Greetings Treat-A-Weekers!
Happy New Year and I’m baaaaack……I’ve missed writing this blog and I hope you’ve missed reading it. I’ve been reading and watching a wide range of content over the last few weeks that I am excited to share with you. I read two great books which could not have been more different, Bad Feminist by Roxanne Gay and Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, and a Bravo docudrama called Dirty John, which is based on the popular podcast and L.A. Times series by the same name. Both books and the show sucked me in from page/episode 1 and oddly, shared a theme in my mind, at least, that appearances can be and often are, very, very deceiving.
Bad Feminist
First up, Bad Feminist is a fascinating non-fiction compilation of essays, simply and powerfully, written by Roxanne Gay who analyzes and critiques issues and themes current in American culture, and our conflicted, often problematic views and treatments of issues and situations involving gender, sexuality and race. Gay’s voice and insights are relatable, sharp, funny and at times painfully honest. The chapters are short and each and every one of them made me think. I could relate with a lot of them. My favorite chapter entitled, I Once Was Miss America, explores how Gay, a black, American girl, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from Haiti, found great hope when Vanessa Williams was crowned Miss America in 1984. She felt that opened the door for her to be considered a beautiful All-American Girl one day too.
This same chapter explores Gay’s surprising love of Francine Pascal’s Sweet Valley High series of books based on a fictional set of blonde, beautiful high school age twins by the names of Jessica and Liz Wakefield whose temperaments and personalities are opposite, but who lead perfect, enviable lives growing up in Southern California. Here’s the funny thing. I read these books growing up too. I too inexplicably loved them even though they were about girls whose lives that could not be more different than my own. I realized through Gay’s words that I gobbled those books up because the Wakefields’ lives were the typical All-American girl’s dream at the time – ever so appealing to someone growing up feeling somewhat separate and apart from that dream and longing to be included. Those books were a way to feel a part of a dream that didn’t embrace us. A dream of attending and fitting in at dances and football games and feeling popular and traditionally attractive. I felt especially connected to Gay when she, one of our nation’s foremost contemporary feminist thinkers and writers, wrote of her excitement as an adult about the release of Sweet Valley Confidential, Pascal’s update of the Sweet Valley High Series, set 10 years in the future. The range of emotions Gay discusses traveling through while reading that book the second it was released on her Kindle– from bliss, to laughter, to cynicism despite her finding the writing to be extremely bad literally made me laugh out loud. How many books have I read where the writing was just plain bad, but I loved the story so much, I could care less? Many. Reading that chapter, about the magic and escape to be found in books, about her love of those two seemingly one dimensional female characters (the “bad” twin, Jessica, in particular), I wished I could have had coffee with Roxanne Gay and talked to her about books, escapism, feminism, identity, the effects of popularity, popular culture, and more. The sad and crazy thing is, once upon a time perhaps, I could have had coffee with and gotten to know Roxanne Gay, but it was my own fault that this never happened.
You see, Roxanne Gay and I went to the same university at around the same time. She was a year younger than me but we were in the same residential college or dorm. We ate in the same cafeteria three times a day and I remember seeing her in the dining hall several times a week. I was a friendly sort of college coed — an Ohioan with a “midwestern twang” as a male friend once noted, I prided myself on being friendly and sunny on the outside even if I didn’t always feel that way on the inside. I often introduced myself to people I didn’t know and connected people with things in common or who I thought would click. I was in charge of coordinating the buddy program for our dorm, pairing a sophomore up with an incoming freshperson to help show them the ropes of life at our university. I met Roxanne Gay as our residential college’s big/little sib coordinator, but I never spoke with her again. Why? Because she did not look or seem friendly to me. Because she didn’t present herself in a perky, enthusiastic way, I dismissed her as someone I would have nothing in common with, when in fact, she was someone I could have had some truly amazing and revelatory conversations with (assuming of course, that she’d have been interested in getting to know me, which is debatable). This is something I deeply regret; an opportunity lost forever. Appearances can be deceiving.
Where The Crawdads Sing
Continuing with the appearances can be deceiving theme, Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens was a truly delectable read. I devoured it in one weekend. Owens, a wildlife scientist by profession, has written an engrossing book with lush descriptions of marsh life. The beauty and habitat of the North Carolina marsh serve as the backdrop for an engaging story about an abandoned girl who grows up in isolation in the North Carolina marsh and becomes embroiled in a love triangle and a murder mystery. This book accomplished many of the things I seek in fiction seemingly effortlessly and all at once. The writing was filled with beautiful descriptive prose, the story of family conflict and strife and of a young girl’s coming of age was affecting, the murder mystery had me guessing until the last page and unique insights like the fact that beauty, strength, and creativity can be born of isolation, not just loneliness, left me wishing there was more of this book to read even after it ended. And, again, this book very deftly exemplifies the theme of appearances being deceiving as the wild marsh girl who raises and educates herself is so much more than the small town she is from believes her to be or will ever understand.
Dirty John
Finally, if you know nothing about this Bravo scripted series, watch it On Demand (the last installment airs tonight) and thank me later. Do not, I repeat, do not read the LA Times series by the same name first because then you will not be taken on the crazy rollercoaster ride that this show is. Dirty John is the TRUE STORY of a successful, wealthy, Newport Beach interior designer, Debra Newell (played by the awesome Connie Britton) who meets a charming, attractive man, John Meehan (played extremely well by Eric Bana), who sweeps her off her feet and into her 5th marriage only for her to quickly discover, much to her and her family’s detriment, that he is not at all what he appears. I know this sounds very B movie, but believe me, even my husband, who when I first met him only watched documentaries, has been well and truly sucked in.
That’s it for me for this week. My message to you all and myself? Dig a lot deeper my friends — we have everything to gain and nothing to lose by not rushing to judgment or into something tricky too quickly.
I hope to be back next week with something yummy. Until then, I remain, very truly yours,
M
