www.iusy.org |
http://www.projectconcern.org/ |
loving fiercely | teaching audaciously | thinking deeply
Posted on December 1, 2012 by Jennifer Wolfe
www.iusy.org |
http://www.projectconcern.org/ |
Posted on August 29, 2012 by Jennifer Wolfe
Do you ever wonder what it’s like to be dead? Where your body goes? What can you see? Feel? Hear? Who can sense you after you’re gone?
I think the author of Her Fearful Symmetry must have been pondering these questions long before writing this novel.
Audrey Niffenegger tried hard to give her readers a glimpse into the afterlife. I loved the idea, but I didn’t love the book.
I wanted to. I really wanted to fall into the characters, get swept away into the charming settings, and be captured by the complexities of the plot. I can’t say it never happened, it just didn’t happen enough to help this book live up to the reputation built after Niffenegger’s first book, The Time Traveler’s Wife.
Her Fearful Symmetry begins interestingly enough with a death. Great way to capture attention, but the problem became that I didn’t really care that the character, Elspeth, had died. She didn’t intrigue me, and I couldn’t figure out how her supposedly grieving partner could shift so abruptly upon meeting the twins, Julia and Valentina. Actually, I didn’t fall for those characters too much either. The only one I remotely connected in was Martin, whose OCD behaviors were oddly realistic and charmingly endearing.
Setting the story in London should have come with ultimate possibilities to develop a sense of place, but instead the locations simply served as that – flat locations for her characters to move in and out of. Even the Gothic graveyard and Highgate Cemetery suffered from Niffenegger’s lack of detail, and instead of adding to the tone of the story they were cast aside. It surprised me to learn that she acted as a tour guide there while writing the book.
After the initial death, the plot developed slowly. While I will admit the middle of the story had me much more eager to keep reading, it quickly fell into the ‘what are you thinking’ category when dialogue surrounding an important character’s decision abruptly ended with a terrifyingly ignorant and unrealistic decision. And it went downhill from there. I kept reading, but felt like I was riding in a car that the driver kept speeding up and then slamming on the brakes. The ending was a disappointment – not because I need to have everything neat and tidy, but because the ending didn’t make me think. I didn’t even want to figure out the possibilities, I just wanted it to end.
Niffenegger’s theme of ‘be careful what you wish for’ makes me wish I had listened to my gut and ended the summer with a more engaging book. Although she is a skilled writer, Her Fearful Symmetry lacked the appeal I was hoping for.
Posted on May 7, 2012 by Jennifer Wolfe
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It didn’t take long for the mood in the theater to change from excitement to shock. Watching regular, American kids experience verbal, physical and emotional abuse on the big screen made my popcorn unappealing, and had me reaching for a tissue. I felt my body convulse with sobs as I watched Ty’s parents bury their 11-year-old son, a boy who reminds me so much of my own. As his mother, nearly comatose, rocked in his bedroom, wondering what she could have done to prevent his suicide, it was more than I could take. I wanted to scream at the screen, lash out at the pathetic creatures who taunted this little boy day after day until he felt, at 11 years old, his life wasn’t worth living. What person has the right to inflict this type of torture on another human being?
Posted on March 29, 2012 by Jennifer Wolfe
Posted on January 16, 2012 by Jennifer Wolfe
I was just barely three years old when Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. That makes my life one that has really never had a first hands understanding of what his struggle was like. I have never known a time when there wasn’t such a thing as the Civil Rights Movement. I have never seen ‘separate but equal’. I have never seen signs for ‘coloreds’ or ‘whites’. I have never known a world when I couldn’t have black friends, go to school alongside black schoolmates, or date a black man.
That’s not to say that MLK’s dreams of a day when ‘children will be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character’ plays true in every part of our American society, let alone our world.
But what it does say is what Martin Luther King Jr. means to me.
1. History
With his death, I learned not to let history repeat itself. I will not live my life allowing others to demean or discriminate based on race, sex, religion, sexual preference or any other criteria.
2. Family
After MLK Jr. died, his daughter Yolanda began the crusade to keep his legacy alive. Much of what he stood for revolved around his dreams for his family. He taught them well – Yolanda’s dream of a national holiday in honor of his father is the reason we celebrate today.
3. Service
Martin Luther King Jr. was a man who served his country. Not every man or woman serves the same way, for the same reasons. MLK taught me to work for social justice and to carry that value on to my children, and the children I serve every day in the classroom.
4. Opportunity
As a white woman I have never experienced racial discrimination. I can only imagine the incredible frustration and anger one must feel when denied opportunity due to the color of one’s skin. Because of MLK opportunities were opened for those who never imagined they would.
5. Wisdom
MLK made people think. He made people act. He made people remember him. He made people wiser.
6. Education
Before MLK education was not equal. Black children were held hostage due to lack of equal access to knowledge. Students were empowered to act and demand the right to the same quality of schooling being given to whites. Now, other underrepresented groups are standing up to be heard.
7. Hope
Martin Luther King showed the world that if you dream it, you can become it. He provided hope for minorities, women, men and children who knew that they could be better, could do better, could live better than they were.
So today, as we honor a man who truly inspired a nation and influenced generations to come, please pause and think of what Martin Luther King Jr. means to you. Give thanks for his life and vision and lessons of peaceful protest. And, if you can, try to imagine what our world would be like had he never held fast to his dreams.