who are you as a reader?

Recently I had an assignment for grad school that asked us to reflect on who we are as readers. At the beginning of the course, we created visual representations of how we came to literacy, and the results of the exercise surprised me. Rather than solely focusing on books I enjoyed or to which I could relate, I remembered books that were read to me aloud, books that were integral to my relationships with others.

Who are you as a reader? Here’s an excerpt from my little essay. What we choose to read and what we remember about reading can provide an insight into who we are, and I think it’s fascinating. Would love to hear your thoughts on who you are as a reader, what you enjoy reading, and how you came to literacy. Happy reading, everyone! Book recommendations are always welcome too. lv, molly

When I look at my drawing from earlier in the week, I see books and letters and poetry, but I also see names, places, and coffee cups. Next to Go Dog Go appears a rocking chair and my overweight grandfather with his unfashionable glasses; along side The Art of French Cooking appears a pot of boiling water and my mother; adjacent to A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man sit two cups of coffee and a stick figure drawing of my dad. These drawings provoked a thought I’d never lent much credence: reading is as much a social activity as a solitary endeavor.

[...]

Plenty of books have caused paradigm shifts in my thinking, but few have been integral to my relationships with others. The books that were important in connecting with others remain fresh in my memory and sit on the top shelf of my bookshelf, so that I can revisit them with ease during nights when sleep evades me.

I see myself as a social reader– one who enjoys the sound of someone reading aloud, for whom context is important (I like a dimly lit room, even if it’s bad for your eyes), and who enjoys the connections books can help us create with others. I realized that this is the framework through which I view text and its significance in the world. Literature and Joyce’s novels in particular helped me see worlds beyond my own, understand how sentence structure and diction influence tone, and connect with my father. Cookbooks imparted a practical skill, and they provided an occasion for me to learn from my mother. Children’s books instilled confidence in my ability to read, and they enriched those evenings when my grandparents babysat me.

indie ink.

Thanks to Indie Ink for publishing a little essay of mine! And thanks to those readers who sent me nice little notes– what a great way to start the week. I enjoy hearing about how books changed your life too. A real delight for a girl who’s going to be a Language Arts teacher.

I wrote it ages ago, and upon re-reading it, there are myriad things I would change and fine-tune. Much like a sculpture, it’s difficult to discern when a piece is finished, and I wish I could revisit this one and erase certain lines, elaborate on other points, do what a perfectionist does: continue to carve until perceived perfection is reached. [Not to compare anything I've written to a sculpture... I think that'd be a little much.]

Regardless, it’s still exciting to see something of mine published on a site I enjoy perusing. Check it out here! lv, molly

P.S. I got Google Voice today. Do you have it? Is it useful? Why am I so excited about it?

P.P.S. I realize that the image above has nothing to do with this post. But doesn’t it make you laugh? That’s a rhetorical question.

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there is joy in all.

Can you tell I’ve been a little obsessed with women writers as of late? (See Joan Didion and Betty Smith posts.)

As I spend more time in schools, it’s becoming clearer to me that female authors and historical figures are rarely referenced in assigned texts and classroom discussions. Even the aesthetics of some schools are male-dominated; over the years, I’ve noticed too many classrooms that feature a disproportionate number of posters featuring men. There are so many amazing women who are too often left out of curricula because they’re not standard members of the ever-frustrating literary canon. [For the record, I'm not disparaging any particular school. This pattern of underpresenting women seems pervasive enough in many schools (my own high school included) to merit mention.]

As I ponder how to create lesson plans, curriculum, and classroom environments that embody social justice and promote equity, I’ve been revisiting my favorite women writers’ work. Tonight I reread some of Anne Sexton’s poetry and stumbled across this gem of a poem. It’s so beautiful. I’d love it if students were given a chance to read this. It challenges students’ notions about poetry being pretentious or inaccessible, and I’d love students to relate this to their own lives. Where do they find joy? Where do you find joy? xo, m

Welcoming Morning

There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry “hello there, Anne”
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.

All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
to a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.

So, while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter in the morning,
lest it go unspoken.

The joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard,
dies young.

Next up? Zadie Smith. I’m going to reread one of her books and post passages that cause me to pause, reread, and wonder.

brooklyn was a dream.

Author Betty Smith was beautiful

As students read silently for 30 minutes as a part of Teacher’s College Readers/ Writers workshop, I opened an old favorite: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I was struck by the beauty of the following passages and hope you are too. xo, m

“Oh, what a wonderful day was Saturday in Brooklyn! Oh, how wonderful anywhere. People were paid on Saturday and it was a holiday without the rigidness of a Sunday. People had money to go out and buy things. They ate well for once, got drunk, had dates, made love and stayed up until all hours; singing, playing music, fighting and dancing because the morrow was their own free day. They could sleep late– until mass anyhow.”

“But, then, so many things seemed like dreams to her. That man in the hallway that day: Surely that had been a dream! The way McShane had been waiting for mother all those years– a dream. Papa dead. For a long time that had been a dream but now papa was like someone who had never been. The way Laurie seemed to come out of a dream – born the living child of a father five months dead. Brooklyn was a dream. All the things that happened there just couldn’t happen. It was all dream stuff. Or was it all real and true and was it that she, Francie, was the dreamer?”

“As she read, at peace with the world and happy as only a little girl could be with a fine book and a little bowl of candy, and all alone in the house, the leaf shadows shifted and the afternoon passed.”

My parents' old apartment building in Brooklyn. My older brother spent his early years living here. I took this photo during a very snowy winter at NYU.

why i write.

Of course I stole the title from this talk, from George Orwell. One reason I stole it was that I like the sound of the words: Why I Write. There you have three short unambiguous words that share a sound.

I stole the title not only because the words sounded right but because they seemed to sum up, in a no-nonsense way, all I have to tell you. Like many writers I have only this one “subject,” this one “area”: the act of writing. I can bring you no reports from any other front. I may have other interests: I am “interested,” for example, in marine biology, but I don’t flatter myself that you would come out to hear me talk about it. I am not a scholar. I am not in the least an intellectual, which is not to say that when I hear the word “intellectual” I reach for my gun, but only to say that I do not think in abstracts. During the years when I was an undergraduate at Berkeley, I tried, with a kind of hopeless late-adolescent energy, to buy some temporary visa into the world of ideas, to forge for myself a mind that could deal with abstract.

In short I tried to think. I failed. My attention veered inexorably back to the specific, to the tangible, to what was generally considered, by everyone I knew then and for that matter have known since, the peripheral. I would try to contemplate the Hegelian dialectic and would find myself concentrating instead on a flowering pear tree outside my window and the particular way the petals fell on my floor. I would try to read linguistic theory and would find myself wondering instead if the lights were on in the bevatron up the hill. When I say that I was wondering if the lights were on in the bevatron you might immediately suspect, if you deal in ideas at all, that I was registering the bevatron as a political symbol, thinking in shorthand about the military-industrial complex and its role in the university community, but you would be wrong. I was only wondering if the lights were on in the bevatron, and how they looked. A physical fact.

Excerpt from Joan Didion’s essay, “Why I Write,” originally published in The New York Times Magazine, December 5, 1976.

back to school.

It’s back to [graduate] school for this one! I’m almost finished with the outstanding requirements. About time considering I start on March 29th, less than 2 weeks away. I’m currently working on a graphic representation that shows my vision of a first year teacher. Yep, that’s the assignment. A tad vague.

In the interim, I’ve decided I need to get some school supplies in preparation: cute, nicely-sized notebooks & a good planner.

Here’s what I’ve come up with: notebooks by Piano Nobile and a planner by Moleskine. The notebooks are refillable (the covers slip off) and fit Moleskines. Hoorah! And they have a little slot for pencils & pens. Perfect for a girl like me who seems to be in constant need of the pen she just lost. xo, m

Photo via here.

greek omelet.

The NYT Healthy Recipe page lets you select ingredients & a dish. So helpful.

The only recipe I’ve posted over the past couple weeks was for a cocktail. However delicious this cocktail may be, we all know it’s not a meal replacement, and I enjoy posting recipes that are good for you & easy to make. (The main requirement, however, is that they taste good.)

The lack of recipes is somewhat telling but not entirely poignant either. The past couple weeks, I’ve had a general feeling of malaise that’s clouded my usual joyfulness & induced a laziness I had hitherto unknown. [I'm employing something called "hyperbole" here because I wasn't actually that lazy, but the the word "hitherto" makes me laugh. I've never used it in writing... until now.] I’m blaming the “out of it” feeling on the change of seasons, & I’m pretty sure that once spring arrives in full force, the malaise will evaporate as quickly as it arrived. Moods are natural, and they come & go. That is always the consolation.

I’m getting back on track this week with cooking, however, because I feel so much better when I make my own food. The whole process of cooking, from picking out ingredients to serving, is therapeutic, and it’s undoubtedly healthier to cook one’s own food. Plus, it’s always fun to share food with friends.

As I’ve mentioned here and elsewhere on this blog, I LOVE the New York Times‘ Recipes for Health section. Delightful and tasty, these recipes haven’t disappointed yet. This omelet recipe looks great  & serves as a bit of a fridge-clean-out too. Just what I need. Happy omelet-making! xo, m

PS- I wish WordPress had a footnote feature. I use footnotes endlessly in essays, often unnecessarily, because they let me ramble when I feel like rambling. (I recognize that this isn’t a good practice.) I use parentheses on here to enclose random rambles that are only tenuously connected to the topic at hand. But if I had footnotes? Wow. That would make this blog so much easier to read & so much fun for me to write!

Greek Baked Omelet with Squash, Leeks, & Mint

Serves 6-8

Greeks often add yogurt to their omelets, which contributes calcium, protein, and bacteria long believed to help digestion. Yogurt also gives the omelet a light, fluffy texture. Make this with winter squash in winter and with zucchini in summer.

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 leek, white and light green parts, cleaned and chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
3/4 pound winter squash or zucchini, cut in 1/4- to 1/3-inch dice
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
1/4 cup chopped fresh dill
2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint
8 eggs
1/2 cup drained yogurt or thick Greek-style yogurt
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil over medium heat in a large, heavy skillet. Add the leek and cook, stirring, until tender, about three minutes. Add the garlic, stir together until fragrant, about 30 seconds, and add the squash. Cook, stirring, until tender, 10 to 12 minutes for winter squash, about 8 minutes for zucchini. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Stir in the dill and the mint. Remove from the heat.
Place the remaining tablespoon of oil in a 2-quart casserole or in a 9-inch cast iron skillet, brush the sides of the pan with the oil and place in the oven. Meanwhile, whisk the eggs in a large bowl. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper to taste. Whisk in the yogurt and the Parmesan. Stir in the squash or zucchini mixture.
Remove the baking dish from the oven and scrape in the egg mixture. Place in the oven, and bake 30 minutes or until puffed and lightly colored. Allow to cool for at least 10 minutes before serving. Serve hot, warm or at room temperature.

these days language seems transparent.

This afternoon I braved my living room, something that doesn’t sound particularly brave, but then again, you probably haven’t seen my living room as of late. [Unless you have. In which case, you contributed to its demise in some way that stemmed from us having fun: the whiskey bottles, pull out sofa, Amy Sedaris DVDs, a striped pair of socks whose owner has yet to present herself, etc. Speaking of which, which one of my friends is missing socks? And how did you arrive with socks but leave sans socks?]

One of the greatest things about cleaning is what you come across amongst the rubble. I found myself putting away books from the coffee table, returning them to their home in the glass bookcase, and pulling out books I hadn’t looked at in years. Books I’d previously loved but didn’t think were worth re-opening or re-examining.

Like an old friend, Billy Collins’ poetry is a standby for me. I never found it as thrilling or as challenging as some other poets’ work, but I don’t think I’ve ever given his work the credit it deserves either. Because it’s unpretentious and seemingly straightforward, maybe I failed to see the complexity, the subtlety of it; it’s easy to do that, particularly when you’re younger & you think you know better. When I was returning a book to its rightful home, I happened upon a copy of Sailing Alone Around the Room and flipped to this poem. I hope you find this poem as beautiful as I do. I think it’s best read aloud. I read it to myself while wearing men’s jeans and a t-shirt (my cleaning clothes), covered in dust, and it felt strangely perfect. Happy reading. xo, m

Nostalgia

Remember the 1340′s? We were doing a dance called the Catapult.
You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade,
and I was draped in one of those capes that were popular,
the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.
Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,
and at night we would play a game called “Find the Cow.”
Everything was hand-lettered then, not like today.

Where has the summer of 1572 gone? Brocade and sonnet
marathons were the rage. We used to dress up in the flags
of rival baronies and conquer one another in cold rooms of stone.
Out on the dance floor we were all doing the Struggle
while your sister practiced the Daphne all alone in her room.
We borrowed the jargon of farriers for our slang.
These days language seems transparent, a badly broken code.

The 1790′s will never come again. Childhood was big.
People would take walks to the very tops of hills
and write down what they saw in their journals without speaking.
Our collars were high and our hats were extremely soft.
We would surprise each other with alphabets made of twigs.
It was a wonderful time to be alive, or even dead.

I am very fond of the period between 1815 and 1821.
Europe trembled while we sat still for our portraits.
And I would love to return to 1901 if only for a moment,
time enough to wind up a music box and do a few dance steps,
or shoot me back to 1922 or 1941, or at least let me
recapture the serenity of last month when we picked
berries and glided through afternoons in a canoe.

Even this morning would be an improvement over the present.
I was in the garden then, surrounded by the hum of bees
and the Latin names of flowers, watching the early light
flash off the slanted windows of the greenhouse
and silver the limbs on the rows of dark hemlocks.

As usual, I was thinking about the moments of the past,
letting my memory rush over them like water
rushing over the stones on the bottom of a stream.
I was even thinking a little about the future, that place
where people are doing a dance we cannot imagine,
a dance whose name we can only guess.

Image via here.

a song i like.

Candi Staton

Sometimes I listen to the radio in my car, & usually I listen to some cheesy Top 40 station because, let’s face it, Ludacris songs are hilarious. But I’ve stopped listening to these stations of late because I’m not a fan of Drake or that song in which the guy sings about a girl sleeping around and follows it with, “I’m trying to find the words to describe this girl without being disrespectful.” (Too late!)

I’ve changed my radio dial to the station that’s probably for people in their 40s and 50s, people who shop at REI and attended two rock concerts when they were 25, who smoked pot once or twice and loved it but stopped themselves because they felt guilty (but are “totally cool” with others doing it). [I'm well aware that I'm stereotyping this radio station's listeners in the way that Jack Donaghey of "30 Rock" stereotypes Liz Lemon and 30-something feminists who pick up knitting for a week once every five years.]

Point is, this song came on. I’m not necessarily proud of the fact that I love it, but I do. (This band’s done a song for a car commercial, but they also toured with Tori Amos, so they have some cred. Clearly I’ve been watching too much “30 Rock;” I almost wrote “street cred.”) Mainly, I love the refrain, which features a sample from R&B legend Candi Staton’s “He Called Me Baby.” Her voice is gorgeous.

Enjoy! I’m off to jog, eat some oatmeal, vacuum, and pick Meaghan up from the airport! Woohoo! Have a fabulous week, readers! xo, m

more about "a song i like.", posted with vodpod

love.

My dad was a German major and translated this poem to read at my parents’ wedding. Last week, I overheard him reciting it to my mom as she made dinner, & I thought, “that’s love.” After 30 years, it’s amazing to see people light up at the sight of the other. Happy Valentine’s Day, friends and people of the internets. Whether you’re spending the day with your partner, friends, or a Colin Firth movie & Chinese takeout (goodness knows we’ve all been there), I hope today’s a good one & that you get to celebrate love in some form. xo, m

Du bist mein, ich bin dein

I belong to you and you to me,
Of that certain you can be
You are locked within my heart
And lost forever is the key.

Photo via here. The name of the German poet escapes me. Give me a day or two; I’ll find it.

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katherine mansfield.

Recently I re-vamped my writing portfolio and updated it to demonstrate more versatility. (An essay on Irish language acquisition in children interests me but probably no one else.) As I was perusing files on my computer and binders on my shelves, I re-discovered an essay I wrote about New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield and her contribution to the short story form. When I discovered her work, my James Joyce obsession waned; that’s how much I love her stories.

Mansfield wrote before and during the first World War and contributed significantly to both the modernist movement and the evolution of the short story. She was diagnosed with tuberculosis at the age of 29, and she spent much of her life traveling in pursuit of better health. Her travels led her to struggle with issues of national identity, and her earliest work focuses on physical, geographical, and emotional boundaries. When her brother died in WWI and her own health continued to diminish, Mansfield’s work began to focus less on exterior boundaries and more on internal. Who do we present to the world, and are those persons different from our private selves? What role does deception play?

In one of her last letters, Mansfield wrote, “If I were allowed one single cry to God, that cry would be: I want to be REAL.” This desire permeated Mansfield’s personal life and career. She abandoned the Victorian tradition of rounded characters in favor of unprecedented realism, and she perfected the modernist notion of embracing and portraying an individual’s complex emotional life. Mansfield’s stories are a descent into consciousness and incidental details that bear great significance for her characters and consequently for her readers. Additionally, Mansfield often wrote convincingly in first person as a man, questioning gendered identities and sexuality. Basically, this woman rocked; her writing is beautiful, her themes relevant.

See a sample of her work below. As Virginia Woolf said of Mansfield’s writing, it was the “only writing I’ve ever been jealous of.” Mansfield’s collection of short stories is available here. And there are some available online as well, though nothing quite beats curling up with a book on a rainy evening.

Happy reading, and as always, I love to receive book recommendations. What have you been reading lately? And what are some of your favorite books? xo, m

“I don’t believe in the human soul. I never have. I believe that people are like portmanteaux – packed with certain things, started going, thrown about, tossed away, dumped down, lost and found, half emptied suddenly, or squeezed fatter than ever, until finally the Ultimate Porter swings them on to the Ultimate Train and away they rattle…”

“The diversity of life and how we try to fit in everything, Death included. That is bewildering for a person of Laura’s age. She feels things ought to happen differently. First one thing and then another. But life isn’t like that. We haven’t the ordering of it. Laura says, ‘But all these things must not happen at once. And Life answers, ‘Why not? How are they divided from each other.’ And they do all happen, it is inevitable. And it seems to me there is beauty in that inevitability…”

“On her way home she usually bought a slice of honey-cake at the baker’s. It was her Sunday treat. Sometimes there was an almond in her slice, sometimes not. It made a great difference. If there was an almond it was like carrying home a tiny present–a surprise–something that might very well not have been there. She hurried on the almond Sundays and struck the match for the kettle in quite a dashing way.

But to-day she passed the baker’s by, climbed the stairs, went into the little dark room–her room like a cupboard–and sat down on the red eiderdown. She sat there for a long time. The box that the fur came out of was on the bed. She unclasped the necklet quickly; quickly, without looking, laid it inside. But when she put the lid on she thought she heard something crying.”

“There lay a young man, fast asleep–sleeping so soundly, so deeply, that he was far, far away from them both. Oh, so remote, so peaceful. He was dreaming. Never wake him up again. His head was sunk in the pillow, his eyes were closed; they were blind under the closed eyelids. He was given up to his dream. What did garden-parties and baskets and lace frocks matter to him? He was far from all those things. [...] While they were laughing and while the band was playing, this marvel had come to the lane. Happy…happy…All is well, said that sleeping face. This is just as it should be. I am content.”

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