I've got a great, light summer read for adults and older teens out there, Mishna Wolff's I'm Down A Memoir. It's hard to believe that a book which concerns itself with race, poverty, divorce, and identity issues can manage to be a light summer read, but this one does. Without being exploitative, Wolff, a white woman, tells her experience of being raised in a poor urban black neighborhood by her white father who believed he was black. She writes of him, "He strutted around with a short perm, a Cosby-esque sweater, gold chains, and a Kangol-telling jokes like Redd Foxx and giving advice like Jesse Jackson. You couldn't tell my father he was white. Believe me, I tried."Wolff's entire childhood seemed to be her father trying to make her down. Much of the humor and sadness in this memoir lie in how she fell short of that goal. Being down came much more easily to her younger sister Anora. Both lived with their father when their parents divorced, but eventually the author moved in with her mother and attended an academically rigorous and predominantly white school. This led to further identity conflict. While her situation is certainly unique, Wolff's central story of a girl wanting to belong and to please her parents is universal. For that reason, I think it's a good book to give to a teenager looking for something to read this summer. Plus, it's funny.
8 comments:
Hey, I'm totally down with coming-of-age stories, especially when they come with a twist!
Anonymous-
What now? How's that?
The Future of the Literature
In spite, of a writer in the future of the literature, with the release through the web of the reproduction of the manuscript ''"Percyfaw Code"'' , of his controverted alter ego him magic missing person obscure [[Maskmelin]], C.S. Scriblerius,get back of the classic literary universe past and he also becomes a "virtual character" as his homonym of the Martinus Scriblerus(XVIII). Author pen name of old several writers that you formed a club denominated literary Scriblerus club. The group was founded in 1712 and lasted until the death of the founders, starting in 1732 and ending in 1745, with Pope and Swift being the culturally most prominent authors. Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer occasionally joined the club for meetings, though he is not known to have contributed to any of their literary work. The club began as a project of satirizing the abuses of learning wherever they might be found, which led to ''"The Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus"'' . The second edition of Pope's ''"The Dunciad"'' also contains work attributed to Martinus Scriblerus. Richard Owen Cambridge wrote a mock epic poem, ''"The Scribleriad"'' , where the hero is Martinus Scriblerus.
Who Was Martinus Scriblerus?
The name Martinus Scriblerus, is a contrived Latin form. Literal translation
of the name Martin means "of Mars." The translation of Scriblerus, from the
sham Latin, means low scribe, clerk, or writer, "one who scribbles." From combination
of the two words, the meaning was "a writer of Mars." In the Scriblerian
activity there is no notable reference to Mars except Swift=s discussion of the
Martian satellites, which appeared later in Gulliver's Travels. Therefore, Martinus
Scriblerus must refer to the author of that report, Jonathan Swift. Thus we can
see how Swift intended from the early formation of the Club to focus activity
around his personal experience. Furthermore, he must have convinced the two
prominent contributors, Pope and Arbuthnot [http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/32376/John-Arbuthnot], of that necessity.
As I mentioned above, the original intent of the Scriblerus Club was to have
Martin as hero of the Travels. However, at some date after the breakup of the
formal group, perhaps during his creation of the Travels, Swift chose the name
Lemuel Gulliver. He also altered the context. He may have felt the name Martinus
Scriblerus was too closely associated with his discussion of the Martian satellites
because of concern for his personal safety. However, he apparently felt a need to
make this connection known through the Memoirs, since his later visits with Pope
rekindled publication. The reason for his decision must remain unknown; we can
only speculate on the purpose of the change from Scriblerus to Gulliver. Perhaps
Swift decided the Memoirs were sufficiently remote from his personal writing that
few would notice.
Curiously, the Travels have often caused both readers and critics to identify
Swift with Gulliver. Nowhere in the story is there mention of the name Gulliver;
Swift always uses the first person, and the resume statements at the beginning of
each chapter always refer to "the author." Gulliver's name appears only in the title
page, in a letter from The Publisher to the Reader ostensibly written by a cousin,
Richard Sympson, and in A Letter from Capt. Gulliver to his Cousin Sympson.
CS Scriblerius - O escritor famoso sem rosto, é realmente um homem de 61 anos.
Seu nome Carlos Roberto Lopes de Souza, mora no momento-Piraí - RJ Trabalha na Contec em Negócios
Rua Barão do Piraí, Suite 101/102, Centro, Piraí - RJ - CEP: 27175-000 Telefone: (24) 2431,0017 / NEXTEL: 78354303 - ID131 * 3266 E-mail: contato@contecnegocios.com.br
veja foto do misterioso autor para o seu bloggler
mediacompainel.blogspot.com
CS Scriblerius – The famous writer as faceless, is actually a man 61 .
Your name Roberto Carlos Lopes de Souza, lives in the moment-Pirai RJ – Contec works in Business
Rua Barao do Pirai, Suite 101/102, Centro, Pirai – RJ – CEP: 27175-000 Telephone: (24) 2431.0017 / NEXTEL: 78354303 – ID131 * 3266 E-mail: contato@contecnegocios.com.br
see photo of the mysterious author to your bloggler
mediacompainel.blogspot.com.br
28 de janeiro de 2013 10:26
"Different from the work and style of Hawks, author Scriblerius has a performace to Philip Roth [3] in "The Ghost Writer",
commenting on the adventures of hisr alter ego Nathan Zuckerman, a
youth convinced author of having found his model in the reclusive writer
in the illustration of E.I. Lonoff, [4]
that lived a quiet life in Berkshire, far away from the amusements of
the world writer.Maybe, in the same way Scriblerius develops his writer
mystic similar to the of the fantastic romance of Roth. Like this,
Scriblerius prefacing his more acquaintance alter ego, the missing
person magic spy doublé, Magister MaskMelin, character of the e-book "Percyfaw Code" , a type of the magician's spy Maskmelin secret dossier related in e-book "Magical Mistery Travel .
Fictional?
The magician Maskelyne conceived of a plan to use British occultist Aleister Crowley, an occult agent acronym of Maskmelin [5],
spy magician of "The Seven Circle", also Secret Agent code number 777,
reference book based in Qabalistic writings of Crowley is a collection
of papers written by Aleister Crowley, it was edited and introduced by
Dr. Israel Regardie.
Maskelyne and Fleming or brother Peter Fleming, agents "Lantern"
recruited the "The Seven Circle" to trick Rudolf Hess into attempting to
contact a fake cell of anti-Churchill Englishmen in Britain, but this
plan was not used because Hess had flown to Scotland in an attempt to
broker peace behind Hitler's back. Anthony Masters's book "The Man Who
Was M: The Life of Charles Henry Maxwell Knight" asserts Fleming
conceived the plan that lured Hess into flying to Scotland, in May 1941,
to negotiate Anglo–German peace with Churchill, and resulted in Hess's
capture: this claim
Controverted mysterious illustration disappeared in the beginning of
Second World War and that turned into half biographical character, half
ficction, a true hoax that has their slopes in sites, blogs and several
wikis and searchers of researches of the virtual universe.
It proceeds in a certain way Scriblerius, the career of the also
mysterious Carlos Castañeda: "In an effort to hide behind a
contradictory, little cloud of data or any interview and he left a
series of mysteries back when building and to nurture his enigma". It
is known however, that that is not the case, of those reclusive authors,
their talents and their works speak much more than a simple strategy
about attracting reader for their works, some authors when using such
file only lose readers.( METAPEDIA )
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