I am tired--but why?

In my poetry workshop class, we recently had a prompt assignment to write a maximization poem—a poem that exhausts both the writer and the reader. Change Me Into Zeus’s Daughter felt like a maximization memoir. The present-time sections moved slowly, weighed down by every single painful event in the speaker’s childhood. The work is beautifully written, with bright details that work against dark reality. But it is exhausting to read; it felt like there was not much withheld. It was also probably exhausting for Moss to write which proves her to be committed to storytelling and sharing. Perhaps this feeling comes from the directness of the writing—the wash of the speaker’s experience over the reader. In the section of pg80 when the kids really want to go home but the father is drinking with Uncle, they already understand that they are going to be there for many more hours even though they want so badly to return home. This scene conveys the agentlessness they have as kids, time is not their own, they’re on their father’s wayward time which often means staying in places they don’t want and having to be in the car while the father is drunk driving, “He was really drunk, reeling when he walked to the car, but we had seen him a lot worse; he could still drive. He slumped in the seat a minute with his foot on the brake, cleared his throat, pulling onto the road and eased down the street at a snail’s pace” (Moss 88). They seem to understand this, and prefer when he drives exceedingly slow rather than aggressively trying to race other cars. For me as a reader, this scene was stressful to read even though there was a strong sense that this was a routine for the kids that they understood as dangerous but had somehow survived and continue to survive.

There are several stark moments in the book that reinforce the lack of agency children have against their parents, “You belong to me and I’ll do with you what I want” (21). It’s clear that the father considers his children as possessions, and in turn treats them as objects to be thrown around and discarded, “Unless, which often happened, he decided you didn’t belong to him at all” (21). The idea of possessing the body of other humans is really disturbing and functions as a justification for child abuse. Throughout the speaker’s life this cycle of possession—discard happens routinely and perhaps leads to the overwhelming exhaustive experience. The fact that the cycle doesn’t end until the father dies, and maybe not even after since living in memory, alone is enough to wear out the reader.

-Andrea

Structural challenges in Change Me Into Zeus’s Daughter

Dear class comrades,

There are many pressing content and thematic elements to explore in Moss’, Change Me Into Zeus’s Daughter, but, because of where I am currently situated in relationship to the preparation of my own thesis (the first draft of which is due early next week) I will be focusing on some structural elements of this work that I struggled with while reading.

1) Episodes and narrative arc

After reading this work slowly over the last few days and then consuming approximately 160 pages in one sitting today, I feel absolutely flooded, as though there is not one inch left of me available for story. The feeling is not pleasant and I’m thinking about the way in which the structure of this text is informing the sensation.

This work (as seems to be common in memoirs, inclusive of my own) is built of episodes that at times open up onto each other, and that are at times separated in the form of distinct chapters. To differing levels of success these episodes serve to build world, character, relationships, conflict, tension, within the family, and between the family and the world/s in which they lived. While the opening of the work at times feels slow, and laborious, occasionally overly detailed, or repetitive, as the work unfolds the emotional register is cast high. In a sense it is a litany of wounds opened, that in their truth I’m sure, and in their rendering here, for the most-part do not heal. (Here I’ll own again that I’m not quite finished the book yet, so maybe something shifts that I haven’t yet arrived at).

In reflecting on Winterson’s memoir I wonder how a more active meaning-making, present-time, adult narrator would have served this work by both honouring the complexity and pain that is made visible through the episodes, while also offering some kind of broader narrative journey that gives a greater purpose to the episodes beyond witnessing of events. It seems there are attempts at this – the struggle with the desire to be beautiful, the use of Alice in Wonderland. This feels particularly salient to me as I am thinking through what are the structural pieces that will support readers of my work in agreeing to venture from one, often difficult, episode to the next.

This leads me to:

2) Tracking time

The transitions in this text between episodes are at times profoundly inorganic. For example I often found myself searching for indicators of age. While I appreciated the ways memories unfolded onto each other, Moss was very inconsistent in offering age/time markers. This compounded the overwhelming impact of the episodes; and perhaps that was part of her strategy, to produce a sensation of disorientation within the reader, highlighting both the static dysfunction (though it did ebb and flow) and mapping the way in which the sensation of time is often altered as a result of PTSD. The impact however was that there was very little room for breath in the text, which for me would have allowed the elements of the story to land more clearly, and squarely into my heart, which I think is ultimately where a writer wants to connect with their reader, first; at least that’s true for me.

3) Parenthetic and italicized text

I wondered about the decision to utilize both parenthetic and italicized text in the work. Again these strategies felt forced and drew me out of the story.

Part of what wasn’t working with the italicized text was the tense jumping, as takes place for example on page 41 and 42 during the bathroom makeover scene. It seemed as though in the writing Moss was wrestling with committing to a present time narrative voice, or trusting that in simply allowing her characters to act in the time-space in which they were situated, that the internal world of those characters, particularly little Barbara, would be made sufficiently visible. The italics in their very visual lean, were attempting to lean us into the little Barbara’s worldview/experience/childlike state of meaning-making and internal dialogue; my experience however was that these moments dragged the text, at times over-explained what was already obvious, and patromized, both the character and the reader. Sometimes it felt as though this strategy was being utilized to round up information as on page 45, “How dare he act like a civilized human being with her… When we were kids, if we happened upon a dog that didn’t fit his ideal, he waited until we loved it and then shot it.” It seemed like these moments in the text were at times used to offload a strong feeling or judgment that she, as in Moss the person, needed expressed, which in effect drew me away from sympathy with the narrator, not because I wasn’t already down with her cause, but because it did feel forced. I wonder if part of what this gestures to was the challenge in determining what episodes to develop, and trusting that enough “information” about characters would be revealed through those episodes. In my own approach to reading and writing I am currently moving away from what has been a pretty strict adherence to the show-don’t-tell ethic, which I think is important to mention as I share this reflection.

In terms of the parenthetic text, the impact for me was that they broke the fourth wall, which can work, but was unnecessary. These moments of catching-us-up on details ie. page 94, “(Dad used the word immaculate to describe anything he though was particularly fine…)” could have simply existed as part of the text that preceded and followed. That sensation of whispering to us simply made me more aware of Moss the writer and drew me away from the story. In more than one occasion what showed up in parentheses was demonstrated through action later, so the impact was that I didn’t feel trusted by Moss to be paying attention to the story enough to catch those threads.

4) Narrative credibility

There were some challenges I had with trusting the narrator. For example early on in the text we are told that she witnesses her mother cry only once – after the death of the baby – however I believe we see Dorris weep on at least 4 occasions following (up to where I’ve arrived in the work). Further, Moss writes on page 130, “We had left so much of ourselves so many times that I hoarded all of my things in a sturdy cardboard box.” I felt confused at this moment as based on my understanding of the story they had until this point moved twice. The impact was that this then read as an exaggeration. The reason I question this is not to question the actuality of events or the truth of the feeling of the experience but to rather identify the gap between the way in which the events are being recounted and the emotional impact as it is being mapped.

Moss time and place.

            I’m not quite finished with Change me into Zeus’s Daughter, but I defiantly have some things to say about Barbara Robinette Moss’s work. It is hard not to read this and compare it to last week’s reading. I couldn’t help thinking about what Elmaz said last week about this being a memoir by an actual memoirist rather than someone well know who is now writing this memoir. I don’t know about anyone else, but for me, I could tell the difference form the very beginning.

            Because we aren’t fans of this author who are chomping at the bit to read this memoir, Moss has to grab are attention and keep it there. She does this from the first sentence, “Mother spooned the poisoned corn and beans into her mouth, ravenously, eyes closed, hands shaking.” Already we are invested into what is happening. She drops us right in and we now need to see what is happening, not because we know her, but because we want to get to know her. Also the use of the word “ravenously” makes the stakes of this opening sentence so much higher.

            One thing that I am seeing Moss doing very well is her command of the room she is in. What I mean about this is her ability to paint the picture of the room she and her siblings are in. We know what each of them are doing at any given time, as if we are a fly on the wall watching the events. Her ability to do this without using the pacing and tension of the scene was amazing. One scene where I have noticed this so far comes when the father comes back from being gone after a while, “John wrapped his arms around Dad’s legs and held him prisoner, countinuosuly screaming, ‘Dad! Dad! Dad!’…’Look, Dad!’ David shouted, popping him on the shoulder and pulling up his sleve to show his muscle….’Dad! Dad!’ I shouted, jumping up and down….. Alice and sweetpea remained at the table, staring. Alice—her spoon frozen in mid-air, a piercing bitterness in her eyes—glanced at me briefy, then returned her gaze to Dad without lowering the spoon.” (69). This scene has a lot going on, like many of them, and Moss is able to keep us in the room letting us see everyone’s actions. It is very affective and helps us see each one of her family members as their own people.This technique is also effective to make the “3am” sections more affective because, like I said, it puts us in the room with her, we almost become a sibling especially with the use of the “we”

            The way Moss moves through time is interesting. This memior jumps around in time starting off with a very early memory than flashing forward to the father’s funeral. This is important because it allows us as readers to see the impact of what is about to happen to the children. It makes the dynamics of that scene so powerful because it is the aftermath at the beginning. It also makes the scenes and memories that are coming more powerful as our minds can’t help but think, oh that’s why Stewart is an alcoholic, that’s why Janet still loves of the farther, that’s why Barbara seems like a mother figure. It is really quite brilliant. It doesn’t take the mystery out of it because the journey is the point.

Best,

CF Pinto 

Moss and Hostility

Barbara Robinette Moss’ memoir, Change Me Into Zeus’s Daughter was so utterly complex, and yet there is appreciation in the way that she gives the account of her youth in Alabama. The technique of flipping from the past to the present is evident, and those moments where the reader sees the perspective of her siblings, all grown up, works well in contrast with the way she describes them as kids. The perspective is imaginative and delightful at times, but then shifts to more darker stories as the novel progresses. What was extremely puzzling was the fact why Moss’ mother put up with her abusive, violent husband for so long. She was an interesting, sweet, maternal character, and the opposite of what the author seems to see in her father. There seemed to be a recurring theme of rules, and how they are kept, and how they are broken. An example of this is when her father forces her to write with her right hand, even though she was a lefty. It was a painful and tortuous act that he inflicted; a strict rule that her mother helped her to break by saying that it was just a “game” and she could write with her (dominant) left hand when she was not with her dad. I this way, the mother broke the “rules” or boundaries laid out by the father, and she tended to do this in different ways later in the book.

In the text, the mother seems to put up with the father’s drunkenness and disruptive, if not dangerous, behavior. One night, her husband randomly shoots at the dresser? But something else might have been going between them behind closed doors. Moss’ mother keeps saying to her children, “‘It’s alright, […] Shhhh, shhhh, shhhh. It was just an accident. Everything’s alright.’” (97) and after that she makes up a story about a mouse being the drawer, and her husband was trying to shoot at it instead of telling her kids the truth. This shows how imaginative and creative she it, creating stories to lessen the fright of the situation at hand. She seems to “sweep everything under the rug” in the beginning childhood memories of Barbara living in Alabama. Her mother is an intelligent woman, and there’s a scene when the author lists all the books and furniture and items that her mother owned when they moved into the new house they were renting in Birmingham, Alabama. She owned (and read) over 50 books, which seemed to a large amount, including all the religious texts, for how poor they were in context.

There was this scene earlier where the mother quietly shows her love for Barbara when she discusses her love for art, and how her mother went to art school when she was younger, (before kids). Moss stated, “I followed the directions in the book and gave my drawings to Mother to grade. She placed waxed paper over my images and made corrections with a red crayon” (63). This shows that the author’s mother seemed to really care enough about her kids to give them pointers on their own artistic abilities and buying all those “paint-by-numbers” art activities. Barbara cared enough about her to almost worship her old drawings from the art school, as well as her red curly hair, which she was disappointed that she inherited her father’s looks and not her mother’s. The mother emphasized rules for her kids, but was loving and gentile, whereas the father was just plain angry, mean, and physical/verbally abusive, especially when he drank.

The dynamic between Barbara and her older sister Alice was intriguing as well. It is the one time where the mother seems to value Alice more than she does Barbara, and threatens her abrasively. She says to her daughter, “‘If you ever tell on Alice again, I’ll beat you within an inch of your life.’ Then she walked away. I rocked, rocked harder, wept, and hated them even more, including Mother. A red-hot, hungry hatred” (104). The author labels her mom as “Mother” with a capitol “M” not by her first named or mama or mommy. This was noticeable because it shows that they are close compared to her and her father, and yet very distant with one another compared to her older sister, Alice. This was the first time where the author is scared of both her parents, and had violent shaking episodes almost every night because of it. The line was striking and heavy-handed. A threat that shook me to the core. Barbara then, realized that should never side with her father on anything, and the mother almost convinced her children to be against him and his behavior as some sort of retribution of his abuse towards her. By making him the “bad guy,” she can be the picker-upper, the cleaning lady that sweeps up all that shattered glass and porcelain plate bits when he throws them in a terrifying fit on the ground. She never stands up for herself, and yet, this line she eerily whispered in Barbara’s ears late at night showed that even early on, her mother has some sort of hidden backbone, and will one day divorce the father and move on with her life. The environment Moss grew up in was mostly hostile and driven with the immediacy of poverty and trying to stay alive. But through those heartbreaking moments, it’s really the close, tight-knot bond she has with her seven siblings that keeps her sane.

The child perspective is suffocating!

While reading Change Me Into Zeus's Daughter I kept remembering our discussion from last week. I think it was Elmaz who talked about how the adult looking back perspective gave the readers needed distance from the abuse occurring between Jeanette and Winterson. I wasn't convinced then that I wanted the distance. But now I know I need it.

It was such a struggle to get through this book despite Moss's brisk prose. I couldn't handle all the terrible things happening to Barbara as a kid, and all the 3 am chapters suffocated me. My breaking point was on pg. 104 when her mom warns her to never tattle on her sister again: "Later that night, as I rocked myself to sleep, Mother came and sat on the edge of the bed. I was startled and stopped rocking. There were no good-night rituals in our house; she never looked in on us at night. I immediately imagined she was concerned about me and my heart leaped with happiness. She leaned over until I could feel her breath on my face and whispered, 'If you ever tell on Alice again, I'll beat you within an inch of your life.' Then she walked away. I rocked, rocked harder, wept and hated them even more." This scene was so devastating to me because it's the first time we see her mother be especially cruel. She is kind of the foil to their father in most of the scenes, the one whose calm demeanor while their father destroys the house lets the children know everything is okay. But for Barbara, who is constantly ignored because she is the middle kid and who must sacrifice her childhood to raise her youngest sibling, it was especially hard to see her mother mistreat her. And Moss does do a good job at conveying the loneliness of her childhood.

At times Moss' sentence structure confused me, and I had a hard time following some of her descriptions. But I was the most confused by the timeline throughout her memoir. She jumps through time, back and forth, without many signalers. In one scene Barbara is nine, in another a few pages later she is thirteen. I think Moss meant for the locations to signify her character's age, but it was hard following everything when she was constantly interweaving scenes together. But ultimately I think it was the way her scenes were separated that confused me. There were a lot of places where I didn't understand why she ended a scene only to continue or repeat herself after the scene break. I was also confused by how Moss handled her character's recovery of rheumatic fever. She gives us a very scary scene where we know her friend dies and no one in her family wants to take her to hospital even though she is deathly ill. Then we are given a scene of a family friend taking care of her . . . but then we hear nothing else about it for some pages until on pg. 194 Moss writes: "The year before, while I was recovering from rheumatic fever . . . ." And I had to stop: Wait. A whole year has gone by in a matter of pages? I thought she was still in recovery!

Ultimately, I found myself confused by Moss' portrayal of the mother. She writes on pg. 108 that the mom seems to crave the father as much as he craved alcohol but I didn't see every evidence for that. I don't think being captive in an abuse relationship is a craving; I just think her mother had all these kids to take care of and she was terrified of leaving the dad. I would be more inclined to think the mom craved the dad if all she talked about was him, if she neglected her children because she was obsessed with her husband. The way Moss wrote it, she seemed more obsessed with Alice, her oldest daughter, than her husband.

Not my trauma. Our trauma.

Unlike Winterson in Why Be Happy, Moss doesn't interpolate her adult musings into her recounting of her childhood in Change Me Into Zeus's Daughter. As a result, reading this memoir was an entirely different experience from last week's despite their sharing of major themes like parental abuse and rural poverty. The two texts approach trauma in a radically different way. Moss' book begins with a disclaimer: "This narrative is a true account of events, according to my memory,"which positions the text more as a recounting of historical events than a personal journey. In this way the potential for moments of misremembering or creative interpretation to serve a higher goal, is dissolved.

I imagine that a key reason that Moss relates the story in such a way without interpreting the lasting effects it had on her family is because, unlike Winterson she is not alone to tell it.
Moss' trauma was a shared one among her many siblings and although surely they each had their own distinct experiences of it, they are united in a shared pain. Presumably, Moss's siblings also made up part of the audience for her book and may have raised objections should she have chosen to incorporate more of her own self-formation into the telling.

As heart-wrenching and compelling as the story was, I felt an absence where Moss' older voice could have been to make meaning or to reflect on how her childhood circumstances shaped her and her siblings. The concluding chapters on her body image and facial reconstruction didn't fill that void for me because it seemed just to graze the surface of her sense of self. Throughout the text the reader is allowed very little time alone with Barbara without the presence of some if not all of her many characters. The effect of this is that her scenes feel crowded as her life often was,  with little space for her individualism.  Although she shares some of her personal thoughts to the reader about her self-doubt, she devotes equal attention to studying how her siblings and parents respond to the events of their lives as she does her own. In this way, I think Moss shows us her path to survival even without pointing to it directly as Winterson did. She demonstrates in thorough detail across the several years covered by the text how she and her siblings conspired to form a united front against the often unjust circumstances they found themselves in. It seems her membership in this team made everything just a little easier to bear.

Mother-Daughter Relationship in Moss's Memoir

   In previous works read in this class, the relationship between the mother and the author has ranged from negative to absent. However, in her memoir Change Me Into Zeus's Daughter, Barbara Robinette Moss acknowledges the powerful and complex relationship between herself and her mother. Moss idolizes her mother, even after her mother exhibits behavior that is harmful to Moss herself. For Moss, her mother is a heroic figure and a victim to the harsh life her husband subjects her to.

   There are very few instances where Moss does not love or admire her mother, especially since the other parental unit is shown in a negative light throughout the memoir. Her mother is always called by the title "Mother" in the memoir, in contrast to Moss's father, who is called "Dad". The usage of the more formal "Mother" instead of "Mom" is a sign of Moss's respect for her mother, who is always seen as dignified and composed, especially in comparison to Moss's father, who is drunk throughout most of the memoir. One aspect of her mother that Moss mentions constantly is her steadiness when dealing with extreme situations, and her refusal to cry. Moss even channels her mother's composure when she is being bullied in school, and strives to not let the bullies know that they are crushing her spirit. Moss's mother acts the same way with her husband and to her children, showing them that while their life is rough and the patriarch of the family abuses them, she will not let him win by breaking down.

   However, there are a couple of points in Moss's memoir where she encounters her mother crying. These encounters all deal with loss: the loss of Moss's sister, Mary Louise, the arrival of her other sister, Janet, and when her mother discovers her father's infidelity. Moss's mother states to her, " 'I've wasted my life...I could have done so many things, but I wasted my life on him" (Moss 278), and this is an eye-opening experience for Moss. Her mother has never expressed these feelings before, and at this moment, she did because her husband was replacing her with another woman. Moss's mother had acted like she was above all of the violence and poverty because her husband needed her throughout their whole life together. But once she discovers that she is not as cemented in his life as she thought, Moss's mother's foundation crumbles. Moss herself states "she's going to leave him now? Now that we're all grown and out of the house! Now that Janet's the only one home!...You mean he could do anything to us- anything to her!- as long as he didn't sleep with another woman?" (286), and her anger at her mother for this is real but also vanishes quickly when her mother needs her. In that way, I found Moss to be especially like her mother. The anger is there, just below the surface, as long as someone they love needs them. For Moss's mother, her husband needed her and for Moss, her mother needed her.

   Moss sacrificed much of her happiness to appease her mother. In the section where most of her younger siblings are sent to a special camp of unprivileged students, despite her great need and desire for a dentist, Moss is forced to stay behind. She is the primary caretaker for Janet, making her mother's life easier. Even when her older sister, Alice, is in the house, Moss ends up doing a good portion of the care-taking of the younger children. While Moss also cares about her siblings, she cherishes the moments she gets with her mother and the attention she receives from her mother because of her willingness to help out. Moss states that her mother "-thought I didn't mind because of the extra Little Debbie cake. But I really liked it because I had my mother all to myself for forty-five minutes every day" (195), and this shows her devotion and love for her mother.

   However, as much as Moss loves and worships her mother, she also acknowledges her passive hand in the abuse. While Moss admits that her mother did not let get it out of control, she was more passive and numb to the abuse all around her. One moment that really stuck with me in how cruel her mother could be was when Moss tattles on her older sister Alice. She thinks that her mother is going to comfort her, but instead her mother whispers " 'if you ever tell on Alice again, I'll beat you within an inch of your life' " (104), and this moment really made me dislike the mother. Her attachment to Alice because of her beauty overshadows the fact that her other children need her love and attention as well. But I also feel like Alice's beauty represents what the mother was before she married her husband, and Moss represents the life that she is forced to led. Moss's "ugliness" is a sharp contrast to her sister's beauty, and not just Alice's, but also Doris Ann's and Janet's.

   Her mother does acknowledge the inner beauty of Moss in the end of the memoir. In the aftermath of Moss's facial surgery, her mother brings her the book "The Ugly Duckling" and it holds a special message for both of them. Moss's mother does have her daughter's back in certain circumstances, such as with the expensive braces treatment and the piano in the house. Moss's mother strives for her children to have a better life, and will protect them from harm. The relationship between Moss and her mother is a complex but fulfilling one, and Moss does not hold back in letting the readers know that she loves her mother.

Best,
Dani

Child/Adult perspective in Change me Into Zeus's Daughter

I thought that Moss's Change Me into Zeus's Daughter did a really interesting and skillful job of integrating both an adult and a child's perspective in her memoir. I felt like the first two chapters were captivating and also set the scene for the rest of the book. The first chapter located us in the child's world. I felt like she was able to introduce her family and the dynamics with her parents and siblings through the storie she chose to tell. The disorienting image of her mother 'poisoning' herself in front of her children, her father forcing her to write with her right hand, Alice telling her how things are, her mother calling her sister. These were all engaging scenes that also tell us so much about the climate of her family. 

I think that the second chapter revealed her adult perspective and also dealt with the complications of writing her memories through conversation with her siblings. The second chapter gave the reader something to hold on to (things are't perfect but they all survived their childhood). It reminded me of the conversation we had in class about the difficulty of reading childhood memoirs without the 'relief' of an adult perspective. For example, Winterson inserted herself as an adult throughout the stories she told about her childhood. I felt like in including herself as an adult, at her father's funeral, Moss was able to create some kind of 'narrative distance' so that her adult self did not need to appear so visibly in the stories about her childhood. Even within the second chapter there is a 'flashback' to her with the sillyputty comic, makeup and duct tape. The way this scene is situated--she goes back to the funeral, in the bathroom, looking in the mirror, saying "No matter what I do to myself,  I feel like it will never be enough." (44). The way Moss arranges stories and weaves together the adult and child perspective serves to better illuminate both.

The conversation she has with her siblings about her father's glasses, and then reflecting on how hard it is to piece together a coherent memory of him also set the stage for her memoir. I thought this was a really effective way of pointing to the inherent difficulties of writing a memoir without directly saying it to the reader. 

Her brother John says "Sometimes I feel like trying to understand life with Dad's about like fuckin' around with a big picture puzzle thats been chewed on by a dog." (Moss 36)

I felt like that is a really great explanation of what writing a memoir is like. Moss is showing us in this scene that she knows that her memory is subjective, that it may be fragmented or incosistent. The big picture might not be clear right away. 

Reading the rest of the narrative felt like a collection of puzzle pieces. She narrowed in on really descriptive and emotionally potent scenes that in their specificity point to the bigger picture. (Shaving pennies down with her brother, cleaning the house at 3am). 

There were times when Moss's adult perspective surfaced, like when she talks about Amy being her mother's favorite. "I liked my older sister on those occasions, but sometimes I hated her. And hated Dad too. And for the same reasons. They both held my Mother prisoner." (103) She goes on to explain the complicated relationship between her and her sister, and in realtion to her parents. She does this, though, through vivid and specific memories (following Amy with a book on her head, her mother threatening her for telling on Amy). I think that this adult perspective on how she felt added to the child-inhabited narrative of her memories. 

I also felt like the second chapter enhanced my understanding of the characters by giving us a grown-up version of them. Reading about Amy's rebellion to the father made me think of her at the funeral saying "He had no right to live as long as he did" (48). I thought it was really amazing that the author was able to show us Amy as an adult, a young child, and a teenager in such a relatively short space. It was clear that each memory she told did a lot of work in revealing specific dynamics while reading as seemless.

I thought that this book was a great example of how an author interweaves both the childhood perspective and the adult reflection in a way that is fluid and authentic.

Barbara Judging and Being Judged

On Monday morning everyone at Kimberly Elementary would be wearing burgundy penny loafers. At K.E it would be so unanimous it wouldn’t matter much. But I was in eighth grade, David in the ninth and Stewart in the tenth – and we went to Mortimer Jordan High School, where it would matter. It would matter a lot! On Monday, all the poor students would be wearing identical burgundy penny loaders. We might as well wear sandwich boards that read, “I’m Poor.” The shoes would say out loud what had been just touched on before, separating us as if we had lice.

This scene really struck me because it exemplifies the complicated dynamics of class in Change Me into Zeus’s Daughter. From the very beginning Barbara’s family is not well off, when their father leaves they almost starve but it always seems like they are still content. It is only when others judge there condition that Barbara seems to be affected and realize the position her family is in. In this scene she doesn’t mind receiving charity, it is only when she realizes that others will know of their circumstances that she begins to cry. It is incredibly unnerving that her opinions of her circumstances are so dependent on what others think. I saw this as stemming from her father’s strict refusal to accept charity and her mother’s pride and hiding of their circumstances. In one of the first scenes we see her mother accepting help but only because the neighbor does not know that they really need the help.  Mother didn’t tell Mamie that Dad was gone, that we had nothing to eat, no money to buy anything (27). Her mother has so much pride that she doesn’t tell of their predicament even if it would mean more help. Barbara picks up on this pride and is embarrassed when the neighbors judge their father’s 3am ritual. But unlike her mother she judges them right back, “No, they’d wait for the light of day, to complain to us; with sneering faces they’d demand that we stop him from waking them, demand that we stop him from using foul language, demand that we stop him from ruining the neighborhood with his drunkenness—as if we had that power” (102-103).  She finds their ability to stand by while everything happens terrible. She comments that they sneer and then expect the children to have the power to stop their father when in reality they would probably be able to help if they only tried. Unlike her father who will not even allow his family to accept charity, even if it means them going without food or clothing, she believes that though people will judge they are more worth being judged because they could actually do something and choose not to.

Barbara is not always happy with their circumstances but her and her siblings seem to make the best of every situation they are in. They run and play in the sewer pipes when they live in the city and they are happy sitting around drinking RC Cola and sharing it as long as they are together. Even when they move to Kimberly and things look even bleaker the go and play in the woods looking at the old stripped cars. Barbara’s family is even the ‘lucky’ ones in their neighborhood and she takes pride in this ‘So Mother became the community nurse, protector and tutor. To these kids, we were unique, special. Our mother didn’t drink, she didn’t run around, and she knew about art, music, poetry, and plays’ (138). And when their neighbors stare she stares right back challenging them to judge their family, when everyone has problems. She may be embarrassed in some ways by the problems her family has but she also knows that they have times when they are happy and that it is not her or her siblings fault that their father is the way he is. She also punishes others for judging their family, especially in the case of her new shoes. She steals ice cream money because the boy chooses to expose her situation and she doesn’t find that to be fair. It is no one else’s business how their family lives and this is what outlines her problems with the brown penny loafers. Everyone will judge them even though they do not know the whole story, in her mind they have no right to judge and not help and even less right to purposely point out their predicament. 

Winterson Response

Jeanette Winterson’s memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? was interesting, even fascinating in the way she used language and dialogue, as well as incorporating the themes of identity, home, love, and religion. Winterson slides between forms, and her openness about her childhood shows that she has accepted the dynamics between her and her mother.

Even in the opening pages the author displays her struggle with her mother by saying that she, “was a flamboyant depressive; a woman who kept a revolver in the duster drawer, and the bullets in a tin of Pledge. A woman who stayed up all night baking cakes to avoid sleeping in the same bed as my father” (1). This already alludes to the fact that her parents had a complicated relationship. And the father fails to protect himself and his daughter from his wife and her hysteria and outbursts. I wish she had included more on the father, because the lime-light is mostly shown on the mother. She refers to her twice in the book to be "flamboyant depressive" which is a strange way of saying that.

It is also interesting to note the switch from the narrator of Oranges and the narration of the memoir itself. Is she trying to confuse the reader on purpose? Does she want the reader to believe she is the same narrator/protagonist from her book of fiction? I'd like to read it and find out...Jeanette seems to be fragmented at times, and it is written in a style that is cryptic and also lucid. Some parts were frustrating to me, but the second part of the book was easier to latch onto and enjoy.

The theme of devout religion is also shown through the mother’s strictness. This is seen in chapter four when Winterson states, “Ours was not a secular house, and my mother was determined that I should have no secular influences” (33). This shows the reader that right away the mother has control with at least, religion on Jeanette’s life growing up. The fact that she was adopted plays into this role of questioning her mother and her crazy tactics. There is a theme of religion, and it plays out as a sort of background that conflicts with the mother’s “orbiting depression” that seems to follow her wherever she goes. Winterson seems to wring humor from adversity, and manages to go forwards, even with the intense force of her mother and her authoritarian religious upbringing.

She bravely encounters many obstacles in her life, but somehow battles through it with grace. By growing up in a north England industrial town now changed beyond recognition, she learns how to deal with her religious zealot mother, which shows her tenacity and resolve. This story lays out a painful past, but in the end is only a search for the truth of where she truly belongs.

"...collecting the scraps, uncertain of continuous narrative"

I am 1/2 of the way through Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? In fact I've just landed on the title line of the book. Thus far I am in, and in deep. There is so much to say about this work, but the thing I want to focus on is a pattern I am noticing Winterson employing in the structure of this text, and the impact it is having on me as a reader.

On p. 41, Winterson writes, "It is probably why I write as I do - collecting the scraps, uncertain of continuous narrative. What does Eliot say? These fragments have I shored against my ruin..." The pattern I am observing seems to be the structural expression of this reflection. While the pattern isn't static and I am finding that it tends to have the following elements present in some continuum, and looks something like this:

1) We are set in place-time which is mostly/often past

2) Which is then developed in relationship to a specific moment/event from her childhood. Throughout context is being developed that sets the individual experience/place into conversation with the dominant cultural/political/social trends (be those trends in the community/area/nation)

3) The present-time narrator waxes philosophic/offers a theory/takes an ideological position/stance branching out from this moment/event

4) We are dropped into a moment of incredible specificity that demonstrates the philosophy/theory/ideology/stance in action, which often sets-up a transitional hinge (sometimes an image, sometimes a word, sometimes an action) upon which the narrative will drive forward (even if in time the story is not moving linearly across time)

5) Place/context is further developed

6) Present-time narrator returns with a more reflective/deepened/sometimes more vulnerable approach to the philosophy/theory/ideology/stance, sometimes invoking the transitional hinge; and often within this

7) A round-up/recall of the events/evidences that have emerged in the text thus far that connect back to the philosophy/theory/ideology/stance takes place

8) We are dropped back into an event (sometimes the same moment/event as earlier, sometimes a new moment/event that branches the narrative outwards)

9) From this event a new philosophy/theory/ideology/stance emerges

I'm going to map part of chapter 6 Church to demonstrate how this is happening, and to explore the way in which Winterson, through this structural pattern is simultaneously developing and weaving multiple rich layers of world, while developing multiple characters, but especially the character of the present-time narrator, as well as that of the younger Jeanette. The pattern doesn't necessarily follow the order I've laid out but includes the elements

(1) Chapter 6 opens, "That's not a church - that's two terraced houses knocked together." Winterson goes on to provide physical description of the church, which simultaneously introduces the church culture and history.

(2) Next we are dropped into the story of Mrs. Smalley losing her dentures which opens to illuminates further the culture and concerns of the church community (inclusive of the kind of poverty they faced); which then narrows and opens onto the church debate "to cremate or not to cremate with dentures"; which opens onto an exploration of Mrs. Winterson's religious philosophy as it diverged from that of the church community - which calls in communal socio-political experiences of the 1st and 2nd World wars situating the reality of the home in a global context;

Within (2) Winterson does a "recall" (7) of things that we have already learned about Mrs. Winterson in this and earlier chapters that connect back to the theme this chapter will explore. "She was an intelligent woman, and somewhere in the middle of the insane theology and the brutal politics, the flamboyant depression and the refusal of books, of knowlege, of life, she had watched the atomic bomb go off and realised that the true nature of the world is energy not mass."

This ends with the introduction of the recurring hinge: "But she never understood that energy could have been her own true nature while she was alive. She did not need to be trapped in mass." (67)

5) Place is developed further in this instance through description of Baptism

(3) Next Winterson begins offering philosophy from the perspective of the present-time narrator: "There are psychological advantages to choosing life and a way of life consciously" (which mobilizes the hinge); "The sense of belonging to something big, something important, lent unity"; "The Western world has done away with religion but not with our religious impulses; we seem to need some higher purpose, some point to our lives - money and leisure, social progress, are just not enough." (all p 68) Here she in a sense is advocating for the community, connection, meaning conferred through participation in faith community, and in juxtaposition to the kind of isolationism her mother practiced.

(4) Winterson then drops us into numerous specific examples that demonstrate this: primarily acts of collective prayer (she also builds some more historical context around the establishment of the church); and invoking the hinge writes Not Mrs. Winterson - she prayed alone, and she prayed standing up, more like an Old Testament prophet than a sinner on her knees. Her suffering was armour. Gradually it became her skin. Then she could not take it off." (69)

(5) Winterson again zooms out and provides more socio-cultural context in relationship to the benefits of belief "We had no bank accounts, no phones, no cars... I don't know anyone, including me, who felt trapped or hopeless." This furthers and heightens the juxtaposition against her mother.

(6) Winterson at the top of page 70 then returns to the philosophy she's started developing concluding, "In a world that has become instrumental and utilitarian, the symbol of the kingdom of God - and it is a symbol not a place - stands as the challenge of love to the arrogance of power and the delusions of wealth." Which introduces the new thematic hinge of love, (9), which will be explored through Aunt Nellie shortly after.

(8) We are dropped back into description of the church's functioning. The Mon - Sun listing of events, the "Brother's Black and Decker." All this continues to build our sense of the world in which little Jeanette was living

Oh hopefully I'm making some sense here.

Why this strategy?

a) Winterson throughout the work (at least up to page 114) is on a narrative journey whose purpose is to both document and resolve her desire to find belonging. As such, the strategy of centering place repeatedly through this work and growing narrative from and in relationship to it, is a gestural act of setting herself down, of laying claim to geographic roots, to situating the fact of her presence, that even in the face of that gaping hole of loss originating through her adoption, and the brutal forms of exclusion and rejection enacted by Mrs. Winterson, she did indeed come from somewhere, in fact all of these places, at once. Through this book, she is in the literal, physical, act of building a home.

b) By building a thriving world (through the development of place, historical context, etc) within which the stories of her family occur, she is democratizing experience, she is demonstrating the continuum through which the world intervenes in the small space of the family, she is also constructing a believable world wherein the mythology of her life makes sense. As she writes, "Personal stories work for other people when those stories become both paradigms and parables." Through the philosophical elements of the text she is making visible the paradigm, she is taking responsibility for it and its implications, and simultaneously the events that she chooses to elevate through this work confirm those paradigms.

c) The philosophical at times heavy-handed work of the present-time narrator does a few incredible things: It establishes and confirms Winterson’s success in writing her own story against that of Mrs. Winterson, it makes visible the contradictions, values, moral imperatives through which the work is drawn while allowing us through viewing the events of her life to understand how those philosophies were built, it allows us to see myth-making in action, it amplifies the tension between the struggles that little Jeanette faces and the present time because we know she escapes – she’s with us – so we want to know how. This for me heightens the emotional stakes, makes the work feel more vulnerable. At times the retrospective quality reads like a letter to her younger self, like a promise that she will make it, that she will survive, that she will quest for happiness, even if she doesn’t ever really achieve it. The ebbing and flowing in and out of present time and past, analysis and magic map a very organic movement of the mind as it works through memory to generate meaning. The very positionally oriented present-time narrator also gives space for the little Jeanette to be a conscious, thinking, opinionated, character, who is also flawed and reflecting a flawed world.

d) The work of circling along thematic/imagistic/event-based transitional hinges builds an accumulating sense of the world. The work of building a whole out of pieces. This generates energy in the narrative, gives it a sense of motion.

e) In combining historical personal events within a geo-political context with a strong present-time narrator she is disturbing time, she is making visible the ways in which the past occupies/haunts/mystifies/troubles the present.

Too much.

Lots more.