How do we connect to the past and from there, to each other?

Women of the Way: Embracing the Camino
Jane V. Blanchard
Purchase on Amazon.

When I picked up Women of the Way, Embracing the Camino, I expected a nice little travel log with a couple of descriptions here and there, and maybe a picture or two. That is not to say I expected anything bad of the book (quite opposite, actually). Honestly, I do not usually read travel memoires.

To be honest, reviewing for StreetWraith Press and Bay Side Stories has seen the most memoires that I have ever read. I am even picking up tips for that eventuality when I will write my own.

Writers learn a lot from reading. I highly recommend it.

Still, I expected good things within the pages. In addition to descriptions of the physical journey, I also expected some introspection and sharing of ideas and epiphanies. Jane is a friend of the site (disclosure time – by the way, she is the same Jane Blanchard you will find under The Network links to the left) and I find her blog to be interesting and informative.

What I did not expect was to ask a question.

Good books will often get me dwelling on them, long after I put down the book at the end of a chapter, but few of them prompt me to ask questions. Women of the Way sits among a rare few.

Memorial Day Reading

“But the thing about remembering is that you don’t forget.”
― Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Boy from Bothell, by Gene Olson
Available through: Amazon

War and Rumors of War

A New Historicism Analysis of Melissa Bowersock’s Marcia Gates: Angel of Bataan
by Lynn Perretta

Melissa Bowersock has written a moving memoir about an Army nurse and prisoner of war: Marcia Gates: Angel of Bataan. Bowersock had unique access to Marcia’s story. This was not merely a person chosen from the history books or a name pulled from rosters to be explored and uncovered. This was a family member, her aunt. She relates, primarily through exchanged letters, what happened when Marcia Gates was taken prisoner by the Japanese following the Battle of Corregidor and the fall of Bataan in 1942. The story follows not only what Marcia went through during internment but what her family went through, not knowing what had become of her or if she was even alive.

A memoir is interesting to consider from a New Historicism perspective, especially when written about a time already long past. New Historicism concerns itself with the reality of the author’s day and how that plays into the narrative that is presented. In this case, we have the events of the day being presented later, by an author removed from the action by place (the niece and granddaughter of the protagonists) and by time (the book is written almost seventy years later). What answers does this work give to New Historicism’s most common questions and how does this work fit into the wealth of works about the World War II era?