My New Book: "Growing up with God and Empire"

I am happy to announce that my new book from Multilingual Matters, "Growing Up with God and Empire: A Postcolonial Analysis of 'Missionary Kid' Memoirs," was published this month. The book provides historical, political, and religious contexts for missionary work, and then analyzes 42 memoirs of now-adult North American missionary kids who lived in various countries over various time periods, mostly mid-20th century. I look at colonial-related themes such as portrayals of the "exotic," language learning, treatment of local people, schooling, race, social class, and gender. Abundant salient/illustrative/revealing excerpts from the memoirs are included. I end with a “Personal Epilogue” describing some of the issues and struggles I had while writing this book, some of which were to do with re-examining my own missionary kid background (many years ago), balancing my academic and personal roles in writing the book, and trying to be fair in portraying missionary work regarding both the good that missionaries and missions did and the sometimes negative colonial aspects of their work. Writing this book involved much (fascinating!) research and hard work, and at the same time was very engaging and meaningful to me, even emotional at times, as it brought together my own missionary kid background, my scholarly interests, and my love of memoir. I am also pleased that I have provided a glimpse into the under-examined lives of missionary kids and their place in the missionary enterprise and the colonial project. I want to express here my profound thanks to my colleagues and friends who were so supportive as I wrote this book, to the terrific editors at Multilingual Matters, and most of all to my missionary parents and missionary kid brothers. I also deeply thank those scholars who wrote the generous reviews/endorsements listed in the Multilingual Matters catalog (see link below). More detailed information is available at http://www.multilingual-matters.com/display.asp?K=9781788922326

"My Year of Rest and Relaxation," by Otessa Moshfegh

Otessa Moshfegh’s recent novel, “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” (Penguin, 2018), has been getting critical praise and much attention, with words like “profound” being tossed about. For a while, I resisted reading it because the descriptions in the reviews sounded oppressive. But I finally decided to go ahead and see what all the fuss was about. I perhaps should have trusted my original instincts. I found the book – and the main character (who is also the narrator) – annoying and depressing. This young woman, who comes from a privileged but emotionally-starved family, decides to leave her lackluster art gallery job, along with most of her life and friends, and “hibernate” in her apartment in Manhattan, as a rather uncertainly-conceived effort to heal herself from her sadness, depression, alienation and anomie. Most conveniently, she has an inheritance that allows her to do so. She sets out to sleep as much as possible, and to help in this goal, she finds an eccentric and highly unprofessional psychiatrist who freely dispenses all sorts of pills to her in large quantities with multiple refills: anti-depressants, anti-anxiety pills, sleeping pills, and much more. Both of her parents -- by whom she was emotionally neglected -- have died, and she seems to have very few human connections. One connection is occasional get-togethers with her longtime on-again-off-again “boyfriend” (of sorts), although they see each other rarely and have an unhealthy relationship, to say the least; Trevor is a successful Wall Street type, about ten years older than she is, and truly uncaring and obnoxious. The other main connection is with her college friend, Reva, who is both intrusive and needy, but on some level caring, and whom our main character treats rather badly. Aside from these two people, she mainly only sees her psychiatrist, her doorman, the owners of the local bodega, and the pharmacists at the Rite-Aid where she fills her numerous prescriptions. I do feel sorry for this young woman, but it is also hard not to be put off by her sense of casual entitlement and the by the way she treats everyone in her life. Although the novel is fairly short, one which I would usually devour in a few hours, I found myself reading a little bit and then setting it aside for a few hours or days before returning to it. I did finish it, and I sort of “get” the book, but I was mostly annoyed by it.

"A Cloud in the Shape of a Girl," by Jean Thompson

“A Cloud in the Shape of a Girl” (Simon and Schuster, 2018) is exactly the kind of novel I am so often drawn to: a multigenerational family saga, focusing mainly on the lives of the women characters, written with attention to the details of relationships among the characters and of everyday life. In addition, its author is Jean Thompson, whose novels and short stories I have enjoyed and admired in the past. Actually, I admired her earlier fiction, but somewhat “went off” her work when I read her last two novels before this one (“The Humanity Project” and “She Poured out her Heart”); “A Cloud…” brought me back to the characteristics of Thompson’s fiction that made me like it so much. A major theme in the novel is that of what a woman’s life is meant to be. Evelyn, of the oldest generation, wanted to work and to “be someone” in the world, but became caught up in being a wife and mother, and was not able to achieve her dreams. Her daughter Laura, on the other hand, wanted most of all to be a wife and mother, even though her marriage turned out to be unhappy, and her children were disappointing in different ways. Her daughter Grace seemed to need to get away from her and the family; her son Michael became addicted to drugs and a series of rehab efforts were mostly ineffective. Despite all these issues, there was definitely love in this family, if not always well expressed. The story goes back and forth among various time periods, and we the readers gradually see connections that were not immediately evident. A sort of subtheme is the question of where “home” is, and what it means. The novel is set in a small Midwestern college town, which is both nurturing and, to some characters, stifling. Two family homes are also important “characters” in this novel. There is much to like in this novel, much to think about. Although it doesn’t feel terrifically original, what it does, it does well. And who am I to question Thompson’s expert and engaging use of this “formula,” when, as I said at the beginning of this post, this is one of the types of novels I most like and savor.

Reading to my Grandson

One of my very favorite memories of my daughter’s childhood is of reading to her. I loved to buy her books (in independent bookstores, of course!) and take books from the library for her. We would go to library storytimes, or simply to browse in bookstores. But best of all were the cozy times of reading to her. And now my daughter has a son who is almost a year old, and I have started reading to him occasionally. He doesn’t quite “get” the idea of reading yet, of course, and his immediate interest is to put the book in his mouth and chew on the corners (thank goodness for board books!). I have a couple of techniques for the situation: one is to read to him while he is in his crib, so he can’t grab the book, and another is to give him one book to chew while I read from another. I show him the pictures, and read exaggeratedly, almost singing sometimes, and he seems to like that. I can’t wait for him to understand more language and to understand the idea of books and reading, but in the meantime I am having fun helping with the process of acquainting him with books and reading. My daughter and her husband of course read to him, but my daughter encourages my reading to him as well. (She knows how much I love it.) I have saved a few of her childhood books (I long ago gave most of them away to family, friends, and her former preschool, but kept a few favorites) and it is fun, and nostalgic, to bring those out to read to her little boy now. And, as you can imagine, I am now browsing and buying in the children’s sections of my favorite bookstores again, after all these years. What a joy it is to read to this new adored child in my life, and to contemplate more reading to and with him in the next few years!