No comments about Eric Moon: The Life and Library Times.

No comments about Eminent Educators: Studies in Intellectual Influence (Contributions to the Study of Education).

No comments about Lila: A Biography.

2 comments about Do I Dare?: A Memoir of One Woman's Life Journey.

1. 'You know I have a lump inside here,' my sister Cookie said, looking down and pointing to a spot above her left breast. We were sitting in the living room of my mother's two story condominium in Santa Clara, California, where they lived together. We were talking, as we had so many times since I had moved back to California seven years earlier. Cookie was sitting in her Lazy Boy recliner doing her usual thing: smoking.
   
   So begins the final chapter of Janet Rossi Tezak's stirring memoir "Do I Dare? published by iUniverse, Inc. Rossi Tezak subtitles her recent work "A Memoir of One Woman's Life Journey," that could as well have been called 'a memoir of on immigrant family's life journey.' In the conclusion of her story, Ross Tezak goes on to narraate the ordeal of going through the co-diagnoses of suspicious mammograms by both her and her sister. As if that weren't burden enough, we learn, too, of her older sister's mental disorder that the family lovingly coped with during life.
   
   Interestingly interspersed with her life experiences is the poetry and photographs that make up this montage of Rossi Tezak's life journey. It is the kind of book everyone would write if we were capable of gleaning those gems of experience from the vast, often dull experiences of the everyday. Her photographs are of the old fashioned sort that those of us who are of a certin generation remember fondly, taken by and with our own families--glimpses into our pasts that cause us to reminisce and for a short second or two, cause us to wish we were back again in happier times or circumstances. Her poetry is yet another theme of her memoir and it, too, reflects the black and white with which we used to see the world long before psychedelic visions that turned into the Technicolor reality rendered so vividly by technology. In "Obsession," she writes:
   When I in school,
   I wanted to say it,
   write it down;
   I didn't give a damn
   if a comma,
   colon,
   was proper. . . .
   Rossi Tezak's poetry reads like a literary daguerreotype of her thoughts through life's journey with her family--sepia in tone and color, black and white in reality and fact.
   
   Early in the book we learn from whom she inherited her storytelling gift--her grandfater Papanon, who "was the storyteller in the family. I loved hearing his stories about when he had to go fight in World War I on the side of Italy...." The author fondly descriibes her grandfather as a "slight man barely 5'2" who had a long roman nose and who carried a hump on his back caused, it was believed, by carrying heavy knapsacks on his back during World War I. Rossi Tezak goes on to tell readers:"He had come to America at the age of 10, but he hadn't become an American citizen. When the war broke out, he had to go back to Italy. His whole family, wife, and four daughters came with him. At one point, he became a German Prisoner of War, and his wife and his four daughters went back to the town of my grandparents'birth, Laurenzano near Naples, to live out the duration of the war. The author illustrates this narrative with a photograph of "Papanon as a prisoner of war" and the reader sees Papanon sitting in an army tent as he glares at the camera while eating from his mess kit.
   
   Rossi Tezak also relates in her memoir the various facets and signposts of her life, growing up in New York and Florida and eventually finding her way to the Monterey Bay and becoming an English teacher at the local community college. We learn of the struggles to find her own identity as she tried to escape the shadows and reality of juggling her artistic pursuits with work and family, and yet remain true to her faith, her husband, her children, her siblings, her mother. Rossi Tezak's memoir thus becomes a blueprint of the dilemma that the artist in each of us faces as we struggle to understand the dichotomy that separates desires and needs from reality. We are torn between love and having it all and if there is a philosophical frailty in American culture, it is the belief instilled in us that we can indeed have it all. Our acceptance of reality comes at a later age in life when we discover that while we didn't achieve it all, it was a pretty good life after all and if we didn't win the derby it wasn't because we didn't run.
   
   That is the lesson the reader takes from Rossi Tezak's memoir. It is a literary monument to that struggle that we as humans encounter, talk about, write about. The memoir is provocative but caring and understandingly woven to help the reader reach into his or her own psyche and relive the personal journey we all take.
   
   ####



2. Tezak looks back on the kinds of decisions so many women must make--what work to do, when/whom to marry, how to deal with family--and constructs a quest and an arrival. This is the kind of narrative many can identify with, while enjoying the insights that a long perspective gives. She has captured so much of the feeling of times and places, while giving the reader an openhearted sense of what it is like to be young and curious; at the same time, she shares her doubts and regrets and reminds us that growing up is what we all have to do--each in her own way.
   Not of the "scissors, drugs, and abuse" genre, this is simply an honest account of a woman's life.

No comments about Geoffrey Alley, Librarian: His Life and Work.

1 comments about The Search for Thomas F. Ward, Teacher of Frederick Delius.

1. Since his achievements as a music publisher are familiar, may I recall that Don Gillespie's biography is a masterpiece of historical recreation--personal and yet factual, detailed and yet thorough--about an obscure but influential music figure in American music a century ago. For those who don't already know, Ward taught Delius, assigned to manage a plantation in northern Florida, more than he learned at the Leipzig music academy a few years later. One charm of Gillespie's book is incorporating his research efforts into the narrative. Indeed, were I a professor of graduate musicology, this is the sort of book I would give to my best students as an example of how to do uniquely valuable scholarship with otherwise forgotten eminences. The awards this book did not receive upon publication are hereby discredited

No comments about Growing in His Light.

1 comments about Women/Writing/Teaching.

1. In the late 1980's and early 1990's, the field of feminist composition began to expand rapidly as women writers and teachers explored the possibilities of autobiographical literary criticism and the relationship between feminist theory, gender studies, and writing pedagogy. Numerous books appeared concerning these subjects including The Intimate Critique: Autobiographical Literary Criticism, a collaborative work by Diane P. Freedman, Olivia Frey, and Frances Murphey Zauhar; Cynthia L. Caywood's and Gillian R. Overing's Teaching Writing: Pedagogy, Gender, and Equity; and Feminine Principles and Women's Experience in American Composition and Rhetoric, written by Janet Emig and Louise Wetherbee Phelps. In reaction and response to the issues raised in these works, Women / Writing / Teaching, using a new approach-that of autobiographical writing-enters the conversation concerning feminist pedagogical practices. This style of delivery, as editor Jan Zlotnik Schmidt, Professor of English and Coordinator of the Composition Program at the State University of New York, New Paltz, indicates "prompts us to lay 'claim' to our lives (to use Patricia Hampi's term); to connect past and present; to reflect on and to re-envision our experiences; and to authorize and to shape our complex identities as feminist writing teachers" (3).

   As a woman, a writer, a first year composition teacher, and a feminist, I approached Women / Writing / Teaching with a mixture of trepidation and excitement. Used to the sterile, proscribed language of English academia, I expected, from both the book's title and its classification under feminist theory, to delve into a dense, untenable mass of postmodern jargon; however, I discovered a wonderfully rich, full-bodied collection of autobiographical essays that explore the complexity of women's lives and their multiple identities as wives, daughters, mothers, writers, women, teachers, and professionals as well as their development of authority. The poignant and at times heart-wrenching personal narratives, written by some of the most prominent researchers and authors within the field of feminist composition studies (such as Lynn Z. Bloom, Ann V. Dean, Min-Zhan Lu, Adrienne Rich, and Nancy Sommers), forced me to examine not only my own various roles but also my own sense of voice. Coached (and coerced) by the academy to write according to a particular standard of style and delivery, I was first shocked and then liberated by the use of the personal "I"; however, upon reflection, I realized, with some measure of sorrow, that I had no idea how to even begin to express my own sense of self, which effectively had been erased from my writing. As I continued to read the essays in Women / Writing / Teaching and simultaneously to explore my own feelings toward the construction of my multiple identities and their influence on my writing and teaching styles, I found a new sense of purpose, a desire to emulate the vision of feminist composition pedagogy illustrated within these narratives.

   Heralded by Marilyn Shapiro for its expression of "true love and excitement about the teaching of writing," Women / Writing / Teaching explores the ways in which women teachers forge connections between themselves and their students, between the private and public spheres, between the personal and academic, between the classroom and the world outside, and finally among past, present, and future. In addition, this collection of essays addresses numerous issues of growing concern among female scholars in the field of composition studies and includes a comprehensive bibliography dedicated to the study of feminist composition and autobiographical writing. In addition, despite the absence of an index, the text, divided into three sections entitled "Silence and Words, "Authority and Authorship," and "Visions of Embodied Teaching," respectively, is accessible and easy to navigate.

   Directed toward women writers and instructors of writing, the collection presents a feminist vision of writing instruction that incorporates the past and present experiences of female writers and encourages the inclusion of their multiple identities as women, as teachers, as writers, as members of specific classes and ethnicities, and as participants in particular cultures. By crossing the boundaries of these identities and by intertwining the elements of writing and teaching, the authors in this anthology introduce a pedagogical approach that recognizes, as Schmidt indicates in the introduction to the work, the "need to merge autobiographical reflection, contemplations of the writing life, and critical examination of our pedagogical practices in order to more fully comprehend our complex lives and struggles as feminist writing teachers in the academy" (3). These essays advocate a breaking of the silence, the emergence from decades of female oppression in an effort to establish women as figures of power and authority within the professions of writing and writing instruction.

   The moving self explorations, the incredible stories of suppression and subjugation, the empowering narratives of female success and authoritative identity development interwoven with humor, grief, pain, and exhilaration illuminate the essential power that women have to create and re-create themselves within their writing and their classrooms. In addition, these personal narratives illustrate the ways in which the diversity of individuals and their experiences can enhance the writing process and bring new vision to their students. Thus, the power of Women / Writing / Teaching lies in its ability to stimulate personal exploration and growth, an experience that no female writer or teacher should miss.

5 comments about Thoughts from a Queen-Sized Bed.

1. Mimi Schwartz's "Thoughts from a Queen-Sized Bed" was ordered for me as a gift. I found the book to be a most entertaining series of essays, covering a 15 years period. Particularly of interest to those of us who have been married for a number of years. I share many of Mimi's thoughts about marriage, the problems of merging a night person with a day person and it was good to see them in print. Mimi writes with honesty, humor and optimism. She has a mastectomy and husband Stu suffers a heart attack, but she is undaunted. She accepts married life with all its nuances and muses on them for our benefit. Knowing that she is loved by Stu doesn't prevent her from toying with the idea of an affair. Her husband Stu snores and she wraps her arms around him for comfort. Their marriage is like an old shoe, comfortable even if a bit shabby looking after so many years. Mimi takes us through her family history, raising children, and looking forward to grandchildren, through petty squabbles and making love after an argument. She writes from the heart. Thank you Gerry for sending me this gift. Rita Berman - author of The A - Z of Writing and Selling, 1981.



2. A Review of Mimi Schwartz's Thoughts from a Queen-Sized Bed

   Thoughts from a Queen-Sized Bed is a wonderful collection of personal essays about Schwartz's life as a single then a married woman, as a wife and mother, and as a women committed to her own profession. These snapshots of her life--portrayed with humor, sensitivity, and insight-make fascinating reading for women and men who, like the author, lived through the 50s and 60s and who can easily identify with her dilemmas. But it also provides other readers with an insightful peek into living, dating, and marrying in an earlier era.
   
   In Thoughts from a Queen-Sized Bed, one encounters a range of human concerns, among them: the tensions of being a first generation American, and a Jew, in a culture of mostly established Gentiles; the desire to stay slim, attractive, and healthy in world where women weren't expected to be athletic; the stresses of juggling marriage, the demands of motherhood, and a successful career... [and] the temptations to stray from a long term marriage....
   I found reading this book a great pleasure. Schwartz has mastered the form of the personal essay, and her craft is evident on every page. In "A Night for Haroset," for example, she recounts a family Passover Seder that is rich with overtones of the couple's recent illnesses, of Schwartz's fragile connection to Judaism, and of interfamilial tensions.

   The family is alive and well in these essays, and I hated to have to stop reading. Had there been more, I would have gleefully continued making a glutton of myself.




3. It is refreshing to read a book about family life that is not dysfunctional. Mimi Schwartz in her new book of essays "Thoughts From a Queen-Sized Bed," has given us a view of her life and experiences that could be anybody's "normal" family. Her thoughts on growing up, parents, love, marriage, children, celebrations, vacations, illness and death, all felt familiar and I kept finding myself nodding in agreement. In fact, in several of the essays, I thought Ms. Schwartz had been a fly on the wall of my house! I really enjoyed reading this book and would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to read about life in a humorous and touching way.



4. What makes for an enduring marriage? My reading of Mimi Schwartz is that a portion of wry detachment comes in handy. Unlike so many women of her (and my) generation who have abandoned a marriage or two on the way to professional success and personal fulfillment, Schwartz has stuck with her Stu, and he with her, and these essays often give off a bit of the tension that underlies such give and take. My standards for good memoir rest more on the quality of reflection than on the drama of the incidents,and Schwartz is a sharp observer of the everyday. But there is plenty of shadow here, most prominently her father's narrow escape from the Holocaust, a family historic event that left her not only cognizant of calamity but grateful for good fortune.Would I recommend this book for newly-weds? Maybe after the first big fight. The more battle-scarred among us will applaud the couples' continuing attraction to each other.



5. Mimi Schwartz's memoir, Thoughts from a Queen Sized Bed, had me alternately laughing out loud, and crying quietly by myself. Her book is a series of short essays about marriage, family, motherhood, illness, work, life, and more!

   What is so poignant about this collection is that it is a raw, deeply honest and open memoir that reveals insights into the author's heart. But more than that, her revelations about her own life are, at times, so universal that anyone can find a thought that pertains to their own experience in the world. Her words about her life help us define our own selves more accutely.

   There is a humorous chapter on a family reunion "Alan Should Have Rented a Car," that touches on everyone's experience of such an event: the joy and intensity of being with people with whom you have love, history, and future, and yet the inherent difficulty, and real frustration and saddness that such gatherings also deliver.

   At times her honesty is so brutal that its makes one want to wince and look away from her pain. Her chapter on breast cancer and mastectomy, "Dreaming of Lace," was brutally honest. And yet her words make us understand the experience in a profound and yet very human way.

   Other essays force us to search inside ourselves and face our own follies and foibles, as we follow along with hers. She deals with everything from friendship to betrayal, from getting lost on the way to Cape Cod (who hasn't had the argument about who forgot the map and should we ask for directions?) to finding ones way on the Galapagos Islands. She shares secrets with us about parenting her children, and watching her children become parents, and she forces us to examine our own views of death and dying as she commandingly - yet with a touch of doubt - shares her views with us.

   This is a brilliant, beautiful memoir that will not only touch your heart, but aid you in knowing your own life a little deeper.

   Thank you Mimi Schwartz, for such a gift!

5 comments about Following Mateo.

1. An odyssey: into the jungles and wetlands of Belize, into the hearts and lives of a few native Belizians, and into the process of self knowledge and maturity, best describes, for me, Tom Molanphy's well crafted adventure/pilgrimage book: Following Mateo! Tom writes with grace and great self deprecating humor and enthusiasm about his journey to Belize as a volunteer teacher, his evolving friendship with an older tribal wise man and leader, Mateo, and their adventures.

   Through an invitation to personally tutor Mateo's young daughter, Tom experiences the hospitality of Mateo's family and a growing knowledge of their way of life. Tom's desire to get Mateo to take him "into the bush," i.e., the deep jungle territory where (in his perception) ancient ritual hunting and gathering rites of the Ke'kechi take place. His subsequent hiking adventures to "prove" his capabilities to Mateo provide hilarious incidents of gradual self awareness for this young American "gringo," Tom.

   As a veteran Jr. High/High School humanities teacher, I feel that this is a book that would appeal to this age range of student. It is a very "good read" for the adult reader as well.




2. Tom Molanphy has a good story to tell about a search for self in a country of different cultures, languages, races,etc. While reading "Following Mateo" I was transported back from the hazzles of everyday life and never-ending city activity to Southern Belize where, through Tom's creative descriptions, I found myself engulfed by nature. Peppered with humor Tom lets us experience father nature in a unique fashion. He tells of how it demands respect,of how we have to adjust to accommodate it and of how rough it can be and yet how soothing her gentle embrace. The book took me through trails under the towering canopies and over mountains that lead to discoveries of people living from the land. People who have learned to coexist and respect the land.
   The book was and excellent read. It thought me about the journey of life and the little journeys within. It also thought me to, every now and then, "stop and smell the flowers, but to be careful not to get stung by a bee that may have beat me to those flowers".



3. Following Mateo is definitely a down to earth book. My friend Tom definitely put it right about life in the southern villages of Toledo and also as a missionary. I've known Tom for the two years that he spent here in Belize. I loved the book and will definitely read it again.



4. Following Mateo is a personal memoir of Tom Molanphy's two year stint as a volunteer educator in Belize. Mateo is a Mayan Indian whom the author becomes very close to in the course of his internship. Following Mateo, the title, refers to the author's attempts to get Mateo to take him to the bush country of Belize. The author has successfully integrated history, anthropology, cross cultural studies and religion into this highly readable memoir.
   I am a college professor teaching English l02 - a writing course using argument from social science topics and also literature, particulary memoir. My students - all l05 of them - absolutely loved the book. They liked the author's descriptive writing style which made them feel they were right there in Belize.They liked the many lively characters that the author presents. They liked the way the author integrated his personal journey with the daily events. They liked reading about a young man on an adventure who had questions about life, about religion, about risktaking. They liked the crosscultural atmosphere of the book and the way the author showed these differences. They liked the light hearted and humorous aspects of the book. They liked the various insights the author gained during his journey, especially about friendship. In writing their essays they were able to center on diverse messages and were often able to interract with the memoir from their own experiences. One student said she liked the book because the author opened himself up and was not "preachy". I thoroughly enjoyed the book and the essays my students were able to write due to the many insights the author offered. It was indeed a journey of joy. I recommend this book to college professors of freshman writing and senior high school teachers as well as volunteer coordinators in various non-profit groups.



5. I really enjoyed this book. Without even noticing, I learned about the country of Belize and the Mayan culture as the author creatively wove historical details into a humorous, touching account of his own journey. I found myself both sympathizing and laughing with him as he tries to learn, and keep up, with the ins and outs of an unfamiliar culture. I became quickly invested in the main character and eager for him to come out on top!