FINDING MY BALANCE by Mariel Hemingway

Finding My Balance is the bittersweet memoir of Mariel Hemingway, an author,

yogini and former actress.  The granddaughter of the renowned adventurer and

novelist Ernest Hemingway, the author recounts watershed moments in her life,

as she morphs from young adulthood into adulthood.   We get to see her at

age 12 as she cares for her chronically ill mother.  

As a teen, she starred in films like“Manhattan”--with Woody Allen--and 

“Personal Best,” in which she plays an athlete, and “Lipstick”--with sister Margaux, 

a model and actress.  Unfortunately, as a consequence of Mariel’s success in films, 

her relationship with Margaux becomes estranged.  In fact, the only familial relationship 

in the book that’s not dysfunctional is with her father, Jack, an outdoorsman, who instilled 

in Mariel a love of nature.

Each chapter begins with a yoga pose: Warrior, Eagle, Rabbit, etc.  Mariel describes

herself as she assumes each pose.  In one chapter, she details her devotion to her

guru, Paramahansa Yogananda and how he changed her life.  She also details her

stringent/extreme diets: “I routinely skipped meals in favor of iced, blended espressos

with vanilla—no milk, no sweetener.”  Another guru (though a reluctant one) is Dr.  Peter

Evans who got her to give up coffee and to re-vamp her diet. “Two buttered eggs for

breakfast with fruit or buttered toast.”

We get to experience Mariel’s intense heartache as she copes with the deaths of her

mother, sister, and father.  Throughout these crises, yoga and meditation saved her life. 

The last crisis in the book is that of her husband’s illness and how she survived that. 

The last chapter is comprised of a series of yoga poses.

Finding My Balance is the wonderfully readable story of a woman as she teeters, at first,

within  her life and then, through yoga, stands grounded on the earth, within her skin.  

“Mountain Pose.”

--Yolanda A.  Reid

Check out Mariel Hemingway’s website at www.marielhemingway.com.  Also check out

an article on her new documentary, "Running from Crazy", about her family history at http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/21/health/hemingway-film/index.html.

KITCHEN CHINESE by Ann Mah

In author Ann Mah's first novel, Kitchen Chinese, the main character  gets fired from her job

and dumped by her boyfriend of eighteen months--all in the same week.

A hip and savvy New Yorker, Isabelle Lee is an independent, fashionable, modern young woman
who works for Belle magazine.  After being fired, Isabelle follows her mother's advice and
moves to Beijing, where she shares an apartment with her sister, Claire.

In Beijing, Claire arranges for an interview so that Isabelle becomes "the dining

editor at Beijing NOW. . . an English-language magazine for expats."  

The Kitchen Chinese of the novel's title is Isabelle's rudimentary Chinese--which she defines
as "Just basic conversation. . . .  Simple words I picked up in the kitchen, spending time with
my mom."  Throughout the book, she struggles to fully understand what people are saying to her.
In one scene, she overhears two women in the community bathroom talking about her.
She flees the room.

Though she looks like everyone else, in Beijing Isabelle regards herself as American.

She is constantly having to confront this issue: as she chats in the cab, with her

date Charlie, the cab driver realizes she is a "laowai" or a foreigner.  When Isabelle is introduced
to Kristin at a restaurant, and Kristin compliments her on her English, Isabelle's companion
explains, "Isabelle is American.  She grew up in New York."

Isabelle wonders, "Though I've only been in China for a few months, has my Americanness

been erased?"  This leads to an identity crisis--for Isabelle, all of China is a social experiment
that elicits themes worthy of existential philosophers and posits the question:

Are we who we perceive ourselves to be?  Or are we whomever others perceive us to be?

“As Isabelle, I am articulate, confident, even sometimes, witty; as Li Jia [her Chinese name]

I feel . . . slow, able only to understand the edges of a [Chinese] conversation."

Ann Mah, the author, is adroit and expert in her use of English.  I loved savoring the language,

the information on Chinese food, the sense of living in contemporary Beijing.  Kitchen Chinese
feels authentic (especially if you've always wanted to visit China).

Each chapter opens with a quote that references Chinese food or history, and is sprinkled with

Chinese phrases  and an eclectic vocabulary.  Of the handful of recipes at the end of the book not
one is for Chinese food.  And despite the Chinese phrases, Isabelle seems so American.

Moreover, I liked that the novel rendered the inner dynamic of a Chinese family--mother to

daughter, sister to sister.  (As a reader, I’d like to see what happens to Isabelle and Claire
in a novel sequel.)

Kitchen Chinese  is a wonderful first novel, suffused with the ambience of Beijing,

and I eagerly await any second book author Ann Mah publishes.

---Yolanda A.  Reid


Check out Ann Mah's blog at www.annmah.net.

EAT PRAY LOVE by Elizabeth Gilbert

Lately, Elizabeth Gilbert is my new favorite author. Her book, Eat Pray Love, chronicles her journey out of an unhappy marriage, as well as her inward journey through meditation as she travels Italy, India, and Indonesia.   Eat Pray Love unfolds with an assortment of truly interesting characters, amid the author's personal revelations and tidbits of information on each country. 

Gilbert experiences eating-bliss in Italy with delectable pasta and pizza; devotion through meditation at her guru’s ashram in India; and  true love in Indonesia. 

Two characters emerge, both in Bali. First, Ketut Liyer, a medicine man who exudes mystery,wisdom, surprising us most when he reveals that he "shares" his wife Nyomo with his brother.

In their first encounter, Ketut reads the author’s palm.  He sums up her past, present, and future—then adds, “Someday soon you will come back here to Bali.”  So she sets out to help fulfill the prophecy by planning a return trip to Bali.

Upon Gilbert’s return, Ketut assigns her the "smile from liver" meditation.  Gilbert was a good student: the book's cover photo features her smiling a deep sentient smile--from the heart. 

The second character is Wayan, an herbal doctor in her thirties. Like Gilbert, she is a divorcee; unlike Gilbert, she was once a battered wife.  Wayan said, "To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced life."

Finally, what I love about Eat Pray Love is exemplified when the author writes, "I was not rescued by a prince; I was the administrator of my own rescue."

—Yolanda A.  Reid

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Copyright © 2013 by Y.A. Reid

Note:  This article first appeared on my other blog a couple years ago.  Eat Pray Love is such an inspirational story and book, however, that I am publishing it here as well. This is a book I read at least once a year.

  

  

  

ON BOOKS I READ IN 2012

As the end of 2012 approaches, I 've  re-assessed the books I read throughout the year. 

Some of the books I read were biographies  of  Cleopatra  and  Audrey Hepburn, an

assortment of business books, a  self-help book and a fairy tale about a girl who saves

her eleven brothers.   None of those books is mentioned on this list, however. 

Furthermore, only two of the books on this list were previously reviewed on this blog. 

Lastly, the  list includes Walter Isaacson’s  biography of Steve Jobs.   Though  this blog is

about women authors/subjects, I chose to make an exception of  Steve Jobs as he was 

such a cultural icon—changing all of our lives, including my own.

1.      Ali in Wonderland  by Ali Wentworth—This book  is a candid,  witty,  heartfelt,

at times amusing take on TV/media personality Ali Wentworth’s life (especially when  

she finds herself in absurd situations).  Ali in Wonderland  begins with the author’s

break-up with her fiancé (who had proposed in an Irish castle).  She left him. 

Imagine her distress when, six weeks later, she discovered a  message on his answering

machine that implied that he’d gotten married and was departing on a trip to the

Bahamas.

2.      Married to Bhutan  by Linda Leaming--the author's well-written memoir of a

year-long stay in Bhutan, which is—according to  Leaming--“a tiny Buddhist country”

that borders India and China.  There she taught English, learned and struggled with the

Bhutanese language,  got acquainted with their customs and met and wed her husband.

3.      My Berlin Kitchen  by Luisa Weiss—My complete review may be viewed at

http://yreidbooks.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-berlin-kitchen-by-luisa-weiss.html.

4.      Sempre Susan by Sigrid Nuñez--I really enjoy Sigrid Nuñez' writing.  She has a

thoughtful, cultivated--one might say, intellectual—approach to writing.  She rarely

chooses the obvious word.  I like that.  The night I was reading this book, I had

to look up ungemutlich--although I spent a summer trying to learn beginner-level

German, years ago.  It's a German word for messy or nasty.   So I learned

something new (though I doubt I'll EVER use this word).

Moreover, no one should be put off by the title.  "Sempre" just means always (in

Italian).  That said, the book is a memoir of Nuñez' non-romantic relationship with

author/writer Susan Sontag.  Nuñez was Sontag's personal assistant, even as she

dated/lived with Sontag's son, David.

A well-crafted and bittersweet tale, Sempre Susan is a sort of "All About Eve" for the

literati or literary set.

5.      Steve Jobs  by Walter Isaacson--I'd been a fan of Steve Jobs from the time my

mom bought our first family PC (an Apple).   So when this book was published, I felt

compelled to read it.  I got to re-live Steve Jobs' brilliant meteoric life.  Also, the dark

moments.  Though I did not know him personally, I liked Steve Jobs.   But--as with

every biography I’ve ever read--the subject (Steve Jobs) is revealed as flawed and

imperfect. Nevertheless, I loved this book.

6.      The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin--I read and really liked this book earlier

this year.  My complete review is posted at  http://www.yreidbooks.blogspot.com/

the-happiness-project-by-gretchen-rubin.html.

--Yolanda  A.  Reid

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Copyright  ©   2012-2013 by Y.A.  Reid

MY BERLIN KITCHEN by Luisa Weiss

"I was born in Berlin in 1977, back when it was still known as West Berlin"--so writes

author Luisa Weiss in her memoir, My Berlin Kitchen.   That Berlin bore

"the pockmarks from mortar fire in the façades of many buildings and the air

smelled of coal smoke."

Three years after young Luisa was born, she and her father returned to Boston.  For years, she

traveled intermittently--spending “summers  in Italy with my mother’s family,” and winters

in Boston.  At age ten, she moved back to Berlin to live with her mother, attended high

school, then returned to Boston for college, then went onto Paris for graduate school.

It is an eclectic, international, peripatetic  life.  "So I looked for home in [my] kitchen."

As a child, Luisa spoke Italian with her mother, English with her father and the nanny--

while speaking German to the outside world.  As an adult, she speaks four languages

and seems remarkably well-adapted, flexible, and self-aware.

 "As I grew up," she writes, "moving around from Berlin to Boston to Paris to New York,

I discovered that cooking was the reliable way to feel less alone."

"...By summoning the flavors of Berlin and the foods of my loved ones, my kitchen became

my sanctuary, the stove my anchor."

Major themes of Weiss' life and character are flux--movement from city to city,

constantly adapting--and a "perpetual  homesickness."  The author acclimates herself

in each new city through food.  "And just like in Paris," she writes, "whenever I needed

some quiet time alone, I'd head to the grocery store."

From the recipes at the end of each chapter, one sees that Weiss often favors rustic

food with peasant origins.  Her favorite dish as a child was a potato vegetable soup—

"Braised Artichokes and Potatoes"--from Italy that her grandmother used to make.  Then 
there's “Depression Stew,” her father's concoction.  

Two kinds of pizza--Sicilian and Neapolitan--are featured, as well as recipes for "Tomato 
Bread Soup," "German Pea Soup," "Potato Salad" (which they seem to eat quite often in 
Germany).  Also, "Flammkuchen” or flatbread, "Apple Tart," "Quark Cheesecake," 
and "White Asparagus Salad."

My Berlin Kitchen introduces us to German cuisine.  Snacks, foods, lore, customs.

How Berliners celebrate Christmas--with lots of Christmas cookies, fruit bread, goose, and

plum cake.  Their surprising friendliness and reverence for neighbors.  How Berliners 
gorge at breakfast time.

German cuisine?  Previously, my knowledge of German cuisine was that I'd eaten

sauerkraut and hot dogs as a kid, I'd heard of wiener schnitzel  and have a faint childhood

memory of biting into liverwurst and not liking it.  So this is foreign territory for me. 

But as I read My Berlin Kitchen, I found myself thinking of trying out some of the yummy 
recipes (despite the fact that cooking is not my forté).

Moreover, I had the sense that the foods and recipes and love story comprised a modern-day

German fairy tale--in which Berlin is a romantic city, filled with Quark and Flammkuchen.

 To  Weiss, Berlin is "the linden-scented city."

She writes, "When the days start to lengthen and the trees bloom and the air fills

with the scent of linden blossoms, warming earth, and budding leaves, it

comes as such a relief, such a much-deserved reward for having survived another

bone-cold winter, that one could almost believe that Berlin was an equatorial paradise."

A beautiful portrait of the author's life emerges alongside the formerly beleaguered Berlin—

"with its overcast winter skies and inescapable history often gets the short end of the stick

when it comes to capturing the imagination of food lovers and romantics."  

To the skeptics, Weiss answers:  Berlin is romantic and a food lover's delight.  

After all, she found  two loves: Sam (who believed  true love was "a fantasy") and Max 
(whom she met in high school in Berlin, fell in love with in Paris, and wed in Italy).   
Ultimately, Weiss found  happiness, fulfillment, friends and true love in Berlin--
by following her self-declared  motto, "Be brave."

At one point,  chameleon-like Weiss discusses breakfasts as they differ in each country.

"Italians eat dry little cookies [krumiri] for breakfast," she writes.  In Boston, she eats

Raisin Bran "bathed in cold milk" or "hot cream of wheat for breakfast."  In Berlin—

where a  smorgasbord of ham, Quark, liverwurst, cheese is the norm--she eats German

"sourdough bread" shaped like "a dozen Princess Leia buns fused together in a pan."

My Berlin Kitchen  is beautifully written, poetic as well as introspective.  As readers,

we become privy to Weiss' feelings and thoughts as she decides, for example, to leave one

wannabe-fiancé (Sam) because she was unhappy.  And, of course, there is the food--
at once sumptuous and exotic and rustic.

In  summation, "When you grow up all mishmashed like I did, with an American passport 
and Italian citizenship and a birth certificate issued in West Berlin it might take a little longer 
than usual to figure out your place in the world.  You're this strange little hybrid of a person, 
easily adaptable, fluent in many languages, an outsider everywhere."

My Berlin Kitchen would go on my list of  Best Books of 2012.

---Yolanda A.  Reid

Check out Luisa Weiss' blog at www.thewednesdaychef.com and her photostream of

the many cities in My Berlin Kitchen at www.flickr.com/photos/74932844@N00/.

BOOKS AND ISLANDS IN OJIBWE COUNTRY by Louise Erdrich

Author Louise Erdrich was a teenager  when she slept  in a football field, by herself, looking  up at the stars in the Great Plains skies.  This event was tantamount to a rite of passage into adulthood, from a “difficult” childhood.  In an interview, she said, “My clearest memory of growing up in North Dakota was the space and flatness. . . .  I remember how things smelled and felt and tasted when I went back to Turtle Mountains.”

 

In her books, those immense and limitless Plains skies emerge almost as minor characters.  In The Blue Jay’s Dance, she is homesick for them, even as she lived in New Hampshire with her children and then-husband, Michael Dorris.  After Dorris’ death, she moved back to Minnesota, her birthplace, to resume writing books about those vast spaces.

Her non-fiction work--Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country--tells of Erdrich’s trip with her baby and life partner, Tobasonakwut, from Minnesota  to see rock paintings in Ontario, Canada.  Like her previous works, Books and Islands interweaves the themes of Native American culture, mythology, cosmology, art, and history.  In addition, she writes in sacred terms of Ojibwemowin, the complex language of the Ojibwe people—with thousands of variations for a single verb. 

The book depicts the full life  that metamorphosed from a very painful experience and time.  In five chapters—entitled “Books and Islands,” “Islands,” “Rock Paintings,” “Books,” “Home,”—Erdrich  gives a glimpse of her life now: in her late forties, she had a baby with her life partner.  In Chapter one, she talks unabashedly of her pregnancy:  “I wept, I snarled, I laughed like a hyena. . .  . On the wall behind my midwife there was a framed poster of that obnoxious poem about the woman who looks forward to getting old so that she can wear purple.  I happened to be wearing purple that day, and I was old, and I was pregnant.”

Yet, Erdrich is delighted with the baby herself, as the little family sail in canoe over lakes, rocks, isles.  “My happiness”—she writes—“in being an older mother surprises me. . . .”

Then, she introduces readers to her new love, “Tobasonakwut, the sun dancer”—who rock-climbs and “can sleep anywhere.”   She says,  “He is a one-man spiritual ER.”  A teacher and spiritual healer, Tobasonakwut has created a foundation to further Native American causes.  As a child, he was forbidden to speak the Ojibwe language.  If he did so, he was beaten or punished.  (By contrast, Erdrich learned Ojibwemowin as an adult—“I wanted to get the jokes, [and] to understand the prayers . . . and the sacred stories. . . .”)

Erdrich’s child was named after a mythical spirit-woman—Nenaa’iikizhikok—who controls the stars and skies.  A force of nature herself, Nenaa’iikizhikok (or Kizhikok, “Sky Woman”) is one of “four spirit-women” in Native American cosmology.  These spirit-women “take care of all of the waters of the world,” as Nenaa’iikizhikok “cleans up the sky after a thunderstorm, makes sure the clouds are moving.  The stars . . . in their places.” 

Though we learn of Erdrich’s emotional  renaissance, today a bookstore-owner, traveler, new mom, with a new life partner, the ghost of her previous life haunts us.  Erdrich herself glosses over this quickly.  In chapter two, she states that her two brothers helped her immensely after her husband’s death.  They lived with her, to “guard my children. . . and made sure I didn’t stay in bed all day. . . .”

As Erdrich and Dorris were well-known for their literary collaboration, working on novels together in different capacities, many of us wondered what her new books would be like?  Would the writing change?  Would we notice?

 

Fortunately, Books and Islands continues Erdrich’s valiant effort to tell the complex story of the Ojibwe people.  She continues to be a voice for her people.  The book is a mature prose volume, more grounded or earth-bound than, say, The Blue Jay’s Dance–a book I love, with its lyrical, rounded, transluscent tones, a prose poem—a joy to read, filled with delightful anecdotes of the writer’s life in New Hampshire, alongside otters, birds, loons, and critters from the woods. 

Gradually, a portrait of contemporary Native American life emerges, filled with innumerable spirits—“The Wild Rice Spirit,” “The Horned Man,” “ Baby Spirits,”  “The Wolverine Spirit.”  “The Confused Man” Spirit, with whom the author shares her house. The “four spirit-women.”  Also, the real Nenaa’iikizhikok—a grandmother—who resides now “in the spirit world.” 

Moreover, we learn the importance of “tobacco offerings” in daily life.  The story of “trader’s rum”  chronicles the undoing of a man through alcohol.

 

Erdrich also writes of  how reading books has sustained her.  Books such as  Austerlitz, Middlemarch,  Spirit Horses, Tristram Shandy, Concise Dictionary of Minnesotan Ojibwe.  She shares with us a universal question she has asked herself and others since she was aged nine: “What book would you take to a desert island?”

In Chapter four, Erdrich describes a blissful time gobbling blueberries--“miinan” in Ojibwemowin--with Kiizhikok, her little daughter.  She writes, “This is the one traditional Ojibwe pursuit I’m good at. . . .  We eat with a lot of laughing.”  Also, she relates how one of her daughters—descended from a hunter-people—is a vegetarian.  “The joke goes: What is an Ojibwe vegetarian called?  A poor hunter.”

“Home” is the book’s final chapter.  “Home,” she writes, “is familiar and it is disorienting.”  It is a recurring theme for Erdrich.  Years ago, in an interview, she said, “The women in my books are lighting out for home. . . .”  And so, in Books and Islands, as Erdrich approaches Minnesota and her life, “I start dialing, and talk to my daughters from the road, check in with my household and with my bookstore people, with my sisters and parents.  All of a sudden I am back in the web of connection. . . .  [I ] muddle around trying to enter the stream of my life.”

Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country  is a slender personal travelogue that illuminates the history of the Ojibwe nation—while it acknowledges Native American spirit-women and real women like Nancy Jones, a female Ojibwe hunter.  Also, “Striped Earth Woman,”  and “Acts Like a Boy”—the author’s female ancestors.  And the ancient Nenaa’iikizhikok.  Add to them Louise Erdrich, the author of this  pensive book infused with the pulses of fierce women.

--Yolanda A.  Reid

Note:  Earlier in  November, 2012, Louise Erdrich won the National Book Award—which she blogs about at her website, http://www.birchbarkbooks.com/_blog/Birchbark_Blog.   Also, check out an interview of Erdrich   at  http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6055/the-art-of-fiction-no-208-louise-erdrich.

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Copyright  © 2012 by Y. A.  Reid

YOU CAN HEAL YOUR LIFE by Louise Hay

For years, I’d heard of Louise Hay and her groundbreaking book, You Can Heal Your Life.   When I
first saw her in a TV interview, she proclaimed how easy, effortless, magical her philosophy is.
According to Hay, your thoughts can be your genie.   Cristina Aguilera’s song comes to mind: “I can make your wish come true/I’m a genie in a bottle. . . .” 

The premise is that we create our lives through our thoughts.

In the book, Hay writes of changing one’s thoughts.  Her philosophy is a kind of New Age positive  thinking.
 

Divided into four parts, the book details why it’s important to change one’s thoughts, as well as how to do so.  Part I introduces us to Hay’s philosophy—which involves a re-programming of our conscious and subconscious minds.  In Part II, she delineates how we can begin to change our thoughts (and thus our life circumstances).  This section cites and describes mental exercises—such as “Dissolving Resentment,” “Forgiveness,” “I am Willing to Change,” “I Love Myself . . . .”

One  important tool, she writes, is the mirror:  “I ask people to look in their eyes and say something positive about themselves every time they pass a mirror.  The most powerful way to do affirmations is to look in a mirror and say them outloud. . . .  Now, look in a mirror and say to yourself, ‘I am willing to change.’”

The gift edition of the book is stunningly beautiful: each page is replete with vibrant watercolors of flowers and seahorses and shells and stars and birds in magenta, royal blue, fuschia, lime green, and sunflower yellow. 

Amid this backdrop, Hay shares her revolutionary ideas: for instance, in Chapter 10, the way to change someone else is to change yourself.  If you keep attracting jerks into your life, look within and analyze why.  “Relationships are mirrors of ourselves.  What we attract always mirrors either qualities we have or beliefs we have about relationships.  This is true whether it is a boss, a co-worker, an employee, a friend, a lover, a spouse, or child. . . .   You could not attract them or have them in your life if the way they are didn’t somehow complement your own life.”

Hay says recovery begins with self-love.  The mirror exercise is a step toward self-love.  If you utter the words, “I love myself” several times a day--while holding a mirror—your mind will begin to believe this thought and behave accordingly.

Once you believe you’re worthy and lovable, you will begin to make better choices.  You will attract someone who regards you as worthy and lovable.  Heartache avoided.

After reading the relationships chapter, I realized how life-changing this philosophy is.  More often than not we want the other person to change.  Then--when we focus on the other person’s faults—situations escalate.   “Why does he always do that?”  “I can’t believe she said that!” “He’s always late!” “Why does he try to hurt me?”  And it may end in domestic violence.  Instead, says Hay, develop a little compassion and try to envision the other person’s “inner child” and speak to that child.  Resentment melts and the relationship is transformed.  Affirmations, prayer, and meditation help to further the process along. 

In Hay’s own life, for example, she decided to move to California.  Her landlord—a problem for other tenants—was a godsend to Hay.  He released her from the lease and bought her furniture.  All the while, she had affirmed that her relationship with the landlord was cordial and good.

Chapter 14 explicates how the body manifests our negative thoughts, expressing the psychological, physical, and mental stresses in our life as disease.  “The stomach,” she writes, “digests all the new ideas and experiences we have.  What or who can’t you stomach?  What gets you in your gut?”  I f you can answer those questions, that heartburn may begin to disappear.

The most astonishing chapter, for me, is the last chapter, in which Louise Hay writes of her life and childhood. 

She overcame many issues: a former teen runaway, Hay experienced domestic violence as a teenager and as an adult.  At a certain time in her life, she attracted abusive men.  But once she changed her thoughts, her life changed.  We must learn to reject what’s not good for us.  Now she fears nothing  (“All is well”), and recently—in her mid-seventies--she took lessons in “ballroom dancing.” 

You Can Heal Your Life  is remarkably inspirational, a phenomenal book that will evoke an intuitive wish for only good in your life.

--Yolanda A.  Reid

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Copyright  ©  2012 by Y.A.  Reid