i believe there has only been the one thing that i have learned from my english education classes), it is that you cannot CANNOT just throw a reader into a complex and intricate work of literature. things need to be laid out and understood about how to go about reading things that delve so deep into the inner workings of the human psyche of society. This is my problem with the O for Oprah book club picks- let the first book on the list be a book about how to read a novel properly and I will back off a little (only a little though because I really do despise the very ground that woman walks on). Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons was touching at the end. The whole thing felt like every other southern white novel expose that i'd read before but the end really made me feel two feelings: good that this little girl got her luck and horrible for thinking 'huh, maybe i am lucky to have not been abused, passed on several times through houses of crazy relatives, seeing three people die, thinking colored could be passed on through germs, not being able to cry because grandmas yell at you to cry like your bastard daddy who killed your mother, yada yada yada. but then this girl ellen struck a chord. she had one or two pages left to get to me and by golly she did. she says, "Now I can turn out to be different too. I could have been a hobo. If my new mama and her girls had been gone on a vacation there is no telling where old Ellen might have turned up.
If I think about my life like that I can see how lucky I am. "
Damn. we should all be so lucky to realize our luck. *
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