Full Circle in at the end of 2011

This has been a beautiful year! My family is healthy and thriving. I received my master’s degree in education. I began the new school year, not as a full time teacher, but thankfully as a long term substitute. Even better was being offered a full time teaching job as a 4th grade teacher 2 months later! Since October I have been figuratively “drinking from a fire hose” as I grappled with the set up of a classroom, formed my class and all the other all encompassing work of a teacher. A couple of New Year’s Eves ago, I promised to savor every moment of that new year, being more reflective and contemplative. I was successful that year, but lost sight of that mindset in 2011. Now, here I sit wondering where the year went! Here again, I make that same pledge for 2012.

Happy New Year!

 

25 days till school starts…

And I don’t have a teaching job. What I do possess is my squeaky, new Masters in Teaching, my Georgia Educator Certificate, an untold number of teaching/instructional strategies, and oodles of enthusiasm/energy. To be honest, I should mention the student loans I acquired to get this third degree (2nd Masters). A proportion of the loans can be worked off with teaching service when I do get a position. Any day now, I should receive notification of the decision to grant my request for an economic forbearance or extension from the company servicing my undergraduate loans that I deferred when I pursued my education degree. This is the price I pay for going to an expensive private school where I couldn’t get the full Hope and changing vocations. Thankfully, I got a full scholarship to seminary, but I am not “using that degree.”

When school begins, I will be a substitute teacher in Gwinnett County Schools. Hopefully, in this year or the next I will be in the right place at the right time when an opening appears. Unfortunately these economic times have made teaching anything but a recession proof profession. Mortician, I think remains the only one. I am not discouraged or bitter now. There were inklings of those emotions last school year during my student teaching when it became clear that jobs for newbies like me without any contacts would not find employment. In fact, teachers hired mid-year that year were informed that their jobs were in jeopardy due to across the board cuts in the district. I have looked in other districts, but it is even harder there due to their cuts and my lack of a relationship with that district. I expect to be very busy subbing in the fall. I will have the free mind space and time to focus on the home and hearth as well a possible business ventures with my husband. There is that book I am supposed to be writing to…

 

Book Club

Now as we and the other members of our book club embark on our respective vacations, we have taken a short hiatus. We didn’t finish our last book and I admit I was glad. In an effort to give them the opportunity to chose our reading selections, we put the titles in a basket and my husband (an impartial party) picked them in the order that we would read our next batch. I wasn’t pleased with their choices. He chose one of their contributions first, James Patterson’s Angel from the Maximum Ride series. This book left a lot to be desired for me. I didn’t like the plot or characters at all. It was as if the author collected what he thought were the ingredients of today’s teen novels, mixed in a bowl, and then served in the form of this series. We had some okay conversations, but… Even though my choice was picked last, I believe I can convince them to read mine next, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card.

My daughter and I are still reading together until the book club reconvenes. We are reading and discussions chapters in Our Bodies Ourselves, by The Boston Women’s Health Collective and Judy Norsigian. It is such a blessing to have this time to talk and spend time together without the pressures of school and other activities.

 

Shame on The GOP!!!

As I follow the debt limit negotiations, I increasingly want to throw up! The president is offering the GOP record spending cuts in exchange for increasing taxes on the top 2% of earners, basically allowing the unfruitful Bush tax cuts to expire. The GOP is refusing to negotiate or raise the debt limit which has been done many times before. Their motivation is becoming increasingly clear especially since the 2010 “shellacking” when they took power: Cut any and all programs that benefit any citizen that is not wealthy, advance social conservatism, defeat President Obama, and defeat President Obama, among other things. Ironically, the right is supposed to be overwhelmingly Christian, but in practice they are anti-poor (“the least of these”), anti-diversity, and anti-truth. Taking this to its logical conclusion, they are anti-Christ in the sense of anti everything Christ means. From a governance standpoint, they are doing everything but governing. As I watch the continuing saga, I will be sure to have a barf bag handy.

 

One book finished, on to the next…

Two days ago we finished Incarceron by Catherine Fisher. Two of us really loved it, one didn’t finish, and I had tired of it by the end. I loved the way Fisher used language. The book was ripe with rich vocabulary words, making me giddy that my girls were being introduced to these “$5000″ words. The mini narratives that prefaced each chapter heightened the suspense by doling out little nuggets of information about the plot. With a third of the novel done, I was ready for it to end. I wanted Claudia to help Finn escape this otherworldly prison and Finn to aid Claudia in her desire to elude the arranged marriage to the jugheaded Caspar. Of course that wasn’t going to happen at the end because book two, Sapphique, continues the story. I will not be reading that one. My girls want to read the next one and I applaud that!

Our next novel is Romiette and Julio by Sharon Draper. This story is in the tradition of Shakespeare’s, Romeo and Juliet. We have read the first 10 chapters and the girls are excited. I am too!

I just finished Meg Cabot’s, Abandon, based on the Greek tragedy of Hades and Persephone. The novel kept me interested because I wanted to understand the connection between Pierce and John. Why he was so taken with her and she with him other than an overwhelming desire to kiss? The story reminded me of Twilight: Pierce’s (like Bella’s) clumsiness and penchant for getting into trouble, Pierce’s popularity with her school mates (like Bella’s), John’s brooding and seeming dislike of Pierce (like Edward)…I could go on. Even though the novel held me I felt sort of manipulated by the author. Like was is trying to draw out the story to get trilogy for a story that could have been finished in one book. Of course after the genius of J.K. Rowling, authors and publishing houses have taken notice that the money is in the series. Perhaps they knew this before, but it is all the rage now. I have nothing against series, but  as the reader  I want more authenticity. If the story warrants multiple books so be it, just don’t drag it out for the sake of it. I fear this was the same for Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games.  I finished that one this week also. I loved the first story, but felt like it could have been brought to an end at the first novel with another hundred pages. I asked one of my girls how she liked the last two books. She reported disappointment in Catching Fire and Mockingjay. I would rather read one good novel than a series where I only liked the first one.

 

 

Delicious Reading

Since the birth and death of my last reading group, I have been longing to begin again. This summer has offered me another chance. I am reading with my daughter and two of her friends, all 13 year olds. We are about one-third of the way through Incarceron by Catherine Fisher, plucked as a choice from my daughter’s summer reading list. I have to resist teaching them directly so they won’t dismiss our time together as another boring class. In addition to pure reading, I am trying to hone their writing skills by asking them to write a book review at the end. As we read along, I have asked them to write little responses to anything interesting they encounter while reading. Perhaps we will continue into the fall.

I continue reading on my own of course now delving into the science fiction/fantasy genre. There isn’t much diversity there. I just picked up Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Fledgling as I am eager to see how she weaves in race. I am practically giddy with all this delicious reading.

 

More from Lori L. Tharps

Reading Lori L. Tharps’ Kinky Gazpacho was like reading a letter from a friend. I have heard the best advice for writers is to “write what you know”. This was advice that Tharps took to heart. There are many elements from Tharps’ life that show up in her novel, Substitute Me. Reading her memoir helped me to understand her novel better and how it could have been shaped in her mind. After reading I got the sense that race can mean everything and nothing to our sense of identity. Tharps’ memoir reads like a novel so it kept me from beginning to end. Lately, I’ve been interested in reading memoirs and coming of age tales, I think because my daughter has just entered “teendom.” I have been thinking about her growing mind and personality. This memoir swept me up in the excitement of visiting a new country, falling in love, and growing up. The last part about the hidden legacy of slavery in Spain was fascinating.

 

Substitute Me by Lori L. Tharps

Lori L. Tharps is becoming one of my favorite authors! I recently finished her novel, Substitute Me, and I highly recommend it. After a day and a half, I was turning the last page. Reading it was bittersweet, because it was a solitary experience and not with a reading group. My dream is to have a reading group. Oh well…maybe one day!

Zora is a thirty-year old African-American woman in transition. She hasn’t quite found her particular niche. Her parents expectations and the knowledge that she has never quite lived up to them, hangs over her life like an anvil. For this reason, she doesn’t tell them that she has accepted a job as a nanny in New York City. Zora is well traveled, college educated (though a dropout), artistic, and a culinary queen. She holds a certificate from a culinary school in her hometown. This novel explores how Zora navigates, race, sex, and class (not to mention love, vocation, infidelity) as a nanny and eventually a homemaker for a thirtysomething White couple and their infant son.

Tharps does a great job with character development for Zora as well as Kate and Brad. The plot builds slowly, but it holds my attention. I enjoyed those little touches of foreshadowing. The dialogue was authentic and the thoughts of the characters that the reader is privy to were nuanced and multilayered.

I loved this story and found myself talking to the book. As I was reading, I thought that Substitute Me would be a great movie. I know that movies with an African- American female lead (sans Madea) are few and far between. If it was picked up, would the screen writer change it to appeal to a “mainstream” audience? Emily Giffin’s Something Borrowed was made into a movie. I enjoyed reading her book and the movie was okay. Substitute Me is of the same caliber if not better! I hope my prayers are answered. Come on Lionsgate or whomever it would take!

Now I am reading Tharps’ memoir, Kinky Gazpacho. A book jacket comment compares it to Under the Tuscan Sun and a blogger wrote that it was reminiscent of Eat,  Pray, Love. Years ago, I read her book, Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America (with Ayana Byrd). Keep them coming, Ms. Tharps!

 

Silver Sparrow part 2

I finished Silver Sparrow a couple of days ago, and I must say that I was so disappointed it had to end. My heart broke for both Dana Lynn and Chaurisse. Neither daughter was the victor in this situation if there is even such a thing in a web of lies and deceit. I had to fight the temptation to make this about the father or his partners in crime, blaming them and wondering how they continued in their reality. In the end, I focused on the daughters and how they made sense of the world around them. It was interesting to see how they formed relationships with young men and related to girls. Each girl seemed to be lacking when it came to self worth. Dana Lynn’s insecurities were to be expected because she knew her father had a life a part from her, another daughter and wife who never had to hide. Chaurisse, though she was the “legitimized” daughter suffered from a deep sense of inadequacy because she was not a “silver girl” with long hair, a  great figure, and lots of friends.

This book is a must read. I recommend it for book clubs, especially.

 

Silver Sparrow

Your father is married and has a daughter the same age as you. He is married to your mother also, but lives with his legal wife and daughter. You and your mother know about them, but you are the secret because they don’t know about you. This is, in a nutshell, the plot of Tayari Jones’ novel, Silver Sparrow. Each daughter narrates a half of the book and I just finished the first half from the perspective of the secret daughter, Dana Lynn Yarboro. This book is a masterpiece and I haven’t even finished it yet! Jones has the ability to draw in the reader so that they feel like the characters are confidantes who are entrusting them with their secrets. I feel like I know each character intimately. I cannot wait to understand James’ other daughter, Chaurisse and wife, Laverne. This book reminds me of Delores Phillips’ haunting novel, The Darkest Child. There are some common elements in the plot, but they each drew me in with their writing.

I’ll be back for a longer review, but I just had to write a few words because it is so good!