A Semester's Worth of Reading

This semester has been a busy one, so there's been very little reading for fun going on around here. For my class, I read pieces of (insert shudder here -- wouldn't a professor know the importance of reading an entire piece, in the right order no less, to know the full context?) of Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point as well as Millennials Rising: The Next Generation by Howe and Strauss. The former was interesting but difficult at times to apply to an educational setting; the latter was published in 2001, before we could even imagine how the colossal influences of  September 11 and Facebook would impact our students and the way they learn. Alas, these texts did little to further my understanding of how to best foster learning in my classroom. Thankfully, I was also responsible for reading and implementing ideas on formative assessment, which was helpful and stands to create great change in education if handled well.

With that aside, I did read a bit during what little time I had leftover. First I started with the amazing Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, nonfiction authors who are a major part of the movement for educating women worldwide. I had heard my college friends and former professors talking about it, raving about it, telling how it moved them to action, for quite some time. Then I heard WuDunn speak at The Global Leadership Summit last August, at which she read excerpts of their book. As I sat in the audience, tears streaming down my face as she told us how a fundamental education had changed the lives of women they'd met, I knew I'd need to buy the book to know more about their mission. I'll admit I haven't finished the book yet (I can hear boos and hisses as I type), but I think that's merely because I'm not well trained or self-disciplined when it comes to reading non-fiction. I am sadly addicted to the plot diagram we learned about in middle school, and nonfiction simply doesn't work that way. I'm nearly finished, though, and it has moved me to action -- I've revisited the ways I can promote education in Liberia through much-needed scholarships for students and improving teacher education programs in the country. The authors discuss other ways to "[turn] oppression into opportunity for women worldwide" as well, but being an educator, that part stays with me and is more meaningful. As I read story after story of women whose education changed their lives, I was reminded why I do what I do -- no matter who the students are, where they are, or the social norms they must face, an education can help them create a better future for all of us.

Feeling a bit guilty that I hadn't yet finished Half the Sky, I felt it important that I maintain the theme a bit and moved to A Short History of Women by Kate Walbert. It comes highly acclaimed, and I enjoyed it enough to finish it, but I was sadly never lost in it. The premise is brilliant: the novel follows five generations of women in the Townsend family, beginning with an early feminist Dorothy in England and working through trials and tribulations until the Millennial Dora. The set-up is right up my alley: multiple narrators, a non-linear pacing to help us see how specific events influence later ones. When it came right down to it, though, I continued reading it simply because I thought somehow, eventually, I would truly connect with a character. It never happened. I think Walbert simply took the plight of women in a direction with which I could not align myself -- she did not include a single lasting joy for any of the five women. Having read many feminist pieces in college and after, I am well aware of the plight Walbert was focusing upon; even so, her laser-like focus on how none of these women found meaning, solace, or joy in anything was merely depressing. It's not like, for instance, Kate Chopin's The Awakening. Edna's story is devastating, but telling it has purpose. And when Edna makes her final decision, it made me what to go out and do something, something important, something that would make me feel complete, feel like an important cog in this big mess of a machine. It's ironic, really, that this book did not spark that  kind of drive within me, since Dorothy Townsend Barrett, the third generation of the family, screamed, "DO SOMETHING," from every rooftop she could find. Perhaps the call meant so little to me because none of the women actually did anything, except for maybe the first Dorothy, more than merely talk about how they weren't doing what they truly wanted to do. 

Without even realizing it, I then continued the theme of women's situations with Nancy Horan's Loving Frank, which I completed in a mere four days. Now, Mamah Borthwick (Cheney) -- now she is a character I connected with, one I felt was telling me her story as we sat together on my living room sofa. Mamah was the lover of Frank Lloyd Wright from around 1903 to 1914. I first bought the book after touring Wright's Dana Thomas House and thought I'd like to know more about the architect. Having the Dana Thomas house in mind, I was intrigued by Horan's take on Wright's motivation; I especially liked an early description of how he incorporated the horizon into his pieces -- I yearn to live in a place where I can see a section of horizon from my windows. I am also intrigued by his thoughts that, "what you put into [a] space will affect how you live in it and what you become" (p. 232). Although I do now understand Wright more than before reading the book, it really wasn't about him. It was about Mamah. 

Mamah struggled with the expectations of women that Walbert addressed; Mamah found her place despite a society of norms that pushed her in another direction. She looked for a way to live out her own identity, to Memento vivere -- remember to live -- on her own terms, and she encouraged others to as well. She was far from popular in having this long-term affair with Frank, with those closest to her as well as the entire Midwest, but after years of searching substance and meaning, she was a better person, and popularity was far from important. The feminist movement -- painted by Horan as primarily for suffrage and equal pay here in the States but also about individual freedom in other countries as well -- was in the forefront of both Mamah's and Frank's minds and of the story. And story it is...it's a fictionalized account of their meeting, their relationship, their life together. Very little documentation on Mamah exists, but Horan did a wonderful job giving what she felt is Mamah's point of view from the few facts we have. I can't say much else, so as not to give anything away, but know that it is a brilliant work that make me wish I wasn't at the end.