RIP Beverly Cleary

I was one of the many, many children who loved Beverly Cleary’s books about Ramona Quimby, her older sister Beezus, Henry Huggins, Otis Spofford, and this author’s other indelible characters. Cleary, a librarian, had children ask for books about “kids like us,” so she started writing about kids and situations based on her own childhood in Oregon. Cleary’s books are relatable and funny, and readers feel they know her characters personally. The books have obviously had a wide appeal; 91 million copies of her books have been sold. The books have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and have won multiple awards. As a child, I loved the Ramona books, but the book I felt the closest connection with was “Ellen Tebbets.” Ellen had a secret: her mother made her wear long underwear, and when she changed for her dance class, she was petrified that others would find out. I don’t know why I particularly related to this book or to this situation, but I do remember to this day that the book made me feel like an insider, the one who knew the secret, and I did not want anyone else to know it. I had no idea that millions of other young readers also knew the secret; instead, it was as if Ellen had confided in me, and only me. I was sad to hear that Cleary had died on March 25, 2021, at the age of 104. What a great legacy she left! (Note: thanks to Hillel Italie of the Associated Press for some of the details I have written about here.)

My Increasing Allergy to Newspaper Ink

I have written here about my strong preference for print newspapers. I have subscribed to the San Francisco Chronicle for decades (and my family of origin subscribed to various newspapers during my childhood and teen years), and I love the ritual of finding it at our doorstep in the morning and reading it with my morning coffee. I also subscribe to the New York Times and the Washington Post online, and I skim those, but my most enjoyable newspaper habit is the in-print reading, separating out the sections, trading sections with my husband, and sometimes clipping articles for future reference. So it is unfortunate that over the past few years I have gradually been developing an increasing reaction to the ink used in printing the paper; it often makes me sneeze or sniffle. I don’t have any allergies otherwise, so it is a bit surprising to have this one. It only happens with newspaper print, not other printed matter, so I assume it is because of the fresh ink. My late father used to have “hay fever” (do people still use this term for allergies?) and this included being allergic to print papers as well as to various plants, grasses, and pollen. I remember that because of this allergy, he would hold the paper out quite far while reading, and now I find myself doing that as well. (OK, this is also partly because of my aging eyes!) But reading my morning print newspaper is too deeply ingrained, and too enjoyable, to give it up unless it becomes absolutely necessary. Of course there is also the very real danger that print newspapers are a dying breed, so maybe it will be a matter of a race to which happens first: newspapers stop print versions, or I can no longer tolerate the ink. I dread both, and will be very sad when either or both of these events happen.

"Amy Tan: An Unintended Memoir," on PBS

I still remember the wonderful shock of reading Amy Tan’s novel “The Joy Luck Club” when it was first published in 1989. There had been a few, but very few, novels by Chinese American authors published before this, the most notable of which was (in my opinion) Maxine Hong Kingston’s 1976 book “The Woman Warrior.” These two books together were true breakthroughs, not only for Chinese American writers, but for opening up possibilities for writers of other minority ethnicities. They were particularly meaningful as pioneer Chinese American women writers. It is perhaps hard for younger readers of today to realize how very white and male U.S. literature was before the 1970s and 1980s; see any college literature curriculum of the time, for example. “The Joy Luck Club” became a huge bestseller, and was made into a movie, and Tan’s later books were also very successful. Today I am writing about Tan and her novels because a couple of weeks ago, on May 3, I watched PBS’ program “Amy Tan: An Unintended Memoir,” about Tan, her family (especially her mother), her writing, her supportive husband, her being part of a writers’ rock band, her love of drawing birds, and how she learned to take risks, along with many other topics. Tan has struggled with the early loss of her father and brother to fatal brain tumors; with her own health issues, including a terrible case of Lyme Disease; with periodic writers’ block; and with criticism from those who quibble with her portrayals of Chinese Americans. There are interviews on this program with Tan herself and those who know her, including clips of her with her late mother. Also other authors, notably Kevin Kwan, speak with emotion of how Tan’s work was such a breakthrough, and paved the way for other Chinese-American writers. This program was so insightful, so interesting, and so beautifully produced that I was glued to the screen the whole hour and 40 minutes. It is a lovely tribute to this great writer (who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, so we take extra pride in her and her work).

Brief Reports on Three Recently-Read Books by Te-Ping Chen, Joan Frank, and Dantiel W. Moniz

My recently-read books have been piling up, so I am going to “catch up” with very brief entries on three of these. First, Te-Ping Chen’s “Land of Big Numbers” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021) is a powerful and illuminating collection of stories about Chinese characters in China and as emigrants elsewhere. The portrayals are psychologically and culturally astute, and I felt that I learned more about China from these stories than in all the articles and books I have read about the country. (I am exaggerating, but only slightly.) The second book is by one of my longtime favorite (partly but of course not only because she is from Northern California!) authors, Joan Frank: the novel “The Outlook for Earthlings” (Regal House, 2020). This story of two lifetime friends, Mel and Scarlet, stretches from 1964 to 2013. The friends are very different, often misunderstanding each other, yet their lives are interwoven. Some readers of this blog will remember that I am drawn to stories about women’s friendships, and this one is emotionally gripping. A third recently-read book, a short story collection, is “Milk Blood Heat” (Grove Press, 2021), by Dantiel W. Moniz. It features young women of various backgrounds in Florida. The stories are intense and sharp-edged, as young women’s lives often are; the characters deal with family, bodily issues, racial issues, cultural differences, spirituality, and death. I highly recommend all three of these books.

RIP Robb Forman Dew

I was sad to hear, belatedly, that the author Robb Forman Dew had died on May 22, 1920, at the age of 73, of a heart problem. I read her first and perhaps still most famous novel, “Dale Loves Sophie to Death” (1981) when it came out, and later read her other novels. She is known for, as the New York Times obituary put it, her unhurried “carefully etched novels of family life” that made her “one of our premier chroniclers of everyday life.” Readers of this blog know that these kinds of novels are among my most cherished. Dew was raised in the South, and felt she was shaped by her time there. Her becoming an author was partially influenced by her maternal grandfather, the well-known poet and critic John Crowe Ransom, with whom Dew was close. As a young adult, she formed lifelong friendships with several women writers, including Gail Godwin, Nancy Thayer, Louise Erdrich, and Anne Tyler. Besides her novels, she wrote a memoir, “The Family Heart” (1994), about her and her husband’s reaction to one of her sons’ coming out as gay. I am truly sad to hear of Dew’s death, especially at this relatively young age. Forty years after reading Dew’s first novel, and having read her other novels as well, I am inspired to re-read some or all of them; they are now on my to-read list.

Tommy Orange is interviewed by Laleh Khadivi

A few days ago, I was fortunate to hear (virtually, of course) the novelist Tommy Orange interviewed by another novelist, Laleh Khadivi, at the university where I teach, the University of San Francisco. Orange is the author of the innovative, powerful novel “There There,” about urban Native Americans living in Oakland, California. I wrote about that novel here on 10/26/18. Laleh Khadivi is the Iranian-American author of “The Kurdish Trilogy” of novels; she teaches at the University of San Francisco. The event was originally supposed to be in person, but like so many other events, had to be postponed, and ultimately ultimately conducted on Zoom, because of the pandemic. Orange spoke candidly about his own background and about the writing of this novel, his first. He wrote that he didn’t really know what a novel was until he read the novels “The Bell Jar,” by Sylvia Plath, and “A Confederacy of Dunces,” by John Kennedy Toole. With both novels, he was impressed by the tragedy and the suicide, but also by the way the novelists created art, created something beautiful. These two novels provided a doorway into many other novels he then read, including by Kafka and Borges. (During the interview, Orange noted Khadivi’s books by Borges in the bookshelf visible behind her. I smiled when he mentioned this, as I, like many other readers, often try during Zoom calls to see what books are on other people’s bookshelves.). Orange spoke of the current moment of auto-fiction, fiction which is close to authors’ own lives, almost memoir. He said it was hard to balance his portraits of the characters in his novel, wanting to be clear and accurate, yet avoiding stereotypes about Native Americans. The two novelists discussed how writing a first novel provides a type of freedom that does not exist when writing ensuing novels, when the writer has to deal with all the expectations of readers and critics. But Orange said he felt he could write the (second) book he wanted to write, and in fact is in the process of writing, and wasn’t worried about whether it would be successful or not; he would be happy just to have written it. The two authors talked about how novels develop in writers’ minds, and how they determine the structure of their novels. They talked about the concept of “tribes,” and about unjust systems of power, both novelists having written about oppressed groups lacking power. Orange made the point that Native Americans want to be seen as nations, not just as American Indians. He said that they have been dehumanized, and in order to be rehumanized, they need their culture, their rituals, and their stories. This conversation between two terrific writers was quietly powerful, even revelatory, and I for one felt privileged to listen in on their discussion, and appreciated so much the level of openness and the insights they shared.

"I'll Be Seeing You," by Elizabeth Berg

Elizabeth Berg always writes beautifully about women’s lives, families, love, relationships, and so much more in her novels. I have just read her memoir about her parents’s old age, illness, and death, and it is as beautifully written as her novels, and all the more poignant for being Berg’s own painful family story. The memoir is titled “I’ll Be Seeing You” (Random House, 2020). It is a short book (under 200 smallish pages) but packed with a combination of realism and emotion. Berg says she wondered if it was acceptable to tell her parents’ intimate story in this way, but concluded that what happened in their lives, and the lives of their children, was something that happens to so many people, and is perhaps not written about in this candid way often enough. Berg herself is 70, as she notes, and her parents were in their late 80s and early 90s when the events of their story happened. So Berg is not only thinking of her parents’ decline, but is also reminded that her own struggles with aging will come in the not too distant future as well. Her father is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and her mother – who was always dearly loved and taken care of by her strong and doting husband – is having a very difficult time adjusting. This comes out as a kind of simmering anger at her husband and at the situation, an attitude which bewilders him. Berg and her sister persuade her parents that they have to leave the house where they have lived for decades, and move into an independent living facility. The move is especially hard on Berg’s mother. Berg finds herself upset with her mother for not trying harder to adapt to the new situation. She and her sister have long gripe sessions about their mother. Yet of course they dearly love both parents; it is just that no one is happy with the developments, and no one quite knows what to do or how to feel. The memoir ends with both parents dying, first Berg’s father and then her mother. The parents and the daughters have by that time more or less adjusted to their evolving situation. But there is no glossing over the pain and difficulty of the situation for the whole family. Berg is very good at capturing the complexities and contradictions of everyone’s experiences and feelings. My family, like so many families, has had some experience with aging parents and of dilemmas related to aging, illness, and decline, and although the specifics of our stories are different, there are definitely common strands that resonate for me, and, I am sure, that resonate for many readers. There is no denying the often wrenching nature of the changes -- whether to a greater or lesser extent -- that old age brings, both for the aging people themselves and for their families. Berg's memoir provides no magical answers, but offers the validation and comfort of sharing common human experiences.