My experience reading Blue Jay's dance has really led me to consider the following questions:
1. How can I step into her field of vision without having had her same experiences?
2. What is the goal of her memoir?
To answer the first question I've concluded that it's probably actually best that I don't have a personal relation to her topic. Because of this I can remain unbiased.
To answer the second question is more difficult. Everyone may have different intentions when writing a memoir. Which is labeled as non fiction. But it's about your own personal life.
I wonder if when one writes about their own life whether it's sometimes appropriate to remove ones self from certain situations when one writes about them?
It seems like Erdrich specifically picks situations in which it is more appropriate to keep herself involved. Everything is happening in her own personal thoughts, and thoughts are always our own, and can't be criticized when nobody else hears them aloud.
Her book is filled with observations, and dare I say, no dialogue.
I don't think her memoir should be criticized. I think how she writes is fair. While she makes statements about how motherhood is, I believe they are all only just personal to her.
Why does she publish them? It's only human to not want to in real time verbally express every detailed thought that we have, but at the same time want others to relate and know what we are thinking.
I love this about memoirs. They are made up of thoughts that have actually gone through our heads, thoughts that are structured the way humans think internally and are not edited.
Here is a wonderfully crafted example of a thought I'm sure all of us have had...
"I make a hieroglyph of my desires, assign grand meanings to my wishes, yet I'm miserably aware it's all brain chemicals, moth pheromones, cravings that can be undone with more east than i would like to allow." (79)
In a real life conversation I might say to someone else...Do you ever think about how we feel things because of chemicals in our brain? But in my head, I'm actually thinking so rapidly and so detailed, just like a memoir.
It's interesting that so much of class has been focused around credibility...
When we read wild, this was a big issue for me, because it infuriated me to read such a story that felt so embellished to the point that it was like a scene from a movie...(It's ironic that it WAS made into a movie; she really laid the ground work for that one)
But with Blue Jay's Dance, how could you ever translate this to a dramatic screen interpretation? You couldn't. Not unless it was perhaps extremely unconventional. With nature scenes set to classical music.
This book is like life. There is a chapter for each thought, and each thought sparks new thoughts.
It is a piece of her. Many chapters titles reveal her love of animals, her relation to them. She juxtaposes wildlife to her domestic life. It has it's thrills and it's low points. Life is intertwined with other life.
To be honest, I'm not concerned with it's factual validity. I believe that with writing that it's impossible to come completely outside of yourself.
If her book is somewhat false and messy, it just brings more validity to it. Because validity doesn't always lie in the facts.
1. How can I step into her field of vision without having had her same experiences?
2. What is the goal of her memoir?
To answer the first question I've concluded that it's probably actually best that I don't have a personal relation to her topic. Because of this I can remain unbiased.
To answer the second question is more difficult. Everyone may have different intentions when writing a memoir. Which is labeled as non fiction. But it's about your own personal life.
I wonder if when one writes about their own life whether it's sometimes appropriate to remove ones self from certain situations when one writes about them?
It seems like Erdrich specifically picks situations in which it is more appropriate to keep herself involved. Everything is happening in her own personal thoughts, and thoughts are always our own, and can't be criticized when nobody else hears them aloud.
Her book is filled with observations, and dare I say, no dialogue.
I don't think her memoir should be criticized. I think how she writes is fair. While she makes statements about how motherhood is, I believe they are all only just personal to her.
Why does she publish them? It's only human to not want to in real time verbally express every detailed thought that we have, but at the same time want others to relate and know what we are thinking.
I love this about memoirs. They are made up of thoughts that have actually gone through our heads, thoughts that are structured the way humans think internally and are not edited.
Here is a wonderfully crafted example of a thought I'm sure all of us have had...
"I make a hieroglyph of my desires, assign grand meanings to my wishes, yet I'm miserably aware it's all brain chemicals, moth pheromones, cravings that can be undone with more east than i would like to allow." (79)
In a real life conversation I might say to someone else...Do you ever think about how we feel things because of chemicals in our brain? But in my head, I'm actually thinking so rapidly and so detailed, just like a memoir.
It's interesting that so much of class has been focused around credibility...
When we read wild, this was a big issue for me, because it infuriated me to read such a story that felt so embellished to the point that it was like a scene from a movie...(It's ironic that it WAS made into a movie; she really laid the ground work for that one)
But with Blue Jay's Dance, how could you ever translate this to a dramatic screen interpretation? You couldn't. Not unless it was perhaps extremely unconventional. With nature scenes set to classical music.
This book is like life. There is a chapter for each thought, and each thought sparks new thoughts.
It is a piece of her. Many chapters titles reveal her love of animals, her relation to them. She juxtaposes wildlife to her domestic life. It has it's thrills and it's low points. Life is intertwined with other life.
To be honest, I'm not concerned with it's factual validity. I believe that with writing that it's impossible to come completely outside of yourself.
If her book is somewhat false and messy, it just brings more validity to it. Because validity doesn't always lie in the facts.
You raise an interesting point here about how memoir is a vehicle for us to shape and share our innermost thoughts that we likely don't share in most conversations--and this has a certain kind of intimacy and truthfulness to it. I'm curious about your different reactions to credibility in Wild and BJD--why do you think you had different reactions? This seemed to be an issue of concern to several classmates, too.
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