When We Collided in Around the World in 80 Books

Sep 21, 2015 Jessica rated it liked it

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Click here for my Pinterest thematic art gallery. Captions below.

The Weeping Woman by Pablo Picasso. This painting seems to depict a visual of Vivi's experience with bipolar disorder. Vivi's healing is not a gently sloping journey upward. Rather, like the woman in the painting, her journey is multifaceted, complex, with moments of healing threaded throughout a dark process. When Vivi arrives in the text, she appears like "a cartoon character come to life" (12)--vibrant, full of life. Similarly,

Click here for my Pinterest thematic art gallery. Captions below.

The Weeping Woman by Pablo Picasso. This painting seems to depict a visual of Vivi's experience with bipolar disorder. Vivi's healing is not a gently sloping journey upward. Rather, like the woman in the painting, her journey is multifaceted, complex, with moments of healing threaded throughout a dark process. When Vivi arrives in the text, she appears like "a cartoon character come to life" (12)--vibrant, full of life. Similarly, the woman in Picasso's painting is painted brightly, exotic in almost tropical colors. She is dressed in bold clothing, as well, suggesting a vibrance similar to Vivi's personality. However, she also appears distraught, tortured. Her face is twisted in pain, hands clutched to her face. The lines are sharp and jagged, also suggesting pain. As the viewer moves to the center of the painting, her portrait becomes gray. Similarly, as the reader follows Vivi's journey throughout the text, they witness Vivi's descent into gray sadness. Despite her loud, bright actions, she still finds the world "so harrowingly, impossibly, uselessly sad" (231) before her recovery process. In this sense, she is not unlike Jonah. She is coping with the grief of mental illness, just as Jonah copes with the grief of loss.

*****


How I Learned to Walk
BY JAVIER ZAMORA
Calláte. Don’t say it out loud: the color of his hair,
the sour odor of his skin, the way they say
his stomach rose when he slept. I have
done nothing, said nothing. I piss in the corner
of the room, the outhouse is far, I think
orange blossoms call me to eat them. I fling rocks
at bats hanging midway up almond trees.
I’ve skinned lizards. I’ve been bored. It’s like
that time I told my friend Luz to rub her lice
against my hair. I wanted to wear a plastic bag,
to smell of gasoline, to shave my hair, to feel
something like his hands on my head.
When I clutch pillows, I think of him. If he sleeps
facedown like I do. If he can tie strings
to the backs of dragonflies. I’ve heard
of how I used to run to him. His hair still
smelling of fish, gasoline, and seaweed. It’s how
I learned to walk they say. Calláte. If I step
out this door, I want to know nothing will take me.
Not the van he ran to. Not the man he paid to take him.
Mamá Pati was asleep when he left. People say
somehow I walked across our cornfield
at dawn, a few steps behind. I must have seen him
get in that van. I was two. I sat behind a ceiba tree,
waiting. No one could find me.

Both Emery Lord's When We Collided and Javier Zamora's "How I Learned to Walk" demonstrate that healing is a journey. Both texts show how grief is overcome.

In the book, grief seems insurmountable at first. Jonah feels overwhelmed by the grief his family experiences after his father's death, a feeling like his "ribs are splitting apart" (44). When Vivi enters his life, he seems shocked by her desire to fit into his family, as no one in town envies their misery (55). Indeed, the Daniels family has had to rearrange their whole lives to attempt to fill the hole Jonah's father left. While his mother spends her time in bed mourning, the children take over chores, work, caretaking, and general household management. But even Jonah recognizes that this kind of arrangement is not sustainable (251). Something needs to change to move their family toward healing, but sadness hangs over them.

Zamora's "How I Learned to Walk" also demonstrates devastating grief. "Calláte. Don’t say it out loud..." the speaker's community demands, referring to his absent father. Like Jonah, the speaker searches for his father, hoping "to feel/ something like his hands on my head" (11-12). He wonders about him, longing for him "[w]hen I clutch pillows" (13). He is trying to find clues about his father's identity in his life. The speaker does not experience joy as he tries to discover his father; instead, he is focused on the removal from his life (20). His attention is directed at the hole left by his father, not by a sense of fullness during his journey.

Despite their pain, both Jonah and the speaker in Zamora's poem experience a journey toward healing. Through Jonah's relationship with Vivi, he is able to experience life again, despite his sadness. He acknowledges, for instance, that she never pulls him out of his sadness but is "all action" (162). Their relationship, however--like his family's grief--is unsustainable because of Vivi's need for healing, too. Their collapse leads him to his mother, who is the only character to initiate the process of healing as a family. When he reaches out to her, she finally sees who she needs to be for him (278). They will never be the family they were before Jonah's father died, but they can rebuild, as we see in the conclusion.

Zamora's speaker does find his way toward healing. However, unlike Jonah, his journey is just beginning. He mourns for his father's absence, but he also recalls that he learned to walk because of "how I used to run to him" (16). In this way, he has learned movement to carry him forward. The reader last sees him walking after his father, then waiting behind a tree, perhaps for his return (22-25). It's important to note that he is sitting still after walking on his own, unassisted. This line suggests some hope of healing thereafter, despite his father's abandonment, that movement is possible. He has learned to walk from his father's actions.

Both Jonah and the speaker of "How I Learned to Walk" have lost their fathers and experience the sadness that comes with loss. However, they are also experiencing healing as a process, emerging from their grief in different ways. ...more

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