Book Review of Eight Women, Two Model Ts, and the American West (2007) by Joanne Wilke
Author Joanne Wilke is a wonderful storyteller whose childhood memories waffle into the readers’ nostrils like homemade apple pie. She beautifully captures the story of her grandmother’s trip to California from Iowa in 1924.
Eight young women loaded their belongings into two Model T cars and headed to California. Wilke tries to answer the question why did these girls do this? How did they find the courage and convince their parents to let them go? Even though Wilke worked from living testimonies of some of the women who made the journey, read their journals and letters back home, this adventure had many gaps and conflicting accounts. Wilke supplements the story with her own childhood memories of spending the summers in Iowa with her grandmother. These added stories really make her grandmother come alive to the reader.
This is a fun, relatively short tale of a cross country adventure before there were real roads, reliable maps, or even enclosed cars. This grand scale of this journey makes me wonder if the women were able to return to their lives and be happy for the memories or if it woke a restlessness in them that was difficult to quench.
Looking for more? Please visit FaMiss - Women's Success History & Literature, including books & movie reviews highlighting historical and modern women experiences.
About the author: Allison Frederick is a writer and online marketing educator for other creative women. www.FaMissWomen.com offers free Web 2.0 resources. She is also the author of an upcoming novel, A Portrait of Josephine, an academic-lite thriller. Find out how to receive a free copy of the novel by visiting www.portraitofjosephine.com
Showing posts with label book review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label book review. Show all posts
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Reinventing Yourself, Changing Your Destiny – Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith book review
When we claim a moment to be magical, we feel as if that moment transcends our normal experiences, our ingrained rules, and our cultural outcomes. Magic raises us out of skepticism slowly but if it is good enough, we become fervent believers.
Magic realism is a literary term describing how a story is told. The stories are grounded in reality but some characters have "supernatural" or larger-than-life abilities. With magical realism, women can take flight with dewy, velvet wings, fleeing a life that only had one outcome by trying to escape her iron-clad destiny.
Authors such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez (author of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera - which was just released as a movie) and Isabel Allende (author of The House of Spirits) and Gina B. Nahai (author of Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith) are some authors who write magical realism. Gina Nahai's character, Roxanna the Angel, took flight from a generational destiny and from Tehran where a woman's ability to escape her fate is so difficult that she must don silky white wings and leap from a balcony with all the faith that she will land softly in a new place.
"Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith" is a powerful, compelling, and fascinating novel depicting several women's lives, women who refuse to meekly accept the lot they were assigned in life and women who forged a new life for themselves.
These women didn't create their new lives without sacrifice, humiliation, pain, loss, or mistakes, yet they succeeded in reinventing themselves and elevating their human experience beyond the level of survival.
Mercedes the Movie Star used her extreme beauty to control the men who thought they controlled women. Fräulein Claude completely overhauled herself by denying her national heritage and insisting that she was of German noble descent. Alexandra the Cat also claimed a noble birth and presumed all the dignity that comes with such a claim. Roxanna the Angel literally flew away from her destiny until she could no longer avoid past and her choices.
The story is mostly about Roxanna and the effect her choices had on the people she loved, including her daughter Lili. When trying to make sense of her life and understanding her choices, Roxanna told her daughter:
"In the beginning, I tell Lili, there were many choices and I believing I was doomed, let them go to waste."
Even though Roxanna fled, she never believed she could truly escape her destiny and maintain any relationship with her family and friends - they were incompatible. This conviction led her to make devastating, painful choices.
I've heard the voices of many women who feel so trapped that they become convinced that absolute escape is the only solution. Famous female authors like Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf are two women who chose death as their reconciliation. Other women are not as extreme but they fight the chasm between who they think they should be and who they believe they are with an exhaustive force.
Do you ever feel like reinventing yourself or simply escaping? How would you do it? What would you be escaping? Is your reinvention completely incongruent with your current life?
I encourage you to read "Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith" (1999) by Gina B. Nahai to see how her characters managed their reinvention.
Gina B. Nahai was born in Iran who later moved to Los Angeles, California. She is also the author of a new book entitled "Caspian Rain," "Sunday's Silence," and "Cry of the Peacock."
--Looking for more? Visit Famiss, women making and discovering their own history
About the author: Allison Frederick is a writer and online marketing educator for other creative women. www.FaMissWomen.com offers free Web 2.0 resources. She is also the author of an upcoming novel, A Portrait of Josephine, an academic-lite thriller. Find out how to receive a free copy of the novel by visiting www.portraitofjosephine.com
Magic realism is a literary term describing how a story is told. The stories are grounded in reality but some characters have "supernatural" or larger-than-life abilities. With magical realism, women can take flight with dewy, velvet wings, fleeing a life that only had one outcome by trying to escape her iron-clad destiny.
Authors such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez (author of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera - which was just released as a movie) and Isabel Allende (author of The House of Spirits) and Gina B. Nahai (author of Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith) are some authors who write magical realism. Gina Nahai's character, Roxanna the Angel, took flight from a generational destiny and from Tehran where a woman's ability to escape her fate is so difficult that she must don silky white wings and leap from a balcony with all the faith that she will land softly in a new place.
"Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith" is a powerful, compelling, and fascinating novel depicting several women's lives, women who refuse to meekly accept the lot they were assigned in life and women who forged a new life for themselves.
These women didn't create their new lives without sacrifice, humiliation, pain, loss, or mistakes, yet they succeeded in reinventing themselves and elevating their human experience beyond the level of survival.
Mercedes the Movie Star used her extreme beauty to control the men who thought they controlled women. Fräulein Claude completely overhauled herself by denying her national heritage and insisting that she was of German noble descent. Alexandra the Cat also claimed a noble birth and presumed all the dignity that comes with such a claim. Roxanna the Angel literally flew away from her destiny until she could no longer avoid past and her choices.
The story is mostly about Roxanna and the effect her choices had on the people she loved, including her daughter Lili. When trying to make sense of her life and understanding her choices, Roxanna told her daughter:
"In the beginning, I tell Lili, there were many choices and I believing I was doomed, let them go to waste."
Even though Roxanna fled, she never believed she could truly escape her destiny and maintain any relationship with her family and friends - they were incompatible. This conviction led her to make devastating, painful choices.
I've heard the voices of many women who feel so trapped that they become convinced that absolute escape is the only solution. Famous female authors like Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf are two women who chose death as their reconciliation. Other women are not as extreme but they fight the chasm between who they think they should be and who they believe they are with an exhaustive force.
Do you ever feel like reinventing yourself or simply escaping? How would you do it? What would you be escaping? Is your reinvention completely incongruent with your current life?
I encourage you to read "Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith" (1999) by Gina B. Nahai to see how her characters managed their reinvention.
Gina B. Nahai was born in Iran who later moved to Los Angeles, California. She is also the author of a new book entitled "Caspian Rain," "Sunday's Silence," and "Cry of the Peacock."
--Looking for more? Visit Famiss, women making and discovering their own history
About the author: Allison Frederick is a writer and online marketing educator for other creative women. www.FaMissWomen.com offers free Web 2.0 resources. She is also the author of an upcoming novel, A Portrait of Josephine, an academic-lite thriller. Find out how to receive a free copy of the novel by visiting www.portraitofjosephine.com
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Book Review: Shaggy Muses: The Dogs Who Inspired Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edith Wharton, and Emily Bronte
Author Maureen Adams wrote a wonderful overview of these famous women writers in her book Shaggy Muses. She explores each writer's life within the context of their relationship and dependence on their dog(s). If you are a dog lover, you can connect to the strong bonds between the women and their dogs. A dog is always accepting and incredibly tolerant. These dogs were no different and constantly, devotedly listened to their mistresses recite their work without ever appearing critical. They also kept the writers from feeling too much loneliness during their literary solitude.
Even if you are not a dog lover, this book offers a great overview and introduction to some of the most famous women writers of English literature. I do have to warn you; however, some of the experiences these women went through were painful.
Pick up a copy of "Shaggy Muses: The Dogs Who Inspired Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edith Wharton, and Emily Bronte" by Maureen Adams.
Published 2007.
About the author: Allison Frederick is a writer and online marketing educator for other creative women. www.FaMissWomen.com offers free Web 2.0 resources. She is also the author of an upcoming novel, A Portrait of Josephine, an academic-lite thriller. Find out how to receive a free copy of the novel by visiting www.portraitofjosephine.com
Even if you are not a dog lover, this book offers a great overview and introduction to some of the most famous women writers of English literature. I do have to warn you; however, some of the experiences these women went through were painful.
Pick up a copy of "Shaggy Muses: The Dogs Who Inspired Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edith Wharton, and Emily Bronte" by Maureen Adams.
Published 2007.
About the author: Allison Frederick is a writer and online marketing educator for other creative women. www.FaMissWomen.com offers free Web 2.0 resources. She is also the author of an upcoming novel, A Portrait of Josephine, an academic-lite thriller. Find out how to receive a free copy of the novel by visiting www.portraitofjosephine.com
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