I recently had the opportunity to attend your “Growing Up in a Small Place” lecture at the Claremont McKenna College Athenaeum. Your presentation was enthralling and I was really impressed with your ability to recompose scenes and memories into beautifully crafted words. I was particularly struck by the way you depicted simple scenes, yet were able to bring forth entire trains of memory beneath the surface of the images, like your descriptions of your childhood home and your family.
Since you have made your career as a writer in the United States, but grew up in the Tropics, it was particularly interesting to hear your descriptions of your homeland as it compares to a Manhattan apartment. The scene of an entire country waking up before dawn in order to work and make a living seems so foreign to someone like me who grew up in a suburban town in the U.S.A. While your descriptions seem so down to earth, they simultaneously are able to say so much about your home and childhood. You explained that in the Tropics Mr. Jarvas woke you up every morning as he took his goats to pasture at half past five. Somehow, you were able to present an idea that seemed so remote to my experience as a simple fact of daily existence. When I heard your words, I felt as if you were relaying all your most intimate thoughts to the world and I noticed that you inserted even the most minor details into your descriptions. This made me feel as if I was listening to a storyteller in the ancient tradition of great storytellers. While the stories were deeply personal, I felt as if I was invited to experience the emotions as a listener and to really get a deeper understanding of the significance of these particular stories. For example, when you spoke about your brother’s death I was amazed at how open you could be with an audience while retelling a memory in which, at the time, you were unable to share your emotions with the surrounding world.
I thought it was particularly apt when you wrote that the only thing Manhattan seems to have in common with where you grew up is its “geographical location.” I really liked how you were able subtly to set such contrasting images between the two places, without relying on the most obvious distinctions. I would have never considered how waking up to the bustle of people getting ready to go to market before sunrise could be such a “romantic” vision, while waking up in Manhattan at the same time would be so lonely. I’ve seen the three businessmen, identically dressed, walking quickly to work, but I’ve never imagined that there could be something more romantic and tender in the early morning. This contrast seemed like a very apt description of an aspect of American culture that lacks any strong form of community.
While your childhood descriptions do not in any way resemble the writing skill of a child, I felt as if entering this magical world of early memory allowed your childhood voice to ring through the text. There seemed to be lightness to the story derived from the innocence of childhood thoughts and misunderstandings. Although the stories were factual accounts of your past, I could feel some wry humor in the writing and, especially since you described yourself as always in trouble as a young girl, this sense of playful, defiant, humor seemed fitting. For example, when you said you fell in love with Lucifer after being forced to copy Paradise Lost, I could really get a feel for your childhood mischievousness and independence.
The blunt way you describe events, with an acceptance for the past, which I feel many people do not hold, made me really able to trust your words. I was impressed with the way your emotional life seemed to be completely and naturally replicated in your writing. Although I know you were only reading passages, I found it curious how your stories didn’t seem to have an end. Even though you stopped speaking and moved on to another passage, I felt as if the story had been somehow cut off in the middle, as if the actual story of your life is never complete and, therefore, cannot really have an ending, as if an ongoing journey through life is more important than having a specific destination. Instead, I was able to get short snippets of your life story from which I could only infer a small, by enticing, amount of your background.
I was struck by how personal all of your writing seemed to be as well. At least with the passages you chose to read, you never seemed to have the need to screen your stories behind a narrator or fictional characters. Instead, I felt as if you were opening a window to your life so that the audience might be able to connect and understand what brought you to where you are today. The story about your brother was especially striking and tragic and I was especially touched when you described how he died without ever letting the world fully know who he was. While that truth is something that is connected to your past, I feel as if it is something that everyone fears and wonders about. I felt this passage particularly was able to provoke the audience to question their own relationship with life and death through the honest lens of your own experience.
I want to thank you again for coming to speak at Claremont McKenna and I look forward to reading more of your books over my spring break. You opened a door to so many possibilities for my own development as a writer.
Sincerely,
Jamie Goldberg
Pomona College '11
Response to your Presentation at Claremont McKenna College
| From: | Jamie Goldberg (jbg02007@mymail.pomona.edu) |
| Sent: | Fri 3/06/09 1:00 PM |
| To: | jkincaid@fas.harvard.edu |
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