April 24, 2024

Understanding Carries the Light

“Wisdom is valuable. But the ability to find understanding is a gift that all creation enjoys… In some ways, you can think of wisdom of light. But it is understanding that carries the light. Understanding is what wisdom travels through.” —from The Case of the Rigged Race, by Michael Hutchinson

I really love the Ontario Library Association’s Forest of Reading Program, mainly because it’s like our family’s version of sports. (Librarians put together different reading lists for all ages, and school children vote for their faves, culminating in an absolutely bonkers in-person festival every May.) My kids’ schools do a good job running the program, but I borrow the books from the public library too just to provide more of a chance to get through the lists. And not all the books end up working for my children, which is fine, because I want to empower them as readers to follow their own instincts and make their own choices. But when Iris couldn’t get into The Case of the Rigged Race: A Mighty Muskrats Mystery, by Michael Hutchinson, a member of the Misipawistik Cree Nation, I didn’t want to just let it go. Even though I understood that it was not her kind of book—about mostly boys, a dog-sled race, the cover lacks an image of a tween girl sipping boba—but I was thinking about Elaine Castillo’s essay collection How to Read Now and how to be white is so often to assume oneself to be “the expected reader” of a story, no adaptations or great leaps necessary. And I wanted Iris to make the leap of reading a book for which she was not necessarily THE expected reader—Hutchison’s series are set on a Northern reserve and are a rare example of middle grade fiction in which an Indigenous kid would see themself represented. But sometimes (almost all the time) in parenting, if you want to make things happen you have to put your money where your mouth is. So Iris and I sat down and read it out loud together.

And am I ever glad we did. I was not expecting the experience to be so rich, the book itself to be so meaningful. A story about a gang of pre-teen cousins solving crimes sounds like a lot of stories I’ve read before, formulaic and flimsy-of-plot, but Hutchison’s novel (Book Four in a series) is the real deal, which is the kind of thing you know for sure once you’ve read an entire book out loud. Complex vocabulary, lots of fun wordplay, moral conundrums, flawed adult characters whose struggles are shown with real empathy, a portrayal of the realities of northern rez life (the prices at the grocery store!), carefully drawn protagonists, and a mystery that was interesting to unravel—I didn’t see any of that coming. But I especially didn’t expect the kids’ grandfather’s lesson—quoted above—to resonate so strongly with me, and to illuminate so many of the problems that occupy my mind half the time.

Wisdom is light (and so is righteousness), “but it is understanding that carries the light.”

What a gorgeous and absolutely necessary message. I’m so glad I got to receive it. Nice pick, OLA!

April 23, 2024

The Time of My Life: Dirty Dancing, by Andrea Warner

If you’ve read my second novel Waiting for a Star to Fall, in which Dirty Dancing features as a plot point (“Brooke had never seen an abortion in a movie before, and it was surprising, because Dirty Dancing was over thirty years old. So it should have been a throwback, but it was something very new: the character who wants an abortion. There is no other alternative, it doesn’t even make her sad, and she doesn’t change her mind at the last minute, or have a miscarriage as a convenient trick to avoid being an agent in her own destiny. She isn’t even sorry… [And] it seemed symbolic that no one had to live in shame. You could be a fallen woman, and then get up on a stage and dance. This was a huge revelation for Brooke, who had never even considered the possibility, the number of ways a script could go.”) then you’ll know that this movie means a lot to me, and Andrea Warner’s The Time of My Life: Dirty Dancing, a contribution to the ECW Pop Classics Series, only deepened my affection and admiration. Warner explores the movie’s roots as based in “the classic Jewish value” of tikkun olam, its celebration of liberal idealism before the ’60s got complicated, the subversiveness of a film whose entire plot hinges on abortion (screenwriter/producer Eleanor Bergstein was deliberate about that!) at a moment when American women’s reproductive rights seemed assured, and how its iconic soundtrack is the bedrock of the film. Andrea also fangirls in typical Andrea Warner fashion, sharing her own personal connections to the story and also critiquing the film for its shortfalls, how it appropriates Black culture and lacks intersectionality—demonstrating both this is a film substantial enough to be worthy of critique and that LOVING ALL OF ANYTHING (in the way that Baby wished Jerry Orbach could love her) means grappling with the ways it disappoints us too.

April 22, 2024

All In Her Head, by Misty Pratt

Misty Pratt is contending with all kinds of threads in her first book All In Her Head: How Gender Bias Harms Women’s Mental Health, including her own personal story of struggling with mental illness, and that of her grandmother—Chapter One begins, “I was five years old the night my grandmother lost her mind.” Pratt is also a researcher whose approach to her subject is based in science, such a basis only underlining that approaches to treating mental illness so often are not, but then neither are many alternative therapies, and that while mental illness is real, women’s experiences are also affected by a society rife with sexism and inequity, violence against women, and the pathologization of femaleness. Maybe it’s not just “all in her head,” but also sometimes it is, or else it’s in her body, or her family, or her workplace, and that’s not nothing. All this tangle of understanding and experience resulting in loud binaries like SSRIS for everyone vs. anti-psychiatry movements, but Pratt manages to blaze a path through the noise to suggest a kind of middle-ground to contend with the inherent complexity of mental illness (that anyone who’s thinking about it has to be contending with all kinds of threads or else they’re kidding themselves) which necessitates care and precision in applying treatments, as well as the message that women themselves are not broken. Pratt notes that puberty, pregnancy/childbirth and menopause are all times of great hormonal shifts when girls and women are especially vulnerable to mental illness, and imagines how different things might be if this reality was seen as normal as it actually is. Which is not to say that women have to suffer through these periods of their lives, but instead that patients deserve care without the message that there is something broken about them as people, and that researchers and doctors could put the pieces of the puzzle together to affect a more holistic understanding of just what women’s mental health might look like (and how anti-depressants affect them—Pratt cites a study stating that females are exposed to “higher blood drug concentrations and longer drug elimination times than males.”)

Pratt spent years trying to wean herself from anti-depressants, only to have withdrawal symptoms knock her right back down again, and she received very little guidance throughout this process, doctors telling her that she should just stay on the medication because it was simpler that way, because her children needed her to be functioning, internalizing the message that she was flawed and broken, that her mental illness was a genetic inheritance that had to define her. But this would turn out not be the case…

There is not cure for mental illness, Pratt writes, but that doesn’t mean that healing isn’t possible. And she shares her own journey to a deeper understanding of her experiences with psychiatry and medicine, making shifts in her life, working with good therapists, learning that feeling (and even feeling BADLY) is a normal part of being, that her anxiety isn’t just all in her head but also the result of living in a world where terrible things can happen but also that it doesn’t have be debilitating or a guiding force in her life.

And don’t worry, her conclusion is not prescriptive—after decades of people suggesting she try yoga or meditation, she knows that these one-size-fits-all cures are rarely helpful. And while there will be readers who might struggle with their lived experiences of mental illness running counter to Pratt’s (people who are all too happy to continue with their medication, for example), this is very much the point of the book: that everyone’s trajectory of mental illness and wellness will be different.

But through the lenses of gender and gender bias, those different trajectories can all be better understood so that patients can learn to tell a different kind of story, one of wholeness, strength and worth.

April 18, 2024

Book By Book: An English Journey

I wrote about our trip to England via the books I read on our travels, and you can read it on my substack. It was really long and kudos to anyone (everyone?) who reads all the way through. Check it out here.

April 17, 2024

Gleanings

• You will find me in the book aisle. In the book shop. At the book stall. By the book sale. My books are my favourite non-living things. There’s something about collecting a library of books that feels sturdy … like I’m shoring up my house for whatever may come,
• he photos that families didn’t want, all the “mistakes” that at 20×24 were too expensive to just throw away. That’s the gold, I’m realizing. The raw, clumsy, beautiful and unpredictable moments that glue a family together, that make them who they are. That’s what we hold on to. That’s what we stick to our fridge. That’s what we’ll leave behind long after we’re gone.
• But in light of new research I’ve recently learned about, I’m wondering if gratitude might also have the power to push us in the direction of a healthier democracy.
• Are my passions really my passions or have they been just a band-aid for this ache? It’s time to find out what she likes to eat and make a feast.
• Why give yourself away? The question lands differently in my ear now—I hear giving as ongoing life-affirming generosity that returns to you a thousand fold, because now I believe that my self is formed of a deep well, a source that is infinite, and that source is love.
• I seem to return to wanting to paint a rainy day, a lone woman with an umbrella, walking away from the viewer, towards something, purposeful in her stride. She knows where she is heading.
• With the privilege of the financial security that comes with middle age, I have the stage where my involvement can be targeted more towards social good. And that feels good. There is no question. 
• But these are days of light. I’m finally open to them after weeks of wondering how to move into a new season, the news grim, some personal issues keeping me awake at night, and no way to find joy in my daily work.  Days of beauty. In our old abandoned orchard, a cherry tree is blooming; a plum by the cucumber boxes is about to flower, its scent of sandalwood and honey held in each tiny bud.
• Sometimes our souls are in good shape, and sometimes not so great. If we can roll our eyes at our suffering, we’re probably going to be okay. So I tell myself.
• What I’m trying to say with this is that my heart bursts and breaks, daily. Sometimes I don’t know what to make of it all, of this, of us, and mostly I don’t know how to write about it.
• So then to my blog: a way to make visible the invisible and to bear witness.

April 15, 2024

The M Word Turns 10

It’s been a decade since THE M WORD arrived in the world, a book that was born because I couldn’t see a reason why stories of motherhood should not include those of women who wanted children they never had, those who never wanted children at all, parenting stepchildren, being mother of children who’d died, experiences of miscarriage, maternal ambivalence, abortion, adoption, single motherhood, motherhood via IVF—AND MORE—could not all be included within a single volume. And what a volume it is. I love this book, and am so grateful to its contributors—including the inimitable Priscila Uppal, who died in 2018—for their generosity in sharing tender and intimate stories with such candour, insight, and brilliance.

Happy Anniversary and thank you to Heather Birrell, Julie Booker, Diana Bryden Fitzgerald, Myrl Coulter, Christa Couture, Nancy Jo Cullen, Marita Dachsel, Nicole Dixon, Ariel Gordon, Amy Lavender Harris, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Deanna McFadden, Maria Meindl, Saleema Nawaz, Susan Olding, Alison Pick, Heidi Reimer, Kerry Ryan, Carrie Snyder, Patricia Storms, Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang, Julia Zarankin, and the amazing Michele Landsberg.

I’m so proud of this book.

Order a copy wherever books are sold!

April 12, 2024

BOOKSPO Episode 6!

What a delight to bring you this conversation with Emily Austin about her beautiful and hilarious new novel INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT SPACE, how some interesting feedback on her first novel inspired her to deepen her own understanding of love, and how ideas from bell hooks’ ALL ABOUT LOVE found their way into her fiction. Listenhttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bookspo/id1733542694 at Apple Podcasts or on Substack.

April 11, 2024

Back Again!

In case you missed me, I was busy buying books all over Northwest England, and having a grand time while doing it. Full report to come in my newsletter on Monday—make sure you’re on the list!

April 1, 2024

BOOKSPO Episode 5!

This week on BOOKSPO I’m talking with Waubgeshig Rice about his new novel MOON OF THE TURNING LEAVES—which came out in Canada last fall and was just published in the United States—and how he was inspired by Cormac McCarthy’s 1985 novel BLOOD MERIDIAN to craft a narrative in which the land guides the story. List at Apple Podcasts or on Substack.

March 29, 2024

Katherine Heiny Gave Me Permission

I’m so happy with my latest essay on Substack (which puts me 1/4 of the way toward my goal of writing an essay every month!). It’s called “Katherine Heiny Gave Me Permission”, and I hope you like it too.

This is my last free substack essay—beginning in April, they’re available to paid subscribers only. Because I really appreciate my blog readers for being here all along, I have three free one year paid subscriptions to give away, and two are still available. If you’d like to receive one, email me at klclare AT gmail DOT com and let me know!