In The Book That Changed My Life: 71 Remarkable Writers Celebrate The Books That Matter Most To Them, Dorothy Allison explains how The Bluest Eye taught her the power of words:
“The Bluest Eye made it plain. The world could be different if truth was told in such gorgeous and stark ways.
I want to do that, I thought. Not, I can do that. I could not imagine a world in which I could put voice to all the things I thought and remembered and imagined about being poor and hated and used and denied. But oh Lord, if I could, if I could make a story that would touch someone else’s heart the way this one touched mine. If I could repay a tenth of what I owed this storyteller, this brave and wonderful woman on the page, I would give anything.
I would give anything—and will. This is a debt that passes to the reader—to take up the reader—to take the story up and remake the world. It changed me utterly It changes me still. It remade my life.”
What books have had similar impacts on you? I’m thinking about this while I read this book. For me there have been many short and long, fiction and non-fiction, poetry and prose. Among them are A Wrinkle In Time, Even Covwgirls Get the Blues, Leaves of Grass, the poetry of e.e. cummings, The Golden Notebook, “The Story of An Hour”, “The Art of Losing”, The Boxcar Children mysteries, James and the Giant Peach and more. You?
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Some past posts to keep you making time:
Adjust your pace accordingly.
It’s about the routine and how you shake up the routine
There are things you will have to give up
See it to achieve it
Washing the dishes
Write slowly
A celebration of the pause
Monday, a run through the driving rain
Zen accident
Get out of your comfort zone