What are you a product of?
There is a line regarding midwives that goes: You are the product of your last ten births.
Meaning, whatever your last 10 births were like, lovely and peaceful, harrowing, exhausting, etc. that is the midwife you currently are. And of course, subject to change.
I was thinking the same is true for fiction. I've been devouring books lately and it has been great. I know that soon I'll have to drop my love of fiction once again as I prepare to knuckle down to months of intense studying. It's amazing how your current read helps (or doesn't help) shape your day. Whichever it is, it seems to play a part.
I just finished Susan Minot's Lust and Other Stories. She is an excellent writer. I expected late 20s Sex and The City type of stuff and it was along those lines to some degree. But more on the Waspy side. The whole book carried with it this underlying upper-class-ness (yep, so literay, me), that made me a bit pissy. I couldn't shake it. Just read the stories, I told myself. They're holding your attention, they are well-written...but the whole thing reeked of (and here I go getting cynical~ my strongest and worst trait): Waa, waa, I'm rich and go to fab parties and no one understands me! *pout*pout*pout*
I'm terrible. I hate that I have such class issues.It's plagued me my whole life. And while I get on just fine most days, and I think I have it together and I've out-grown my issues with the wealthy, all it takes is one slim book of short stories to set me off and prove I've not changed as much as I would've liked.
Damn.
Maybe it's because this book followed up my having read the book about the autistic woman who was raised by a very poor, working-class family.
The other day I found myself pissed about an acquaintance turning to me and asking if I went to *any* college. Or did I just graduate from 8th grade? Tee hee, ha ha. WTF? But I went along with it and the "white trash" words came out and I was pissed at myself for laughing along with it. Enough. Enough already.
So I have to watch what I read right now. I'm falling too deeply into the books I'm reading.
I am definitely a product of the last 10 books I've read.
posted by Mid-life Midwife at
12:33 PM
2 Comments:
just remember that you are smarter than most folks that went to college. and you didnt waste a fuck load of money for pretty much a pieve of paper. i know you know this and it is not easy living in a town of 3 colleges so that question seems to roll off the tongue of most. maybe coming up with a stock answer you give folks when they ask that question ... just a thought. college aint shit i tell you its overrated crap. and anyone who values it as a standard is covering for their own insecurities.
11:38 PM
thank you for the reply. i actually don't care about the college, degree or no-degree thing.
this post was written as a result of the book i had just finished. it was just the *tone* of it.
and the white trash thing~ there's a huge difference between growing up poor and being white trash. WT is more about living without dignity, without values. i hate being lumped into that category (from my childhood). it breaks my heart b/c i don't think my mom EVER worried we were WT. she came from a middle/working class family and had a lot of good values. the house was always spotless and you treated guests well (even if you were feeding them the scanty dinner you'd prepared).
so i was just in this fiction-caused funk and pissiness...not about not having gone to college (my belief in homeschooling and aprenticeship as learning is as strong as ever), but more about assumptions from the wealthy. there are so many shades of gray on down the spectrum. well, in both directions. and its no more fair for me to judge the wealthy.
but thank you for the re-enforcement anyhow. :)
8:30 AM
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home