A friend and I read together. People, we are a rockin’ two-woman book group! Our main topic of interest is depictions of faith in children’s and young adult literature from all the decades. So we started out with Are You There, God, It’s Me, Margaret? by Judy Blume (1970) and have gone on from there. It’s a blast!
We’re not so rigid, though, that we don’t read other kinds of books, too, including adult. If one of us reads something that troubles or interests us, we ask the other one to read it as well and we talk about it on our next call. For example, she asked me to read The Many Daughters of Afong Moy by Jamie Ford to discuss the take on healing from generational trauma, and I asked her to read Private Way by Ladette Randolph to discuss the take on “don’t say gay” and also because it’s set in Lincoln, Nebraska (we’re both midwestern girls) and is part of the University of Nebraska Press’s Flyover Fiction series.
Our discussions build and expand, and one of us always has something to say that the other one hadn’t thought about.
So satisfying!
Right now we’re in the middle of the big and fun project of reading E.L. Konigsburg’s entire oeuvre. We started with Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth (1967), and are now up to The Dragon in the Ghetto Caper (1970). From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler (1968) is still amazing and so fun to read, for the adult characters, the way the kids take care of themselves in the museum, and the gorgeous writing. I think About the B’nai Bagels is my favorite so far, again for the adult characters, especially the mom, and for being real about how middle school boys may very well be interested in Playboy magazine.
Not all her books are as wonderful as Files or Bagels, and some of them are dated in ways that don’t hold up well, but there’s always something interesting to explore.
I recently found some notes I’d taken when we read A Proud Taste of Scarlet and Miniver (1973), and would like to share them here. They’re like a character study of me, just so indicitive of what I’m interested in, what delights me, what troubles me, what I’m probably going to be thinking about until the end of my days.
- p. 167 “(John was) snot and sinew” and raised with no music
- bastards are talked about “none my wife allows me to admit to”
- merchant class; charters; hospitals; roads – Eleanor of Aquitaine
- information on the roots of our culture and government, according to one viewpoint
- great man/woman theory
- woman working behind the scenes; courtly love, etc.
- p. 193 “girl who can control her own time can control a kingdom”
- p. 175 “great assortment of four-letter words”
- convenience vs. enclosure
- uniform systems
- measures and coins
- “rebellious”
- a huge amount of tragedy and violence glossed over – the lot of a leader
- p. 186 “save” the Earth for Christianity, then distribute it
After finding these notes, I thought about you, dearest bunnies, femme dragonflies, luna moths, adorable ones. What constant in your life grounds you and challenges you and brings you both deeper into yourself and out of yourself into the interesting and unknown? Knitting patterns, cookbooks, old sheet music, poetry, photos, art, quilting, support groups, oh, on and on!
And then, who in in your life to share those wonders with? Who do you bring yourself to for fabulous connection and a wider even more delicious discussion?
How marvelous, how good it is!
Take a moment, my always dears, hold still a moment my sugar plums: there you are, here we are! Ourselves in all our glory.
Fierce.
Fabulous.
Femme.
Many a Monday, I offer a Meditation for Queer Femmes, in the spirit of my maternal grandmother, Mimi, who was fabulous, and from whom I inherited her Meditations for Women. Would you like to offer up a Meditation of your own? I would love that! Send it along to me at thetotatalfemme@gmail.com
The Total Femme 