience reading this book, because that's what it truly turned out to be...an experience. So I'll just close with an excerpt...
Around that time, probably because of all the garbage, a big, nasty-looking river rat took up residence at 93 Little Hobart Street. I first saw him in the sugar bowl. This rat was too big to fit into an ordinary sugar bowl, but since Mom had a powerful sweet tooth, putting at least eight teaspoons in a cup of tea, we kept our sugar in a punch bowl on the kitchen table.
This rat was not just eating the sugar. He was bathing in it, wallowing in it, positively luxuriating in it, his flickering tail hanging over the side of the bowl, flinging sugar across the table. When I saw him, I froze, then backed out of the kitchen. I told Brian, and we opened the kitchen door cautiously. The rat had climbed out of the sugar bowl and leaped up onto the stove. We could see his teeth marks on the pile of potatoes, our dinner, on a plate on the stove. Brian threw the cast-iron skillet at the rat. It hit him and clanged on the floor, but instead of fleeing, the rat hissed at us, as if we were the intruders. We ran out of the kitchen, slammed the door, and stuffed rags in the gap beneath it.
That night Maureen, who was five, was too terrified to sleep. She kept on saying that the rat was coming to get her. She could hear it creeping nearer and nearer. I told her to stop being such a wuss.
"I really do hear the rat," she said. "I think he's close to me."
I told her she was letting fear get the best of her, and since this was one of those times that we had electricity, I turned on the light to prove it. There, crouched on Maureen's lavender blanket, a few inches away from her face, was the rat. She screamed and pushed off her covers, and the rat jumped to the floor. I got a broom and tried to hit the rat with the handle, but it dodged me. Brian grabbed a baseball bat, and we maneuvered it, hissing and snapping, into a corner.
Our dog, Tinkle, the part-Jack Russell terrier who had followed Brian home one day, caught the rat in his jaws and banged it on the floor until it was dead. When Mom ran into the room, Tinkle was strutting around, all pumped up like the proud beast-slayer that he was. Mom said she felt a little sorry for the rat. "Rats need to eat, too," she pointed out. Even though it was dead, it deserved a name, she went on, so she christened it Rufus. Brian, who had read that primitive warriors placed the body parts of their victims on stakes to scare off their enemies, hung Rufus by the tail from a poplar tree in front of our house the next morning. That afternoon we heard the sound of gunshots. Mr. Freeman, who lived next door, had seen the rat hanging upside down. Rufus was so big, Mr. Freeman thought he was a possum, went and got his hunting rifle, and blew him clean away. There was nothing left of Rufus but a mangled piece of tail.
Instead of my usual signature (Happy Reading!), I'll just encourage you to find a book you can truly connect with, a book that you can experience.
RC
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