by Barbara Kingsolver
“High Maintenance Coping Between Independence and Heartache”
Barbara Kingsolver continues to weave together her story very well between two women, Taylor Greer and Lou Ann Ruiz, in the novel “The Bean Trees” (New York: Harper, 2003). I suspected as I read the book that Taylor and Lou Ann would eventually meet up in friendship, as Kingsolver made a very good character comparison of the two women while they were in two separate locations earlier in the book. Now Kingsolver successfully uses the first confrontation of two independent women learning to get along in friendship and coping with the past to bring out the big picture of what women are left to do when their freedom is brought to disillusion by failed relationships.
Kingsolver shows Taylor and Lou Ann learning to deal with their respective baggage in friendship to bring out a bigger theme for women: When men run out on their lives, how do women survive among each other? Kingsolver portrays Taylor and Lou Ann as essentially two sides of the same coin. One woman is running away from the concept of family. The other woman is burned out from the disillusion of a failed family. Both Taylor and Lou Ann, fiercely independent women, find their first combustion of personalities when Lou Ann expresses her desire for their friendship to be like a family, or to have the context of a family, and Taylor flatly states that she doesn’t want their friendship to be like a family (Kingsolver 87-8 ). Taylor has to learn to accept what Lou Ann is going through – the fear of failure from an abandoned marriage – if Taylor is to communicate with her. And Lou Ann has to learn to accept what Taylor has gone through – escaping the imposed burdens of her upbringing in Kentucky – if Lou Ann is to communicate with her. Both women have found their freedom quests to be quests of disillusion. Now the women must connect with each other in order to move on.
In this moment, I think that Kingsolver effectively addresses a very real heart issue for women embracing independence after the disillusion of failed relationships. When men walk out on relationships with women, or when men otherwise fail to provide a sense of belonging or a sense of place for women, women are left to resort to connectedness among each other to fill the gap that more intimate contexts of male-female relationships – family, marriage – leave blank. Since women are cut out of a family network or family context by men, women have to create their own alternative family network, their own coping with the past through a refuge of friendship among fellow women, away from the more intimate place – a failed intimate place. As women are cut off from men, women will want to establish a firm distance from the past, and a firm streak of independence. And the challenge that Kingsolver portrays for women is that independent women have to learn to put down their guard between each other to provide a safe place of retreat in friendship with each other from the failed place of belonging that men provide. ]]>
Hi Bradley; you're very welcome! My apologies that I didn't connect with you sooner. I would be glad to network with you about literature.
Bradley wrote: "Hi Rick, thanks for adding me as a friend. =)
http://www.cardshark.com/content/view_ar...
Dreamsbane of Tamalor"
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by Nancy Kricorian
“Fragmented Identity Composition and Neo-Modern Self-Reinvention and Self-Actualization in Nancy Kricorian’s “Dreams of Bread and Fire”
Nancy Kricorian’s “Dreams of Bread and Fire” starts off well as a promising story of a young woman wanting to dream her world all over again after a troubled family heritage, reshaping her identity through renaissance and romance in France (New York: Grove, 2003). I want to write both an appreciation and a constructive critique for Kricorian’s story, as it offers a fresh sense of adventure for young readers, but then also gets caught up in a sense of intellectual disorientation for the protagonist’s image that would be familiar to older fans of postmodern literature, but less embraceable to younger minds.
Kricorian writes with a breath of fresh air for younger people wanting a high sense of reinvention and actualization for their identities beyond the haze of the postmodern idea that we should resign ourselves to irrational confusion or lack of direction. In “Bread and Fire,” a young Armenian American woman, Ani, detaches herself from a troubled family background in which her father’s death and its association with demonic spirituality leaves Ani traumatized and disillusioned about dogmatism and hyper-imaginative storytelling in her parents’ legacy. Ani runs off to France, interested in reshaping and restarting her life all over again and taking in the academic scenes of France as an au pair. And yet Ani yearns to find a sense of belonging, a sense of family, in a long distance relationship that is going nowhere (Kricorian 5; 11-2; 15; 17). Kricorian captures the essence of young people emerging from postmodernism: a high passion for self-reinvention, rational adventure, and self -actualization beyond their parents’ disoriented view of self. Neo-moderns don’t want the same confusion of anti-grounded, anti-intelligent sensibility as their parents. Rather, neo-moderns want to dream up a whole new world for themselves, taking on a firm sense of direction for their lives through academic renaissance and intelligent romance. And neo-moderns take on a real sense of trans-nationalism, or life without borders across cultures. Postmoderns lived within the borders, fearing marginalization and the “unknown” of countries and cultures outside their comfort homes. Neo-moderns smash the borders down, crossing between cultures and embracing the “unknown” as their new frontiers for shaping their self-image.
And Ani’s longing for a firm romantic relationship shows the dilemma many young people face after postmodernism: how to start a new family legacy beyond the wreckage of their past family legacies. Neo-moderns don’t want the naïve experimentation of loosely anti-moralized, anti-rational marriage from their parents. Rather, neo-moderns want a moral sense of belonging with a soul-mate. Men and women want to know that they belong to each other in a home, and not be confused with an anti-intellectual disorientation of self between each other. Kricorian starts her story off very well with Ani personifying this emerging ethos of neo-modernism.
And yet Kricorian also ironically uses a storytelling method very familiar to postmodern literature, the fragmentation of connectivity between scenes and thoughts of a character’s life, to describe Ani’s transition from a traumatic family past toward a new self-pioneered future. Here is where my constructive criticism kicks in. Kricorian uses a storytelling method that I would describe as “fragmented identity composition.” In this method, the character’s self-image as seen by the audience (or read by the audience) is put together by bits and pieces across disconnected times and places.
Fragmented identity composition works very effectively in postmodern cinema, such as Stanley Kubrick’s film library, most notably “The Shining.” In this movie, Kubrick uses interjected phrases such as “The Interview” and “Thursday” and “8:00 AM” to show the characters’ disorientation across moments and thoughts. The movie’s characters become disjointed as the phrases shift from formal settings to frenzied hours (Burbank: Warner Brothers, 1980). Kricorian uses the same method of fragmented identity composition in a literary context. Ani’s identity is fragmented between “1965” and “1982-1983” to show her transition from her demonized parents’ past to her newfound freedom overseas (Kricorian 2; 9). I would express caution that the storytelling method works better for Kubrick’s film than Kricorian’s novel. Young readers interested in a consistent development of Ani’s life may find a bit of confusion to the fractured chronicle of Ani’s background. And Kricorian may end up turning off young readers who want Ani presented with a better sense of composure than fragmented identity composition may offer.
As a helpful offering of support for Kricorian within my constructive criticism, I would recommend Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel “The Namesake” as a good example of literary dissent from postmodern disorientation, and the neo-modern embrace of rational realness for fictitious characters (New York: Houghton, 2003). In Lahiri’s book, she doesn’t fracture her characters’ self-image through disconnected times and places. Rather, Lahiri uses flashback moments in the characters’ lives that heighten their peculiar traits as real and rational and accessible to readers, without disrupting the flow of chronology and “the present moment” for the characters. Lahiri illustrates the protagonist’s husband as a lover of Russian novels, with the explanation for one particular novel being that it was the novel he read on the day he nearly died. And in gripping language, Lahiri flashes back to the day that the husband pours through the pages of a book only to be literally poured out into snow from a train wreck (12-3; 17). In this example from Lahiri, neo-modern literature doesn’t use fragmented times and places to build a character’s identity to readers. Rather, neo-modern literature uses vivid, connected, and sensory scenes to explode the character’s traits right onto the reader. That’s what neo-moderns want: vivid, rational realness, and consistent development of direction for one’s life, especially in the characters they read. I think that if Kricorian uses this approach of vivid, sensory realness to her writing, she’ll attract neo-moderns more closely to her novels.
Overall, I think Kricorian has brought her story of Ani to a promising start, her choice of literary method notwithstanding. I think Kricorian should be commended for identifying with young people wanting a breath of fresh air from the postmodern haze of anti-intellectual, anti-identity confusion. And I look forward to how Kricorian develops Ani in her discerning of her options for education, adventure, and romance in France and beyond. ]]>
bookshelves: currently-reading
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by James Adams
“American Isolationism, China, and Muslim Social Networking in James Adams’ ‘The Next World War’ ”
James Adams provides some useful data about the development of Muslim social networking and its ramifications for Western culture in his book “The Next World War: Computers Are the Weapons & the Front Line is Everywhere” (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998). Adams notes that American isolationism among baby boomers coincided with China’s competition with the United States in the automotive and software industries, with China effectively reinventing their economy and gaining the upper hand on these industries. And Muslims developed their own digital information and social networking sensibilities from China as the Chinese invested in Muslim countries.
Adams shows China’s investment in Muslim countries as key to these countries becoming major players in the digital information age. The Chinese invested in Xinjiang, a major Muslim setting, in an attempt to avoid crude energy crises. The Chinese reinvigorated their economy through competing with the United States in automotive design and software design. And both China and Middle Eastern authoritarian countries, especially Iran, managed to transit their cultures into the digital information frontier without compromising their systems of government (Adams 21-2; 24; 26; 30). One thing we can expect for Western public policy relations with the Middle East and China is that as Middle Eastern countries partner with China for addressing economic crises in China (and greater Asia), there will be tensions in these countries between high government control over independent civilians’ social networking and the expansion of social networking, and the overall digital information age, as its own post-authoritarian entity. American diplomacy will tend to be very reactionary to these emerging tensions.
And another thing we can expect for Western relations with the Middle East and China is that Muslims and the Chinese will be very trans-national as well as info-savvy. Muslims and the Chinese will invest throughout Western and Asian cultures, with individual entrepreneurs and their businesses connecting between themselves and their families in their home countries. Muslim and Chinese entrepreneurs will also extend their families beyond their home countries into new settlements in Asia and the United States. Political and socio-ethnic tensions may emerge as Muslims and the Chinese plant roots in Asia and the United States, and especially as American baby boomers interact with Muslim and Chinese entrepreneurs taking advantage of the baby boomers’ isolationist history and settling down in their own country. Western, and specifically American, diplomacy will have to adjust for Muslims and the Chinese investing in Western countries in the digital information age. ]]>
by Sara Gruen
I've been interested in reading that book. Let me know what you think of it. ]]>
Rick Palma
read and liked
Jenni Simmons's
review of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich:
"I better put this ahead of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell for now, for our Church's book club. But I hear this book is excellent, too ... "
"I better put this ahead of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell for now, for our Church's book club. But I hear this book is excellent, too ... "
bookshelves: currently-reading
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