Review: Class: A Memoir Of Motherhood, Hunger, And Higher Education by Stephanie Land

 Dear Book Loves,

For this particular post I am reviewing the book, Class:  A Memoir Of Motherhood, Hunger, And Higher Education by Stephanie Land.  If you ever had a doubt how tough single moms are, this book will stifle that doubt.  Ms. Land writes openly and with emotional depth about the challenges of being a single mother and pursuing a degree in writing while parenting her six year old daughter, Emilia.

Not being a mom myself, I still found Ms. Land's writing compelling reading as I prefer memoirs about regular people as opposed to celebrity memoirs.  Ms. Land last wrote the memoir titled Maid:  Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive a couple of years ago.  She related in that book how she became pregnant by an abusive boyfriend and decided to keep the child.  She has her own cleaning business whereby she cleans houses, businesses, gyms, etc. in order to make a living to support herself and her young daughter.  Remember, she tried working under someone else's house cleaning business, but then she decided she could control her schedule and make more money by having her own business located I believe in Seattle, Washington.  In the first book we see the author making the decision to pursue higher education in Montana and she and her daughter move to Missoula, Montana.

With the memoir titled Class:  A Memoir Of Motherhood, Hunger, And Higher Education, Ms. Land continues her story.  She and her daughter rent a portion of an older home, Ms. Land continues her cleaning business, and she is also adding the pursuit of a four  year degree to the mix.  Single motherhood finds her working tirelessly to juggle the pursuits of being a mom, a business owner, and a student.  We see her juggling five classes during her senior year of college.  Additionally, she is attempting to get an increase in child support from her daughter's father.  We see the rigors of dealing with a court system and a judge who value a father's earnings from his full-time job with overtime pay over her job cleaning houses, raising a daughter, and meeting the demands of collegiate reading, essays, reviews, and thesis papers.  Finding affordable child care is a major issue described in this book in that the costs are exorbitant even with having your own business, receiving child support, and utilizing food stamps.  

When Ms. Land's daughter turns six years of age, Ms. Land loses food stamp benefits for herself, but retains them for her daughter Emilia.  Many times the reader sees where food stamps barely cover the cost for grocery staples much less fresh fruit and vegetables.  Going for ice cream and getting a happy meal for your child are extravagances Ms. Land lives for and she will often go without food herself so that her daughter can eat what she likes.  At times this book is so raw and vivid that I found myself shocked and bewildered by all that Ms. Land tackles on a daily basis.   At one point she writes that her life motto is "My life may be relentless".  She is constantly chasing collegiate deadlines, a way to get her daughter to school in a timely fashion, cleaning homes, and hoping that her car starts each morning.  

And then there is health care.  When Ms. Land finds herself with a puncture wound in her leg during this book, she tries to treat it herself knowing that visiting a hospital ER is not a reality she can readily afford.  She does go to the college's student health center where she receives help cleaning the wound, Neosporin is applied to the wound, and she is sent home with a load of bandages.  Her instructions from the student health center are that if it gets worse head directly to the ER.  Though Ms. Land recovers without a trip to the ER, I find myself wondering what does it say about our country when a single mom with a puncture wound in her leg who works hard for a living and is trying to improve her life status via education, can only afford to be seen at a student health center as opposed to an actual ER?  There are a lot of moments like this in the book where I am shocked at the lack of assistance for this hardworking mother of a single child.

Also, child care is a major hurdle for Ms. Land.  Many times a friend or roommate will watch Emilia after she gets home from school each day.  In order for Emilia to attend day camp during the summer, Ms. Land barters with the day camp's owners by cleaning their facility in exchange for a discount on the cost of sending Emilia to camp daily.  And sometimes Ms. Land has to depend on the generous mindset of her professors who allow her to bring Emilia to class with her.  Why could the college not have offered a child care center for students who are also parents.  And why could it not be staffed by students pursuing a degree in early, middle, or high school education? Even better, what about a sliding pay scale for students like Ms. Land who are doing their best to raise a child, obtain a degree, and additionally run her own business? It leaves  you seeing where the gaps are in education, the family court system, and food stamp benefits.  Honestly, we have hospitals that offer child care for their staff so obviously, where there is a will there should be a way.  Are these benefits only for the wealthy members of our society?  

There is a big revelation and/or event in this book that I will not give away here.  In the final chapters of the book we see Ms. Land finishing her four year degree along with having $50,000 in student loans that she will have to start repaying six months after graduation unless she continues in a collegiate MFA program at another university.  Her first jobs are as a data entry clerk and she also obtains a paid YWCA internship. She does not explicitly say it, but I am sure she is still running her home cleaning business just to make ends meet.  Here's what I hope:  Ms. Land secures a spot in a phenomenal graduate school, she maintains a tenacious yet loving spirit, and she continues to show readers and the world the stamina it takes to be a single mother making a life for herself though the systems that rule her life are lacking in so many fundamental ways.

Till my next read,

Grace (Amy)  

Review: The Mango Tree: A Memoir of Fruit, Florida, and Felony by Annabelle Tometich

Dear Lit Loves,

This month I read the memoir, The Mango Tree:  A Memoir of Fruit, Florida, and Felony by Annabelle Tometich.  The interesting part of the opening of the book is that the reader thinks this is going to be a book about a daughter and her siblings who have to bail their mother out of jail because she shot at the car of a man who dared try and steal mangoes from the trees in her yard!  No.  This is a book about a quite complicated family.

This narrative revolves around the author learning to find herself through a childhood that was quite heartbreaking and precarious.  At one point, her father's mom lived with the family and the grandmother absolutely detested the girl's mother simply because she was someone from a foreign country.  Never mind that Annabelle Tometich's mother allowed her mother-in-law to move in with their family in order to help in her caretaking.  This is a mother with a generous and devoted heart who believes when it comes to family, helping is essential even if a relative is demeaning to you.

Next, we witness a young Annabelle coping with the fallout of her mother and father's explosive fights.  Her dad often leaves home and much of the parenting and household duties fall to Annabelle's mother, Josefina.  And then Annabelle learns that her father has died by suicide though she will tell others that her father died in a car accident just to avoid all the stigma that comes along with sharing that a family member has died via suicide.

The author has a contentious relationship with her mom who likes to save everything including broken crayons as she can place them in a balikbayan box to take with her on the next trip made to her home country because the relatives there have so little compared to the abundance the family enjoys in Fort Myers, Florida.  Also, the author's mom has a distinct problem hoarding just about everything especially VHS tapes and DVDs of various American television shows and movies.  Though Annabelle struggles to keep the house clean, her mom appears to prefer it in a catastrophic state. The truce:  live and let live.

Annabelle sees her mother in a whole different light when they take a trip to Manila.  While in Manila, Annabelle gets to see how her mother's extended family lives quite poorly.  The family in Manila is thankful just to have a roof over the heads and food on the table.  Annabelle sees what it is like living in a desolate, poor area of the world where her mom essentially raised her siblings.  Her mother brings all the balikbayan boxes with her for her relatives and is generous with her time, money, and profound love. 

At one point, life becomes wo overwhelming for Annabelle's mom that she insists they are going to leave Fort Myers, Florida and move to Manila.  In order to prevent this, Annabelle must start helping her mom with getting her brother and sister to school, cooking, cleaning, and mowing the yard.  

Finally, the reader sees Annabelle go off to college in Florida and befriend people while attending a university.  She loves college life so much that she actually stays year-round at the university.  This part of the book speaks to the point of how we are unable to choose are biological family, but once we are adults, we can choose who we would like to have in our lives that we treat as family.  

Young Annabelle works in the food industry, as a journalist, and by the end of the book, we find Annabelle with her own family at a neighborhood party.  When she overhears someone telling the story of how a local woman shot what I believe was a BB gun at a man who was on her property stealing mangoes, Annabelle claims and defends her mom for the strong, independent woman she is and for how much of those same qualities her mother, Josefina, has helped her to also acquire.

What a heartbreaking and dynamic memoir.  I found myself at times having to put this book down due to some of the big issues tackled in the book.  In the end, I found myself relating to the author in that we all come from dysfunctional families and we are defined by them in ways both positive and negative.

A solid, eloquent, and emotionally moving memoir.

Till my next review,

Grace (Amy)

Review: The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

 Dear Lit Loves,

Hi.  So this month someone in my book club decided we should read The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese.  And then one of the members brought a copy of the book and set it down on our round table.  Personally, I took one look at the seven hundred page tome and just completely lost my desire to even read the book.  Seriously, a thick, long book can be as intimidating as a white, blank page.  For a week I let my copy of the book just sit on my sofa table.  I gave it dirty looks and a side grin which means I am really not happy about someone or something.  I considered just reading someone's Cliff Notes on the book and not even attempting to read the book itself.   Then my conscience got the best of me.  Read the dang book, already!  At least I might be able to declare who my favorite character is to my book club and explain why.

It took me three weeks to read The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese.  The entire story revolved around a young girl in India who is twelve being sent to marry someone she has never even met.  Oh, and the girl's future husband is forty years old!  Just that concept alone brought fire to my veins.  The book takes place in Kerala.  And I must say that the only information I had on the author was that he in some way is involved in medicine which explained why in this one Indian family, there is a condition causing someone to die in each generation. And each death was explained in detail.  And the death is usually associated with water and drowning.  The parts of the book about medicine and acoustic neuromas were detailed expertly.  

Suffice it to say, I did read the book.  I also felt like throwing the book across the room at various points while reading it.  There were just so many characters weaving in and out of the story throughout the entirety of the book.  The author definitely underscored India's caste system.  I did not like the caste system prior to reading this book and I thoroughly detest it after reading the book.  Also, the author began using words from the Indian language throughout the plot and it just made me frustrated as a reader.  You ask me to read a seven hundred page book and then begin using words from a language I do not know and it requires me to Google each word?!  I thought that was asking a lot of the reader.

What was the book about?  Family.  Our biological family and then those who we chose to treat as ourbi family.  It involved what we inherit from our biological family members and oftentimes what we choose to give or how we treat those in one's biological family as well as one's "chosen" family.  Also, the book revolved around what parents will sacrifice for their children.  For example, if you knew you had a disease that could be contracted by your child, would you stay and expose them to the harmful, disfiguring effects of the disease and let the child experience how a society can ostracize people because of their illness/conditions?  Or, would you feel that for the child's sake, you might decide to choose to leave and let them be raised by someone else such that the child will never inherit a disease that will disfigure them and cause them to be shunned from society?  Perplexing and heavy questions for sure.

Overall, this book made me really thankful I do not live in a country revolving around a caste system. The book made me reflect on my own decision not to have children due to the inheritable diseases I have that could be passed on to a child.  Finally, the book enabled me to reflect upon all the sacrifices that were made by my own parents for me and my sibling.  And the book truly made me think about why even in the United States, people have family that deliberately choose to not show up for other family members during times of serious distress and duress.  I have witnessed this first hand and have been on the receiving end of being shunned, ignored by family for various reasons.  And the very people who shun their family call themselves Christians?  How does that work?  It is a real dagger to the heart when anyone shuns you, but especially when your own flesh and blood shun you because they do not find you "acceptable" according to their standards.  

This book and the various characters and events were quite triggering for me as a reader.  I think maybe some books should come with a warning label if some of the events in the book are particularly distasteful or graphic.  I know I will be wary about whether I recommend this book or not as I am undecided on a rating for it.  The writing was beautiful, but the events were quite tragic.  Upon finishing the book, I simply felt a sense of relief and to this day I still cannot say I would wholeheartedly endorse this book to my family, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances.  And I will be quite interested in how members of the book club I belong to felt about the book and if they read it or listened to it in its entirety.

Till my next read,

Grace (Amy)