Sue Christian Parsons, Ph.D. Spring 2019: Writings about Writing Anne Lamott (1994) tells us, Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship. We hope that our students will be drawn in, intrigued, challenged, and buoyed, by what they read. We hope, too, that they claim their own voices through writing so they may challenge and add interest and hope to the world around them. Too often, writers in our classrooms view writing as pedantic and obligatory rather than passionate and rife with possibilities. Each of the books in this collection brings the reader into writing. Some are works of fiction while others take us into the minds and/or lives of some of our most influential writers, making the craft accessible and the reading of their works even more intriguing and inviting. It is important to reconsider the common perception that we teach books. If we try to do so, we often miss teaching the learner. We teach readers, not books. Learners need to choose books that speak to them, those in which they recognize or, in the best of books, come to know themselves better. Learners also need to choose what they write—ideally, as Mem Fox (xxxx) reminds us, those things about which they “ache with caring.” They must learn to recognize and speak their own truth, manipulate words to evoke responses, influence their surroundings, and discover new possibilities. Again, we don’t teach forms, but rather teach possible forms, how to use them, and what might happen as a result. We explore with them powerful writing and invite them to use the writers as mentors. The beauty of these books is that they take the reader beyond examining craft to envision the possibilities of the “writerly life.” In them, we see writing as transformative and writers as transformers. The books reviewed here explore writing and writers. Some are works of fiction richly imbued with the author’s experiences and passions. Others are told by or about the writers, inviting us behind the familiar work to see the writer and thus understand familiar texts in new ways.
9
