Literary Mama contributor Cindy Dyson has just launched Book Club Works, a grassroots, adoption-style program that matches the thousands of book clubs across the country with the thousands of literacy teachers, activists and volunteers in order to bring the transforming power of books to the people who need it most.

For literacy workers Book Club Works means a steady supply of free, great books. It
means knowing a group of readers cares about his or her work. Just a few of the lit-
workers who will benefit:

• tribal teachers
• disaster relief workers
• homeless shelters
• battered women’s shelters
• detention centers
• prisons
• inner city programs

For book clubs, BCW means having a way to share their love for and knowledge of
books beyond their current circle of influence.

Because BCW simply provides a place for book clubs and literacy workers to find each
other, there are no programs or rules. No bureaucracy to slow down the process of
getting books to the people who need them most. Simply one book club adopting one
teacher or literacy worker and meeting that teacher’s book needs.

Book Club Works has just launched and is eager for literacy workers and book clubs to
join before taking the program nationwide. Check out the website and sign up your book club now!

I live in a bubble. It shimmers in the sun and casts pale rainbows on everything I see: my husband, my two sturdy boys, our life together. Most days, I carry on as if the bubble’s not so fragile, but of course every once in a while, something I read or something I see will remind me that this is a very delicate state in which to live. It’s not, in fact, real. I can’t close myself off from the sadness of the world with walls of soap, because if I did, I’d be closing myself off to some real joy, too.

I was reminded of this reading the new anthology edited by Literary Mama columnist Jessica Berger Gross, About What Was Lost: Twenty Writers on Miscarriage, Healing, and Hope. When I mentioned to a friend that I was reviewing the book, she asked, “Why? Why would you choose to read something so sad?” Why, indeed? I’ve never been touched closely by miscarriage, why sign up to read about an experience I’ve managed, so far, to skirt?

Because I didn’t expect that the book would be only and irrevocably sad (and it is not). Because I expected to find in the book some beautiful, deeply-felt writing (and I did). Because miscarriage is hushed-up—although twenty to twenty-five percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage, did you know that? (I didn’t)– and I wanted to do some small thing to speak up about miscarriage. Because miscarriage is something that happens to women and families, and they grieve, and then learn how to carry their grief along as they move on in life. I wanted to read about that.

I read about the secrecy in which we shroud miscarriage, still, even though we know it happens so often. David Scott writes ruefully, “The world of miscarriage was a secret society we’d joined by accident, by living.” Emily Bazelon takes some small comfort in this, that this unwanted experience has moved her into a quiet community: “As I unraveled—there was a long time when I didn’t think about anything else—I held on to the idea that I was joining a sad but wise tribe.”

I read about the physical pain of miscarriage, its terrible perversion of labor. Jessica Jernigan’s doctor tells her that miscarrying will feel like bad menstrual cramps (which by now we should all know is a lame euphemism for tearing agony); instead, she writes, “It was much worse, and each time the pain came, I felt the urge to push, and this travesty of labor was worse than any physical hurt…. The doctor had also told me that I wouldn’t recognize anything resembling a baby. He wasn’t quite right about that, either…I recognized the gestational sac when I saw it…I held it in the palm of my hand. It was small and round and dark, like a plum.”

I read good ideas for helping women and their families endure miscarriage. Joyce Maynard reminds us to just, please, take it seriously. “However it occurs, under whatever circumstances…it is a death, and nothing less. It leaves you one child short, once again.” Dahlia Lithwick recalls the end of her pregnancy in the hospital’s labor ward, and comments bitterly, “I’d have preferred to have that surgery in a hospital broom closet or the damned parking lot. In hindsight, it’s unbelievable that any modern American hospital would not have a soothing, non-ironic place to minister to the thousands of pregnancies that end as mine did.” And so she suggests simply “that hospitals, which thoughtfully offer massages and hot tubs and music for the new mommies, could also provide spaces—both physical and psychological—for the almost-mommies as well.”

I read about the aftermath of loss, and the need to carry on for one’s family, as in Sylvia Brownrigg’s wrenching story of a trip to Lake Tahoe to memorialize her son Linnaeus: “As with so much of our experience with Linnaeus, my husband Sedge and I were accompanied by our son, Samuel, not yet two, and my stepson, Henry, seven. There was a certain need to keep up appearances… It’s a funny kind of family vacation, a trip that’s part fun and frolics in the snow, part ash-scattering.”

And I read about moving on. Susan O’Doherty’s “The Road Home” concludes the collection with her intertwined stories of becoming a mother after many losses and resuming a writing career. After reading to her son’s class, she writes, “A serious-looking girl raises her hand. You’re a mother, and you’re a writer,” she says.
I wait for her question, but there doesn’t seem to be one.
“That’s right,” I say.
She nods. “That’s good.”
I nod, too. “Yes,” I say. “It is.”

Thank goodness for all of these writers, sharing their stories and offering understanding sympathy to people grieving miscarriage. They map out a sad terrain, but suggest, too, some routes toward hope.

This month in Literary Reflections, Amy Mercer remembers how she loved solitude as a child, and describes how she longs for it now as a mother and writer:

But now, married for almost ten years and the mother of two children, I fear I’ll never be alone again. I check email with a child on my lap. I cook dinner with a boy on the ladder next to me, making “salt and pepper make-up” (water, flour, salt and pepper) in a mixing bowl. I shower with my two year old, shampooing with one hand. I carry a boy on each hip to bed, where we read, cuddle, get more “choco” (chocolate milk), and when I tuck them in for the third time, I’m weary of others. Collapsing onto the couch with a magazine or a book, I read someone else’s story. I am alone at last for as long as I can stay awake.

Someone else’s story reminds me of my own. Alone with my children, I banish them to their playroom, so I can write. I let them play computer games for too long, so I can write. I buy them new DVD’s, so I can write. Will asks for a snack while I struggle for the right word, and Miles pulls on my arm as I type. Alone in motherhood; in the hours of laundry and cleaning and cooking and telling everybody else what to do, I am connected to the rest of the world when I write. With Play-Doh spread across the table, Will cutting and Miles eating, I write about trying to relax. As they eat dinner at the kitchen counter, I write about the McDonald’s commercials, and my struggle to keep our family healthy. While the boys take a bath, splashing water across our new tile floor, I write about my definition of home. After I read them books, I sneak out of their room, and if I’m not too tired, I write about giving birth to readers.

Read more about how Amy Mercer plays Solitaire.

I was so sad to emerge from my flu haze this morning to learn that Molly Ivins has died. Her writing offered the very best combination of smart and funny. The best way to memorialize her, I think, is to keep on writing against the war in Iraq.

From her last column:

The purpose of this old-fashioned newspaper crusade to stop the war is not to make George W. Bush look like the dumbest president ever. People have done dumber things. What were they thinking when they bought into the Bay of Pigs fiasco? How dumb was the Egypt-Suez war? How massively stupid was the entire war in Vietnam? Even at that, the challenge with this misbegotten adventure is that we simply cannot let it continue.

…

We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we’re for them and trying to get them out of there.

Rest in peace, Molly Ivins.

I was recently asked to write the story of Eli’s birth for my doula. She’s an accomplished photographer, assembling a book of birth photos and stories. It was a nice project for me; I’d written quite a bit in my journal about the day, but fleshing it out into an essay, with feedback from my writing class, was a terrific writing experience.

But after I wrote it, I thought, how much of this is true? What I remember of the day now is what I wrote in my journal a week or so after the fact, by which point some details were probably already lost. When did I start turning the day into a story? While it was still happening? I don’t think I had the wherewithal for that, actually. I do get through a lot of stuff by thinking about the story it will make later, but not labor! But it did start to become a story before I even started telling people about the day, while Tony and Britt and I were all still huddled around brand-new Eli, marveling about our experience. And then I started telling people about it, and then I wrote it down, and now I’ve written it again, and, and, and…

I thought about this particularly because after I wrote this latest version of Eli’s birthday, I gave it to Tony to read, and wondered how much of it he’d remember, or even agree with. But he’s an excellent partner to a writer, knowing that whatever I write is my truth. He can write his own version if he wants.

This is all a lengthy lead-in to a quote that struck me from Julian Barnes’ essay in a recent New Yorker:

My brother remembers a ritual—never witnessed by me—that he calls the Reading of the Diaries. According to him, Grandma and Grandpa each kept diaries, and in the evenings would sometimes read out loud to each other what they had recorded five years earlier. The entries were apparently of stunning banality but frequent disagreement. Grandpa would propose, “Friday. Fine day. Worked in garden. Planted potatoes.” Grandma would reply, “Nonsense,” and counter-cite, “Rained all day. Too wet to work in the garden.”

I just love this. Love picturing the old and crotchety pair reading to each other from their diaries (diaries like my father keeps, of weather and garden reports). Love that they both keep diaries. Love that they disagree! It just cracks me up.

Barnes goes on:

My brother also remembers that once, when he was very small, he went into Grandpa’s garden and pulled up all his onions. Grandpa beat him until he howled, then turned uncharacteristically white, confessed everything to our mother, and swore that he would never again raise his hand against a child. Actually, my brother doesn’t remember this, either the onions or the beating; he was just told the story repeatedly by our mother. And, indeed, if he were to remember it he might well be wary of it: he believes that many memories are false, “so much so that, on the Cartesian principle of the rotten apple, none is to be trusted unless it has some external support.” I am more trusting, or self-deluding, however, so shall continue as if all my memories were true.

And so this is how I write. No, I’m not presuming to claim I write like Julian Barnes, just that I’ll write as if all my memories are true, and go from there.

When Tillie Olsen died New Year’s Day at the age of 94, the world lost not just a singular writer, but a woman who tried to combine motherhood and writing long before “mom-lit” became a publisher’s marketing label. Her writing is spare and strong, her work as a feminist an example for us all.

I’d been getting reacquainted with Tillie Olsen via her granddaughter, Ericka Lutz’s, wonderful column at Literary Mama; her latest is a moving portrait of saying goodbye to a sometimes difficult, always beloved grandmother. There’s also a wonderful tribute to Olsen by Marjorie Osterhout on the Literary Mama blog.

I first read Tillie Olsen’s work in high school; I remember particularly a fruitless debate about whether the mother in “I Stand Here Ironing” is a “good” mother. I wonder now about the teacher engaging sixteen year-olds in such a dialogue; it’s an easy way into the story, but where does it get you, really? Who’s to say what a “good mother” is? We were way too young and green to fully understand the story’s complicated truths. Still, I’m glad that teacher introduced me to her story, because of course her writing stayed with me. Thanks to him, Olsen became a name I looked for in college, in graduate school; she became a writer I read, and reread, and taught myself. And if I did no better teaching her complex story than my high school teacher, at least, I think, I’ve planted her name in my students’ heads, and they can return again when they’re older.

Tillie Olsen’s family has asked that on her birthday, this Sunday, January 14th, we commemorate her life and her work with gatherings and readings of her writing. You can find more information about how to honor this extraordinary woman at the Tillie Olsen Memorial website.

A funny essay by Lockie Hunter titled “Your Toddler: Socrates in Training Pants.” Here’s an excerpt:

When Francis Bacon first postulated that truth is learned through experience, he must have had the toddler in mind. Their thought processes are vastly different from adults, as theirs is a world of constant experimentation. Prior to the birth of my daughter, my world, particularly that of my writing, was somewhat formulaic. Write in scenes. Use interesting language. Be aware of the arc of a piece. I seldom took chances with form. My characters were unsympathetic, dull even. My thought processes were simple, unwavering. The creative had plunged out of my creative writing. The thought patterns of a toddler, however, follow those of a philosopher. As my daughter learned to stretch her creative muscles, I began to take note and stretch mine as well.

Just as Bacon believed that knowledge is gained through experimentation, so, too, does the toddler seek to find meaning in her world through investigation. The toddler is familiar with the material Play-Doh. She molds the Play-Doh into various shapes. What would happen if it were placed, say, in the cat’s fur? I created a handy matrix to use in various instances.

Do not put the ______ in the ______.

Column A	Column B
Play-Doh	cat’s fur
booger	shoes of the dinner guests
toothpaste	DVD player

All a parent need do is pick an item from Column A and an item from Column B and speak the consequent sentence to her child. Unfortunately, I realized that my formulaic writing followed a handy matrix as well.

1. Premise

Did the protagonist ______ in the ______?

Column A	Column B
die	boudoir
betray a friend	rose garden
take solace	surf at the beach
reveal his hidden past	trenches at Normandy
have a coming of age experience	arms of another man

2. Character affectations. Circle all that apply.

Does the protagonist have a __________?

southern accent
ascot
limp
facial tic
rosebud mouth
three-day beard growth

My fiction was composed like the game of Clue: Colonel Mustard killed Professor Plum in the library with the rope. Recycle characters, change the setting from library to say, trenches at Normandy, and begin again. While the matrix was making my writing somewhat banal, I thought it was still working and clung to it like a life raft. However, the handy parenting matrix began to dissolve when my daughter’s actions and questions stepped outside the realm of predictability.

Head on over to Literary Mama to read the rest!