Okay, we're not like that Church Lady. But the Neland Book Club is a groups of ladies from my church. And this week we took the giant leap into reading a graphic novel together. This month's title was Blankets by Craig Thompson, a book which is easy to mistake for memoir, but is officially "an illustrated novel." Some were a bit unsure about reading it, and one stalwart decided she wouldn't, feeling that the whole point of reading a book is to imagine it. But more about that later.
Jenny Williams, who teaches a college class on the graphic novel, lent us her expertise tonight. Blankets is one of the books she always teaches in that class. Blankets is about a young man who has grown up in a fundamentalist Christian home, isolated and lonely in a culture that discourages his natural artistic talent. He falls in love with a kindred spirit at a Christian winter camp during high school, and he goes to visit her. Their relationship opens a new lens on his life and his talent.
While the character in the novel, named Craig Thompson like the author and with many similarities to the author, does not embrace the church, this book would give any Christian pause, begging the question of what they or their church is communicating to the young people within. This young man experiences sexual abuse at the hands of a babysitter, harsh discipline from his parents, and bullying from his classmates. His faith offered him a future security, but nothing to help him in his current earthly life.
Jenny's students always have a strong response to this book. Many identify with the small-town experience or the feeling of isolation at the Christian camp. They express their disappointment at the end result of the character's experience and mourn the fact that he was not in a good church situation. She said that students are always disappointed to find out that this is not absolutely true to his life story--that there are fictional aspects to the novel.
Interestingly, since this book is highly autobiographical, Jenny also let us know that Thompson did not tell his family that he was writing this book and, in fact, let them know by sending them a copy when it was published.
We discussed the title: what blankets are in the book? There is a blanket that Raina, his newfound girlfriend, makes for him, which is the obvious choice. Then there are the blankets that he and his brother fight over and play amidst when they share a bed as children. There are blankets of snow throughout the book. Blank spaces abound. And given the different uses of a blanket--warming, covering, hiding, suffocating--there are many dimensions to the image. Christianity is a sort of blanket as well--his parents use it as security and comfort; Craig finds it to be something that hides what's really there and suffocates him. Interestingly, in real life, he still has the quilt that his girlfriend made him.
An interesting aspect of the book, which helps explain why he feels so isolated from his parents' faith, is the complete divorce that he feels between Christian spirituality and the physical world. The physical world is dismissed as unworthy of celebration and attention. Why did God create our bodies, nature, a physical earth if it is meaningless? It's an easy trap for Christians to fall into.
I would not give Blankets to just anyone--I think given the questioning of faith and the sexual abuse in the novel, I wouldn't give it to anyone under 16. And sexuality, as part of the physical world that has been cut off from his life, plays a prominent role. Jenny and her students have discussed what the difference is between reading a story and seeing the images of them in a graphic novel. For some, images last longer in their minds, while others have very vivid images from reading text. This goes to discernment for what is important for each individual reader.
Which leads me back to our wonderful friend who is not interested in graphic novels. She doesn't want everything imagined for her. However, the art in a graphic novel is part of the storytelling. The minimal text is informed by the art in a completely different way than illustrations function in traditional texts.
Blankets is a poignant look at one person's experience. It is filled with both sadness and beauty. Craig Thompson will be at the Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin next April. I'm looking forward to hearing what he has to say, and I pray that the experience of Festival will be a blessing to him. I'm also looking forward to reading more graphic novels. The art gives an added value to the experience, giving some variety to the always-enjoyable time spent reading.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Off the Reservation
Three weeks ago the Fab 5 Book Club took a road trip, leaving our little Dutch lives to enjoy the different vibe of Cincinnati. It's taken me at least this long to recover enough to write about it! Pretty much we ate our way through the town--three of the original Fab 5 lived in Cincinnati for quite a few years together before we came together. They had lots of favorite places to revisit--Graeter's for ice cream, Skyline Chili, the Grand Finale and more. Sonya claimed she was in a food coma for days. But oh how sweet it was.
We looked out over the city from Carew Tower. We toured neighborhoods like Over the Rhine while listening to, well, Over the Rhine. We all coveted mightily at a most awesome architectural antiques store. We stopped in to see Union Station, where in the bathroom we overheard a young boy, after commenting on the state of his mother's rear end, wondered loudly to his mother why a particular portion of his private anatomy is always sticky, a question answered immediately with a burst of laughter from everyone in the bathroom. So it was a pretty full weekend of entertainment.
We combined this inaugural road trip with our book club discussion of Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie. In this novel, Thomas Builds-A-Fire and two of his fellow Spokane form a band. At first they perform covers of famous songs, but eventually Thomas writes his own for the band. The success that they achieve is not welcomed by the rest of their tribe. Along the way two white women join their band briefly, and later two women from another tribe join. Each bring their own complications.
We spent some time regretting the fact that we really know very little about Native American culture. The magical realism in the book can sometimes be hard for us to wrap our minds around, and we want to know how much is the author's style and how much of it is cultural. The novelist gives prominence to the importance of dreams and what they tell the dreamer. Sometimes it was hard to separate the dream from the reality in the story, which seems quite intentional, since they are meant to be so closely related.
The sadness of life on the reservation--commodity foods, hunger, poverty, mass alcoholism, unemployment and violence--come to a crescendo at the end of the book. It's not happy. And the even harder-to-understand part of it is the reluctance of the fellow Spokane to rejoice when someone from their reservation has a chance to excel. Because excelling seems to be equivalent to rejecting their history and their people.
These themes came up in young adult novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, also by Sherman Alexie. The novels are very similar, but I think that Diary is the more entertaining, better crafted of the two.
One thing I really like about Reservation Blues is that the author used the music to further his theme. In the beginning, when they form their band, they only performed covers of music that was written by other people from other cultures in other struggles. What people expected from them was their "Indian" music, a performance taken out of context, sort of like going to an "authentic luau" at the Quality Inn on Maui.
When Thomas begins to write his own songs, he is creating his own music, influenced by his culture and other music cultures, but bringing them into the modern state of his own experience. I think the author sees that as the same situation that the reservation faces. They can perform to the caricature of their history that is expected by the outside world, they can abandon their own history to adopt someone else's culture, or they can take the best of both worlds to create something meaningful for themselves.
One odd association I had while reading this was the character of Big Mom. She is a puzzling character, possibly deity, possibly human, certainly powerful in a limited way. I read one blog that said she symbolized Time, which is an interesting way to interpret it. At the risk of alienating both friends and foes of the loved and hated book The Shack, Big Mom sort of reminded me of "Papa," the black woman who represented God the Father. Big, caring, irreverent, nurturing. I find it interesting that two such radically different books would come up with a character who has so much in common.
One place where you could find both of those books and so many more is Half Price Books. We do not have one of these lovely institutions here in Grand Rapids, though the Fab 5 are considering opening a store ourselves. We made the pilgrimage to two different Half Price Books while in Cincinnati, much to my dear husband's chagrin. Heavenly places. And I even scored a paperback copy of Alexie's book of short stories The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, which includes many of the characters from Reservation Blues and was the basis for the movie Smoke Signals. I hope to see it soon.
Well, this Big Mom needs to get moving. I know that I do not personify Time, or good use of it, and I have a mountain of chores to attend to. But first, lunch with my mom and sister.
We looked out over the city from Carew Tower. We toured neighborhoods like Over the Rhine while listening to, well, Over the Rhine. We all coveted mightily at a most awesome architectural antiques store. We stopped in to see Union Station, where in the bathroom we overheard a young boy, after commenting on the state of his mother's rear end, wondered loudly to his mother why a particular portion of his private anatomy is always sticky, a question answered immediately with a burst of laughter from everyone in the bathroom. So it was a pretty full weekend of entertainment.
We combined this inaugural road trip with our book club discussion of Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie. In this novel, Thomas Builds-A-Fire and two of his fellow Spokane form a band. At first they perform covers of famous songs, but eventually Thomas writes his own for the band. The success that they achieve is not welcomed by the rest of their tribe. Along the way two white women join their band briefly, and later two women from another tribe join. Each bring their own complications.
We spent some time regretting the fact that we really know very little about Native American culture. The magical realism in the book can sometimes be hard for us to wrap our minds around, and we want to know how much is the author's style and how much of it is cultural. The novelist gives prominence to the importance of dreams and what they tell the dreamer. Sometimes it was hard to separate the dream from the reality in the story, which seems quite intentional, since they are meant to be so closely related.
The sadness of life on the reservation--commodity foods, hunger, poverty, mass alcoholism, unemployment and violence--come to a crescendo at the end of the book. It's not happy. And the even harder-to-understand part of it is the reluctance of the fellow Spokane to rejoice when someone from their reservation has a chance to excel. Because excelling seems to be equivalent to rejecting their history and their people.
These themes came up in young adult novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, also by Sherman Alexie. The novels are very similar, but I think that Diary is the more entertaining, better crafted of the two.
One thing I really like about Reservation Blues is that the author used the music to further his theme. In the beginning, when they form their band, they only performed covers of music that was written by other people from other cultures in other struggles. What people expected from them was their "Indian" music, a performance taken out of context, sort of like going to an "authentic luau" at the Quality Inn on Maui.
When Thomas begins to write his own songs, he is creating his own music, influenced by his culture and other music cultures, but bringing them into the modern state of his own experience. I think the author sees that as the same situation that the reservation faces. They can perform to the caricature of their history that is expected by the outside world, they can abandon their own history to adopt someone else's culture, or they can take the best of both worlds to create something meaningful for themselves.
One odd association I had while reading this was the character of Big Mom. She is a puzzling character, possibly deity, possibly human, certainly powerful in a limited way. I read one blog that said she symbolized Time, which is an interesting way to interpret it. At the risk of alienating both friends and foes of the loved and hated book The Shack, Big Mom sort of reminded me of "Papa," the black woman who represented God the Father. Big, caring, irreverent, nurturing. I find it interesting that two such radically different books would come up with a character who has so much in common.
One place where you could find both of those books and so many more is Half Price Books. We do not have one of these lovely institutions here in Grand Rapids, though the Fab 5 are considering opening a store ourselves. We made the pilgrimage to two different Half Price Books while in Cincinnati, much to my dear husband's chagrin. Heavenly places. And I even scored a paperback copy of Alexie's book of short stories The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, which includes many of the characters from Reservation Blues and was the basis for the movie Smoke Signals. I hope to see it soon.
Well, this Big Mom needs to get moving. I know that I do not personify Time, or good use of it, and I have a mountain of chores to attend to. But first, lunch with my mom and sister.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)