Lifestyle Gumbo: Celebs as Literary Figures, Hot or Not?

I ran across this slideshow from StyleList that pits modern day celebs as classic literary heroines. Here are my favorite looks from the shoot:

[Sienna Miller as Natasha from Lev Tolstoy's War and Peace]

[Marcia Cross as Marguerite from Alexandre Dumas' La Dame aux Camélias]

[Emily Blunt as Gwendolyne from Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest]

The campaign benefits Montblanc's "Signature for Good" campaign.

-- Whitney

Photos by Roger Moeniks for Montblanc

I Love a Good Gem!

Unpolished Gem: My Mother, My Grandmother, and Me
Alice Pung

Ok, UL world, I have a confession to make...ready? I am...a book cover judger. Yes, I will pick up a classic, and few new books on the block but I can't leave the library (yes library, I'm a student on a budget) without a random selection that simply caught my eye. With this being my tv-free week, (I encourage you all to try it sometime) I picked up this striking orange beauty and flipped to the back.


A quick glance and I learn about a family fleeing the Cambodian killing fields in search of the Australian dream. Wow, Oz, I've been there, never heard anyone call it the "Australian dream" though. I better read on. So I opened the intro and found:

"In 1980, my father, mother, grandmother, and Auntie Kieu arrived in Australia by airplane. They arrived with one suitcase. There was nothing in the suitcase, and the only person who was carrying a heavy load was my mother, because she was eight months pregnant with me."

I don't know about you, but I was intrigued. I was all the more inspired when I saw that the author is a young 28 and her story about being a second-generation immigrant is garnering much acclaim. Check it out.

~Melissa

And just a quick survey, am I the only one who judges books by their covers?

Oh, Zadie

[Zadie, clutching one of her books]

We're Sorry! Okay, I just wanted to get that out of the way before I commence to posting. We (as in the fabulously bookish/ridiculously busy bookworms of this blog) have completely neglected our project in favor of other delights, like starting new jobs, going to school, moving, and overall conquering the world.

So anyway, I hope that we'll be back to regular reading + posting glory soon, but until then I just wanted to quickly draw your attention to a Mrs. Zadie Smith. If you don't know Zadie, you definitely should. She's a young, biracial British author who's three novels have all been considered new classics. I've been trying to read her latest On Beauty for about a year now but always seem to get distracted. My sister (Miss Sweet Jones on The Real 7) read it and raved about it.

[On Beauty, by Zadie Smith]

Anyway, she is mentioned in a recent Guardian article about upcoming writers that actually live up to the hype. How often does that happen?

Maybe a new, fresh voice is just what we UL girls need to kickstart our book club?

-- Whitney

Bookish Chic: Recycled Book Journals

Just had to share these adorable, eco-friendly journals made out of drumroll....recycled book covers! They're fantastic and would make a great gift for a book-lover (hint, hint).

[ex libras anonymous book journals, $13]

[jack and janet journal]

Cute, huh?

Teeming with Excitement! If A Girl Can Be So...

As you all know I am a big fan of India writer Amitav Ghosh. His first novel The Glass Palace is never too far from my thoughts, and though I've tried delving into one of his other subsequent novels, The Circle of Reason, Ghosh's enormous imagination engulfed me to the point where I was exhausted by the language dealing with phrenology and had to stop. Recently, while listening to my favorite Internet radio site, NPR, I came across an interview Ghosh did for his latest book (drum roll please...) Sea of Poppies!.

I could spend forever just listening to him recount the process of writing this expansive novel, and you can too over here at NPR's All Things Considered Book Review with Amitav Ghosh. I don't quite know the gist of the novel, but NPR's introductory description "Imagine if Charles Dickens had signed on for a voyage with the Pequod" is enough for me. But if you're at all interested in the ties among India, Britain, and China during the opium trade in the 1800s then this novel promises to be a great read. An excerpt from 'Poppies' is also provided at the bottom of the NPR interview.

Okay, I'm heading out to Barnes & Noble to curl up with my copy and an apple crisp pouch. So good! Happy reading!

Nic

Election Fever, Literary Style

We Did It! Assuming all reader of this blog supported our President-Elect Barack Obama in the election (and if you didn’t I have no qualms telling you to leave now), this is certainly one of the best weeks in our lives. Being a complete bookworm, I immediately consulted Amazon to see what I should be reading up on as we usher in this new era of American History. This is what I came up with:

[Unbought and Unbossed, Shirley Chisholm]

Ms. Chisholm is a true black American icon. She was the first black woman elected to the U.S. Congress and the first black person to run for president of the U.S. Obama’s win surely owes this woman some credit.

[The Audacity of Hope. Barack Obama]

Yes our dear leader penned books even before he took control of the ’08 election. Hope is a huge part of Obama’s plans for our country, so I’d love to get a crack at where the head man’s head is at.

[The West Wing: Complete Series]

I hope that you’ve heard that Obama isn’t wasting any time tooling up for the inauguration. He’s already hired former Clinton staffer Rahm Emmanuel as the Chief of Staff for the new administration. Interestingly, Rahm inspired a character on the politi-drama The West Wing.

Yes We Did! Visit the new administration’s webpage at www.change.gov.

--Whitney

Uptown Literatti Shows Love to the First Family

We congratulate President Barack Obama on a monumental campaign that he led with diligence, compassion, and humility. Let us all make this a catalyst toward continuing in the direction of our dreams!

And should any of you be in D.C on January 20th, please join UL and friends as we stand should to shoulder with fellow Obama supporters at the Inauguration of our 44th President of the United States!

'A Tree' Brings Forth The Early American Immigrant's Tale

I started A Tree Grows in Brooklyn standing in the middle of the aisle in Barnes & Noble, and by page 3 I found myself sitting Indian-style on a little wooden chair nestled between two Japanese comic book shelves, hovered over the book like a die-hard Harry Potter fan trying to burn through the pages of the latest novel. (*I know you love Harry Potter, Whit. I’m the same way with Lord of the Rings :). But I digress.

I thoroughly enjoyed Betty Smith’s cool, easy way of telling a narrative in a very plain spoken manner. Through depicting what during the early 20th century was an everyday slice of life for the poor, Smith uses the voice of a young but very perceptive girl to truly breathe life and color into her narrative.

Of all the themes throughout the novel, I would like to address the one I have an affinity for: the immigrant experience and the class system by which it was affected. Part of what makes A Tree Grows In Brooklyn so unique is that although these very human experiences happened in some form or fashion to millions of individuals every year, the immigrant experience in New York—Brooklyn in particular—was very different from an immigrant living in California or even the Deep South. There were certain commonalities, of course: the country’s transition into war in Europe, adjusting to the language and the politics of the culture, etc. The immigrants in cities like New York and Williamsburg, Brooklyn faced unique challenges such as tenement apartments, low rents and equally low safety regulations. There was the fact that you had no land with which to farm and cultivate your own foods as in your native country or even the broad spaces of the American West or Midwest. Bread, meat, and vegetables, though staples in many homes were often times luxuries that could not be afforded or had to be consumed in moderation. For example, the Nolan’s plan a weekend to buy meat not because they have a surplus of money in which to splurge but because now they have just enough to where they can afford to include it. These staples had to be bought from the store, and in many cases for immigrants they were recycled. Crusted bread was kneaded into more bread that had to stretch through the week by adding water and a little heat.

There was something unique to the experience of Eastern and Western European immigrant groups living on top of one another and not always seeing eye-to-eye. During the early 1900s all the way through the Red Scare of the 1950s, Irish-Americans were against Jewish-Americans and Soviets were against Irish-German Americans, etc. There was plenty of conflict amongst these groups living in such close proximity, and with that melting pot came some form of tolerance that perhaps more “affluent” individuals not accustomed to immigrant life did not always have.

Betty Smith included some very important undertones to the immigrant experience, one being how immigrant parents and children were sometimes taken advantage of by the school system and made to feel inferior, perhaps because they didn’t understand the language, or more importantly because the teachers out right ignored their entitlements. Simple things like acknowledging a child so that he or she can go to the restroom, or feeling that you can whip a child because he or she will never tell his or her parents both contributed to this broken education system. There was also the issue of ignoring the flagrant problem of overcrowding and being deficient of enough resources to allow each child a chance to learn properly.

Think of the characters you despised most. It wasn’t the store keepers who took advantage of their younger customers (i.e the neighborhood kids) by taking more of their pennies than they should, or the man who hurled a tree at Francie or Neely, or even Katie when at times when she appeared unfeeling towards Francie as a young girl. Why not feel some amount of disdain for these individuals? Because all of these characters understood that making a life for oneself on a limited means was hard. Anything you could do to protect yourself or your children towards the harsh realities of living was necessary. The shopkeepers are living on a fluctuating income, too. Their coaxing more money from a child isn’t out of spite for that child but rather a defensive tactic to preserve their own means of living.

The people I disliked the most was the doctor and his harsh words whose meaning he thought would be lost on Francie, and his weak-minded nurse. It was the teacher who made Francie burn her “ugly words” and declared that someday Francie “would be thanking her.” It was the teachers who, having come from a background of similar poverty, now find it pertinent to look down on their pupils with disdain, and worse, pity.

The grand irony to this novel is that the American dream was being denied to the very group of people—immigrants—who, in retrospect, defined the American dream of creating something out of nothing and having it grow from generation to generation. Smith was wise enough to know that poverty worked two- fold: you can be poor in character and full in your pocket, or you can be poor in pocket and become resilient despite being so. Like the tree that still grew from cement, one could continue to grow through one’s inadequacies, if they were strong enough. Smith didn’t view the immigrants themselves as bad or misfortunate. Throughout her narrative she does a beautiful job of showing how many of the immigrants fought to make it work so that their children didn’t always have to live on limited means.

Francie Grows in Brooklyn

[A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith]

Before it's all said and done, you'll tire of hearing me say how much I heart coming of age stories. Something about witnessing a literary heroine go from bookish nerd to awkward young adult just pulls at my heartstrings.

So, I really, really wanted to like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith instantly. But, I didn't. Francie Nolan, the book's protagonist, was so similar to so many other girls in other books. She read. A lot. She wrote. A lot. She daydreamed, she was teased. In other words, she was the type of girl that writers love to write about. A lot.

As a result, I was pretty bored with the first 50-60 pages, but then I began to love Miss Francie and realize why the book is heralded as a classic, great book. It wasn't her charm or intelligence, it was her love for and commitment to Brooklyn, and everything in it, including her great, big family.

An overview: The Nolans are a working class, second generation Brooklyn family. Mommy Katie's a beautiful, hard-working and practical Austrian while Dad Jimmy is a fanciful, loving and kind of lazy Irishman. They've got two kids: Francie, who's smart and shy plus Neely, who's more outgoing, but doesn't have the patience for more intellectual pursuits. The family's central struggle is with poverty and Jimmy's alcoholism, which costs the family precious dollars and constantly chips at the dignity Katie tries so hard to preserve.

The tree referred to in the title is a Tree of Heaven, suspiciously planted in the concrete jungle of Brooklyn, but still managing to survive. This is, of course, akin to the Nolan's. Like Ashleigh pointed out, so much of the book is about the will to live, and for that life to be meaningful/dignified, which I think makes it so relatable to nearly everyone.

Throughout the book, Francie grows from a little, awkward girl, freezing in threadbare clothes and feeling inferior to prettier, cleaner girls that manage to get the teacher's attention, to a similarly awkward teenager forced to leave school and work reading newspaper headlines after her dad dies and her baby sister is born.

All in all, it was a really good read. I enjoyed Smith's acute attention to detail in recreating everything about her beloved Williamsburg, Brooklyn. From the way it looked, to the way it smelled, sounded, felt and how it was able to nurture a small, poor immigrant family.

What did you think about the book?

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Okay, better late than never, right?

I finished reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn quite a while ago. Life (and a few other good books) has gotten in the way of me writing about it, but here I go. I absolutely loved this book. Admittedly, when I started out I didn’t think I’d make it through the hundreds of pages I was facing, but once I got into it, the pages flew by. I sometimes measure how much I like a book by the feeling I get when I know I’m close to the end. In those last few pages I felt myself trying to read a little slower to savor those last moments on Francie’s journey. She was just such an amazingly relatable character that I really didn’t want to leave her. During the five year journey through some very formative years in Francie’s life, Betty Smith takes her readers through the raw emotions of a little girl not only on her path to womanhood, but in a struggle to survive her daily life. With the added struggles of poverty, isolation, and family breakdowns, Brooklyn is a tough place to grow up. In midst of all that, Smith still created a character in Francie that is able to shine through; her courage, her passion, and her spirit allow her to make it through, and cause the reader to cheer her on throughout the novel. You see Francie come into herself as time goes on and there are so many scenes that stick out in my head (think the vaccination scene), but there is one quote that was so beautiful to me I haven’t been able to get it out of my head since I read the book.

"Let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere-be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost."

Now, my journey hasn’t been as much of a struggle as Francie’s, but the last five years of my life have been full of so many huge life changes, especially this past year and a half that really shook up my world and set me off on a completely different path. I’ve learned to appreciate life in such a different way and to really be present in the moment and truly living life. In this passage, Francie basically put words to thoughts I’d been having on how I want to live my life, and I’m grateful to Betty Smith for giving that to me. It is such a simple line of thought, but I think its simplicity that makes it great. She’s not asking to be delivered from the life that she’s had to experience. She doesn’t ask to be beautiful or perfect or rich (and considering her life, could you really blame her if she did?), she just wants to live. And to live in such a way that she is something and every experience is meaningful. Who wouldn’t want that?

I think I’ll leave it at that and wait for my fellow bibliophiles share their thoughts. And if you haven’t read it, do it!! This really is a great piece of literature that every woman should read. And if anyone knows where I can get a copy of the movie on dvd, PLEASE let me know. My days of tapes and vcrs are long gone and I want to see the movie!