Grief in Drabbles (and a Poem)

Plus library and book ban news for the week

Some encouragement for my mom’s little navel orange tree.

Hello Friends,

I’ve realized that I tend to riff in the audio version/voiceover. If you want a few sidebars about the banned books, that where they are. 😊

On the anniversary of my mother’s death

If you read Be a Cactus last week, you know that it was the first anniversary of my brother's death and that today is the fourth anniversary of my mother's death. To state the obvious, the holidays have a different atmosphere than they used to.

On this anniversary, I’ll be helping a friend with a garage sale at her mom’s house. I’m heading out her way a few days early to sort and label things along with two other friends who are coming from the Bay Area. The mom who owns the home recently moved to nursing care after falling and breaking her femur. So—sorting out parents’ stuff is on my mind.

Since my parents died, months apart in 2020, I’ve been writing a lot about them. Creative nonfiction, mostly. I wrote an essay, published on HuffPost, about their obsession with sexual purity for my sisters and me. It went viral in many places. I’ve also tried to write to understand and empathize with my mother. That work has been of less interest to publishers (“Loved this, but it’s not quite a fit. Please send us more of your work!”) A thing I learned: it’s hard to write about your mother.

I have some longer unpublished essays about caring for my parents during the pandemic and about my mother’s pride in her Irish background. I decided to go another direction and write about her in drabbles—that is, in (exactly) 100-word stories.

A person can’t be condensed into such a short form, but it has helped me to think about the forces that shaped my mom. I could only look at one aspect of her at a time, so these drabbles are named after parts of her body—her teeth, her ankles, her tongue. Then I tried to write one about the tiny orange tree we bought to commemorate her. It’s a bit of a mess for only 100 words. What I want to say there may not fit the micro-form. Finally, I took the drabble “My Mother’s Tongue” and converted it into a poem, which is a bit longer, about 115 words. But I think I like it better. To be sure, poetry is not my forte, but some friends who are poets helped me with the line breaks.

So, Mom, here’s for you.

Three Meditations on the Death of My Mother During a Pandemic

My Mother’s Teeth

Were a full plate of false, which she hid, being but thirty. Her secret discovered when, brushing in the shower, she dropped them, chipping the right front incisor. A backhanded gift of realism. Mother of five, measuring herself against conventional beauty standards, she daily lowered her bucket of desire into a well of shame.

Decades on, suffering from dementia, she is a pandemic convict, I her voluntary cellmate. Awaiting the advent of order, I urge her to finish her lunch. She removes her teeth at the table, wedging her fingernail between molars, flicking a bit of lettuce in my direction.

My Mother’s Ankles

Forced offices of intimacy now bind us, though you never desired touch. You accept me scrubbing your back, trimming your toenails. Bending to dry your feet, I note your swollen ankles, comprehend their meaning, having been through this with my in-laws. Your heart is failing. Tucking you in for the night, I raise your feet on pillows. I place a hand over your ankle, gauging.

“You’re warm,” you say. “That feels good.” Your words an invitation to rest a second hand on your other ankle. I’ll remain here, a sentinel at the foot of your bed, awaiting your imminent sleep.

The poem after the drabble “My Mother’s Tongue”

Mother Tongue

Where did your consciousness go? I call you

from every corner of the room. Some days

you identify me. My daughter.

I can see this is a win for you, but the home

care nurse presses. What’s her name?

You pull many from memory, none of them mine.

Rosemary is a favorite. Finally it is simply

you watching me watching you, suspicious

of my presence. Where

did your consciousness go? I imagine it

hanging out at a single’s bar, bourbon and cigarette, waiting

still, for the right man to deliver you

from the reality of five children

in seven years. But you receive

a more practical Eucharist, your own body

placed on your tongue, swallowed.

Here’s the one that isn’t working out. Feel free to make suggestions. (Actually, feel free to make suggestions about any of these.)

I’m still hoping two years after the transplant. The poor tree has been in shock and later attacked by legions of snails. It’s gotten slightly taller, but not thicker around.

The Grove

or

The Transplant

In a sibling group text about my move, Lee, agricultural water manager, advises starting over. “Digging up citrus is a BAD plan. The rootstock of modern hybrid trees sustain damage. Transplanted, it won’t do well.”

“She’s trying to save the tree she planted when mom died,” Lisa answers.

“It’ll live,” Lee says, “just stunted.”

“Can it bear fruit?” I ask. “I don’t need big.”

“Stunted trees bear the sweetest fruit. All the energy goes into fewer pieces. When we grew up, our stunted navel nearest Center Drive? Best fruit ever.”

“You're right,” John jumps in. “Best oranges I’ve ever had.”

Part 2: Library and book ban news

There was a lot of book news this week; these are some of the stories important to me. And they only go through Wednesday since I have been gone the rest of the week to help a friend.

How To Explain Book Bans to Those Who Want to Understand from Book Riot

I’ve shared this before, but it’s important and will be new to our newer subscribers.

Here are several talking points you can and should use with the people in your life who may otherwise not understand the complexity and seriousness of book bans happening in school and public libraries. It will not include everything, nor can it. Instead, this is meant to be for people who are eager to listen and learn but may be overwhelmed with where to even begin.

Texas State Board of Education proposes taking over school library book ratings. Here's why from the Austin American-Statesman

The proposal would give the elected education board significant power over determining what’s appropriate for public school libraries and would mirror legislation that has been filed by Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, who in 2023 authored the Reader Act, a law that placed the burden of rating books on vendors and has been on hold over litigation.

A process of rating books that children are reading in schools is best fit for the state board, said board member Tom Maynard, R-Florence.

…

If passed, HB 183 would largely rewrite a section of the 2023 Reader Act that has been under litigation since July 2023. Patterson's 2023 Reader Act requires book vendors that sell to school libraries to rate their material for either sexual relevance or sexual explicitness.

Book vendors — including Austin’s BookPeople — and library associations sued the state over the law, insisting it was overly burdensome to businesses.

…

Member Rebecca Bell-Metereau, D-San Marcos, worried that the task of wading through every possible book review request that could come before the state board from across Texas could be insurmountable.

“This would be a herculean task to read and rate all of these books,” Bell-Metereau said. “That just seems insane to me.”

Maynard also suggested local school boards would welcome the state board taking decisions about the appropriateness of library books out of their hands.

“They don't like having protesters in front of their building,” Maynard said. “For us, it's business as usual.”

First list of banned books in Knox County Schools released, schools have until winter break to remove them from WBIR 10 News.

The list was sent out to teachers and contains 48 books that are scheduled for removal from Knox County Tennessee public school libraries:

• Me, Earl & The Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews

• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

• Go Ask Alice by Anonymous

• Chopsticks by Jessica Anthony

• 13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher

• Girls on the Verge by Sharon Biggs Waller

• There's Going to Be a Baby by John Burningham

• Draw Me A Star by Eric Carle

• Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

• Just Listen by Sarah Dessen

• A Stolen Life by Jaycee Duggar

• The Carnival of Bray by JessieAnn Foley

• In A Glass Grimmly by Adam Gimwitz

• Lighter Than My Shadow by Katie Green

• Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

• Locke and Key: Alpha and Omega by Joe Hill

• Locke and Key: Clockworks by Joe Hill

• Locke and Key: Welcome to Lovecraft by Joe Hill

• Identical by Ellen Hopkins

• Tricks by Ellen Hopkins

• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

• Attack on Titan Vol. 2 by Hajime Isayama

• Grown by Tiffany Jackson

• DUFF by Kody Keplinger

• The Walking Dead: Book Ten by Robert Kirkman

• Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe

• Monstress Vol. 2: the Blood by Marjorie Liu

• Late Night at the Telegraph Club by Malina Lo

• Empire of Storms by Sarah J. Maas

• Tower of Dawn by Sarah J. Maas

• The Way We Work by David Macaulay

• Wicked by Gregory Maguire

• Sold by Patricia Morrison

• The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

• Skin by DonnaJo Napoli

• Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez

• Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick

• Beautiful by Amy Reed

• Mrs. Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - Graphic Novel by Ransom Riggs

• You: The Owner's Manual for Teens by Michael Roizen

• I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sanchez

• In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak

• A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein

• The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater

• Blankets by Craig Thompson

• Squad by Maggie Tokuda-Hall

• Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

• Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon

State school board cranks up heat on 1 book from Charleston City Paper

The S[outh]C[arolina] Board of Education on Tuesday voted on the fate of two books challenged by a parent under Regulation 43.170, a blanket school book-banning policy that took effect at the beginning of the school year.

The books in question — HMH Into Literature, an 8th-grade English textbook, and Crank, a novel by Ellen Hopkins — were challenged by Emily Clement of Fort Mill. The board opted to keep the textbook in classrooms, but restricted access to Crank to students whose parents sign an opt-in form.

Advocacy groups across the state have fought the state regulation, claiming that it will open the floodgates for mass book bans from politically motivated pro-censorship groups. …

Crank is a fictional, cautionary tale of a high school student whose life is derailed by drug addiction and a plummeting mental health. Hopkins, the novelist, spoke at the Dec. 2 press conference about messages she’s received from young readers.

“I’ve received over the years literally thousands of messages like that one in support of the book, telling me that the book turned them away from that path or gave insight into a loved one’s addiction or even encouraged them to become drug counselors or social workers,” she said. “Many of those people found that book in their school libraries or classrooms.”

A Year Among My Fellow Banned Writers from the New York Times

Gift link (you can read the full article) toi an essay by Sandra Cisneros, whose The House on Mango Street faces bans. Not only did we have it in our libraries, but we taught it in tenth grade English classes. (I taught English for 12 years before becoming a teacher librarian.)

The poet Joy Harjo has said books are medicine. If so, libraries are pharmacies with a prescription out there for every human. Parents have the right to supervise what their children read, but might they also consider that the book they regard as harmful for their own child may be the perfect remedy for another?

My first novel, “The House on Mango Street,” is among those deemed inappropriate by the South Texas book-removers. Most of the vignettes in the book were inspired by my time teaching at Chicago’s Latino Youth Alternative High School. My students were former dropouts who struggled mightily just to return to school. Some were gay, some were addicted to drugs, some were children raising babies, some couldn’t walk outdoors without being targeted by gangs, some were targeted by abusive boyfriends or parents. This was their reality. As their teacher and counselor, I had no means to heal their wounds beyond listening and telling their tales.

Because I wanted my novel to enter classrooms and libraries, I felt obliged to censor myself by writing about mature themes elusively, in a way that would sail over the heads of little ones. I needed my book to reach teens who were living these same stories, but I was also aware the stories might be read by younger readers, too. So I found myself crafting with care, respecting what children could handle at certain ages, since I certainly didn’t wish to offend anyone, especially parents and school boards. That’s why I told my truth, but told it “slant,” as the poet Emily Dickinson would put it, in a lyrical way so that the tale would be understood gradually by readers as they aged.

Michigan librarians back bills aimed at thwarting book bans From M Live Media Group

“Sometimes we forget that all ages, all abilities, all interests, all races, all religions, the rich, the poor, the traditional, the nontraditional families – they all have First Amendment rights as well, and we want to make sure that they can find materials of interest in the public library,” said Debbie Mikula, executive director of the Michigan Library Association (MLA).