All the ages and books inside of you
I was listening to this fantastic interview with Sandra Cisneros and was overjoyed to hear her talk about her short story, Eleven. I read it a long time ago and hadn’t thought about it in awhile, and yet there it was, lodged in some lit up part of my brain. Which is very metta, because the story is largely about how we are every age we’ve ever been all at once. An excerpt:
I’ve also been thinking about books that shaped me, so the two cleaved in my brain. I realized that I am 40 years old now, but I am also…
the 14-year-old who read The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and had my mind blown about race and identity and longing and trauma,
and the 24-year-old who read Appetites by Caroline Knapp and knew that the self-hatred I’d seen all around me in high school and college was real and wrong,
and the 30-year-old who read Composing a Life by Mary Catherine Bateson and started highlighting it and passing it around to my friends, most of whom were going through our Saturn Return and freaking out about what the hell the female adult life was supposed to be all about.
So I put it to you—what is the book that shaped you most in each decade of your life so far?
What a joyful question to ponder! Where the Red Fern grows in 6th grade, when I first cried from reading a book. The Giver in 8th grade and having my first real deep conversations about life, loss, and meaning. And Shantaram in my late 20s to highlight the different roles we play pending on where we are plus the beauty and devastation of where we are born.
It's interesting as I reflect on my "literary life as a reader" -- my 20s were so rich as I completed my BA in English and then my MA in Education. Between 20 and 30, I read Song of Solomon, Hunger of Memory, The Women's Room. More recently, 50 to 60, my focus as been so much on memoir and nonfiction -- Mary Karr's "The Liar's Club," Sherman Alexie's "You Don't Have to Say you Love Me," Nick FLynn's "Another Bullshit Night in Suck City." I'll try to narrow down my decades.