He introduced me the his Traveling Library. (http://www.bookcrossing.com/) And I have come to love this!  I get the chance to read my book and leave my mark and then watch it travel to someone else.  I look at it now as a gift.  Especially if it is a book I really loved reading.   For some of us, certain books have a profound meaning and leave a very clear mark on how we view the world.  What could possibly be better than sharing that experience with someone else?    And you don’t have to give the book to somebody you know.  You can leave it at your favorite coffee shop.  You could hand it to a stranger on the subway.  Just make sure you have added that book to your account on BookCrossings and you are set to see where it travels to!   And you never know what kind of experience someone else will have with that book.  You could very well help them deal with a tough situation or brighten a dreary day!

 I have also discovered Half Price Books in Cedar Rapids, IA (http://www.hpb.com/).  They carry a wide variety of books.  Looking for some new recipes?  They have you covered.  Want to read up on the Civil War?  Check.  Want to get some reasonably priced movies or cds?  Absolutely!  (Be careful that you don’t bring broke college brother with you though….They might find several things that big sister just might pay for!)  I have bought several books from them.  And the price difference is astounding.  Books I have bought previously in the same condtion are literally half the cost.  Man, I could have bought way more books had I known about this place sooner!  And if you are a book hoarder like myself and find yourself drowning in books you can sell your books.  They buy all books.  And with the money that you get…you can buy MORE books!   I highly recommend hitting them up if you have one in your area.

My book goal for 2013 was pretty intimidating when I first set it.  A whole whopping 40 books.  I don’t know why I thought it sounded like so many at first.  It’s almost May and I currently have 19 books read.  That puts me ahead right now!  I just have to keep it up and I should be able to blow my goal out of the water.  I use Goodreads (http://www.goodreads.com) to track the books I have read and the books I am currently reading.  You can join book clubs, add your booky friends, and get some great (and bad) recommendations on what you should read next.  It is a great reading tool but be careful you don’t spend all of your free time reading reviews on Goodreads.  Make sure you are acutally reading the actual books!  

I think I am going to start reviewing some of the books that I have read on my blog.  So, keep your eye out for those posts!  And you if you guys have any recommendations on what books I should read, hit me up in the comments or email me! 

I just finished reading Breaking Night.  Highly recommend.  One of the upcoming blog posts will be a review of this book!

BUT
i heard this lady on the radio yesterday.
i think this is a book i would really like.
hmmm mmmm.

Yolonda Ross

Omaha Film Festival Highlight: Yolonda Ross Adds Writer-Director to Actress Credits; In New Movies by Mamet and Sayles as her Own ‘Breaking Night’ Makes the Festival Circuit

©by Leo Adam Biga

Soon to appear in The Reader (www.thereader.com)

You may not know the name but for more than a decade now Omaha native Yolonda Ross has been a stalwart actress in American independent cinema and quality television movies and episodic dramas.

Before recently working with a pair of star indie writer-directors – David Mamet, on the new HBO movie Phil Spector, and John Sayles on the coming feature Go for Sisters – she’d previously been directed by Woody Allen (Celebrity), Cheryl Dunye (Stranger Inside), John Cameron Mitchell (Shortbus) and Todd Haynes (I’m Not There).

Ross played the recurring role of documentary filmmaker Dana Lyndsey in season two of the acclaimed HBO series Treme. She’s guested on such prestigious network shows as Third Watch, 24, Law & Order and New York Undercover.

Spector and Sisters come on the heels of her turn as a mother and wife in the well-received 2012 indie feature, Yelling to the Sky, that deals with issues of race, violence, bullying and relationships. It was shot in Queens, NY.

A measure of the esteem Ross enjoys is that both Mamet and Sayles wrote parts for her in their new films. Though she’s only in one scene in the Spector biopic, which premieres Mar. 24, it’s with the great Helen Mirren. Her co-lead role, opposite LisaGay Hamilton, in the Sayles  cross-cultural suspenser Sisters marks her first lead in a prestige feature.

2013 also marks Yolonda’s writing-directing debut with the short drama Breaking Night, an official selection of the Mar. 6-10 Omaha Film Festival unreeling at the Regal Stadium 16, 7440 Crown Point Avenue. Her dramatic narrative short screens Friday at 5:30 p.m. The coming-of-age story stars Ross as a young woman riding the throes of first love to escape a harsh home life. The film was selected for the New Voices in Black Cinema series in Brooklyn, NY.

Ross is a veteran of workshops at the Sundance Institute‘s screenwriters and directors labs, where she’s worked with her “dear friend” screenwriter-director Joan Tewksberry (who scripted Nashville). The actress filmed her short last summer in St. Charles Parish, New Orleans and in Baton Rouge, whose spell she’d already fallen under from her work on Treme, the post-Katrina Big Easy-set drama. She recruited some of her crew from the show.

Fellow Omaha native Alexander Payne served as a Breaking Night producer.

A longtime New York City resident, Ross will be at the OFF screening, where  Omaha friends and family will lend support.

Though she hopes Sisters leads to acting offers and Breaking Night establishes her directing cred, she’s taking matters in her own hands by writing new scripts for her to direct and/or star in. She’s currently penning a feature family drama she plans to direct in Houston, Texas next year. She’s also writing a spec pilot. She has more short scripts she’d like to develop.

She clearly views Breaking Night as the start of her career as filmmaker.

“It’s like one down and many to go. Once I got it finished it was just onto the next one. It doesn’t stop at one,” she says.

The many faces of Yolonda Ross:

Ross, a Burke High graduate who left Omaha in the mid-1990s to work in fashion, also sings (jazz, R&B) and paints (acrylic abstracts) and thus she views writing-directing as simply two more expressions of her creativity.

“I can do a lot of things. I happen to be one of those people that’s gifted in a lot of ways creatively. I mean, that’s just how I function. To not be utilizing all the parts of yourself sort of feels like you’re wasting yourself .”

Her writing’s evolved to where she’s confident she can craft her own vehicles.

“I feel as time has gone on my writing has gotten more defined. I know what my voice is, I know I have a unique point of view, I know I see things in a way that I feel are not being seen. Also, so many things are from a male point of view. I find it refreshing to see somebody else’s point of view, and you know I’m a black woman and one that I don’t feel is stereotypical,” says Ross, who’s worked with several women directors.

“I can tell a story and my writing has been really going places.

Breaking Night realizes a long-held goal to put her ideas on screen.

“I wanted to get the visions out of my head and see if I can do it, see what I can make, see what comes out of me. I actually had something else written but I didn’t feel like doing that so the story of Breaking Night just kind of came about. I had just been up at the Sundance film labs the summer before working on a project and it just made me want to have my own project to work on and to see what came of it with a collective group of people.”

Helming her own film proved to be everything she thought it would be.

“It was like an amazing, magical event. Little by little it all came together. It was a four-day shoot. Our last day of shooting was a night shoot that went into morning and the sun came up and we watched the sun rising. We all broke night together and nobody wrecked anybody’s nerves. We all worked together, there were no like attitudes, it was just beautiful.”

She says the film’s story is “a universal one with a different face on it.” Her inspiration was the classic ’70s rock song “Blinded by the Light,” a personal favorite that always conjured romantic and rebellious images for her. She set the story, which all takes place in the space of 24 hours, in the same decade to stay true to the song’s roots.

“I tell a universal story of a young person going through problems at home who doesn’t have support and leaves home. That’s every race, every generation.”

In her script the song becomes an anthem for breaking free of shackles that define or limit us. Her choice to infuse an interracial love relationship into the mix was about overturning stereotypes but in the end her film’s less about that than it is about finding one’s identity and following one’s destiny.

“There are definitely images that would always come to mind when I would listen to the song, knowing the time period it comes from, knowing which stations it would be played on and who the audiences would be for it. But in my thoughts it’s universal because everybody I know loves that song and rocks that song and I wanted to put a different face on who the characters were in it.

“If a film from the song was made in the ’70s when it came out I’m sure those characters would all be white. In TV and film then most times you would see black people either in the city on drugs or selling drugs or trying to get out of the ghetto or in the South trying to flee the South. In this case I wanted to put certain constraints on myself to fit the story and these elements into this seven minute song and tell this story.”

She’s satisfied she delivered a tale of youthful angst and longing that transcends cultures.

“I feel I’ve succeeded because race is not the issue at all in it. The story happens to have a black family. What I used as reference were movies like Silkwood and Norma Rae. It’s a rural home where the mom, even though it’s not said, has like a factory job and she’s got a dude she shouldn’t be with. He’s not a dad, he’s kind of living off them and taking advantage.

“The boy the girl is in love with is her escape. He’s the only one that understands her. At that age you have that person and he’s that person. They both run away. She’s got him as protection. That’s a young romance, so who knows what’s going to happen to it when she gets to wherever she’s going.”

Ross has the girl she plays cross paths with a posh black couple out on the town getting their disco down. The couple represent to the girl a sophistication and life far removed from her own.

“It’s like they symbolize to the girl that she can become that. So then she does take her life and her future into her hands and makes a decision. She’s not going to be a person who gets run over and taken advantage of, she’s not going to allow herself to be in the same kind of situation as her mom.”

An actress who never looks the same from part to part, Ross deftly plays both the ingenue and the ethereal disco mama.

Ross shot and edited the encounter to indicate the disco couple also see in the girl the possibility of something she’d never seen in herself. The girl becomes empowered by accepting a knowing look from the woman and a kiss and a business card from the man. All affirmation of her worth and  emancipation – that her time has come, that her path will be different.

“It’s like, ‘This fabulous couple sees something in me? OK, I’m out of here.’ The kids don’t know where they’re going, they’re just running away, but now she’s going wherever the disco man’s card says he from. It’s that kind of feeling.”

Ross went after a late ’70s-early ’80s Pop style look for the film, which plays like a good music video. She doesn’t mind the music video comparison but is adamant the story stands on its own.

“It has the aspects of a music video to it but it really is a short film because without the music the story is still there. I would like people to understand that there’s a lot actually happening there. All those frames in it have meaning.”

The visual palette changes as the drama plays out.

“It’s got three parts to it. It starts off light and kind of generic but once you get into the home it gets dark, it gets more real because it’s a messed up situation that happens. Once she’s out of the home that night it goes through a kind of surreal take. It leaves you wondering did this really happen or did she dream it.”

Breaking Night

In one shot the two young lovers have a kind of out-of-body experience while making out and to convey that feeling Ross wanted a visual effect she recalled seeing from that era. But she couldn’t find an example and she didn’t know what to call it.

“That was like the hardest thing,” she says. “In describing seeing that thing on TV or in videos in the early ’80s I could not find anybody who knew what that thing was. I finally found somebody to actually do it for me. It’s called a trail.”

The ending unfolds in an other-worldly rural idyll flush with Spanish Moss trees. There’s a sumptuous quality to the imagery throughout, even the gritty parts, that she credits her director of photography, Justin Zweifach, with.

“My DP was amazing. He literally came on a week before us shooting because my original DP dropped out and it was a blessing because he understood everything that was going on in my head. I made storyboards and there’s a full script but him asking me certain questions about the feel of things, the feel of characters, how I saw things, that was way more helpful in him capturing how it looks. It’s above and beyond what I expected. I mean, he shot it beautifully.”

She says crew embraced the project because with its minimal dialogue and luscious images their work can be readily seen on the screen.

Others who helped ease her through the first-time filmmaking process were executive producer Tim Mather and associate producer Sasha Solodukhina.

About Mather, she says, “When you’ve got somebody who’s got your back and understands the whole production part of it to guide you through it’s a lifesaver because there are so many little things. I come from acting, so I know about emotions, I know about all that kind of stuff. Before I did this i really didn’t even know the difference between a gaffer and a grip. I hate to say this but I didn’t know what the jobs were, but now I know. I know in front of, I know behind, I know these things now.

“And Tim is great dealing with people and places you need to have connections to to get better deals and to get things done.”

She says Solodukhina was “like wonder woman because she got me so many people. She knows everybody.”

As for having Payne’s imprimatur on the film, she notes, “What can you say? How can that hurt? I’m glad that our friendship made him come on and contribute. I still have to show him the film though.”

With the likes of Payne, Mamet and Sayles in her corner, she knows her work is getting noticed by the right people.

“It’s like how I feel most of my career has been, you just do your work and a lot of times you don’t feel anybody’s paying attention or whatever but then you get these offers from these great directors, so it’s amazing who watches and who does think of you.”

The offer from Sayles came while she location scouted for her short. She knew him from auditioning for his Honeydripper, losing a part in it to her Go for Sisters co-star, LisaGay Hamilton.

Sisters is the fictional story of childhood best friends whose different life paths have separated them for 20 years until events reunite them as adults. Ross is the newly released from prison Fontaine, who finds her old friend Bernice (Hamilton) assigned as her parole officer. The street wise ex-con becomes a lifeline when Bernice’s son is captured and held for ransom by drug dealers in Mexican border towns. Edward James Olmos becomes the third amigo in this search party that courts danger at every turn.

Edward James Olmos, LisaGay Hamilton, Yolonda Ross in Go for Sisters

Olmos, Hamlton, Ross in Go for Sisters

The low-budget, guerrilla-style shoot in Mexicali, Calixico and Tijuana required a huge number of locations in a short number of days, which kept cast and crew hopping.

“It was fun but just different logistically for me,” says Ross. “It was sort of like you wake up and you just go. You don’t even look around. You’re like, OK, who am I? What are we doing? It’s almost a road movie because we’re on the move so much. The story takes you on a nice trip. There’s lots of familiar faces in cameos and it’s fun to see who you come across next.”

About the enigmatic Sayles, she says, “Pretty much he gives you the blueprint and you do it. He has said, and now I see it, that his directing is choosing the right actors,. He lets us do our work.” By contrast, she says Mamet “is more verbal than John. I think he’s really funny, I really like him a lot. The one way they are alike is they both tell stories while working  and they both have people around them they’ve worked with before, so there’s a level of comfort with the crew.”

She’s excited to see who next notices her work. though she says she’s been around long enough to know that some filmmakers “go after the same people or who they think are hot or whatever,” adding, “You can be talented all day but that has nothing to do with them hiring you.” She says if box office performance is the arbiter then she’ll always be at a disadvantage because the small indie work she does rarely makes much of a splash or a profit.

“It’s unfortunate. The rest is just all crazy business stuff, which makes no sense. That’s why I’m writing.”

Ross is also part of a March 9 panel, Actors on Acting, at 3:15 p.m.

The Omaha Film Festival is a curated assemblage of narrative feature films, documentaries, live action and animated shorts as well as workshops and panels. Now in its eighth year, the fest has a strong track record of bringing film artists with and without Nebraska ties to discuss their work.

For schedule and ticket details, visit http://www.omahafilmfestival.org.

Related articles

• John Sayles – An American Classic (mrmovietimes.com)
• Phil Spector Biopic Trailer Released By HBO (noise11.com)
• Interview with Victoria Mahoney on ‘Yelling to the Sky’ starring Zoe Kravitz, Gabourey Sidibe and Black Thought (ifelicious.com)

Black Reel Awards nominated actress Yolanda Ross has completed her debut film, the short Breaking Night. Inspired by watching writer/director Victoria Mahoney, Ross made the leap and is quite satisfied with the end results.

Breaking Night stars Clarke Peters, Levi Fiehler, Otto DeJean, and Ross as the female lead who experiences a metamorphosis after leaving life in a small town to venture out into the world, ultimately changing her own perception of it by daybreak. The concept for the film was inspired by 70s rock classic “Blinded By The Light” – the Springsteen track made popular by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band. Ross’ Breaking Night is a 7 minute short film-music video hybrid shot on RED camera by cinematographer Justin Zweifach, who wanted to maintain the look and feel of a 70s film. Working closely with co-producers Timothy Mather and Sasha Solodukhina, the film was shot over four days between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

“FINALLY!! A chance to see the images that would always come to mind whenever I would hear “Blinded By the Light, said Ross. Yeah, the song everybody’s heard at least one time in their life. I figured, why not? I wanted to try something fresh and new to me, so with Breaking Night I am telling a Universal story, using a 70′s classic rock song and actors that most likely wouldn’t have been cast (people of color) if this were actually done in the 70′s. Breaking Night was an exercise for me to tell this story with images and sound within the confines of a seven minute song. Like most pieces of art, it’s gonna touch each viewer differently. That’s the goal.”

Ross was nominated for Outstanding Television Actress for her work in 2001′s Stranger Inside and has roles in Antwone Fisher and Treme. She also co-starred as the mother of Sweetness O’Hara, the lead played by Zoe Kravitz in Victoria Mahoney‘s Yelling To The Sky featuring Tariq Trotter (Black Thought) of The Roots.

As Liz moves through her teen years, she spends more and more time skipping school and eventually lands up moving out of her mother’s house and becoming homeless. Breaking night, is the term used on making it through another night on the street, when night is broken and she has made it through to another day.  A day where Liz, through the kindness of friends, will probably sneak into their house to take a shower, sleep or have a snack from their kitchen.

This book is an enlightening window into what day to day living is like for a homeless teen. A teen who found herself in this place, through no fault of her own, as many out there do.  A teen who breaks many stereotypes of what we in the home having world may think. But beyond that, this is also a story of how someone with all the odds stacked against her and under incredibly difficult circumstances, decides to take control of that part of her life that she can control. She realizes that only with an education will she eventually be able to pay her own rent and not have to rely on others.  So with amazing determination, she finds a way to go back to high school and eventually beyond, all while being homeless.

I listened to this book, which is read by Liz and found her story totally captivating. Just knowing that she overcame homelessness and has become so successful, is inspiring in and of itself.  But really understanding and being immersed in the details of her life, gives one a true sense of her daily obstacles and the inner strength it took to move her life to such a different place.

A link to Liz’s web site.

A short movie called Perseverance, featuring Liz.

Ever cried for people you don’t even know? Like those starving people on the street (No one should ever go hungry or cold), sick/abused animals(dogs)?

Does your eyes get teary for somebody you never met? Ever felt that you can relate to them so well more than you actually relate to the people in your own life? did you cried for that girl who died of cancer in your favorite movie? or that guy who broke her heart in that book? Did you felt the pain when Edward left Bella alone in forest? Or when Emma died in Terms of Endearment..?

Ever felt (or imagined) the pain of parting with somebody you really love in the form of death or something else… ever felt complete numb with an urge to cry so hard over something but your eyes don’t let you? Ever felt like giving up everything you had & die? Things that you don’t just remember but you can’t forget.. An incident that actually changed your life?

I believe every person has that one incident in life which changes the life itself!

I had not one but a series of incidents. a book I’ve read recently instills so much emotions in me, that I never knew I had in me..

I was born in April(Taurus) & started crying at the hospital and I haven’t stopped since. I cried about thirty seconds ago, and probably twenty minutes before that, and a couple of other times today. The hormones. I never cry when anyone else is around though. And definitely never blog about it! That would be unmanly, you see.

Few years’ back I had some issues with a friend that I finally realized needed to be resolved. It pushed me over the edge and I spent 10 mins in the bathroom, then I took my break right after that and chain smoked for an hour. Didn’t helped much. Back at home that night, I picked up my cell dialled all 10 digits distinctly, but hanged up after one ring. I never had the courage, it was all messed up. Then I messaged sorry followed by a full stop. That’s it. Reply never came not that I asked something but still. Maybe, I shouldn’t have said sorry. Then I cried, cried like a child for hours in my room. Like one of those scene in cheesy movies about love. I don’t even know when I fell asleep that night. But when I woke up in the morning I felt better, like a new beginning. Um, can I switch my answer now? I am glad I said sorry. No regrets.

Tip: wash your eyes before sleeping so they’ll not turn red next morning & nobody can guess whether you cried last night.

The Book.

Breaking Night (urban slang for: The act of staying up all night without sleeping.)

Ma, 6th Street, Greenwich Village, 1971

First thing, this book is a memoir, meaning it is non-fictional. Tell me how many people went homeless at the age of 15, end up getting a New York Times scholarship & got accepted into Harvard?

Elizabeth “Liz” Murray did. That’s her story. Liz was born to poor (with drugs in her blood) & drug-addicted (but loving) parents. She became homeless just after she turned 15, when her mother died of AIDS. She was carrying with her a crumpled snapshot of her mother, taken at a similar age. Liz’s parents usually spend their monthly welfare check on cocaine. She described the place where she lived very distinctly.  She also describes hunger vividly, she and her older sister, Lisa, struggles to stay alive, on eggs and mayonnaise sandwiches, occasionally eating a tube of toothpaste and a cherry-flavored ChapStick to kill their hunger. This is an extraordinary tail of Survival & Hope. life on the street is hard, & survival is not certain, especially for young girls. But with the help of her friends(now she calls them family) who gave her food & place for sleeping at night, she survived. But soon she realized she couldn’t continue living the way she was, this 17 year-old girl has a moment of enlightenment and decides she could get a summer job (what?!) instead of begging for food and mooching off her friends’ parents. So she looked into schools again and was finally accepted into an alternate high school program. She earned all A’s and she slept on hallway landings, on subway trains and whenever she could, on the floors of friends’ apartments. She went through 4 years of high school in 2 years (not counting summers, during which she had to work full-time). That’s a quick summary.

Sometimes the people who you are told will help you, actually do more harm than the things they are trying to prevent. So true. I really loved the first half, quite depressing like my blog but if you can give me two out of five, surely you’re gonna love this book. The way she described her childhood was amazing, you actually get to know who Liz Murray was before she went to school or Harvard. Specially the conversation between Liz & her Ma, the way she tried to get her attention.

I liked how naïve she was about big things in her life. Like how she had no idea how big the New York Times was, and as such she didn’t prepare a big presentation for them when she went in for a scholarship interview. You won’t find it lame when she says “poor me!”

She was also aware of her part in every decision she made & took responsibility for that. Like She would say, “you know, if I had just gone to school when I was 14, the state never would’ve taken me away”. I mean, she could’ve said something like “I should’ve gone to school, but it was just too hard! And the state didn’t care to investigate why I wasn’t going to school. I was treated badly!” But she doesn’t have that attitude at all.

This book is truly inspirational. This is a fairy tale with a fairy tale ending–you will wonder how she got so far, this one was hard to get through, especially the first half.

Can get you a soft copy (any format)

e: aniruddha.daheria@gmail.com

Favorite Passages:

Had I know when I left that there would be no going back, no returning to a roof over my head, I’m not sure I would have done it. After all, isn’t that what really draws the line between childhood and adulthood, knowing that you are solely responsible for yourself? If so, then my childhood ended at fifteen.

__________

I was inspired by a question that kept repeating itself in my mind: Could I really change my life? I’d spent so many days, weeks, months, and years thinking about doing things with my life, and now I wanted to know, if I committed to a goal and woke up every single day working hard at it, could I change my life?

__________

In this way I didn’t have to choose to go to high school just once, I had to choose it over and over again, every single time I was tempted not to go. During these mornings that were full of rare and precious quiet, soft pillows and warmth, I was tempted more than any other time to just pull the blanket back over me. It took everything I had to choose to walk through the door to go to school instead. In these moments, I was my biggest obstacle. Warm blanket or walk through the door?

___________

But it was no easy task to pick out a birthday card from Daddy to Lisa. What could I possibly pick? They were all designed for men who had lived up to their responsibilities as a father, cards decorated with shimmering monikers of Dad, Daddy, sayings like, “This card is from your loving Father.” …. I came up with my own solution. Neither of them knew it, but more than once I found the perfect card from Daddy to Lisa in the sympathy section of the card store: “Been Thinking About You,” …..cards that expressed love but left room for the implication of tragedy and distance. These were the only greeting cards that captured Daddy’s role as a father.

__________

“What I was beginning to understand was that however things unfolded from here on, whatever the next chapter was, my life could never be the sum of one circumstance. It would be determined, as it had always been, by my willingness to put one foot in front of the other, moving forward, come what may.”

__________

Things turning around for me had been the result of my focusing on the few areas in life I could change, and surrendering to the knowledge that there were many more things I just couldn’t make different

Actually, here is the fine print, all of these books were either published in the fall of 2010 or were published in 2011. I would like a drum roll please…..

1.  “Left Neglected” by Lisa Genova,  published in 2011.  The story of a young career woman who is impacted by a car accident and loses feeling and ability in the left side of her body.  Many people read her first book, “Still Alice” but I actually liked this one better.  It kept my interest, I learned a lot and had a great story.  READ it!

2.  “Unbroken” by Lauren Hillenbrand,  published in November of 2010.  This is the staggering account of the obstacles that Louie Zamperini faced during his lifetime.  This book makes most any other life look easy.  When my chips are down I think of Louie’s journey on a life raft in the shark infested waters.  He survives that only to land on enemy soil during the war and become a POW.  It’s long, but it’s good.

3.  “Breaking Night” by Liz Murray, published in September 2010.  I don’t know how she did it but she made her story of growing up homeless in New York City a positive and hopeful story.  Despite her living conditions and having drug addicted and alcoholic parents, she graduated from Harvard.  You will thank your parents for your childhood no matter how dysfunctional you think your family is!

4.  “The Paris Wife” by Paula McLain, published in 2011.  This is the story of Hadley, who was Ernest Hemingway’s first wife.  It features love, sex, alcohol and affairs.  You really can’t go wrong.

5.  “Room” by Emma Donoghue and published in September of 2010.  This story had such an interesting and unusual premise that it really is a must read.  It is the story of a young mother and her small son who are locked up in a room.  It is heart wrenching, yet hopeful and it is unlike anything else you have ever read.

So if you are looking for gifts, these would be great for the reader in your life.

If you are a reader:  how did I do?  Obviously absent from my list are two books:  “In the Garden of Beasts” by Erik Larson and “State of Wonder” by Ann Patchett, both published in 2011.   While I am glad I read both of them,  I don’t think they are top 5 worthy.

Check these out!

Liz describes her parents as loving parents who were drug addicts.  Each of them contracted HIV/AIDS.  Her mother’s addiction to cocaine was so fierce that she once tried to sell her child’s coat to a dealer.  Amazingly, the dealer wouldn’t make the sale because he knew Liz needed her coat.

By the time Liz was 15, both of her parents had died as the result of the disease and she found herself homeless.  Let’s just think about that for a minute.  Homeless at 15!  I can’t even imagine what that would have been like, not to mention the life she lived prior to that – living in conditions below poverty level and not even having money for food because her parents spent all of the money on drugs.

At a time when most people her age were entering college, Liz was trying to find a high school that would accept her so that she could complete her education.  Not only did she find a high school and complete her degree, she completed four years of work in two years – all while being homeless.  And – AND – she earned excellent grades all along the way.

The New York Times ran a contest where the winners would be given full scholarships to Harvard University.  The entrants needed to write an essay describing any obstacles they had overcome in their lives.  She submitted an entry, was selected as one of the six winners, became a student at Harvard and is now a graduate of Harvard University!

I’m not able to post the speech video here, but you can watch an interview she did with Mike Huckabee at Fox News: http://video.foxnews.com/v/4438855/from-homeless-to-harvard if you would like to hear more about her story.

Source: Pinterest

One of the things Liz mentioned during the speech was that we all have a choice when life hands us difficulties.  We can choose resentment or we can choose gratitude.  That is the part that has been bouncing around in my head for the past day.  Resentment or gratitude.

RESENTMENT or GRATITUDE.

The choice we make when faced with illness, difficulty, hardship, or even tragedy will have a significant impact on our lives.

I have cancer.  I can choose resentment or gratitude about this fact.  I can’t change the fact, I can only change my response to the fact.

I can resent the fact that cancer has interrupted my life in a BIG way, created a lot of stress (not only for me, but for my family), and forced me to endure nasty chemotherapy.  OR, I can be grateful that the cancer was found now, before it caused permanent damage to my kidney.  I can be grateful that there are knowledgeable doctors and powerful medicines available to help me treat this disease.  I can be grateful that my body seems to be tolerating and responding to the treatments pretty well.

Resentment or gratitude?  It’s a choice I have to make each day.  I don’t think it’s as simple as saying, “I choose gratitude,” once and for all.  It’s a choice I will have to make over and over again throughout this process.

Why?  Because things change.  Emotions come into play.  The days when I feel worse may will make it tempting to choose resentment over gratitude.  Some days it will be easy to choose gratitude, but on other days I will have to consciously CHOOSE gratitude over resentment.  I will have to choose thankfulness over bitterness.  I will have to choose joy over self-pity.

I don’t think this is only a choice cancer patients have to make.  This is a choice we all have to make at some point in our lives.  My sister lost her husband this year.  She has to choose resentment or gratitude on a daily, if not hourly, basis.  I am so proud of her because she is choosing gratitude, even though it is tough to do some days.  Choosing resentment is easy, it requires little effort.  Gratitude requires effort and determination.

There might be a situation in your life right now where you need to choose resentment or gratitude.  What’s your choice going to be?

The Bible says in I Thessalonians 5:16-18,

“Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”

It doesn’t say sometimes or when things are easy or when I feel like it.  It says in ALL circumstances, give thanks.  In all circumstances, be thankful.  In all circumstances, be grateful – not resentful.

I may not be perfectly successful at this 100% of the time, but I’m going to give it my best shot.

♥ Rachel

We successfully completed the corrections, but I’m sure once I read the script during the flight, there will be more adjustments. @Efidalgo12 will also decide to add new wrinkles. (Writers are never truly satisfied; we always feel as if we can enhance something to improve the project!)

Here is the one little thing which I recalled:

1. A couple months ago, I decided to create a Facebook page for the blog. Originally, the page was named Peter Teixeira. When I launched the page, I was the first to click the “like” button. For the entire day, the Facebook widget read, “One person likes Peter Teixeira,” and below was a picture of me! (Partly, I wished that it would remain the same forever, but change is inevitable!)

I honestly can’t remember any of the many hilarious little things, but I’ll include an excerpt from Penn Jillette’s book, which I’ve been reading. I found many hilarious quotes, but I have decided to only include this one. When discussing family friends who are lesbians, Jillette writes, “Hey, you talk against lesbians around my fucking family, we take you down to Chinatown.” (I don’t know why, but I love that line!)

I honestly want to end this post right here, but for some reason, I don’t feel as if it is complete. I will take a few moments to try and come up with at least a couple more little things.

1. Last week, I invited my nephew for some sushi. There is a place relatively close to my neighborhood, and he agreed to accompany me. I parked in an empty spot across the street from the restaurant, and we crossed Washington St without being killed. I would name the establishment, but I always forget what it is called and I am way too tired to look it up. I approached the door and attempted to pull it open; the large wooden object did not budge. “You’re supposed to push it open!” My nephew mocked, while laughing. “Thank you genius!” I replied. We placed our order and after paying, I decided to drive to the nearby fish store to pick up some Cray fish for my Redtail Carfish. (I figured it was only fair to bring home a treat for the fish, as well!) I told the accommodating woman that we would return shortly, I shared the plan with my nephew and we headed for the door. As if I am a complete moron, I pushed. Laughter filled the foyer, then I heard, “I can’t believe it; you’re so dumb! I can’t wait until we come back to see if you can finally get it right! You’re 0 for 2!” All I could do was laugh. I am proud to announce that I did in fact learn the proper procedure, and I will never make the mistake again!
2. Last summer, on a warm Sunday night, my nephew joined me for one of our many missions to kill hunger; he decided he wanted Wendy’s. For some reason, I decided to drive to the fast food joint in Quincy. (Don’t ask me why; I just love Quincy!) It was an uneventful trip. We returned to the house and I parked the car in the yard. We walked towards the gate, and he waited for me to lock up. I had a bag of food in my left hand along with the keys, the chain and lock in my right hand along with my soft drink. (If you know me, you probably think I ordered a Coke, but Wendy’s is one of those “other cola” only establishments so I went with Mountain Dew!) I’ve done this a thousand times with little trouble, but for some reason, the comedy gods favor my nephew. Inexplicably, my drink crashed, creating a small pond fit for ants and beetles. For a second, I thought I was seated in the bleachers at Fenway Park, during the ninth inning of a playoff game, watching David Ortiz hit a game winning homerun. My nephew was jumping up and down and yelling, “Yay! Great job idiot!” Again, there was nothing I could do, other than laugh!

That’s all I am willing to force myself to produce!

Thanks for reading! (I trust that Jet Blue has a strict policy against drunk pilots so we should arrive safely in Los Angeles!)

@PeteTeix617

I am a little embarrased to admit that I plowed through 6 books this vacation.  I know, right?  Here is what I read in St. Thomas.

1.  “The 158 Pound Marriage” by John Irving.  Those of you who read my blog know of my fascination with John.  This was his third novel and was published in 1973. It is quite sexual since it revolves around 2 couples and their menage a quatre.  Let’s just say that I enjoyed it, mostly because I love Irving but based on the subject matter it’s really not for everyone.  ABL rating 3.  Ouch, sorry John.

2.  “Breaking Night” by Liz Murray.  One of my book geek friends, Lindsay, recommended this book and it did not disappoint.  It is the memoir of Liz a young woman who was born to loving but drug addicted parents in the Bronx.  She found herself homeless at 15 but rose up from it all to graduate from Harvard.  I loved the tone of this book.  At one point she talks about her parents like this:  “they had no intention to hurt us….they simply did not have it in them to be the parents I wanted them to be.”  I recommend, and give it a 4.

3.   “These Things Hidden” by Heather Gudenkauf and was recommended to me by my friend Stephanie.  This was the perfect beach book about two sisters that hide a secret and what happens when that secret is exposed in their small town.  It has a great page turner format:  short chapters and alternating narrators.  I recommend, it’s perfect for something to keep your attention on a beach day.  I give it a 3.

4.  “The Solitude of Prime Numbers” by Paolo Giordano which was recommended to me by another blogger.  It is about two painfully shy teenagers that are each haunted by a tragedy early in life who become best friends.  The prose is beautiful and while it was painful to read, I enjoyed it.  I would have liked it more except it had a very sad ending.  Not for everyone, I give it a 3.

5.  “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot.  My book geek friends and I have talked about this one a lot and it comes up every time on my Amazon recommendation page so I decided to give it a try. This is a book about Henrietta, a black woman who died in 1951 but whose cells have lived on immortally in chemistry labs throughout the country.  My friend, Gary summed it up perfectly:  “it’s a good book, I’m glad I read it but there is too much biology to keep your attention.”  The parts about Henrietta’s family were the most interesting.  In the end I am glad I read it but I wouldn’t recommend it.  ABL rating 3.

And then I ran out of books!  I wandered up to the front desk with a heavy heart, usually the hotel book exchange is full of serial novelists that I don’t read.  (I am a book snob, I know).  I was pleasantly surprised to find James Frey’s memior, “A Million Little Pieces”.  I read it when it first came out in 2003. This is a wonderful memoir about his 6 weeks in Hazelden.  But he made one major mistake.  He didn’t put that little qualifier at the front of the book, the bit most authors write about changing some names and that some events may have been changed slighty.  If you remember Oprah recommended this book and then when her fact checkers found some inconsistencies he went through the Oprah “spanking machine”.  I have only watched the Oprah show one time, when James appeared.  She let him have it.

Anyway, I rarely re-read a book but for this one, I made an exception.  I loved it the second time.  I highly recommend and I give it a 5.

This is Liz’s story of growing up and surviving. It’s a detailed looked at her life from birth until her high school graduation, and even a quick summary at the end of life after graduation. And let me tell you, her life really sucked.

– Krista

Since I teach kindergarten through 8th grade you can imagine who makes me feel like a rock star. The little ones, the five and six year olds who see me in the hallway and scream, “HOLA! as if they are surprised I am outside of my classroom… so excited to see me out and about. It’s an awesome “job”. I hardly ever call it my job or work. Most days it doesn’t feel like work (of course there are some days when it is definitely work.). I am so fortunate to go to a place almost every day where I feel loved. My older students make me feel just as loved. These middle school kids are so hilarious. What a crazy stage in life. The things they ask me about and the things they are interested to know about me reminds me of the way I felt about my beloved swim coaches throughout my life whom I loved and adored and couldn’t wait to talk with and spend time with. They scream hola just as loudly in the hallway. It is hilarious.

Now the hard part of my “job”…….

I have to remember each day to make every one (well most I hope) of my students feel just as loved and validated as they make me feel. It is SO difficult some days. My husband says I try too hard and think too much and he never remembers any of his teachers doing what I do or worrying about what I worry about. So that makes my task all the more important to me. I have these kids as my students for NINE years. That is a long time. The hardest part of my job is making sure these kids feel as loved as they make me feel for that LONG period of time. As human beings we just DO NOT all get along. That is just human nature. So when I have a student that proves to be very difficult to love, man do I ever learn A TON from that kid!

I just finished the book “Breaking Night” by Liz Murray from homeless to Harvard. She is living proof of what feeling loved and validated by her teachers can do!

The following is only a small smattering of the reading I’ve been doing lately. I don’t know how I’ve managed to read so much all of a sudden. Possibly it’s due to the rash of really great books of the unputdownable variety I’ve been lucky enough to read so far this year. Whatever it is, I can’t complain.

The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

I’ll start off with a classic, Walker Percy’s 1961 novel The Moviegoer, winner of the 1962 National Book Award.

I bought a slightly yellowed but decent copy from a used bookseller, partly on impulse but mostly because I wanted to read more southern literature. I’d always heard Percy’s name mentioned in conjunction with the best of the best, so when I happened upon the book I considered it fate. It didn’t hurt that the book was incredibly cheap, or that it’s part of a southern literature series including the names of a few other writers I’d never heard of.

Books that lead to other books? Yes, thanks!

The Moviegoer is the story of Binx Bolling, a Vietnam vet living in, and hailing from, New Orleans. A stockbroker by trade, Binx has trouble with long term relationships, choosing to lose himself in movies instead of putting effort into real-life interactions with people. He professes to be bored, discontent with the “everydayness” of life. Therefore, he’s always searching, for what he couldn’t say.

“To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.”

Then:

“The movies are onto the search, but  they screw it up. The search always ends in despair. They like to show a fellow coming to himself in a strange place – but what does he do? He takes up with the local librarian, sets about proving to the local children what a nice fellow he is, and settles down with a vengeance. In two week’s time he is so sunk in everydayness that he might as well be dead.”

Thanks for perpetuating the stereotype, old buddy old pal.

The Moviegoer is a strange and occasionally funny novel, as plotless as Binx’s own life, wandering from scene to scene with only the loosest of plots. I loved the atmosphere of New Orleans, the quirky relatives and the tone varying from profound to sad to lyrical:

“Three o’clock and suddenly awake amid the smell of dreams and of the years come back and peopled and blown away again like smoke. A young man am I, twenty nine, but I am as full of dreams as an ancient. At night the years come back and perch around my bed like ghosts.”

Lovely stuff. And librarian basher or not, I’ll most definitely read more Walker Percy.

[Personal copy]

• Paperback: 241 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1st Vintage International Ed edition (April 14, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375701966
• ISBN-13: 978-0375701962

Vacant Possession by Hilary Mantel

As far as I can recall, the only novel of Hilary Mantel’s I’ve yet attempted was her hugely successful Wolf Hall. Though I love the subject of the Tudors, around halfway through this novel I became frustrated, putting it aside because I had so much trouble keeping the characters straight it became more a history lesson than an enjoyable read. Mind, I love history, but it became too much a slog to continue.

Vacant Possession was written in 1986, back in the days of yore. In 1986 I was in college, studying for my Bachelor’s Degree in English literature. I had no idea Hilary Mantel even existed, so immersed was I in the classics.

I regret that, not reading anything at all by contemporary writers when life was so much simpler, and I had those long summers with hours and hours of idle time to while away. Back then I just never thought to, not when there was a whole world of Victorian literature to keep me set for eons, reading and re-reading the novels of Hardy, mostly, with lots of Dickens thrown in. But modern writers? I was completely in the dark. Had the internet been around and as useful as it is now, things may have been different. But it was easy, as an English major, pushing aside anything that wasn’t considered Literature with a capital “L.”

This novel is a tremendously satisfying gothic-inspired novel, with a main character as twisted and insane as any Barbara Vine has ever created. Muriel Axon was raised by a mentally disturbed mother who locked her away from life in order, in some warped way, to keep her safe from what’s “out there.”

“This was Muriel’s life: days, whole weeks together, when Mother didn’t let her out of the house in the mornings. She locked her bedroom door, or hid her shoes. At St. David’s School on Arlington Road, she was nothing but an object of remark. None of the remarks were flattering. She rocked in her chair, played with her fingers. She would not write, could not, had never learned, forgotten how. At the sound of a bell the children rushed out of the room and fought each other in an asphalt circus behind bars. She stood and watched the others, rubbing her arm above the elbow where Mother’s fingers left her permanently bruised. She licked some rust from the railings; there was iron on her tongue, salt, ice. She laid about with her fists. Soon this part of life was over; Mother kept her at home.”

When she was older, Muriel was released from her prison by a man who happened to see a woman – locked in an upper-floor room where there were, she felt, unnatural, invisible creatures nipping at her legs – gesturing wildly for help. He knocked down the door, pushed Muriel’s mother aside, and broke the woman out of the room. As a result of the excitement, Muriel’s mother had a heart attack and died.

Later, the same man bought the house. Enraged, blaming the man for her mother’s death, Muriel sets about seeking revenge. And there’s nothing she won’t do to achieve her goal, since she has no sense of rationality, no concept of reality or normal society. Unsurprisingly, Muriel turned out to suffer from the same sorts of mental illnesses as her mother.

I love books like this, those that give me the creeps. That is, if the characters are human and not creatures from horror novels. I have no use for those. But books that explore the twisted psyche, now that’s my sort of reading. If this is your cup of tea, try Vacant Possession.

[Personal copy]

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Picador; Reprint edition (August 31, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031266804X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312668044

A couple review books I read for the Amazon Vine program:

Breaking Night by Liz Murray

I’ve experienced crappy- life memoir overload after reading umpteen hundred of them, so I’m not sure what possessed me to actually choose to read and review this one. Luckily, it turned out to be pretty impressive.

Liz Murray grew up the child of two alcoholic crack heads. The family lived month to month on welfare checks, most of which was squandered on drugs. Surprise! What little food they did buy lasted only days after each check. After that it was everyone for him/herself.Liz learned to visit friends on a regular basis, getting hot meals there at least a couple of times a week.

In the middle is the story of what it was like to grow up in a completely neglectful household, how she and her sister, Lisa, survived. Liz eventually became homeless, again, living largely off the kindness of her friends who gave her what food and shelter they could. Still, she spent a lot of time on the streets. Her eventual success was due to her own strength of character, her refusal to let her godawful childhood doom her to the same fate as her parents.

Inspiring is such an over-used word. Rather than that, I’m amazed all over again at the ability of the human spirit to recover from seemingly impossible odds. And not just to survive, but to thrive. Many of us surmount the seemingly unsurvivable, so Liz Murray definitely isn’t the first. But what she’s done is write a memoir that’s completely lacking self pity, telling her story without falling into the “poor me” trap. I thought that alone a very good recommendation.

Worth a read if you’re a fan of memoirs, and a good book to hand to a teenager who thinks his or her life is rough.  Lots of good life lessons here.

[Free review copy from Amazon]

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion (September 7, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786868910
• ISBN-13: 978-0786868919

The Heroine’s Bookshelf by Erin Blakemore

And, last but certainly not least, a wonderful, wonderful book about heroines in literature, including:  Lizzy Bennet (Pride and Prejudice), Janie Crawford (Their Eyes Were Watching God), Anne Shirley (Anne of Green Gables), Celie (The Color Purple), Francie Nolan (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn), Claudine (Colette), Scarlett O’Hara (Gone With the Wind), Scout Finch (To Kill a Mockingbird), Laura Ingalls Wilder,  Jane Eyre, Jo March (Little Women) and Mary Lennox (The Secret Garden).

 What author Erin Blakemore has done is take these female characters, relate their qualities as we know them from the novels they’re in, while weaving in biographical details from the author’s lives. In the midst of this, Blakemore extrapolates the experiences of these women to apply to women as a whole. And the effect is just wonderful.

I didn’t expect this book to be nearly as good as it was. When you’re choosing titles blindly it’s an iffy proposition. But this time I struck gold.

Very highly recommended to those who enjoy books about books, exploring how the fiction evolves from real life.

[Free review copy from Amazon]

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1st edition (October 19, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006195876X
• ISBN-13: 978-0061958762

That catches me up somewhat. Actually, considering how crazy-nuts things have been around here I’m doing well just to recap this much. The problem is while I’m waiting to catch up with what I’ve already read I’ll be reading other books.

Wait, did I just say that’s a problem? Okay, it is if it’s a review book. But I’d like to share thoughts about every book I read, including those I pick up on a whim. I ask for lots of the review titles specifically, but  many of them just arrive. Sometimes they’re good, and sometimes not so much. The not so much often wind up in our library sale pile, but the good ones I have the best intentions of reviewing. Sometimes it’s just on Amazon, but for maximum impact I prefer blogging them, as well.

I have to have everything, don’t I?

Well, frankly, YES. Shocking I don’t go on a Muriel rampage, actually. Good thing my keeper put me on the choke chain. And now here comes the muzzle! Oh drat.

I don’t have a big budget to buy books or even a place to keep them, so I borrow a lot from the library, friends, and family.  I recently borrowed a book from my mom, a memoir called Breaking Night by Liz Murray.  I had to read it really fast, because the faster I read it the sooner Liz would be well and safe.  Reading about her hardships made me feel like she was experiencing them in the present.  I knew that wasn’t true of course, but she has a way of writing right into your heart and I couldn’t just put a bookmark in and forget about her. 

Everyone experiences hardship in one form or another.  On the cover of the book it says “… From Homeless to Harvard”, so going into it I thought since I already knew the ending I wouldn’t be too moved by the rest.  I thought I would have an “oh she had it hard but everything turned out fine” attitude.  However, knowing that she survives and thrives in the end didn’t mitigate the emotional effects her experience had as I read her story.  I gasped, laughed, and cried.  She is truly a remarkable person and an inspiration. 

I’m always a little sad when I finish reading a good book.  This is especially true when I read nonfiction.  I go from being consumed by it to being finished with it, and that’s a big instant change.  I am still thinking about Liz and her story, and others out there who haven’t be able to rise above their circumstances like she did.

Liz Murray’s book, “Breaking Night,” details her incredible young life, a life no child should have to live through, as a child of parents addicted to and dealing drugs, which resulted in her going out on the streets, which she saw as an escape and a step up from where she was. At age 15, she took control of what she could, and let go of trying to control what she couldn’t, and began her journey to Harvard and beyond. As she says in the video, “If I could just pick the things that I had some control over, and give the rest to something higher than myself, let it go, surrender to it, focus on what I could control — and for me that was education. It was school. I couldn’t change any of that, but you know what? I could show up at school everyday. … I could get not only a B, but I could get an A.”

The Serenity Prayer:

“God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.”

I went to my regular pre-natal visit today and got checked out to see if I was even dilating. Last night I was having back pain and it felt like my cervix was regularly squeezing and releasing, even though they weren’t getting stronger and stopped when I walked or changed position.  And there was nothing. I wasn’t dilated.  My cervix wasn’t open at all.  The baby’s head isn’t even as far down as a baby’s head normally is when you’re about to go into labor. I am so frustrated and am so sick of being pregnant.  I don’t want to be pregnant anymore. I’m so tired already and just so uncomfortable. I can’t sit for too long without hurting. I can’t walk without hurting. And I definitely can’t sleep or turn over without discomfort and I’m going to the bathroom literally three or four times a night.  I guess the discomfort isn’t so bad – it’s conditioning me for what happens on the other side – the absolute sleep deprivation.  And thankfully, humans don’t have the 22 month gestational period that say an elephant does.  But seriously enough already. I’m ready.

And I’m much more mentally prepared now for the actual birth experience and for having a newborn on the other side. I know that it will be rough, but I also know now that I can be more forgiving of myself.  I’m prepared for, say, breastfeeding to be hard and for sleep deprivation to be just awful.  But I also don’t think that I’ll be as tough on myself. If, say, breastfeeding doesn’t work this time around, I’m not going to take it as the end of the world.  I’ll try and I’ll try really hard but if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work and that’s ok. The last time I worked out a way where Nate was getting breastmilk, just pumped a lot.  And that worked out well. 

I also just finished reading a pretty powerful book called Breaking Night.  And that is making me feel a bit more confidant as well. Check out my review here.

I’ve not yet read Elizabeth Murray’s book Breaking Night.

An excerpt from Tara McKelvey’s article “Unsentimental Education” about Breaking Night:

Graham Greene once said that writers should keep a chip of ice in their hearts. It’s sound advice, with exceptions. Despite her generous portrayal of her troubled family life, Liz Murray succeeds as an author. Few parents would seem to have been more deserving of contempt than the ones who raised her.

When Liz’s mother died of AIDS, she decided to take control of her own destiny and go back to high school, often completing her assignments in the hallways and subway stations where she slept. Liz squeezed four years of high school into two, while homeless; won a New York Times scholarship; and made it into the Ivy League. Breaking Night is an unforgettable and beautifully written story of one young woman’s indomitable spirit to survive and prevail, against all odds.

My take: I love reading a really great memoir.  I detest reading a badly written memoir.  A badly written memoir has a tendency to interpret events rather than staying in the moment.  Jeanette Walls has an amazing gift for staying in the moment and telling her story without moralizing or interpreting meaning.  Since then, I’ve read a scant (if any?) memoirs that have been so poignantly and honestly written.  Liz is one of those gifted authors in the same class as Jeanette Walls.

Liz is born in 1980 to a couple in their twenties who have already lived a life in the midst of drugs.  Liz is the younger sister of Lisa, two years older.  Both girls are exposed to the drug culture while toddlers.  In fact, Liz was born with drugs in her system.  Liz describes the scenes of waiting for the welfare check, her parents running to cash it, child in tow, and either mother or father risking life and limb to buy a hit or two.  Within a few days, the money is out and the cupboards are empty.  She vividly remembers the blood splatter on walls, food, and counter since they mainlined cocaine, the feeling of responsibility for causing her parents’ problems; if she’d only be better, this or that wouldn’t happen, and the constant draw to please.

Living in filth, hunger, and no parental supervision, Liz watches the family disintegrate, drops out of school, and finds herself living on the street as her mother dies of AIDS, her intelligent father becomes completely indigent, and she becomes a stranger to her sister.

The story is riveting as it introduces the reader to a way of life that is incredibly in the same country as I am.  Liz does not paint herself as a heroine, which I so appreciate.  She paints herself as a human being trying to survive and, ultimately, as a survivor.  She is not a saint, nor does she try to describe herself as such.  She writes of her own choices and consequences and accepts herself holistically.  She beautifully describes how she does not define herself by circumstance but by her decisions every day.  Actually, she expresses the idea much more articulately than I just did but, because it is an ARC, I can’t quote it and I’ve already loaned it out.

It is amazing to me that this book is written by a 27 year old woman.  Her writing skills far exceed what one would expect from someone of her age and academic experience.  As previously mentioned, she can be compared to Jeanette Walls.

Most touching to me, however, was the last couple of chapters as she describes her quest for education.  She saw her independence in education.  She describes interviews at alternative high schools and, ultimately, the alternative high school that accepts her not only academically, but also as Liz Murray, herself.  The staff and programs available to her provide her with a feeling of acceptance and safety.  They love her and honestly care about her.  It is through them she sees her potential and serves as a launching pad for who she is becoming.

On a personal note, I am a high school counselor, working at an alternative high school.  Unknowingly, Liz coached me on how to do my job.  While reading this book, I finally had to get my butt off the sofa and grab a colored pencil.  She articulately describes what qualities in her teachers (counselor) provided a nurturing environment.  In fact, I would recommend this book to any professional in the helping field; social work, teaching, counseling, nursing home aide, etc.  Liz gives an honest description from the other side of the desk.  She gave me a perspective I would not have gotten from a textbook or even from a student sitting on the other side of my desk.  They express appreciation but lack the articulation for describing what they truly need.

To be seen.  To be heard.  For someone to act.  To not pity but to provide a nurturing environment. Provide high expectations and to hold her accountable.  She tells of one teacher who called each student who did not show up to school that day and ask if the student would mind sharing with him the reason, ask for a commitment to come tomorrow, and he kept copious notes and held the student accountable.

Where will Liz Murray end up?  I don’t know but she’ll be great. 


Epilogue:  This book is now in the hands of my principal.

This week I was a slacker.  First of all, I’d like to give a shout out to my sister, Jene Marie.  Not because she ran a half marathon this morning but I want to thank her, from the bottom of my heart and gut for sharing the stomach bug with my family.  With school starting this week, I think she deserves a round a applause.

Three down, three to go.  Funny, three seems to be the magic number today.

This week I finished

This one has a giveaway attached.

I plan to read:

I also intend on reading A LOT of disclosure documents.

By the way, free public education fees for my 10th grade student?

$828