WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

 

 

I came across a new-to-me word while doing a puzzle the other day.  The word was “heteronym.”  Here is the most straightforward definition I could find:

 

“[O]ne of two or more homographs (such as a bass voice and bass, a fish) that differ in pronunciation and meaning.”   - Merriam-Webster.

 

I tell you this, not to present you with a word that might also be new to you, but to share my geek-ish excitement over the discovery. 

 

I experienced a similar delight this morning, when, once again, working on a puzzle, I learned that temperament has an “a” in it.  I hadn’t known this. I did know that temperature had an “a” in it, but English spelling is a tricky business, and it had not occurred to include an “a” in temperament.

 

As you may by now have surmised, I love words.  

 

I have loved words ever since I can remember -- ever since I sat in an overstuffed chair in my childhood living room, sounding out “See Dick run.  See Jane run.” ** This is one of those vivid memories, complete with physical details -- I can see and feel the nubby, brownish material of the chair -- that stick in the mind.  Who knows why?  I call them snapshot memories – nothing to surround them – they just loom out of a black hole. 

   

Here is a snapshot memory of me that a friend shared recently:  

 

It is maybe 40 years ago.  We are walking across Tenth Avenue in downtown Portland, when I ask her what she thinks about while walking around.  She, a yoga teacher, tells me she is always looking at people and thinking about whether their bodies are in alignment.  When she asks me the same question, I tell her I am usually thinking about words.  

 

I don’t remember this exchange, but it absolutely rings true. It is of a piece with my own word-related memories.  Here is one:

 

I am in my early twenties and am at the home of a much-older couple with whom I am friends.  I am telling the man, whom I much admire, about a dream or series of dreams, and I say, “They were just short vignettes, really.“   

 

Here’s the thing.  I pronounce “vignette” as “vidge-net.”  

 

Decades later, I can still remember the look that flickered across his face.  Was it surprise?  Suppressed laughter?  The man in question, being older and wiser and quite kind, refrained from saying anything. Bless him.

 

It was probably several years before I learned the word’s proper pronunciation.  Sadly, the passage of time had not erased the memory of my friend’s look.  I was retrospectively embarrassed.  

 

What can I say?  I had never studied French, but was an avid reader, scooping up words as I read.  I had a vast reading vocabulary.  That is, I had learned a great many words that I had never heard spoken.  With the passage of time, this memory no longer brings embarrassment, only compassion for a young woman who loved words, whether or not she could pronounce them.

 

One more memory.  I am in elementary school.  I am nine or ten.  For homework, we are to make a list of homonyms (not to be confused with the aforementioned heteronyms). This is right up my alley. But, do I stop at making the list?  Oh, no.  I am so pleased with my list that I staple it to piece of colored construction paper and staple another piece of construction paper on top as a cover, upon which I write these words:  

 

“Even though I am a busy teenager, I always have time for homonyms.”  I can still see the stick figure of a teenager that I drew alongside these words.  In memory, her skirt is a triangle, and she is carrying a purse.  I can still see myself proudly handing this creation to my teacher.  What was I thinking?  What did I imagine being a teenager would be like? Words and a purse, apparently.

 

As a matter of fact, I remained a word geek throughout my teenage years and beyond.  I memorized miles of poetry during high school and college – not by trying, but by osmosis, by reading the ones I loved, over and over again.  (To this day, I can recite many of these poems, but don’t ask me what I read last week . . .)

 

My love of words has not changed in the decades since I memorized all that poetry.  I am most happy when I am reading, writing, or thinking about words. Looking back, I see them as a major throughline of my life. 

 

And you?

 

What is it that has followed you throughout your life?  Where is it that you feel most aligned with yourself? 

 

                                                Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

 

** Books for early readers have greatly improved since the 1950s.  If you are too young to remember Dick and Jane books, be grateful.  

 

 

 

 

 

READING TO SAVE OUR SOULS

Several times this week I sat down to finish a post about reading.  This was to be my long-delayed Part II to an earlier post.  But it had been a terrible week, and I couldn't settle to it.  I couldn't get the image of that white cop with his knee on the neck of a black man out of my mind.  I couldn't stop seeing that white woman in Central Park going off on a black man for asking her to leash her dog in an area where leashes were required.  I kept asking myself - How is it possible that a black man was arrested for allegedly trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill and the white man with his knee on the black man's neck wasn't restrained by the cops who were with him?  And why wasn't the cop who kept his knee on the black man's neck after said black man had lost consciousness taken into custody immediately?  Let's go over that again:  A black man arrested (and killed) after allegedly trying to pass a fake $20 bill and a white man allowed to walk away after causing the black man's death.

Whose thumb is on the scale of justice?

Yes, I know the cop has now been charged, but the other three cops who stood by have not.  And why wasn't the woman in Central Park charged for making a false police report?  There should be consequences for white people who call the police because a person of color is conducting his or her life within their sight.

So, getting back to the post I was trying to write - I couldn't finish it.  It felt frivolous in the face of these events.  And then it occurred to me that reading (and writing about reading) isn't frivolous.  While reading can be pure entertainment, it can also open otherwise unseen worlds for us.

Books can teach us if we are willing to learn.

And so, I have put aside my unfinished post for the time being, and will approach reading from a different perspective right now.

A while back, I wrote a post about race relations.   There, I addressed women of color to see if we could find a way to talk.  To see how white women could be of help in the fight for racial justice.  Now, I think it is much more important for me to address white women (and white men).  Black people have enough on their plates.

So, because I can't think of anything else to do with my anger and sorrow right now, I'm going to tell you about the books that have helped to open my eyes to the effects of systemic racism in America.

But first let me admit that these books were not front and center in my reading life until recently.

I began my life reading that which was fed to me.  I don't remember reading any books by or about black people in high school.  I read dozens of books - fiction and non-fiction - in my years as a college English major, most of them written by dead white men about issues of concern to white men.  (There was nothing wrong with most of these books in and of themselves.  What was wrong was the dearth of books written from other perspectives.) I did read Malcom X and Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, but not for any class. In the years after that, I read more and more books by and about women. A few, but not many, of these books were by or about people of color.

It wasn't until three or four years ago that I began to seek out books about the experiences of black and brown people in America.**  Some of these I read with my book group and some on my own. I would like to use this post to share a list of some of these books. I do not share this list by way of self-congratulation. I share it because we cannot break down systemic racism unless we understand it.  I hope you will consider reading some of these important books, if you have not already done so, and that you will share your book suggestions in the comments. (Most of these are  newish books; some are older books that I have recently read.)

FICTION

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Kindred by Octavia Butler

Sula by Toni Morrison

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson (prose-poem)

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

The Bluest Eye by Tone Morrison

NONFICTION

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (a black man's letter to his son, describing racism in America)

We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates (a collection of articles written during Barack Obama's presidency)

Stamped From the Beginning:  The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X Kendi

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin (Baldwin's essays about growing up in Harlem)

Becoming by Michelle Obama (autobiography)

The Hemingses of Monticello by Annette 
Gordon-Reed (the story of Thomas Jefferson's "other family")

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson (about author's remarkable work representing death-row inmates)

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson (the story of the migration of African-Americans from the Jim-Crow south to northern cities)


Photo by John-Mark Smith on Unsplash

** I shared this quote from Maya Angelou in an earlier post and I will share it again now:  "Do the best you can until you know better.  Then when you know better, do better."

SWIMMING IN BOOKS: My Life As a Reader (Part I)

      When I started thinking about this post, it was my intention to tell you what reading had meant to me as a child.  How I could still see myself at age five or six, sitting in an overstuffed chair in my family's small living room, a pile of learn-to-read books on the arm of the chair, feeling the world shift and open as I deciphered the words on the page of each new book.  How, after I had conquered the rudiments of reading and gained some prowess, I would tag along with my best friend and her mother on their weekly trip to the public library, where I would carefully select five or six books, then take them home (barely able to contain my excitement during the ride) and hole up in my room to read them.  How, when I was about eleven, another friend's mother had chided me for reading what she called an adult book--A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. (I'm still scratching my head over that one.) How reading allowed me to hide in plain sight, to slip off into another time or place while the adults around me assumed the presence of my body meant I was there in the room with them.  How in a chaotic household, presided over by an angry father, reading saved my life.

      And then I read Maria Popova's post on the subject on her Brain Pickings blog and realized that everything there is to say about reading as solace for a sad and lonely child had already been said.  So, on this subject, I will simply leave you with these words from Mary Oliver as a teaser for Popova's post: "standing . . . deep inside books. . . can re-dignify the worst-stung heart."  

     I will today write instead about the role of books in my adult life.  The sad and lonely child is long gone, but the comfort, the sheer pleasure of reading remains.  The child who could not get enough of reading has morphed into the woman who continues to anticipate each new book with excitement and to feel anxious if her pile of yet-to-be-read books is not tall enough to topple.  Adulthood with its responsibilities and distractions notwithstanding, I read 75 books last year. The year before I read 74.  And before you jump to the conclusion that I spend half of every day lounging in an easy chair, let me disabuse you of that notion.  I would guess that of the books I read last year, I read about 25 while sitting in that easy chair or at the kitchen table or in a waiting room.  The rest -- and here is the secret to being able to read so many books despite the obligations of adulthood -- the rest I listened to.  

     Yep.  Ear buds firmly in place, I listened to book after book.  I listened while walking.  While gardening. While knitting.  While cooking.  While driving.  While waiting to fall asleep.  While not sleeping in the middle of the night.  

     In short, since the advent of audio books, I have conducted my life while reading. 

     I can hear some of you asking, "But is that really reading?"  I don't know.  Is cross-country skiing really skiing?  But I take your point.  I used to be a print snob too.  And then one day about 25 years ago, a book I had ordered from the library showed up in cassette-tape form--yes, that was the audio-book delivery system at the time.  As it happens, I was home with a cold or the flu or some such life-interrupting condition, and decided to give the tapes a try. I put on my my great big headset and lay there in my weakened state, letting the words wash over me, periodically rousing myself to change the cassette.  It was wonderful.

     
      I soon discovered that I didn't have to be sick to enjoy a book in audio form.  For the most part, the readers are terrific.  Remember how lovely it was to be read to as a child? The pleasure remains.  On the rare occasion where a reader disappoints, it is easy enough to return the audio version and seek out the same book in print.  And access has gotten easier over time.  Cassette tapes long ago gave way to CDs, after which CDs gave way to library apps.  These days, I have only to order a book from my library through the Libby app, and it will appear on my phone, as if by magic.  (I am convinced that it is magic.  Should there be many people wanting the book, I can place a hold using Libby, and the book will show up on my phone when it becomes available, courtesy of the same magic.) What could be simpler?  (Ten years ago, I traveled to Europe with a friend.  We each brought one paperback book.  When I finished mine, she started tearing off chunks of her book as she finished them, and handing them to me.  Thanks to easily portable audio and ebooks, such desecration is no longer necessary.)

      I am happy to report that listening to audiobooks has led me to read a wider range of books than ever before.  My time for reading printed books is limited, so I am careful where I spend that time. Audio books are another matter.  In the early days, when I had to satisfy myself with whatever cassette tapes or CDs were available on my library's shelves, I discovered books I would not otherwise have picked up.   My willingness to try new genres in audiobook form led to my trying out mysteries.  I would never have otherwise picked up Tana French or Louise Penny or Jacqueline Winspear.  What a loss that would have been.

      And then there is this.  When reading in bed, it is much safer to listen to a fat book than to hold one.  Take Dickens, for instance.   I like to return to Bleak House every few years, but if I were to fall asleep while reading and drop the book, I might injure myself.  Instead, I simply pop in my earbuds, turn on my book, and wait for sleep to arrive.  And on those nights when sleep is elusive--well, at least I'm getting some reading done without turning on a light.  

     Of course, I still love to crack open the spine of a "real book," and to settle in for whatever is contained in its pages, and I will continue to read in this fashion for as long as my eyes and my brain hold out.  But there is no more print snobbery for me.  Thanks to a combination of print and audio books, I am able to swim through my life on a tide of reading.  Sometimes the books are life rafts and sometimes they are guides, friends, entertainers, or teachers.  But always they have been my companions.

       I believe my childhood self would approve.