Spoken from the Heart
Laura Bush, 2010
Simon & Schuster
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781439155202
Summary
Born in the boom-and-bust oil town of Midland, Texas, Laura Welch grew up as an only child in a family that lost three babies to miscarriage or infant death. She vividly evokes Midland's brash, rugged culture, her close relationship with her father, and the bonds of early friendships that sustain her to this day. For the first time, in heart-wrenching detail, she writes about the devastating high school car accident that left her friend Mike Douglas dead and about her decades of unspoken grief.
When Laura Welch first left West Texas in 1964, she never imagined that her journey would lead her to the world stage and the White House. After graduating from Southern Methodist University in 1968, in the thick of student rebellions across the country and at the dawn of the women's movement, she became an elementary school teacher, working in inner-city schools, then trained to be a librarian. At age thirty, she met George W. Bush, whom she had last passed in the hallway in seventh grade. Three months later, "the old maid of Midland married Midland's most eligible bachelor."
With rare intimacy and candor, Laura Bush writes about her early married life as she was thrust into one of America's most prominent political families, as well as her deep longing for children and her husband's decision to give up drinking. By 1993, she found herself in the full glare of the political spotlight. But just as her husband won the Texas governorship in a stunning upset victory, her father, Harold Welch, was dying in Midland.
In 2001, after one of the closest elections in American history, Laura Bush moved into the White House. Here she captures presidential life in the harrowing days and weeks after 9/11, when fighter-jet cover echoed through the walls and security scares sent the family to an underground shelter. She writes openly about the White House during wartime, the withering and relentless media spotlight, and the transformation of her role as she began to understand the power of the first lady.
One of the first U.S. officials to visit war-torn Afghanistan, she also reached out to disease-stricken African nations and tirelessly advocated for women in the Middle East and dissidents in Burma. She championed programs to get kids out of gangs and to stop urban violence. And she was a major force in rebuilding Gulf Coast schools and libraries post-Katrina. Movingly, she writes of her visits with U.S. troops and their loved ones, and of her empathy for and immense gratitude to military families.
With deft humor and a sharp eye, Laura Bush lifts the curtain on what really happens inside the White House, from presidential finances to the 175-year-old tradition of separate bedrooms for presidents and their wives to the antics of some White House guests and even a few members of Congress.
She writes with honesty and eloquence about her family, her public triumphs, and her personal tribulations. Laura Bush's compassion, her sense of humor, her grace, and her uncommon willingness to bare her heart make this story revelatory, beautifully rendered, and unlike any other first lady's memoir ever written. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 4, 1946
• Where—Midland, Texas, USA
• Education—B.A., Southern Methodist University; M.A.,
University of Texas, Austin
• Currently—lives in Crawford, Texas
Laura Bush was First Lady of the United States, the wife of George W. Bush, the 43rd President.
Bush has had a love for books and reading since childhood, and her life and education have reflected that interest. She graduated from Southern Methodist University in 1968 with a bachelor's degree in education, and soon took a job as a second grade school teacher. After attaining her Master's degree in Library Science at the University of Texas at Austin, she was employed as a librarian. She met George Walker Bush in 1977, and they were married later that year. In 1981, the couple had twin daughters.
Bush's political involvement began with her marriage. She campaigned in her husband's unsuccessful 1978 run for the United States Congress and later his successful Texas gubernatorial campaign. As First Lady of Texas, Bush implemented many initiatives focused on health, education, and literacy. In 1999, she aided her husband in campaigning for the presidency of the United States in a number of ways, most notably delivering a keynote address at the 2000 Republican National Convention; this gained her national attention. She became first lady after her husband defeated Democrat Al Gore in the 2000 election.
Polled by Gallup as one of the most popular first ladies, Laura Bush was involved in topics of both national and global concern during her tenure. She continued to advance her trademark interests of education and literacy by establishing the annual National Book Festival in 2001 and encouraged education on a worldwide scale. She also advanced women's causes through The Heart Truth and Susan G. Komen for the Cure. She represented the United States during her foreign trips, which tended to focus on HIV/AIDS and malaria awareness. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
A deeply felt, keenly observed account of her childhood and youth in Texas—an account that captures a time and place with exacting emotional precision and that demonstrates how Mrs. Bush's lifelong love of books has imprinted her imagination.
New York Times
Mrs. Bush's delicate rendering...sets this book far apart from the typical score-settling reminiscences of politicians or their spouses... Spoken from the Heart reveals Laura Bush to be a beautiful writer, a keen observer and a tender soul who drew on her roots to live a life in the public eye with compassion and grace.
Wall Street Journal
Laura Bush's autobiography, Spoken From the Heart, begins promisingly enough for anyone hoping to penetrate [the] surface.... It is a shame that [it] was, in the end, overly edited by the head. Because Laura Bush, with an ear trained by all those hours curled up with novels, clearly has more to tell, if she so chooses.
Washington Post
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Spoken from the Heart:
1. Laura Welch learned that her grandmother had lost two children, but no one new the entire story—because it was never discussed. "You might talk about the wind and the weather, but troubles you swallowed deep down inside." In what way does this training—suppressing unpleasant information—prepare her for the life ahead?
2. How does Laura describe her growing up as an only child? What was it like for her eventually to marry into the large, boisterous Bush family? How hard do you think it was for the once shy girl who went on "solo picnics" to fit in?
3. How does Laura Bush frame the terrible car accident that happened when she was 17? She writes that so many lives were wrecked that night at that corner." Talk about the accident and its aftermath.
4. If you are "of an age," how well does Laura capture the tone and tenor of the 1950s and '60s? She grew up in Texas, but are there similarities to your childhood years?
5. Laura Bush doesn't talk about how she felt watching so many of her friends marry...and she, herself, not marrying until the day after her 31th birthday. She learned of a friend's remark that "the most eligible bachelor in Midland" married "the old maid of Midland." She says she thought it was funny. Do you believe her?
6. How does she explain the whirlwind courtship with her future husband? Does she discuss what drew her—a once shy, bookish young woman who read Tolstoy by the poolside—to an outgoing jock-turned-oil-man? How does she talk about their differences...and what holds their marriage together?
7. What does she mean that she and George, as a young married couple, "were the outliers on the Bush family curve"?
8. How does Laura talk about her relationship with her mother-in-law, Barbara Bush? How did the relationship evolve?
9. In what ways did Laura's life change from being first lady of Texas to being First Lady of the United States? Did you/do you ever envy her positions? Would you find it exciting...or terrifying...to be the wife of the President of the United States?
10. How does Laura defend the her husband's decision to declare war on Iraq? And his response to hurricane Katrina?
11. Talk about how she felt on her return to private life in Texas in 2009. What does she mean when she says, "I could at last exhale"?
12. Laura Bush has always been described as a deeply private individual. Do you feel she reveals her inner self in this memoir? Do you feel you know who she is, more so than when you started the book? Or do you feel she revealed very little, especially after her childhood?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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The Ride of Our Lives: Roadside Lessons of an American Family
Mike Leonard, 2006
Random House
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345481498
Summary
The Ride of Our Lives is the humorous yet deeply moving account of NBC journalist Mike Leonard’s cross-country odyssey with his eccentric parents, three grown children, and a daughter-in-law.
Full of ups and downs, laughs and tears, the month-long journey becomes a much larger tale of hope, persistence, and valuable lessons learned along the way.
A celebration of the ties between parents and children, as well as the unforgettable community of people one can meet across America, The Ride of Our Lives is an inspiring narrative of self-discovery and self-fulfillment–and how one unique family found blessings and simple pleasures on the road called lifets. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 30, 1947
• Where—Paterson, New Jersey, USA
• Raised—suburb, north of Chicago, Illinois
• Education—Providence College
• Currently—lives in Winnetka, Illinois, USA
Michael "Mike" Leonard is an American television journalist presently working for The Today Show on NBC. Leonard has been a feature correspondent for on the show for 28 years, and is known for his stories on everyday life and the unique, creative way he presents his work.
Leonard is also part of a family video production company, Picture Show Films. The company uses digital video exclusively and edits its projects on PowerBooks. Picture Show has produced critically-acclaimed television shows, features for PBS, ESPN, and other news outlets, and videos for fund-raising, corporate training, and other projects. Picture Show is also credited for producing The Brendan Leonard Show, hosted by his son Brendan Leonard.
In 1989, Leonard had the honor of having a G.I. Joe figure sculpted after his likeness by Hasbro. They named their character, Scoop, whose given name was "Leonard Michaels," in honor of the real newsman. Scoop was also in the communications field, just like his inspiration.
In 2006, Leonard published The Ride of Our Lives: Roadside Lessons of an American Family, about a month-long road trip he took with his parents and grown children in an RV. Leonard has four grown children, Matt, Megan, Kerry, and Brendan, and three grandchildren, and currently resides in Winnetka, Illinois with his wife, Cathy. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Heartfelt and whimsical...a cross-country trek through life’s lessons.... Mike Leonard is a storyteller at heart, and each anecdote...punctuates the family’s love, struggles, and triumphs. In short, this is one ride worth taking.
Rocky Mountain News
Fans of NBC News correspondent Leonard's slice-of-life features for the Today show may enjoy this account of a month-long road trip he took with his parents, now in their 80s. But what works on screen doesn't translate to the printed page, and Leonard's attempt to merge a tribute to his parents with greater issues of life and death hits a dead end. As he drives from Chicago through the Southwest, up the East Coast and back to Chicago, Leonard intertwines his reflections with biographical stories by and about his somewhat eccentric parents. Their tales offer the book's most entertaining moments: phlegmatic Jack, who's "conversational `off' button got jammed," likes to sing old songs, while gregarious Marge likes to drink and repeatedly spices her conversation with profanity ("Toora loora, my ass!" she yells during one of Jack's songs). Although Marge's behavior begins to seem more unnerving than unusual, Leonard's account of her brave childhood with an abusive father is the book's highlight. But Leonard keeps putting himself at the center of the story, detailing how charmed his life has been from his college prep high school days to lucking into his TV career, which makes for dull reading.
Publishers Weekly
Take a road trip, combine it with the dynamics of three generations of a family living in close quarters, and the results can be worth sharing. Leonard, NBC's Today Show correspondent, leads the adventure by taking his retired parents and three adult children on a month-long trip from Phoenix to Chicago to be present for the birth of his first grandchild. Along the way, this extended family stops at places like the Alamo and Leonard's parents' alma maters and visits acquaintances from Leonard's previous reporting. Each stop offers further insight into this quirky family and sparks humorous and touching reminiscences of family history. Whether recounting his happy childhood or unearthing new discoveries about his parents' lives, Leonard delivers his engaging account with the same offbeat storytelling style that is the hallmark of his television reporting. His is a story of taking the time to learn about your family and appreciating the sometimes odd people you find in its ranks. —Sheila Kasperek, Mansfield Univ. Lib., PA
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Ride of Our Lives:
1. What motivates Leonard to organize this road trip with his parents and children across the U.S? Would you have dared to attempt this with your own family?
2. In literature, as far back as The Odyssey, books about journeys represent a journey of self-discovery. Even though Leonard's trip is a real cross-country road-trip, in what way does he present it as the classic fictional "journey"? Who learns what...about whom?
3. How would you enjoy traveling with Leonard's parents? Talk about Jack and Marge—as characters, as well as parents and grandparents. How do you explain their affection for one another when they seem so incompatible as a married couple?
4. Where are the fault-lines in this family? Where do they fall—between Leonard and his parents...or Leonard and his kids? What is the nature of—and reason for—so-called "generational gaps"? Why do they occur in almost every family, most likely even your own? Speculate on why grandparents and grandchildren seem to get along so well.
5. What does Leonard learn about his parents—for instance, his mother's alcoholic father...his father's childhood trip to Ireland?
6. What were Mike Leonard's own struggles as a child? How did he overcome them? Would it have been different (easier... harder) in today's world? How did his experiences shape his life as a broadcast journalist?
7. Pick out the passages you found particularly funny...and talk about them. Also, those passages that your found most poignant—perhaps Jack and Marge's visit to their college campuses...or their old neighborhood in New Jersey.
8. What was most appealing to you about the places that the Leonard family visited—perhaps the B&B in the Bayou country where the sign says" Pick a room. Take a key. We'll see you for breakfast"? Any others? How did you feel about the diversity and quirkiness of the U.S. after reading this book? Make you want to take a road-trip?
9. Care to make comparisons between the Leonard family and your own?
10. What does this work suggest, if anything, about growing old in the 21st century?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures
Anne Fadiman, 1997
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780374533403
Summary
1997 Winner, National Book Critics Circle Award - Nonfiction
Brilliantly reported and beautifully crafted, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down explores the clash between the Merced Community Medical Center in California and a refugee family from Laos over the care of Lia Lee, a Hmong child diagnosed with severe epilepsy. Lia's parents and her doctors both wanted what was best for Lia, but the lack of understanding between them led to tragedy. (From the publisher.)
More
When three-month-old Lia Lee Arrived at the county hospital emergency room in Merced, California, a chain of events was set in motion from which neither she nor her parents nor her doctors would ever recover. Lia's parents, Foua and Nao Kao, were part of a large Hmong community in Merced, refugees from the CIA-run "Quiet War" in Laos. The Hmong, traditionally a close-knit and fiercely people, have been less amenable to assimilation than most immigrants, adhering steadfastly to the rituals and beliefs of their ancestors. Lia's pediatricians, Neil Ernst and his wife, Peggy Philip, cleaved just as strongly to another tradition: that of Western medicine. When Lia Lee Entered the American medical system, diagnosed as an epileptic, her story became a tragic case history of cultural miscommunication.
Parents and doctors both wanted the best for Lia, but their ideas about the causes of her illness and its treatment could hardly have been more different. The Hmong see illness aand healing as spiritual matters linked to virtually everything in the universe, while medical community marks a division between body and soul, and concerns itself almost exclusively with the former. Lia's doctors ascribed her seizures to the misfiring of her cerebral neurons; her parents called her illness, qaug dab peg—the spirit catches you and you fall down—and ascribed it to the wandering of her soul. The doctors prescribed anticonvulsants; her parents preferred animal sacrifices. (Also from the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 7, 1953
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—Harvard University
• Awards—National Book Critics Circle Award, 1997; National
Magazine Award - Reporting
• Currently—New York City
Anne Fadiman is the recipient of a National Magazine Award for Reporting, she has written for Civilization, Harper's, Life, and the New York Times, among other publications. She lives in New York City. (From the publishers.)
More
Anne Fadiman is an American author, editor and teacher. She is the daughter of the renowned literary, radio and television personality Clifton Fadiman and World War II correspondent and author Annalee Jacoby Fadiman. She attended Harvard University, graduating in 1975 from Radcliffe College at Harvard.
Researched in California, her 1997 book, The Spirit Catches You, examines Hmong family with a child with epilepsy, and their cultural, linguistic and medical struggles in America.
She's written two books of essays, Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader (1998) and At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays (2007), and edited Rereadings: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love (2005).
Fadiman was a founding editor of the Library of Congress magazine Civilization, and was the editor of the Phi Beta Kappa quarterly The American Scholar. She was forced out of her position at The American Scholar in 2004 in a dispute over budgetary and other issues.
As of January 2005, in a program established by Yale alumnus Paul E. Francis, Anne Fadiman became Yale University's first Francis Writer in Residence, a three-year position which allows her to teach a non-fiction writing seminar, and advise, mentor and interact with students and editors of undergraduate publications. Fadiman is married to the American author George Howe Colt. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Ms. Fadiman tells her story with a novelist's grace, playing the role of cultural broker, comprehending those who do not comprehend each other and perceiving what might have been done or said to make the outcome different.
Richard Bernstein - New York Times
This fine book recounts a poignant tragedy.... It has no heroes or villains, but it has an abunance of innocent suffering, and it most certainly does have a mora.... [A] sad, excellent book.
Melvin Konner - New York Times Book Review
An intriguing, spirit-lifting, extraordinary exploration of two cultures in uneasy coexistence.... A wonderful aspect of Fadiman's book is her evenhanded, detailed presentation of these disparate cultures and divergent views—not with cool, dispassionate fairness but rather with a warm, involved interest.... Fadiman's book is superb, informal cultural anthropology—eye-opening, readable, utterly engaging.
Carole Horn - Washington Post Book World
I cannot think of a book by a non-physician that is more understanding of the difficulties of caring for people...or of the conditions under which today's medicine is practiced.
Sherwin B. Nuland - New Republic
When two divergent cultures collide, unbridgable gaps of language, religion, social customs may remain between them. This poignant account by Fadiman, editor of The American Scholar, of the clash between a Hmong family and the American medical community reveals that among the gaps yawns the attitude toward medicine and healing. The story focuses on Lia Lee, whose family immigrated to Merced, Calif., from Laos in 1980. At three months of age, Lia was diagnosed with what American doctors called epilepsy, and what her family called quag dab peg or, 'the spirit catches you and you fall down.' Fadiman traces the treatments for Lia's illness, observing the sharp differences between Eastern and Western healing methods. Whereas the doctors prescribed Depakene and Valium to control her seizures, Lia's family believed that her soul was lost but could be found by sacrificing animals and hiring shamans to intervene. While some of Lia's doctors attempted to understand the Hmong beliefs, many interpreted the cultural difference as ignorance on the part of Lia's parents. Fadiman shows how the American ideal of assimilation was challenged by a headstrong Hmong ethnicity. She discloses the unilateralness of Western medicine, and divulges its potential failings. In Lia's case, the two cultures never melded and, after a massive seizure, she was declared brain dead. This book is a moving cautionary tale about the importance of practicing "cross-cultural medicine,' and of acknowledging, without condemning, differences in medical attitudes of various cultures.
Publishers Weekly
Award-winning reporter Fadiman has turned what began as a magazine assignment into a riveting, cross-cultural medicine classic in this anthropological exploration of the Hmong population in Merced County, California. Following the case of Lia (a Hmong child with a progressive and unpredictable form of epilepsy), Fadiman maps out the controversies raised by the collision between Western medicine and holistic healing traditions of Hmong immigrants. Unable to enter the Laotian forest to find herbs for Lia that will "fix her spirit," her family becomes resigned to the Merced County emergency system, which has little understanding of Hmong animist traditions. Fadiman reveals the rigidity and weaknesses of these two ethnographically separated cultures. In a shrinking world, this painstakingly researched account of cultural dislocation has a haunting lesson for every healthcare provider. —Rebecca Cress-Ingebo, Fordham Health Sciences Library, Wright State University, Dayton, OH
Library Journal
A compelling anthropological study. The Hmong people in America are mainly refugee families who supported the CIA militaristic efforts in Laos. They are a clannish group with a firmly established culture that combines issues of health care with a deep spirituality that may be deemed primitive by Western standards. In Merced, CA, which has a large Hmong community, Lia Lee was born, the 13th child in a family coping with their plunge into a modern and mechanized way of life. The child suffered an initial seizure at the age of three months. Her family attributed it to the slamming of the front door by an older sister. They felt the fright had caused the baby's soul to flee her body and become lost to a malignant spirit. The report of the family's attempts to cure Lia through shamanistic intervention and the home sacrifices of pigs and chickens is balanced by the intervention of the medical community that insisted upon the removal of the child from deeply loving parents with disastrous results. This compassionate and understanding account fairly represents the positions of all the parties involved. The suspense of the child's precarious health, the understanding characterization of the parents and doctors, and especially the insights into Hmong culture make this a very worthwhile read. —Frances Reiher, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
School Library Journal
A vivid, deeply felt, and meticulously researched account of the disastrous encounter between two disparate cultures: Western medicine and Eastern spirituality, in this case, of Hmong immigrants from Laos. Fadiman, a columnist for Civilization and the new editor of The American Scholar, met the Lees, a Hmong refugee family in Merced, Calif., in 1988, when their daughter Lia was already seven years old and, in the eyes of her American doctors, brain dead. In the Lees' view, Lia's soul had fled her body and become lost. At age three months Lia had had her first epileptic seizure—as the Lees put it, "the spirit catches you and you fall down." Lia's treatment was complex—her anti-convulsant prescriptions changed 23 times in four years—and the Lees were sure the medicines were bad for their daughter. Believing that the family's failure to comply with his instructions constituted child abuse, Lia's doctor had her placed in foster care. A few months after returning home, Lia was hospitalized with a massive seizure that effectively destroyed her brain. With death believed to be imminent, the Lees were permitted to take her home. Two years later, Fadiman found Lia being lovingly cared for by her parents. Still hoping to reunite her soul with her body, they arranged for a Hmong shaman to perform a healing ceremony featuring the sacrifice of a live pig in their apartment. Into this heart-wrenching story, Fadiman weaves an account of Hmong history from ancient times to the present, including their work for the CIA in Laos and their resettlement in the U.S., their culture, spiritual beliefs, ethics, and etiquette. While Fadiman is keenly aware of the frustrations of doctors striving to provide medical care to those with such a radically different worldview, she urges that physicians at least acknowledge their patients' realities. A brilliant study in cross-cultural medicine.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What do you think of traditional Hmong birth practices (pp. 3-5)? Compare them to the techniques used when Lia was born (p. 7). How do Hmong and American birth practices differ?
2. Over many centuries the Hmong fought against a number of different peoples who claimed sovereignty over their lands; they were also forced to emigrate from China. How do you think these up-heavals have affected their culture? What role has history played in the formation of Hmong culture?
3. Dr. Dan Murphy said, "The language barrier was the most obvious problem, but not the most important. The biggest problem was the cultural barrier. There is a tremendous difference between dealing with the Hmong and dealing with anyone else. An infinite difference" (p. 91). What does he mean by this?
4. The author says, "I was struck...by the staggering toll of stress that the Hmong exacted from the people who took care of them, particularly the ones who were young, idealistic, and meticulous" (p. 75). Why do you think the doctors felt such great stress?
5. Dr. Neil Ernst said, "I felt it was important for these Hmongs to understand that there were certain elements of medicine that we understood better than they did and that there were certain rules they had to follow with their kids' lives. I wanted the word to get out in the community that if they deviated from that, it was not acceptable behavior" (p. 79). Do you think the Hmong understood this message? Why or why not? What do you think of Neil and Peggy?
6. Dr. Roger Fife is liked by the Hmong because, in their words, he "doesn't cut" (p. 76). He is not highly regarded by some of the other doctors, however. One resident went so far as to say, "He's a little thick." What do you think of Dr. Fife? What are his strengths and weaknesses? The author also speaks of other doctors who were able to communicate with the Hmong. How were they able to do so? What might be learned from this?
7. How did you feel about the Lees' refusal to give Lia her medicine? Can you understand their motivation? Do you sympathize with it?
8. How did you feel when Child Protective Services took Lia away from her parents? Do you believe it was the right decision? Was any other solution possible in the situation?
9. Were you surprised at the quality of care and the love and affection given to Lia by her foster parents? How did Lia's foster parents feel about Lia's biological parents? Was foster care ultimately to Lia's benefit or detriment?
10. How did the EMT's and the doctors respond to what Neil referred to as Lia's "big one"? Do you think they performed as well as they could have under the circumstances?
11. How does the greatest of all Hmong folktales, the story of how Shee Yee fought with nine evil dab brothers (p. 170), reflect the life and culture of the Hmong?
12. Discuss the Lees' life in Laos. How was it different from their life in the United States? Foua says, "When we were running from Laos at least we hoped that our lives would be better. It was not as sad as after Lia went to Fresno and got sick" (p. 171). What were the Lees running from? What were they hoping to find in the United States?
13. When polled, Hmong refugees in America stated that "difficulty with American agencies" was a more serious problem than either "war memories" or "separation from family." Why do you think they felt this way? Could this have been prevented? If so, how? What does the author believe?
14. The Hmong are often referred to as a "Stone Age" people or "low-caste hill tribe." Why is this? Do you agree with this assessment of Hmong culture? Does the author?
15. What was the "role loss" many adult Hmong faced when they came to the United States? What is the underlying root cause? How does this loss affect their adjustment to America?
16. What are the most important aspects of Hmong culture? What do the Hmong consider their most important duties and obligations? How did they affect the Hmong's transition to the United States?
17. What does Dan Murphy mean by, "When you fail one Hmong patient, you fail the whole community" (p. 253)?
18. The author gives you some insight into the way she organized her notes (p. 60). What does it say about the process of writing this book? She chooses to alternate between chapters of Lia's story and its larger background-the history of the Lee family and of the Hmong. What effect does this create in the book?
19. The concept of "fish soup" is central to the author's understanding of the Hmong. What does it mean, and how is it reflected in the structure of the book?
20. It is clear that many of Lia's doctors, most notably Neil Ernst and Peggy Philp, were heroic in their efforts to help Lia, and that her parents cared for her deeply, yet this arguably preventable tragedy still occurred. Can you think of anything that might have prevented it?
21. What did you learn from this book? Would you assign blame for Lia's tragedy? If so, to whom? What do you think Anne Fadiman feels about this question?
(Questions from the publisher.)
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I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman
Nora Ephron, 2006
Knopf Doubleday
160 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307276827
Summary
With her disarming, intimate, completely accessible voice, and dry sense of humor, Nora Ephron shares with us her ups and downs in I Feel Bad About My Neck, a candid, hilarious look at women who are getting older and dealing with the tribulations of maintenance, menopause, empty nests, and life itself.
Ephron chronicles her life as an obsessed cook, passionate city dweller, and hapless parent. But mostly she speaks frankly and uproariously about life as a woman of a certain age.
Utterly courageous, uproariously funny, and unexpectedly moving in its truth telling, I Feel Bad About My Neck is a scrumptious, irresistible treat of a book, full of truths, laugh out loud moments that will appeal to readers of all ages. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 19, 1941
• Where—New York City, New York, USA
• Raised—Beverly Hills, California
• Death—June 26, 2012
• Where—New York City
• Education—Wellesley College
Nora Ephron was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, novelist, journalist, author, and blogger.
She was best known for her romantic comedies and is a triple nominee for the Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay—for Silkwood...When Harry Met Sally...and Sleepless in Seattle. Her film Julie & Julia came out in 2010. She sometimes wrote with her sister Delia Ephron.
Personal life
Ephron was born in New York City, eldest of four daughters in a Jewish family, and grew up in Beverly Hills; her parents, Henry and Phoebe Ephron, were both East Coast-born and raised screenwriters. Her sisters Delia and Amy are also screenwriters. Her sister Hallie Ephron is a journalist, book reviewer, and novelist who writes crime fiction.
Ephron's parents based Sandra Dee's character in the play and 1963 film Take Her, She's Mine (with Jimmy Stewart) on their 22-year-old daughter Nora and her letters to them from college. Both became alcoholics during their declining years. Ephron graduated from Beverly Hills High School in Beverly Hills, California, in 1958, and from Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, in 1962.
She was married three times. Her first marriage, to writer Dan Greenburg, ended in divorce after nine years. Her second was to journalist Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame in 1976. Ephron had an infant son, Jacob, and was pregnant with her second son, Max, in 1979 when she found out the news of Bernstein's affair with their mutual friend, married British politician Margaret Jay.
Ephron was inspired by the events to write the 1983 novel Heartburn, which was made into a 1986 film starring Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep. In the book, Ephron wrote of a husband named Mark, who was “capable of having sex with a Venetian blind.” She also said that the character Thelma (based on Margaret Jay) looked like a giraffe with "big feet." Bernstein threatened to sue over the book and film, but he never did.
Ephron's third marriage was to screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi.
Although Jewish by birth, Ephron was not religious. "Because you can never have too much butter — that is my belief. If I have a religion, that's it," she told NPR in an interview about her 2009 movie, Julie & Julia.
Career
Ephron graduated from Wellesley College in 1962 and worked briefly as an intern in the White House of President John F. Kennedy.
After a satire she wrote lampooning the New Post caught the editor's eye, Ephron landed a job at the Post, where she stayed as a reporter for five years. In 1966, she broke the news in the Post that Bob Dylan had married Sara Lownds in a private ceremony three and a half months before.
Upon becoming a successful writer, she wrote a column on women's issues for Esquire. In this position, Ephron made a name for herself by taking on subjects as wide-ranging as Dorothy Schiff, her former boss and owner of the Post; Betty Friedan, whom she chastised for pursuing a feud with Gloria Steinem; and her alma mater Wellesley, which she said had turned out a generation of "docile" women." A 1968 send-up of Women's Wear Daily in Cosmopolitan resulted in threats of a lawsuit from WWD.
While married to Bernstein in the mid-1970s, at her husband and Bob Woodward's request, she helped Bernstein re-write William Goldman's script for All the President's Men, because the two journalists were not happy with it. The Ephron-Bernstein script was not used in the end, but was seen by someone who offered Ephron her first screenwriting job, for a television movie.
Ephron's 2002 play Imaginary Friends explores the rivalry between writers Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy.
Ephron and Deep Throat
For many years, Ephron was among only a handful of people in the world claiming to know the identity of Deep Throat, the source for news articles written by her husband Carl Bernstein during the Watergate scandal. Ephron claims to have guessed the identity of Deep Throat through clues left by Bernstein. Among them was the fact that Bernstein referred to the source as "My Friend", the same initials as "Mark Felt," whom some suspected to be Bernstein's source.
Ephron's marriage with Bernstein ended acrimoniously, and Ephron was loose-lipped about the identity of Deep Throat. She told her son Jacob and has said that she told anyone who asked...
I would give speeches to 500 people and someone would say, "Do you know who Deep Throat is?" And I would say, "It’s Mark Felt."
Classmates of Jacob Bernstein at the Dalton School and Vassar College recall Jacob revealing to numerous people that Felt was Deep Throat. Curiously, the claims did not garner attention from the media during the many years that the identity of Deep Throat was a mystery. Ephron was invited by Arianna Huffington to write about the experience in the Huffington Post and now regularly blogs for the site.
Death
On June 26, 2012, Ephron died from pneumonia, a complication resulting from acute myeloid leukemia, a condition with which she was diagnosed in 2006. In her final book, I Remember Nothing (2010), Ephron left clues that something was wrong with her or that she was ill, particularly in a list at the end of the book citing "things I won't miss/things I'll miss."
There was widespread and somewhat shocked reaction to her death (as she had kept her illness secret from most people), with celebrities such as Meryl Streep, Matthew Broderick, Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, Nicole Kidman, Tom Hanks, Albert Brooks, and Ron Howard commenting on her brilliance, warmth, generosity, and wit.
At the Karlovy Vary Film Festival of that year, actresses Helen Mirren and Susan Sarandon, who were honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award, paid tribute to her during their speeches.
Nora Ephron Prize
The Nora Ephron Prize is a $25,000 award by the Tribeca film festival for a female writer or filmmaker "with a distinctive voice." The first Nora Ephron Prize was awarded in 2013 to Meera Menon for her film Farah Goes Bang. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/1/2014.)
Listen to a terrific audio tribute to Ephron by bloggers Hollister & O'Toole.
Book Reviews
This brief, long-overdue book is for readers still willing to buy into Ms. Ephron's familiar writing persona: that of a sharp, funny, theatrically domesticated New Yorker who can throw both arrows and good money at the petty things that plague her. When she says that she can trace the history of the last 40 years through changing trends in lettuce, she isn't kidding.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
Despite the elegiac tone of this collection, it would be nice to think that we'll have Nora Ephron around for a long time. She's always good for an amusing line, a wry smile, and sometimes an abashed grin of recognition as she homes in on one of our own dubious obsessions.
Bunny Crumpacker - Washington Post
The honest truth is that it's sad to be over sixty," concludes Nora Ephron in her sparkling new book about aging. With 15 essays in 160 pages, this collection is short, a thoughtful concession to pre- and post-menopausal women (who else is there?), like herself, who "can't read a word on the pill bottle," follow a thought to a conclusion, or remember the thought after not being able to read the pill bottle. Ephron drives the truth home like a nail in your soon-to-be-bought coffin
Toni Bentley - Publishers Weekly
Though humorously self-deprecating and poignant, critics agree that the essays, some published previously,are uneven.... Despite the collection's lightweight feel, Ephron still writes [according to L.A. Times critic] "like someone who has something useful and important to tell her readers."
Bookmarks Magazine
A disparate assortment of sharp and funny pieces revealing the private anguishes, quirks and passions of a woman on the brink of senior citizenhood.... One doesn't need to be a post-menopausal New Yorker with a liberal outlook and comfortable income to enjoy Ephron's take on life, but those who fit the profile will surely relish it most.
Kirkus Reviews
Book Club Discussion Questions
1. In “I Feel Bad About My Neck,” Ephron writes that she avoids making truthful comments on how her friends look, even when they ask her directly [pp. 3–4]. Why is this a wise decision? She says, “the neck is a dead giveaway” [p. 5]. When women seek each other's opinions about how their necks, and other features, really look, do they want the truth, or do they want to be reassured?
2. According to Ephron, most authors who write about aging say “it great to be old. It's great to be wise and sage and mellow” [p. 7]. What, for her, is wrong with this approach? How would you compare I Feel Bad About My Neck with other books you have read about aging or menopause? Is it more useful?
3. In “I Hate My Purse,” Ephron sees her purse as a microcosm of her life—it is the symbol of her inability to be organized. Given the current obsession with expensive purses in American fashion, why is her choice of a plastic MetroCard bag amusing [pp. 15–16]?
4. What do the foods we cook, the cookbook authors we seek to emulate, and the way we entertain guests, say about how we want life to be? Why does Ephron give up her attachment to Craig Claiborne and begin “to make a study of Lee Bailey” [p. 26], and then later move on to Martha Stewart and Nigella Lawson?
5. Heartburn was a “thinly disguised novel about the end of my marriage” [p. 28]. If you have read Heartburn or seen the film, think about how Ephron presents her current stage in life, and what has changed for her. What is her attitude as she reflects on earlier and more difficult periods of her life?
6. Ephron writes, “I sometimes think that not having to worry about your hair anymore is the secret upside of death” [p. 32]. She also says that going to a hair salon twice a week and having her hair blown dry is “cheaper by far than psychoanalysis, and much more uplifting” [p. 34]. For Ephron, “maintenance” has larger implications than just taking care of one's appearance. What are the larger meanings of these annoying, repetitive actions, for her—and by implication, for women in general?
7. What would this book be like if written by a man? Do men have similar issues about growing older, and do they talk or think about them in similar ways? Think about and share ideas about what well-known man—a writer or a celebrity, perhaps—might be capable of writing the male version of I Feel Bad About My Neck.
8. In “Parenting in Three Stages,” Ephron revises some commonly held notions. Adolescence, for instance, is a period that helps parents separate from their children, and there is “almost nothing you can do to make life easier for yourself except wait until it's over” [p. 62]. Later in the book she says, “the empty nest is underrated” [p. 125]. How does being in her sixties, with her children out of the house, change Ephron's perspective on motherhood?
9. In “Moving On,” Ephron writes about an important and prolonged episode in her past: a love affair with an apartment building. How does she eventually “move on”? Does this essay suggest that she has become more pragmatic with time? How does she change her mind about what makes sense for her, as she gets older?
10. Why is “The Story of My Life in 3,500 Words or Less” such an effective way of telling one's life story? What does Ephron focus on as the most important issues in this miniaturized autobiography? What lessons has she learned?
11. While this is undoubtedly a funny and enjoyable book, in what ways is it also a serious book? What are Ephron's most important insights in “Considering the Alternative”?
12. What, if anything, does I Feel Bad About My Neck have to say about the benefits of growing older?
13. Certain small pieces in this collection might provoke you and members of your group to try writing your own version. What would you include, for instance, in your own list of “What I Wish I'd Known”?
14. What is the funniest moment in this collection, and why?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class
Lawrence Otis Graham, 1999
HarperCollins
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060984380
Summary
In 1995, Lawrence Otis Graham wrote a first-person account of his observations of institutional racism perpetuated at an elite country club—Member of the Club
In Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class, Graham focuses his sights on the black upper class, looking at the people, places, and objects it comprises. His examination of the history of this elite — who refer to themselves as "our crowd" — serves as a first-person look at a small, tightly knit group that has wielded an increasingly large amount of power and prestige.
Debutante cotillions. Million-dollar homes. Summers in Martha's Vineyard and Sag Harbor. Membership in the Links, Jack & Jill, Deltas, Boule, and AKAs. An obsession with the right schools, families, social clubs, and skin complexion. This is the world of the black upper class and the focus of the first book written about the black elite by a member of this hard-to-penetrate group.
Author and TV commentator Graham, one of the nation's most prominent spokesmen on race and class, spent six years interviewing the wealthiest black families in America. He includes historical photos of a people that made their first millions in the 1870s. Graham tells who's in and who's not in the group today with separate chapters on the elite in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago, Detroit, Memphis, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Nashville, and New Orleans. A new Introduction explains the controversy that the book elicited from both the black and white communities. (From the publisher.)
About the Author
• Birth—1962
• Where—New York City, New York, USA
• Raised—Westchester County, NY
• Education—B.A., Princeton Univesity; J.D., Harvard University
• Currently—lives in Westchester County, New York
Lawrence Otis Graham is an attorney and commentator on race, politics, and class in America. He is one of the nation’s leading authors and experts on race, politics and class in America. A graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School, he is the author of 14 books and numerous articles in such publications as the New York Times, Essence, Reader’s Digest, Glamour and U.S. News & World Report. His book, Our Kind of People: Inside America’s Black Upper Class was a New York Times, L.A. Times and Blackboard bestseller.
Graham’s newest book, The Senator and the Socialite: The True Story of America’s First Black Dynasty is an important biography of U.S. Senator Blanche Bruce, the first black to serve a full term in the U.S. Senate. Graham is also the author of such books as The Best Companies for Minorities, Proversity—two Important guides on diversity in the workplace—as well as the very popular Member of the Club, which focused on his now-famous experience of leaving his New York law firm and going undercover as a busboy to expose racism, sexism and antisemitism at an all-white country club in Greenwich, Connecticut. That was originally a cover story on New York magazine.
Graham has appeared on more than one hundred TV shows including Oprah, Today Show, The View, Good Morning America, and has been profiled in USA Today, Time, Ebony, People Magazine and many other publications. He is a popular speaker at colleges, corporations and other institutions where he has addressed the issues of diversity and culture. His audiences have included Duke, UCLA, Howard, Yale, Kraft Foods, Corning, Xerox, Disney, American Library Association and many other organizations around the U.S. and Japan. His research and advice have appeared in the Wall Street Journal.
He is leading a campaign to get the U.S. Post Office to honor Senator Blanche Bruce on a stamp since the nation has never placed a black elected official on a stamp. Graham is married to the corporate executive, Pamela Thomas-Graham, who is the author of novels including Blue Blood and Orange Crushed. They live in Manhattan and Westchester County, New York. (From Wikipedia.)/p>
Book Reviews
A fascinating if unwieldy amalgam of popular history, sociological treatise and memoir....Graham clearly loves and admires the people he is writing about, and this is both the charm of the book and its great failing....Still...[Graham] has made a major contribution both to African-American studies and to the larger American picture.
Andrea Lee - The New York Times Book Review
Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class is the literary equivalent of the nose job Graham obtained so that he could "further buy into the aesthetic biases that many among the black elite hold so dear." Instead of reporting on the foibles of the black upper crust, Graham sucks up to it, providing little more than a breathless list of neighborhoods, vacation spots and social clubs dominated by folks who can pass the 'brown paper bag' test.
Jack White - Time
In this work, Graham, who exposed bias against African Americans in his sharp-tongued account of working at an elite country club (Member of the Club), here focuses on "America's black upper class": a conservative, well-to-do group that dates back to the first black millionaires in the 1870s and whose members are associated with institutions like the Links and the Oak Bluffs area of Martha's Vineyard.
Library Journal
[Graham's] insights into the story of blacks in vacation spots...are fascinating. Nevertheless, the ongoing claustrophobia of privilege can weary a reader. One walks away with the impression that Graham's effort could have been cut in half—and all one would have missed is an extra afternoon of interminable croquet, followed by cucumber sandwiches down by the gazebo.
Kirkus Reviews
Book Club Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Our Kind of People:
1. Does Graham's book offer a critique or a glorification of the tightly-knit world of upper-class African-Americans?
2. What does it take to become part of this elite group? Can the self-made man or woman join?
3. Trace the historical background, the development, of this elite group of African-Americans and its separate-but-just-as-equal (or more-than-equal) world.
4. What do you think of the insuated resorts for the wealthy (black or white) on Martha's Vineyard, Sag Harbor? Do you find them alluring, claustrophobic, unfairly exclusive, enviable?
5. To what degree does Graham's place in his social milieu enable him to view it objectively. Do you think his familiarity helps him or hinders him in his assessment?
(Questions issued by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks)
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