"The joy luck club" by Amy Tan

This novel by Amy Tan tells of the intricate relationships between two strong-willed generations, four tough, intelligent American women and their equally tenacious Chinese daughters. The four families are connected through the Joy Luck Club, a mah jong group that meets each week. After its founding member passes away, her daughter is asked to take her place at the table and the stories begin. Each of the eight women narrates two stories from her own point of view except for the deceased whose daughter tells her stories for her. The mothers relate stories about their lives in China, and the daughters tell of the trials that they face growing up as first-generation Chinese-Americans. The women that Tan has crafted are well developed and extraordinarily believable. She shows the strong and weak sides to all eight of her main characters. Her men however, are flat and are there simply as supporting characters. This is to be expected since this is essentially a book about mother-daughter relationships and how women bond. Therefore, it is my assumption that this book is aimed, for the most part, at the female reader.
Tan's literary style is truly novel. The way this woman writes can't be compared to anything that I have read in recent years. The novel that I feel comes closest to mirroring Tan's subject matter is"The good earth" by Pearl S. Buck. As I was reading, I found myself continually drawing parallels between the two. Therefore, if you found Buck's novel enjoyable, Tan's will be a pleasure as well.
At face value, I feel that Tan wrote sixteen incredibly interesting stories. It is the undercurrent that runs throughout the novel, however, that makes it a classic. No matter what race you are, or when your ancestors came to America, the themes that rings true to all women are the struggles that we see underscored by the fierce love that is so obviously shared between each mother and daughter.
The topic has universal appeal. Who hasn't been ashamed of her roots at one time or another? In this case, the mothers are trying to instill their Chinese spirits into their Americanized daughters before their ancestry is lost forever. The daughters fight their mothers every step of the way under the pretense of independence from overbearing matriarchs. However, I got the feeling that the conflicts arise because the daughters are somewhat embarrassed by their Chinese heritage. They seem to want to be as stereotypically "American" as they possibly can. What they all come to realize at the end of the book, though to different degrees, is that what they have been battling against is something that can't be fought. The daughter of the deceased expresses all of their feelings best when she proclaims' "I see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood." This novel reminded me of an old quilt my grandmother currently owns that has been passd down for generations. Each square is beautiful enough to stand alone. Each has its own special meaning in the history of our family, but when delicately woven together with the others, creates such a masterpiece that it truly ties each of us together. You can understand what it means to be a part of our family be examining the blanket.
I like to think that "The joy luck club" is the start of Amy Tan's quilt. She is telling the women that came before her that they will not be forgotten. She is assuring them that she has captured their spirits. Her dedication at the beginning of the novel is what allowed me to arrive at this conclusion. "To my mother and the memory of her mother...You asked me once what I would remember. This and much more." This review cannot possibly do "The joy luck club" justice. Tan is a truly gifted storyteller and her novels must be experienced firsthand. The highest compliment that I can give is that in the midst of the busiest summer of my life, with summer readings stacked high atop my desk, and the buzz of the alarm clock awaiting me in less than five hours, I couldn't help myself. I read it again.

Book review by Maria B.

 

6th Italian Read-Aloud Club

Country: Italy

Name of partner organization: Tecnopras s.a.s.

Number of participants: 11

Target group: Migrants

Date: 13 December 2014

Location: Association Gli Argonauti 2000, Rome

Duration: 2 hours

Description of activity:

Book chosen: ‘The joy luck club", Amy Tan (Four mothers, four daughters, four families whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's "saying" the stories. In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Rather than sink into tragedy, they choose to gather to raise their spirits and money. "To despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable." Forty years later the stories and history continue.)

The book has been indicated by the participants themselves, who agreed on it after some chats on the phone started for the Asian men of the previous meeting. All the participants came to the reading club with the books and an extra copy for the coordinator as Christmas gift. Through this present they wanted to express their appreciation for the whole activity.
After the reading there has been a short session of story telling. Those of the participants feeling to do it told Christmas episodes from their lives in mother countries. One Ukrainian woman sang traditional songs from her village.

Finally, we collected learners' feedbacks on the activity of read-aloud clubs for our evaluation document. Also, being the last meeting before Christmas and end of the year 2014, at the conclusion we had a toast together with the promise to meet again in 2015.

"The storyteller" by Mario Vargas Llosa

Part mystery, part fictional biography, part travelogue, part ethnological study, this intriguing tale draws the reader into its onion-like structure. A Peruvian scholar has set himself several academic tasks to be accomplished in Florence, Italy, where he has traveled for a respite from his homeland. While there the narrator discovers a gallery exhibiting photographs of the same Amazonian tribe, the Machiguenga, that he had visited years earlier and never forgotten. One photograph fascinates him, driving him to decipher the story of the storyteller depicted in shadow.
As the narrator traces the history of his college friend, Saul Zuratas, who has not been heard from since he allegedly emigrated to Israel many years earlier, the reader is reminded of Joseph Conrad's narrator Marlow, who recounts the tale of his friend Kurtz, who also disappears into the jungle. The novel explores the evolution of an individual from contemporary Latin American urban life to tribal life in the jungle, as he becomes so obsessed by the tribe that in time he undergoes a conversion.
Gradually he changes from his role as an ethnologist studying Machiguenga culture and passionately supporting its preservation to a role as one of the tribes's central figures, a "talker." Issues of cultural and environmental integrity, of what is "primitive" versus "advanced," and of what modern society truly offers in a setting in which the environment and its inhabitants have successfully coexisted for thousands of years, are treated with great intelligence and sensitivity.
 The narrator as a writer envies his friend's ability to spin tales, wondering at the mystery of transformation from the Spanish native tongue and civilization to the "crackling" language of the Machiguengas and their pagan, animistic belief system. In his youth Zarutas condemns the missionaries, holding that the imposition of their beliefs upon the Indians only produces a nation of zombies. Interestingly, he later recounts the Christian story to "his" people in their own language, terminology, and frame of reference.
Vargas also treats issues of disfigurement: individual, ethnic, and environmental, as well as the related issues of alienation and acceptance, of being an outsider. The audience is given much to consider and marvel at through the spellbinding artistry of the storyteller.
The Storyteller hypnotized me with its rhythmic myths of the Machinguenga storytellers. I was captivated with the imagined scene of gathering around a fire with a group of entranced people listening to the calming lilt of the voice of the storyteller and the comfortingly familiar (to them) stories of Tasurinchi. I could really imagine what it would be like to feel that this was important in their lives. The storyteller was like a medicine man or a shaman whose words were like a healing balm for a people who felt misplaced in the world as it was becoming for them. Mascarita had the soul of a storyteller because he perhaps carried an unconscious identification with his ancestors who wandered as nomads in the desert; a people with no permanent home. For this and many other reasons, he understood what it meant to have no solid ground on which to stand.
Is it better for an anthropologist, as one who studies other cultures, to keep an academic distance from the people who are his subjects? How far should participant observation be taken? Saul Zuratas took it all the way. He abandoned the modern world and joined with a culture that was trying to avoid being assimilated into the world of zombies. The Machinguenga is a culture that is deeply imbued with meaning in every area. Globalization says that progress is king. If a `traditional' culture is impacted by global culture, that is just part of life. Do we hold `traditional' cultures back by wanting them to stay frozen in the past? Or are we `helping' them by bringing them up-to-date with our modern world? I sometimes think it is a battle of meaning versus modernization. Can the two be compatible?

Book review by Brian A.

4th Italian Read-Aloud Club

Country: Italy

Name of partner organization: Tecnopras s.a.s.

Number of participants: 9

Target group: Migrants

Date: 22 November 2014

Location: Association Gli Argonauti 2000, Rome

Duration: 2 hours

Description of activity:

Book chosen: ‘The storyteller’, Mario Vargas Llosa (A visitor from Peru, happening upon an exhibition of photographs from the Amazon jungle in an obscure Florentine picture gallery, finds his attention drawn to a picture of a tribal storyteller seated among a circle of Michiguenga Indians. There is something odd about the storyteller. He is too light-skinned to be an Indian. As the visitor stares at the photograph, it dawns on him that he knows this man. The storyteller is his long-lost friend, Saul Zuratas, his classmate from university who was thought to have disappeared in Israel. ‘The Storyteller’ is a brilliant and compelling study of the world of the primitive and its place in our own modern lives.)

A woman, who has been participating to the Reading Clubs from the very beginning, has proposed the book for this meeting. She contacted us via mail and suggested the choice. We brought the book and copies of the first chapter in the club so that everybody could follow the story. As a first step, however, we asked if someone had any other book suggestion that we could discuss. All participants were very happy with choosing Vargas Llosa. At the end of the meeting, two men from Asia applied to propose the books for next Reading Club.

A good half of the group has decided to meet extra Club before Christmas to visit some Churches in the center of Rome sharing the price for a touristic guide who could explain them the cultural details.

"The Girl Who Fell from the Sky" by Heidi W. Durrow

Rachel, the daughter of a Danish woman and African American G.I., grew up in Germany. With her light brown skin and blue eyes, Rachel did not see herself as anything but her parents' child. When tragedy strikes her family after moving to America, Rachel moves in with her paternal grandmother. In Portland, Rachel feels alienated from her family and schoolmates, unable to fit into categories of white or black, and she struggles with memories of her mother. Although told mostly from Rachel's point of view, the novel also follows Rachel's father, her mother's boss, and a young boy who witnessed the family tragedy as Rachel attempts to discover who she is beyond others' labels.

Durrow has created a unique story that combines a young woman's search for identity with a family's history of shame and secrets. The novel begins with Rachel narrating her move to Portland and is told in stark, simple prose. In Portland, Rachel becomes acutely aware of her lack of belonging. She is "light-skinned-ed;" she "talk[s]" white" and can't help but judge her grandmother for her lack of formal English. She fails to fall into pre-established categories.

Meanwhile, pieces of Rachel's parents' history are filled in. Both parents are filled with shame for their inability to protect their children, although their shame comes from different sources. Rachel's mother exemplifies a woman unable to to accept or actively reject that many Americans do not see her children as her own and see them only as a skin color.

The detachment of the first part of the novel distanced me as a reader and felt slow, but as Rachel grew, I grew closer to her and her story. The tragedy piles on thick at times, but the second half of the novel touchingly covers the nuances of Rachel's development: her feelings for her aunt's fiance Drew, her conflicts with her judgmental but well-meaning grandmother, and her relationship with a liberal white college boy. The novel skillfully explores the complexities of racial identity and relationships today.

Book Review by Christine B.

 

3rd Italian Read-Aloud Club

Country: Italy

 

Name of partner organization: Tecnopras s.a.s.

 

Number of participants: 11

 

Target group: Migrants

 

Date: 25 October 2014

 

Location: Association Gli Argonauti 2000, Rome

 

Duration: 2 hours

Description of activity:

Book chosen: ‘The girl who fell from sky’, Heidi W. Durrow (the novel tells the story of Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I. who becomes the sole survivor of a family tragedy. With her strict African American grandmother as her new guardian, Rachel moves to a mostly black community, where her light brown skin, blue eyes, and beauty bring mixed attention her way. Growing up in the 1980s, she learns to swallow her overwhelming grief and confronts her identity as a biracial young woman in a world that wants to see her as either black or white).

The learners have welcomed the initiative as an opportunity for socialization among migrants and integration in the hosting community.

Most of them were already acquainted with one another, therefore the initial embarrassment that arose in previous Clubs was not relevant and the participants could make the most of the experience with the educators.

At the end of the Club, the participants agreed for an extra time together to visit an exhibition of African photography.

France Second Read-Allow Club

Our second Read-Allow Club was organized at Bibliothèque de la ville de Paris Faidherbe Chaligny, 10-20 rue Faidherbe, 75011, Paris on October 10^th 2014.  

In this second encounter we decided to meet in the beautiful library of Paris in the eleven district. The participants had received in advance some preparation tasks. They had to choose and bring a short story / text or a song that they really liked to share with the others. We prepared copies for everyone so they could follow the reading and work on the vocabulary.

As we did the previous time we use the first part of the meeting to do activities together related to literature and our favorite kind of books, our favorite characters… We also worked together on the construction of a story. The participants seemed to enjoy this kind of introductory activities.  In the second part of our club we made a reading circle and we heard the different stories with all kind of accents and learning from each other cultures.

 

                     

                              

  

                         

                             

       

Poster of Italian Read-Aloud Clubs Autumn 2014

France first Read-Allow Club

The Reading Club took place on Elan’s Interculturel Training Room. 7 rue Guillaume Bertrand, 75011, Paris in April 30 2014.

During our first pilot meeting and tanks to our friends of “Colcrea” association we gather 10 participants for the very first reading club. The richness that this group brought to the Club was they diversity. Among our participant’s we could find different backgrounds and generations, different level of French language skill and plenty of other foreign languages.

We did together 2 different activities; the first one had the aim of knowing each other and to encourage the exchange of experiences between them and the second one was the reading. Two participants presented / read a short story related to their origins and the rest of the group could follow the reading with their own copy of the text. They underlined the words that they didn’t understand and at the end of the reading we focused on grammar, vocabulary and a short discussion about the culture presented on the text.

"The pickup" by Nadine Gordimer

I tended to read Nobel Prize-winning writer Nadine Gordimer's books more out of a sense of duty than pleasure, but in this intense work, she's produced a page-turner as gripping as her apocalyptic July's People.
The story is told against two backdrops, from the perspective of two very different people, who "pick each other up". It's a cliche to say their lives are changed forever by their encounter, but Gordimer introduces fresh and complex twists into this most ancient of plots --Boy Meets Girl, and Nothing is Ever the Same Again.
Julie Summers, the archetypal poor little rich girl, meets Adbu -- not his real name -- in a garage workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa. Julie is in flight from her privileged background and splintered family; Abdu is an illegal immigrant from an impoverished desert nation, desperate to make a better life for himself. They become lovers, and a chain of events is set in motion that eventually leads to marriage, deportation and exile in a remote desert village in Africa.
The powerful erotic tension between them keeps them together, in spite of the widening gulf between their goals and values. Julie -- who takes for granted so many of the advantages that come with her background of wealth and status -- is fascinated by the strange new world, the exotic culture, religion and language into which her bond with Abdu plunges her. She is mesmerised by the desert, and builds deepening bonds with the women of the clan. Abdu, however, is almost fanatically determined to emigrate to a Western nation and build a "good life", one with the security and comforts that Julie has the luxury of despising.
Gordimer is an incisive and intelligent as ever in exploring complex issues, and she has her finger on the pulse of issues perplexing both post-apartheid South Africa and the global village. Migrancy and refugee movements have become major issues for the 21st century, with wealthier countries adopting increasingly hard-line attitudes and policies, even though many of them were founded by immigrants. In a relatively short book, Gordimer also touches deftly on the entire range of questions raised by cross-cultural relationships -- from the intimate and domestic to the broad and metaphysical ones of religion and identity. She also provides a fascinating study of how two people who love each other can fail utterly to understand one another.
I've withheld a fifth star only because I was slightly dissatisfied with the ending; Gordimer often resists closure, but I am a little wary with the trend in current South African writing that has women accepting the "lesser portion" and resigning themselves to fate. But I recognise that the ending is what will spark much debate about this fine work. So, to find out what actually happens -- read the book!

Book review by Helena B.

2nd Italian Read-Aloud Club

Country: Italy  
 

Name of partner organization: Tecnopras s.a.s.

Number of participants: 13

Target group: Migrants

Date: 15 March 2014

Location: Parish Conference Hall

Duration: 2 and ½ hours

Description of activity:

Book chosen: ‘The pickup’, Nadine Gordimer (the daughter of a rich white banker falls in love with a black mechanic, an illegal immigrant to South Africa, and follows him to his homeland where she finds purpose in her life although her husband only wants to leave).

An expert educator from Tecnopras (leader) together with a second educator from the NGO Sabine Association for Migrants (co-leader) has coordinated the Read-aloud Club. The co-leader, being more acquainted with the learners, supported the familiarization of the group.

The Public Library and the Parish supported the recruitment of learners and hosted the clubs. We advertised the Club activity with posters in the notice boards of the Library, of the Parish and of the adult evening school.

The educators prepared a list of books on interculture and brought the books in the meeting so to have a range of choices and the possibility to start immediately reading after the choice of the book.

"Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe

Uncle Tom's cabin is frequently criticized by people who have never read the work, myself included. I decided I finally needed to read it and judge it for myself. And I have to say, that for all its shortcomings (and it does have them), it is really a remarkable book. The standout characteristics of this book are the narrative drive (it's a very exciting, hard to put down book), the vivid characters (I don't know what other reviewers were reading, but I found the characters extremely vivid and mostly believable - exceptions to follow), the sprawling cast, the several completely different worlds that were masterfully portrayed, and the strong female characters in the book. The portrayal of slavery and its effects on families and on individuals is gut-wrenching - when Uncle Tom has to leave his family, and when Eliza may lose little Harry, one feels utterly desolate. As for flaws, yes, Mrs. Stowe does sermonize a fair bit, and her sentences and pronouncements can be smug. Yes, if you're not a Christian, you may find all her Christian references a bit much. (But the majority of her readers claimed to be Christian, and it was her appeal to the spirit of Christ that was her most powerful tug at the emotions of her readers). Yes, she still had some stereotypical views of African-Americans (frankly, I think most people have stereotypical views of races other than their own, they just don't state them as clearly today). But in her time, she went far beyond the efforts of most of her contemporaries to both see and portray her African-American brothers and sisters are equal to her. The best way she did this was in her multi-dimensional portrayal of her Negro characters -- they are, in fact, more believable and more diverse than her white characters. Yes, at times her portrayal of Little Eva and Uncle Tom is overdone at times -- they are a little cardboard in places -- but both, Uncle Tom especially, are overall believable, and very inspiring. The rest of the Negro characters - George Harris, Eliza, Topsy, Cassie, Emmeline, Chloe, Jane and Sara, Mammy, Alphonse, Prue, and others, span the whole spectrum of humanity -- they are vivid and real.
The comments of a some readers that the book actually justifies slavery (because "it says it's no worse than capitalism") and that it shows that Christianity defends slavery are due to sloppy reading of the book. No one reading the book could possibly come to the conclusion that it does anything but condemn slavery in the strongest and most indubitable terms. This was the point of the book. The aside about capitalism was just that, an aside on the evils of capitalism. It did not and does not negate the attack on slavery. Secondly, another major point of the book is that TRUE Christianity does not and could not ever support slavery. Stowe points out the Biblical references used to claim that Christianity defended slavery merely to show how the Bible can be misused by those who wish to defend their own indefensible viewpoint. It's ridiculous to say that the book "shows that Christianity supported slavery". It shows that some misguided preachers abused certain Bible passages and ignored other ones to support their view of slavery.
There is an overlay of the tired "Victorian women's novel" to this piece - that must be granted. For literary perfection, it will never take its place beside Tolstoy, Dickens and Austen. But it is a piece entirely of its own category. Nothing before or after it has been anything like it, and it IS a great, if flawed, novel. I highly recommend it. I give it 5 stars despite its flaws because it's utterly unique, and its greatness is in some ways is related to its flaws.

Book review by Pietro R.

Group Read-Aloud: some indications

Listening to literature being read aloud is one of the most valuable and pleasurable experiences beginning readers and writers can have. Read alouds should be part of every child's day.
Story time, circle time, and read alouds offer a chance to model good reading and thinking strategies and to expose young learners to a rich variety of literature. When this exposure is accompanied by supportive and engaging discussions, children are able to extend their world view and develop important critical thinking skills.

The following are some helpful hints that will help you make the most of your read aloud time.

• Plan enough time for each session (15-20 minutes)You'll want to give yourself and the children enough time to read aloud, to enjoy, and to discuss the story, poem, or information text.
• Choose stories or texts that respond to audience's interests and experiencesFor very young children or emergent readers, choose books with vivid pictures, a strong story line, engaging characters, and evocative language. Humorous and predictable books are particularly successful.
• Preview the book before you read it with the group so you can anticipate questions or reactionsPractice reading the book through so you can decide where to pause for emphasis and where to elicit questions, predictions, or reactions.
• Introduce the book to the groupPoint out the cover illustration, title, and author. Invite the children to predict what the book is about, and talk about how the book might connect to their own experience or to other books they've heard or read. You can also give a brief explanation about why you chose to read the book. "This is the story of a boy who goes on an unusual trip. I chose it because you just came back from a trip." Or "This is the story about a special friendship between a mouse and a whale. I have read this many times. I wonder what you will think about it."
• Read with expressionLet your voice reflect the tone of the story or the personalities of the characters. Don't read too fast. Vary your pace so you can pause for emphasis. Allow time for children to think about what's happening or what might come next.
• Build in time for listeners to respond along the wayAllow time for children to study the pictures as you read, make comments, and ask questions about the story.
• Encourage predictionsAsk children what they think will happen next. Help them confirm or revise these predictions as the story unfolds. Try to honor many ideas and interpretations, not just the "correct" ones. Instead of accepting or rejecting comments or ideas as right or wrong, use comments such as "That's one possibility, let's see what the author has in mind." or "Well that's an interesting idea. How did you think of that?"
• Watch your audienceWatch the children's expressions and body language and be sensitive to signs of boredom or confusion. You may need to change your reading plan, change the book, or do more preparation next time.
• Save time at the end of the story to get reactionsAsk open-ended questions that don't have right or wrong answers and that can't be answered with a yes or no reply. For instance, ask what the child liked (or disliked) about the book and why. You may ask what he or she thought about the characters or how the problem was solved. Find out if the book made listeners think of any personal experiences or other books they've heard or read.
• Point out parts of the story you noticed or especially likedShow the children special language patterns or phrases or parts of the text that made you feel or visualize something. Ask children if there were other parts of the book they noticed.
• Remember that for some children, listening to stories is a new experienceSome children aren't used to being read to and will need to develop that interest and ability. Start with short, interesting stories with strong pictures. In some cases, allow active children to manipulate play dough or to draw while listening. Be responsive to facial expressions and body language.
• Encourage discussion about the storyAsk the children questions about what's going on and encourage them to predict what will come next. Be sure, though, not to turn the discussion into a quiz!
• Most importantly: Have a good time!

Article by America Reads

Wellbeing through groups reading aloud

Since the creation of the Epic of Gilgamesh some 4000 years ago, human beings have had a powerful technology with which to record, analyse, and explore their existence. I am talking about literature, which replicates more faithfully than any other man-made form the sense, structure, and feel of experience itself, while at the same time affording a safe distance from which to refract that experience. The ancient Egyptians understood this, inscribing “the medicine chest of the soul” over the door of the great library at Thebes.

In recent years, there has been a move towards integrating some aspects of literature into the medical and psychotherapeutic toolkit. Since 2001, The Reader Organisation in the UK has been pioneering Get Into Reading (GIR), with the help of colleagues from the Schools of English and of Medicine at the University of Liverpool, and with several Merseyside National Health Service (NHS) Trusts. The Reader Organisation is now training staff members and service-users, including the Chief Executive and the Medical Director of Mersey Care NHS Trust, to deliver weekly read-aloud reading groups, already pioneered in over 80 community settings. GIR is a simple intervention. Group members meet weekly for an hour or two, and just two things happen: a facilitator or group member reads aloud; the reading is broken up by conversation and response to the text. Our hypothesis is that reading literature aloud with others offers something uniquely valuable.

What does reading literature offer that reading a newspaper, chatting, knitting, dancing, or participating in a choir does not? As Maryanne Wolf has noted in Proust and the Squid; The Story and Science of Reading and the Brain (2008), reading literature offers exposure to “both the commonality and the uniqueness of our thoughts”. For someone in a depressive state to be (as Wolf puts it) “no longer limited by the confines of his or her own thinking” may in itself have a therapeutic value. Our belief in not giving group members targeted self-help books is the other major structural principle: what literature offers is the opportunity for people to discover a relation to the book rather than the book narrowly proposing it. Deeper, wider, and richer resources are offered within the broadly human realm than are offered through the medicalised “self-help” pigeonhole. The decision not to go for immediate and obviously “relevant” connections is related, I believe, to a need to get the brain functioning along different connections of pathways—the more difficult, the more rich, the less immediately relevant a text the more therapeutic it might be. If the connection with a book comes as a surprise, an active emotional discovery, there may be a more dynamically creative result. That is why the rule here is that the book matters in its own right in GIR, because, paradoxically, that is what produces a deeper effect on the reader. In GIR you can use your difficulties to imagine, to give and find sympathy and relationship.

Here is an example that I encountered at an NHS meeting. The speaker told assembled medics and managers that he had had a severe breakdown while teaching English in a desperately failing school. He was still suffering badly and did not expect to work again. He had found that the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins offered him, if not active help, then something like serious company. He said, “when things are really bad it helps to see that someone else has been there and hung on, it helps to see that someone has managed to get it in order”.

Jean Honoré Fragonard - La liseuse (1776)

Hopkins' poem neither changed nor expunged the experience, nor did it distract this man from it. No one would claim the poem was a cure, but it did offer recognition, solidarity, and perhaps a safe harbour.

Let me add some thoughts from my own experience as a reader. Someone reads out “O the mind, mind has mountains” and as the reading voice is registered in my mind I am already processing and expanding upon the content. In a split second I am checking with myself: does the mind have mountains? An image of a sheer cliff face flashes upon what the poet Wordsworth calls the “inward eye”; I remember being frightened on a scree slope somewhere on Snowdon when I was about 14 years old; I think fleetingly of my friend Wil who died in a climbing accident; I feel a vertiginous drop as I remember a time of extreme mental distress and almost feel that distressing memory as “fall”; I'm also registering the crying repetition of the word mind, “o the mind, mind”. I'm slowing this down and reimagining it in order to write it down here, but as it happens in real time I've barely registered any of this. That is why stopping to talk, as the reading happens, becomes important.

But such literature is a gift that it is hard for some to receive. The man in my example was a literature graduate. But many people have difficulties with literacy and not everyone has easy access to the great writing, ranging from Doctor Seuss to William Shakespeare, which we might want to call “literature”. Reading aloud can give immediate access to complex writing that might otherwise be at least daunting and at worst unavailable to a large section of the population.

It is worth noting that in the history of civilisation, the notion that reading should be silent and private, rather than communal and out-loud, is a fairly recent development. In his Confessions (AD 397), Augustine records with surprise seeing Ambrose reading silently, ‘“his eyes scanned the page and his heart sought out the meaning, but his voice was silent and his tongue was still.’” Voiced reading was the norm, creating a community of listeners: we return to that tradition in GIR but from within a culture where silent and private reading is now the norm instead. Reading aloud now offers experiences and benefits not available elsewhere.

Literary texts of the past 300 or so years, though obviously with an oral component, are for the most part not meant for oral performance. That means that reading aloud is much slower than reading done by the solitary individual in his or her head, and it demands not only a different sort of attention (translating from outside to in, from out there to my personal relation), but also calls for a greater attention to human detail unfolding in time. Reading aloud thus offers a counter to an over-busy world of visual scanning or ephemeral print.

The read-aloud model facilitates the creation of a series of powerful interplays: between the written text and the aural experience; between hearing the text from outside and processing it within; between one's own experience and that of the author and characters; between the privacy of personal consciousness and the public experience of group discussion. And always there is the group. For by reading aloud in a group it may be that readers experience what we might call interpersonality both with the book, and its author and characters, and with other group members. Group members have often reported a sense of the book itself as a voiced human presence in the group and at its emotional centre. To see oneself in others; to see others in oneself: this is the rich experience going on within the group and with the books.

For people who have become competent readers, and especially for those who have become readers of literature, such as our English teacher, reading is largely a private and solitary activity. Those who wish to engage with others through books (members of book clubs, colleagues meeting over the water-cooler, people taking literature courses) usually do so by having the reading experience in private and then talking about that experience or the ideas arising from that experience at the meeting or class. Especially when set against the utterly primal excitement that the reading experience can sometimes involve, this disjunction between having the experience and sharing the meaning makes much literary talk feel at best second-hand, and at worst, unreal. The reading-aloud group model offers something live: the sharing of the experience itself, the reading together, and also the immediate discussion of that complex experience in a social community.

“The mind does have mountains”, a group member may remark. “That's a great description of how it feels.” “Yes, I've been there”, another member may add—or not, if she chooses to remain silent. But the thought “Yes I've been there” will be registered even if the expression is not yet ripe. Seeing others grappling with difficulty, attempting expression, overcoming silence, using personal resonances, may be another “active ingredient”. Having the language, both verbal and syntactical, to describe complex experience may be a key component in developing the ability to survive mental tribulation.

Samuel Johnson wrote “The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.” 

Article by Jane Davies

from The Lancet

"Cosmopolis" by Don De Lillo

Un de mes meilleurs romans lus! L'auteur du récent "l'homme qui tombe" est une figure incontournable de la littérature contemporaine américaine, pour qui veut la connaître.
Je ne le connaissais pas jusqu'à présent.
Là, c'est chose faite, et avec délectation, j'ai beaucoup apprécié "Cosmopolis".
Avec l'étonnante circonstance de l'épisode KIERVEL de la SocGen, c'est avec grand plaisir que j'ai lu les turpitudes cérébrales du héros, un trader richissime de 28 ans qui, pour arriver au sommet, était plus que doué pour anticiper l'avenir .
Car c'est bien le thème du livre ; il s'articule autour de la notion du temps, thème favori des philosophes anciens comme actuels.
La thèse développée par le héros : l'avenir n'a plus de secret pour celui qui sait utiliser l'informatique, tellement les technologies actuelles permettent d'anticiper les cycles.
Sauf que "Cosmopolis", dés les premières pages nous précise : "pour tout sommet atteint, ce trouve une chute" ; toujours cette théorie des cycles.
Le récit se déroule sur une seule journée et il est ponctué d'événements et de dialogues (de très bonnes réparties de la part des protagonistes), qui s'enchaînent parfaitement.
Le style de l'auteur est tout simplement remarquable. C'est trouble, parfois obscure, noir, réfléchi, souvent pertinent, pas toujours linéaire, méandreux.
Don DeLilo mérite pleinement toutes ses récompenses décernées. Un de mes meilleurs romans lus, à ranger à coté des "Seigneur des porcheries", "Conjurations des imbéciles".
Je conseille, donc !

Book review by Claire P.