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.