1 comments about Eminent Victorians (Dover Value Editions).

1. The work itself is a great read; however, I wish there were some footnotes or endnotes to provide some background for the text. I would recommend another version such as the Oxford edition, which has extensive notes.

No comments about Mary's Voyage.

5 comments about Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn.

1. As someone I would love to have known, Martha Gelhorn ranks right up there with Carly Simon...who, thankfully, is still alive. She is the only one of Hemingway's four wives who left him. This after an affair-turned-to-marriage that began when she walked into a Key West bar and introduced herself to him.
   
   Her extensive correspondence detailed in this book, and her life subsequent to Hemingway, reveal a woman, who though emotionally healthier than Ernest, had her own demons to contend with. She is nevertheless a fascinating personality, widely traveled, a prolific author, and by all accounts a very engaging raconteur. She deserves to be notable in her own right and spent much of her life in a fight to be accorded someone other than Heminway's third wife. Though with a personage as large as Hemingway, that was a difficult struggle, this treatment of a segment of her correspondence certainly helps her individuality along by revealing the brilliant and complex person she was



2. This book is beautifully edited by Caroline Moorehead, the one woman in all the world who knows more than any other about dear old, trying old, basilisk-fierce Martha Gellhorn. The odd thing is that the publishers sent out an advanced uncorrected proof claiming that this was Gellhorn's "COLLECTED LETTERS" and now, months later, the dust has settled and the book has changed its title to "SELECTED LETTERS," perhaps a subtle difference but one that makes you wonder what went south at the last minute. If only the beloved investigative snoop, Gellhorn herself, was still here to look into this minor mystery! Warning, there is indeed a lot in it about Hemingway, but that's why many will be drawn to Gellhorn in the first place, and the other half of the readers will be wanting to know how a dogged spirit stays independent, especially in the face of huge sadnesses, There's an inspirational feel about the collection, surprising as it may seem, and even though tragedy seemed to overshadow her fun no matter where she went.
   
   Her dedication to reporting is in itself remarkable. Wasn't there ever a point where she paused and wondered what on earth good it did to do this particular job, or did she merely shrug off the moral niceties. She doesn't seem to have cared whose feelings she hurt, even those she loved (one of her novels was withdrawn from the UK when a dear friend, whose love life Gellhorn had written up and lightly salted with fiction, complained, first to the author, then to the courts) and her ire hangs high against those who have crossed her (especially Lillian Hellman, who must have been scared silly every day of her life with that menace Gellhorn still out for her blood).
   
   She had a weakness for "sophisticated" (often bisexual) men and Moorehead prints some "NOTES ON A SCANDAL" style letters outlining her embarrassing obsession with Leonard Bernstein, his genius, his private life, and his body. Really everything about him. "He's got quite a nice voice, plummy and deep, as if his mouth was pure, as if he'd never had a filling. The complexion of a white peach. He's worth it, this one. He's the one I've waited for." (My paraphrase of Judi Dench.) Another set of letters between Martha Gellhorn and Betsy Drake, the former wife of screen star Cary Grant, elicits more rueful confessions, for Drake shared a great secret with Gellhorn, that it may be liberating to step away from an adored and celebrated spouse, but at the same time every day you look in your mirror and you know that your obituary is going to say, "Ex-Wife of Blank."
   
   Gellhorn's passion for action, in Africa, Spain, wherever, covering the war in Vietnam for the Manchester Guardian, is rather better covered in Moorehead's great bio of the journalist, than in this book of collected, I mean selected, letters. In fact if you didn't have Moorehead's notes coming in every now and then to re-ground the story and put it into real perspective, you might as well be on a cloud.



3. To turn the pages of a collection of letters in our time, is to return to a time when people wrote, at leisure, at length and in great detail, to one another about trifles, confidences, and assorted themes. In our age of e-mails it is almost inconceivable. Inconceivable too is that Martha Gellhorn's letters, by Caroline Moorehead, brings this world before us with such force, that we are held captive from page to page, from the start to the last. Yet while her correspondents are many of them famous, it is true, it is the letters themselves that shimmer, that gives us images rare, reflections profound, letters for all of time.



4. Intelligent, dauntless, and restlessly peripatetic, Martha Gellhorn refused to be encumbered by what she called "the kitchen of life." Travel, men, seclusion and adversity all were stimulants to Martha's agile mind. "Normal people depend on other people, I roam in space", she once remarked.
   
   Like most complex personalities, Martha is difficult to peg, and even an intrepid reader who makes the effort to negotiate these 500-plus pages of letters may come away feeling dissatisfied. Martha was a prolific writer--these letters represent a minute fraction of her output, most of which she managed to destroy. Her surviving correspondences reveal a fluid writer, fueled by a "passionate desire to find SOMEONE to communicate with."
   
   She is unfailingly candid and insightful. Only in a few instances is she less than cordial, and only in a few instances does she seem free to totally enjoy the act of writing. These instances are instructive, involving her adopted son--whom she wrote to in tones of fearfully harsh admonishment, and her stepson, to whom she allowed herself to write freely and playfully. Oddly enough, both of these young charges shared the same name: Sandy.
   
   It is tempting at times to compare Martha's character to that of Katherine Hepburn (who attended Bryn Mawr at the same time), or to Isak Dinesen. Both of these women seemed to share Martha's brand of independence. However, Martha crossed paths with both, and in her recorded opinions, does not express admiration for either of them. To Martha, Hepburn and the Baroness Karen Von Blixen were both too patrician. Martha was not at one with the monied class, which she found wasteful and vainglorious. Martha liked to have things both ways in her life--she loved to mix it up, defending the underdog, and she also loved the freedom of getting away from the hurly-burly, keeping life at a distance.
   
   What was most impressed upon me by these letters was how much Martha was devoted to, and suffered for, her fiction writing. Martha gained her reputation as a war correspondent, but these letters leave no doubt that Martha truly wanted to be remembered for her books of fiction. She often agonizes over writer's block, her failing memory, and the self-doubts that plagued her.
   
   The final portrait that emerges here is of Martha as an unflaggingly energetic, unvanquished personality who periodically engaged with the world, and then fled to solitude in order to write about it. Her unflinching honesty and her humorous dismissal of all that was "bulls---t" are the qualities that drew people to her, and she is worthy of far greater renown than she currently holds.
   
   Carolyn Moorehead has provided two great touchstones in the biography, "Gellhorn: A Twentieth Century Life", and this large volume of letters. Now, I will move on to the volumes about war, and the available fictional works that Gellhorn left behind.



5. Martha Gellhorn did not cooperate with her biographers when she was alive and she did not make it easy for them after she died. She made her opinions on this matter quite clear: "...writers are diminished by having their lives known: they should only be known by what they write." She left many of her manuscripts and some letters and other papers to Boston University before she died, but she deliberately destroyed most of her letters. She probably hoped her correspondents would destroy the letters she sent them as well, and even specifically requested them to in some cases, but she knew a clean sweep would not be possible.
   
   Well, then. Should we respect her wishes and read only her many stories and articles? Or should we pry into her private life, in the hopes of learning something valuable that will add to her published writings? Or should we be completely honest and read her biographies and letters, knowing full well that although we will find out nothing that adds to her journalism or literature, we'll get an adventure story that rivals anything she ever wrote.
   
   Having tossed aside my misgivings when I picked up the first biography of Gellhorn, Nothing Ever Happens to the Brave by Carl Rollyson, I didn't hesitate when Caroline Moorehead's Gellhorn: A Twentieth Century Life came out. It was a foregone conclusion that I would read The Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn. Sorry, Martha.
   
   In The Selected Letters, as in the Moorehead biography, we find out that Gellhorn was a difficult person. She could be rude and something of a bigot, although it may not be fair to judge her based on letters she wrote to friends. Still, suffice it to say that if I were to quote her on African Americans, or the Chinese, or the Italians, my review would not be published on this website. And while she loved to discuss and argue with friends and colleagues about politics, apparently she would not listen to anyone who disagreed with her regarding the Palestinians.
   
   Her relationship with her adopted son was painful to read about. Much has already been said about whether she was a good, or even a fit, mother, so I won't add my amateur opinion. However, it is interesting to note that, like so many parents in the Sixties, she considered her son's recreational drug use altogether different from her own frequent and liberal use of alcohol and amphetamines.
   
   An odd discrepancy occurs in a letter she wrote in 1991 to an old friend from the Spanish Civil War. In it, she mentions having taken four marriage vows. Even counting her early relationship with Bertrand de Jouvenal as a marriage, which it probably wasn't, she was married three times. Curious.
   
   The Selected Letters is a fascinating companion to Moorehead's biography of Gellhorn, although I can't honestly say it is a valuable addition. Gellhorn's best stories have already been told by Gellhorn herself. The letters show an unpolished side of Gellhorn's writing, for what that's worth. She wrote so many letters and such long letters that one is tempted to speculate that writing them was a way of putting off real writing, or perhaps a way of writing through all the clutter in her mind that had to be cleared out before the real writing started.
   
   Regrettably, Gellhorn was right about a writer being diminished by having her life known. But she would surely understand that the curious reader can't resist getting to the bottom of a great story.

5 comments about Forever Young : The Life, Loves, and Enduring Faith of a Hollywood Legend ; The Authorized Biography of Loretta Young.

1. This book is pretty straight forward. Like the title says this is a book about Loretta Youngs life; loves, Clark Gable, Spencer Tracey, Tom Lewis, etc, etc.; and faith one of the mainstays in her life threw all the good and bad times she experienced.
   
   All in all a very good book about Loretta Young. The best part about it is that finally Loretta admitted that Judy Lewis was her biological child with Clark Gable.



2. The book was interesting and I learned more about Loretta Young's life. I agree, it was a bit "candy coated", but I think it explains the "sign of the times" and that is where she was in her life. I think it is great that she had such a strong faith in God and that her religion played a very important part of her life. Her life is a good example for others. In this day and time, we let too much just "hang out there". It would be nice if our world was a little more "reserved".



3. Whilst Loretta Young unquestionably lead an interesting life, you would not know it from this whitewashed, saintly version. This book would have been far better promoted as a commentary on Loretta Young and her relationship with god. Certainly those readers wanting to know about her experiences in Hollywood in the 1930s would be disappointed. Her screen career was largely glossed over - we are talking about a woman who worked with pioneers such as Lon Chaney - you'd barely know it from this book. Similarly, there was little on her relationship with her sisters or any comments of substance about their lives or careers. Even the more 'scandalous' elements of her life were only worth a couple of pages - the rest of the book was more like a conversion exercise. Whilst the religious element was obviously something that influenced who she was as a person, the author did not delve beyond this. It is an injustice if this is the best that can be offered in her memory.



4. She is not like you would have imagined from the TV Show. She had a lot more going on than the glamour that she displayed with her swirling entries each week.
   She was not the angel one might think either but she was human and she faced it, or not, within the pages of this book. She sometimes came off as a saint and sometimes as naive but you did not always believe she could be THAT naive. Other times she came of as competent and adult, which, in my book makes her as real as a Hollywood siren can be.



5. This book is written through Ms. Young's eyes and appears to be her somewhat romanticized and (more importantly)spiritualized take on life. She tends to gloss over the tawdry or questionable aspects while dwelling on the spiritual aspects. Having read her daughter Judy's book, I can clearly see that there was a lot of moral conflict in her mind and this book was clearly a good way to absolve herself of most of the negatives in her life. That said, the book is an o.k. read once you begin to differentiate the truth from the romantic fiction.

5 comments about Sorrow Mountain: The Journey of a Tibetan Warrior Nun.

1. One day, the daughter of a Khampa chieftain, seventeen-year-old Ani Lemdha Pachen, ran away from home to avoid marrying. It wasn't that she disapproved of the match her parents' had arranged, but rather that she preferred the cerebral and peaceful world of a Buddhist nun to the physical demands of traditional married life.
   
   Runaway Pachen had spent little time at the monastery, before she returned to her parents. Despite the shame of what she had done, they not only forgave her but agreed she would not have to marry. Before she could return to the monastery to complete her training, Pachen's father tells her of their country's dire political situation. The Chinese are coming to "liberate" them. As a Khampa princess, she will be expected to lead their people through this situation, especially if the Chief should die. So the young lady received a different type of training instead.
   
   For all her bravery, Pachen was unable to resist for long. She was captured by the Chinese army and spent 21 years imprisoned. This true story focuses on how Pachen's spirituality kept her hopeful and sane during her confinement and during the many tortures she endured. The book is sprinkled with the Buddhist teachings that helped her maintain both her sanity and will to live through these dark days and features an introduction by the Dalai Lama himself.
   
   Apparently Richard Gere also advocated this book's creation and publication. He contributed his own introduction and story of how the book idea was born. He speaks of Pachen's life as a "beautiful, disturbing, and deeply inspiring story." He argues that no "serious literature" in the form of narratives or the "Great Tibetan novel" had emerged from the "Tibetan Holocaust, so a book like this one would be a great boon to the Tibetan cause. Gere, of course, had become a Buddhist and was studying in Tibet at this time.
   
   The story's merits include its insights into the life of a Tibetan woman seeking nunhood during the Mao era, it offers inspiration through triumph against extreme adversity, it draws attention to Tibet's political and cultural situation and the ways in which they have suffered in recent history, and it provides lamanistic teachings.
   
   Despite Pachen's, Donnelly's, Gere's, the Dalai Lama's, and many others' good intentions, however, this book probably has fallen short of its intended goal. The storyline does little to sustain the reader's interest because it is patchy and doesn't flow well (When Gere called it "a miracle of simplicity," he wasn't kidding! Something is clearly lost in translation here.). Although the author supposedly consulted many reliable resources, oddly very little of Pachen's story is put into historical context and few of the sources are used to draw insights into Tibet's situation. Considering the book committee's intentions, I would have expected to find a list of support organizations for Tibet in the appendices. Because of the sketchiness of the writing, it was difficult for me to find the book an inspiration, though other readers might find it so. Those looking for a story of spiritual stamina and female courage may enjoy Pachen's story, while those seeking a new perspective on Tibet should borrow it from a friend or a library rather than spending the money to buy it. Everyone else, just skip it. Sorry Richard, this one's not the great Tibetan novel, either.



2. This book tells the remarkable story of Ani Panchen, a Tibetan nun, who led the resistance to the ruthless Red Chinese occupation of Tibet, after her father's death in 1958.
   For 21 years she was imprisoned in hellish Chinese prison camps, only surviving because of her strong will and faith.
   After her release she continued to lead the struggle against the Red Chinese occupation and genocide of Tibet's people. In 1988 she was forced into exile in India, where she has continued to devote her life to the dream of Tibetan freedom, even after it has been forgotten by the world.
   
   She begins by her peaceful childhood in pre-occupation Tibet:
   In 1950 she describes how "Our country was still at peace, though on the eastern bank of the Yangtze River Chinese troops were gathering. In a few short years, they would sweep over my country, changing it forever. In the name of liberating Tibet from 'imperialist' powers they would destroy monasteries, plunder homes, burn sacred texts, and drive our people to poverty and despair."
   Babies were removed from their parents in their thousands to be relocated to Red Chinese 're-education' centers were they were to be brought up in Communist doctrine. Over a million Tibetans were to be anihilated in the Chinese holocaust that followed, and even the animal life of Tibet destroyed in order to force the Tibetans to give up their reverence for life.
   Ani Panchen tells of her experiences fleeing from Red Chinese forces, and of seeing small Tibetan children gunned down by Chinese snipers.
   It also tells of Panchen's deep Tibetan Buddhist faith underpinned by her will to 'Let all beings be free of suffering, let all being find peace.'
   While the book hopes to expose the horrors of the Chinese destruction of Tibet, in actions paralleling those of the Nazis during World War II, Richard Gere in his forward expresses his wish this book may help to "dispel the darkness of this darkest night of Tibetan history and be of benefit to all beings everywhere".
   Will the world re-awaken to the suffering of the Tibetan people mand the destruction of their civilization, and not least their dream of the re-birth of their culture and self-determination.



3. I gave this book four stars because this book is a story that people should know. It is the true story of an amazing Tibetan woman who shows strength and courage in unimaginable situations. My problem with this book is that it is poorly written. It could have been an amazing book as well as an amazing story. "Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk" by Palden Gyatso is still the best I have read on the Tibetan people.



4. Need a reality check? Feeling sorry for your life? Then read Sorrow Mountain and experience life at it's best and worst. It will lift one out of ordinary existence into the realm of compassion and tolerance. One will begin to experience the essence of the Tibetan region and the mystical struggles of one held prisoner by torturous bandits who tried to steal the Heart of Compassion and failed. Turn off the tv "reality" shows and experience the real-ness of Ani Pachen and her Sorrow Mountain. I guarantee it will become your Sorrow Mountain too.



5. I just finished reading this book and didn't want to put it down. The story of Ani Pachen is both horrifying and inspiring, how she against all odds not only survived but kept her faith, battling against her own anger at her captors to try to reach a higher spirit of generosity. The writing of Adelaide Donnelley is gorgeous and poetic, capturing the inner spirit and the mystical beauty of the land in words that lift this book to a high literary level. This book deserves to be widely read over many years. But it! Read it! It will move you.

3 comments about To Pause at the Threshold: Reflections on Living on the Border.

1. In our 21st century world, this meditation on the ordinary becomes a poetic statement about finding one's way, and is so needed. A work that broadens ones vista, the subtitle of the book, "Reflections on Living on the Border," contains new visions of life from ancient wisdom. A small book, the author Esther de Waal explains how and what to do with the new found in places like, "So when I went walking along the stretch of Off's Dyke that ran only a few miles away, I came to know afresh the world that had earlier delighted my father." This book tells the way to live in the world. It speaks of living with the inner world of the heart and mind, as well. For me, these are important.
   
   "All our lives are inevitably made of a succession of borders and thresholds, which open up into the new and promise excitement or fear. The traveler encountering unknown places has all the exhilaration, the thrill of another country." For some time, I have sought to find newness of seeing things and knowing things, and also in regard to people in my life. This book helps to change the reader in ways that open the eyes to new ways of living and seeing. It is a work of vision and ongoing renewal. Again, in a book, she accomplishes with clarity and easy style lessons of the meaningful in life, and finding meaning.
   
   She writes about pausing in the book. Titled "To Pause at the Threshold: Reflections on Living on the Border," published by Morehouse Publishing, she writes about living a spiritual life, of living life within the Anglican Communion. The book is both dear, as in personal and telling, and objective as in telling and demonstrating. "Above all I want to explore the role of thresholds, of the crossing-over places, not only geographical ones but also metaphorical thresholds," she writes in her introduction. This book is for the spiritually inclined, for the religious individual, and for the seeker of new life in living.
   
   Our world is uncertain. Her instructions on living a better life go like this: "The first step in listening, learning, and changing is to see that different is not dangerous; the second is to be happy and willing to live with uncertainty the third is to rejoice in ambiguity and to embrace it." Originally published under an imprint of St. Mary's Works called The Canterbury Press Norwich, this formerly English book will find many readers in the United States. She says so many things that speak to the Anglican religious way of living, and so many things that speak to a society that is diverse as America. She finds the central places of the spirit in her writing. Two other books are noted here as worthwhile: "Living with Contradictions: An Introduction to Benedictine Spirituality" and, "Seeking God: The Way of St. Benedict." One quickly gets an idea of the thrust of her work from the titles.
   
   Laying a way to enjoy and reflect on the ordinary in life, she draws large inferences in this book: "...we find ourselves touched by something primal, that repetition of birth and death, dying and new life, experienced again and again, year in and year out, repeated throughout our lives." These are some patterns of the day, like the simple task of bowing ones head down during the day in the bright light, "...giving glory to the great God of life for the magnificence of the sun and for the goodness of its light to the children and men and to the animals of the world."
   
   Here is another nugget from a book that flows and contains nuggets of establishing oneself in a place. Esther de Waal quotes from many sources. Here she quotes John Howard Griffin's diary: "August 6, 1969. 5:45 a.m. Before dawn. With the beginnings of the predawn-light some of the birds come to life--not with singing yet, but with a kind of murmuring. I carried my coffee out on the concrete porch and drank it walking back and forth. The air is cool, almost cold, and fresh. Light came slowly. I watched the trees assume black shapes through the fog. I thought of Tom who saw the sounds, smelled the same predawn freshness, allowed the same silences to do their work in him."
   
   For people who like a good read, the 102-page book categorized as spirituality is intelligent and inviting. There is importance in opening up and being inviting to one's surroundings, as the book blurb states. I agree, this is a book that sees "A threshold as a sacred thing..." Her book is like the porter in St. Benedict's rule who waits at the gate, the work "...shows us a conversation between the holy and the everyday..." Esther de Waal points the way to enjoyment.
   
   --Peter Menkin, Pentecost 2007



2. Deceptively slim, this book of meditations from de Waal's reading and personal experience asks for careful reading and cogitation. I found myself reading it aloud, softly and slowly, in order to take in the deep meaning. This is truly matter for Lectio Divina. A quotation: " If the borders are not frontiers, and if the thresholds are continually crossed and recrossed, then we open up to the new." Readers of de Waal will find familiar sources-- St Benedict, Celtic writings-- as well as fruits of de Waal's wide current reading. This book should become a spiritual classic.



3. Esther de Waal never lets us down! In To Pause at the Threshold she explores how even the busiest life can be lived mindfully and prayerfully. She attunes us to what the Celtic Christians called "thin" moments, those times when what is before gives way to the new, when God is experienced as most palpably present. Life is immeasurably blessed, she assures us, when we receive the next moment, the next event, the next person with reverence and expectation. This fine little book is a lovely companion for the one who lives life on pilgrimage.

4 comments about Betty Smith: Life of the Author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

1. Valerie Yow has done it again. I was absorbed by her biography of North Carolina writer Bernice Kelly Harris; now, with Betty Smith: Life of the Author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, she has given us another fascinating, highly readable and meticulously researched and documented biography of a major woman author.
   Since I first read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn--at about age thirteen--it has remained one of the books that have remained bright in my memory. Valerie Yow has brought me into the world and the writing life of the complex and determined woman who was its author, and the author of many other memorable works. Yow is herself an excellent writer. She gives us a story that is a true pleasure to read, and which also demonstrates her strength and professionalism as an historian. This biography deserves wide readership. I recommend it highly to anyone interested in Betty Smith's work, as well as in the writing process and the writing life during a period when the way was not often easy for a woman writer.
   Joyce Allen



2. Having loved "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn", I picked up Ms. Yow's biography of Betty Smith with curiosity and a measure of trepidation. I expected an academic treatise but what I discovered, to my delight, was a rich, full-bodied, insightful account of Betty Smith's life.
   Ms. Yow is a skilled story teller and this talent combined with her keen research skills and her expertise as a psychologist, yields a book that is not only informative and perceptive but a great read, as well. You won't be able to put this one down.
   Anyone who has read and loved "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn" will enjoy this biography. Ms. Yow helps the reader achieve a new understanding of the genesis of Francie Nolan and her family through her compelling analysis of Ms. Smith's own story.



3. Fans of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943) will find a rich treat in Valerie Yow's biography of its author, Betty Smith. Smith is best known today for the largely autobiographical Tree, but she was celebrated in her day as a prolific playwright (she wrote some 60 plays), and three other popular novels that, like Tree, drew from her own life: Tomorrow Will Be Better (1948), Maggie-Now (1958), and Joy in the Morning (1963).
   
   Though Smith's dramatic work (King Cotton, 1937; So Gracious Is the Time, 1938; The Desert Shall Rejoice, 1941, with Robert Finch) is little-known, Yow examines it thoroughly, and shows that Smith first found her voice in theatre - a lifelong passion.
   
   Yow portrays Smith as a complex individual, at home in the lively, combative streets of Brooklyn as well as its quiet library. She had a fine intellect, nurtured by study at Yale and a circle of literary friends; but as a writer, she did not seek the companionship of the intellectuals of her day. An introvert, she immersed herself in raising her family through three complicated marriages and years of poverty; and in writing polished, sometimes controversial, plays that explored the dark corners of contemporary life in the mid-twentieth century. With success came the stressful glare of public life; but with the accompanying money, she was able to afford weeks of solitude at Nags Head, on North Carolina's Outer Banks, where the diminutive, city-bred author rose at dawn to revel in the sunrise and fish for hours in the Atlantic surf.
   
   Much of the revelation of Smith's character and life in Yow's book comes through well-chosen excerpts from her correspondence and published personal interviews. Yow, an oral historian and psychologist,also conducted lengthy interviews of Smith's surviving family, friends and associates; spent years ransacking obscure archives for information on, and photos of, her subject; and thoroughly immersed herself in the places that Betty brought to life in her semi-autobiographical fiction: Williamsburg, Brooklyn; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Chapel Hill, North Carolina; and Nags Head.
   
   Yow's excellent analysis suggests Smith's enduring appeal arises from her realism, for in her fiction she developed the full, flawed humanity of her characters - most famously, Francie Nolan's beloved, alcoholic father, Johnny Nolan in Tree. At a time when "literary" fiction was expected to have an overt social and political agenda, Betty Smith explored more personal terrain, though nonetheless gritty; for her characters pick their way through messy personal relationships that both nurture and thwart their hopes and dreams.
   
   Yow points out that Smith's wise studies of individuals struggling in the barbed embrace of family and community remain compelling more than a half-century after she wrote them. Despite critics who dismissed her books as "sentimental" because they dealt with the personal, rather than the political, Smith's realistic approach has survived seismic cultural changes, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn has become what few of her contemporaries can claim to have produced - a classic.



4. In Betty Smith: Life of the Author of a Tree Grows in Brooklyn, author Valerie Yow has done a masterful work of making a non-fiction biography read as entertainingly and engrossingly as a well-written novel. Using a compelling narrative style, Yow tells the fascinating story of this little-known woman writer of mid 20th century. Amazingly well researched, this biography never feels moribund by facts. Instead they are used to paint a compelling picture of a writer's life and the times in which she lived. Yow provides a telling analysis - both literary and psychological - of Smith and her work. From her impoverished beginnings in Brooklyn to her turbulent life in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Smith's story is even more compelling than that of the character Francie in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. After reading Yow's biography the relationship between author and characters, between author and the people in his/her life becomes even more understandable, as is the relationship between an author and the times in which he/she lives. This book is more than just a great read, it is an invaluable resource for writers and historians and anyone interested in literature.

5 comments about Alek: From Sudanese Refugee to International Supermodel.

1. I bought this book after reading an excerpt, I believe it was in Vogue (or possibly Elle?) Anyways it's a really captivating but not long read. Might be good for a plane trip, etc. Despite her trying experiences of being a refugee and having psoriasis, she has a really refreshing, upbeat outlook and attitude.



2. I bought this book for my mom and she loves it! She is from Panama and has a dark skin complexion. She saw a lot of herself in Alek esepcially in her stories about familiy life. It's amazing how things stay the same even though years have passed, technology improved and continents separate you.



3. I'm not a fan of reading. I really only picked up Alek Wek's book because she came to a book singing at my school, Howard University. She impressed me as a down to earth, humble, kindly demeanored woman. She personally autographed it and took a picture with me. I sat the book down for several months, but, when I did pick it up over the Christmas break it gripped me. It is both entertaining and informing. She speaks about her life as child growing up in war torn Sudan, and the atrocities which occurred there, her move to New York and London, her subsequent conquering the fashion industry, and her eventual return to her birthplace. Throughout the book I literally laughed at times, and was on the verge of tears at others. It not a difficult read. It's simply a really good read. Pick it up!



4. Alek Wek shared a story with me, through this book, that helped me to appreciate the mind of child growing up in poverty, in a family, in a culture, in a world of others who are not alike. Alek's story helped me to make connections to the old ways of my mother's mother and my mother and the very old ways that perhaps originated back in Africa; ways that were somewhat preserved from modern "civilized" ways. Alek's story helped me to appreciate the story I am leaving and hope to leave with my own children. Alek's words encourage me to be careful with my own (to say that Alek is "well-spoken" would be an understatement. As an aspiring author, myself, I would say about Alek's writing: it would seem she truly appreciates the gift of language and the power of thought behind it). Alek's book is appropriately titled in my opinion, she is not the girl of an impoverished African village or primitive tribe, she is not the rags to riches to story. She is Alek, a unique life force that has been affected and infected by the life around her.
   This was a special treat for me for many reasons but mainly because it reinforced my hope that our kids are listening; not only to our words but to their environment. It was again a special treat for me...to be infected with the spirit of Africa, to feel the power of her words and her love for herself...who she truly is.



5. this book is amazing, touching, i cried my eyes out. its very inspiring and motivational. it made my everyday problems seems so little compared to what she went through. i will definitely recommend this book to everyone.

No comments about Working Women in Mexico City: Public Discourses and Material Conditions, 1879-1931.

5 comments about Learning Joy from Dogs without Collars: A Memoir.

1. Bravo! a well written memoir. Thank you for taking the time to write about your life. I enjoyed the progressive chapters ---Lauralee's unique dance of life. I am sure it wasn't easy. You held my interest and my heart, Bravo to your mom--cause she was the backbone to your success.
   A very interesting novel, especially if you have a teeenager involved in wrestling. Imagine! the only female on the wrestling team at Harvard. Again, thank you for writing your story.
   t



2. I thought this book was enjoyable to read. Say, a decent book to read in the park on a nice afternoon. Nothing too intense. It was a little slow in the middle, but still had enough interesting stories to keep the reader going and find out what happened to this young woman. It picked up the pace toward the end, almost putting off too much for the end; the intense reunion with her father, graduating Harvard, and plenty of wrestling team metaphors for her growing self-realizations -- all within the last few chapters. Compared to other books I've read, it wouldn't be a 5-star because it wasn't particularly life-altering, funny, witty or original. A well-rounded 1st novel for Summer though.



3. This is one of those books that was hard for me to put down. I think I read it over a period of 1 1/2 days. However, I felt that Lauralee skipped over a lot of things. I hope that she writes more about her life. I can't help but wonder what life has in store for her!?!



4. Lauralee Summer's memoir moved me beyond words. It is so uplifting to read stories like hers that show the resilience of the human spirit.

   Despite her very unconventional childhood, Lauralee's mother was very loving and supportive within her capacity to provide for her brilliant daughter.

   An earlier reviewer mentioned her father. This chapter moved me more than almost any other. If there was ever a person who regretted his earlier behavior and genuinely tried to make it up, then her father would get my vote.

   Inspiring, moving, beautifully written in the same vein as ANGELA'S ASHES and FINDING FISH




5. Seeing is believing, or in this case---reading, as the adage goes that relates to the remarkable story of one such lady who in my opinion beats Frank McCourt's 'Angela's Ashes.' Don't get me wrong about McCourt's memoir of the Irish poor, but Lauralee Summer's oddly titled 'Learning Joy from Dogs Without Collars' has an extraordinary flair all it's own. When Lauralee Summer was at the age to enter college she never knew her life would make the newpapers and make radio airwaves nationwide. The headlines would read "Homeless to Harvard" and she even got interviews with the Boston Globe and other prestigious newspapers. When she was asked to make a network TV appearance, during the interview she was pressed for time, the host gave her only less than a minute to reply to the question: What was it like to be homeless? The short-moment media experience of her life in a nutshell prompted her to write the memoir.
   

   
   Summer's reveals in her memoir of a fatherless, nomadic-type life who lived with her mother who was known very little of being employed, eccentric---but loving and protective of her daughter. Summer and her mom were always on the move to one state or another. Life was far from easy of living in dreary, and even dangerous homeless shelters and delapidated welfare houses. They didn't own a car or a bank account and what little money they had wasn't enough for food or clothing. The sort of schooling Summer had she obtained here and there. And her joy came from learning to read and her love of books when she was a small child. It wasn't until she reached high school when she found the mentors she needed and a love for wrestling where she was accepted on the competitive all-male team! This was the time in life, Summer was able to move into her own acceptance. This would later build her foundation into the priviledged walls of Harvard. It was when Summer won a wrestling scholarship to Harvard, she was in the limelight of the press media of her unique story. Summer had come a long way from poverty and neglect, but everything paid off in the end. For everyone it always does in some way. Summer found her place in the world and made her own home. By constructing her life from the life of the streets and her Harvard education she is a mentor who paints a window of the dark, isolated and discriminating world of women and children in poverty. The house that Summer built was the one of a honest, courageous and compassionate heart who has found joy from dogs without collars.