Growing Up Amish

This book popped up on my Goodreads account a few weeks ago, and I decided I would check it out. I was always interested in the idea of Rumspringa--the time in Amish life where the youth run wild before joining the church as adults. Sometimes this means leaving their communities, sometimes it just means sneaking around and experiencing the outside world on the sly. The Amish believe that only adults can fully accept Christ, so people are baptized around the age of 18, give or take a few years.

Ira Wagler in Growing Up Amish runs wild for a period of several years. When he is 16, he runs away in the middle of the night from his community in Bloomfield, Iowa with his friends. They live like cowboys, working on a farm. They drink. They smoke. They meet girls. This would be the first of Ira's five trips out of the Amish community and into the world.

For the next ten years of his life, he lives in a constant state of longing. If he is in the Amish community, he longs for the outside world. For cars. For booze. For freedom. When he is in the outside world, he longs for his family and the stability that comes with the Amish lifestyle. Not even a total believer in God or the church's message, and guilt-ridden because of his many sins, Wagler also worries that he will die on the road and go straight to hell. Eternal damnation is a lot of pressure, and one of the other reasons he returns home so many times.

After returning from his third trip into the outside world, Wagler comes home and joins the church. When he is baptized he feels nothing. But he tries desperately to settle into Amish life and have what his parents have. He begins courting a girl named Sarah, and the two even get engaged. However, as life moves along, Wagler becomes increasingly aware that he cannot stay. He misses the outside world. He knows he will not be happy. So he leaves. Again. And is excommunicated

But after being out in the world, he once more wishes to return to the Amish way of life. He is also concerned with his soul. He writes, "The Amish have always taught, always preached, that once the desire to return leaves, that's when you are truly lost." Afraid of being truly lost, Wagler grasps onto his feelings of sorrow over abandoning the Amish. He attempts to return to the church. The Amish church in Bloomfield accepts him back, but he leaves Bloomfield for a different settlement, trying to create a different but still Amish life for himself.

It is on his fifth return to the Amish church he has a spiritual awakening and begins to believe in God. He also believes that God forgives him for his sins. Less concerned for his soul and the threat of eternal damnation, he starts to realize that maybe he can leave the church and not be damned forever. He decides to do this, and makes his final, permanent exit from the Amish church. He moves to Pennsylvania and joins a Mennonite church.

Growing Up Amish is moderately well-written. In writing classes you always hear, "Show, don't tell." As in, paint a picture for your reader, don't just tell them what events happened. Wagler does a good amount of showing, but sometimes he simply tells and can get a bit repetitive. These problems happened most clearly towards the end, where the book begins to get a little bit rushed. However, some of his sentences are beautiful and he turns a nice metaphor every now and then.

This book may not be highly literary, but it is highly informative and sometimes, surprisingly, relatable for those of us in the outside world. There is one scene where he discusses a boy in his school who was brutally bullied by the other children. One wouldn't imagine such holy societies to have such horrifying bullying problems (the child is beat up on a daily basis, mocked, etc.), but in that sense their schools are just like ones in the outside world. Wagler also explains all of the ins and outs of Amish life, which I appreciated. I learned a lot about a culture I didn't know much about.

I also could relate to Wagler's pull between one world and another, to a small degree at least. I often felt that way about college. When I was away at school, I missed home. Then I would go home and miss school. I know there are other boomerang generation-ers out there who know what I'm talking about. Obviously there was a lot less riding on these torn emotions. Being conflicted between home and college is much different than an Amish person being torn between their community and the outside world. When I was at school, I wasn't concerned about the fate of my soul or forever being exiled from my parents. One of the successes of this book is the fact that Wagler did a great job at making a very unique experience seem somewhat relatable.

For memoir readers out there, I definitely recommend this one.

The Year of Magical Thinking

I am not sure what I can say about Joan Didion’s non-fiction book The Year of Magical Thinking that hasn’t been said before in a review. The book is famous, a masterpiece even, for a reason—it is complex, masterful, reflective, and beautifully sad. Instead, I wish to offer more of a reading guide to the piece. 

If you haven’t read the book, here’s what it’s about: Writers and couple John Dunne and Joan Didion watch their only child, Quintana, develop pneumonia and septic shock several days before Christmas in 2003. She is admitted to the hospital in critical condition and falls unconscious. A few days later on December 30, 2003, while Quintana is still comatose, John is struck at the dinner table by a massive coronary. He dies instantly. After several weeks, Quintana regains her health. She travels to California with her husband Gerry where she collapses in LAX. She is rushed to the hospital where she is diagnosed with a massive hematoma. Quintana, once again, falls unconscious and gravely ill but later recovers.

Didion attempts to make sense of these events, and attempts to understand death. She researches death and the medical problems her loved ones suffer. She turns to the literature. She is a smart, grounded woman, but a part of her still expects John to come back. It is this expectation of his return that she refers to as her “magical thinking.”

Clearly, this book is a rough book to read. It has been on my list for about two years now, as I am quite a fan of Didion. The Year of Magical Thinking is a book that people always talked about in my writing classes in college. It’s an important book in terms of style—Didion never falls into being overly sappy or sentimental, which is a challenged giving the subject matter. (Who could blame her if she did get sentimental or sappy?) If you are going to write a book about death, this is a model of how to do it effectively.

But, like I said, all of this has been said before about The Year of Magical Thinking, so I am going to give two pieces of advice to the reader of this book, based on my own experience. First of all, read it when you must, when it fits for your life. There were other times in my life when The Year of Magical Thinking could have been of use to me, but I decided to pick it up now. The book made me scared of all of the terrible things that can possibly happen. I think if I had been reading this at a rougher period in my life, I could have related to the book more. But instead it just made me nervous. I read the book quickly, trying to get through it so that I could escape the parts of it that made me uncomfortable.

Which brings me to my second piece of advice: Read this one slowly. Read it carefully; absorb it; pay attention to how Didion copes through language. I remember in “The White Album” she writes, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” This is what Didion is doing in The Year of Magical Thinking. She constantly puts the events of John’s death and Quintana’s illnesses into a story, into a timeline. She slows down. She takes the time she needs to make sense of the events in her life. So when you read it, don’t power through it. Take it nice and slow.

In summation, read The Year of Magical Thinking when it is necessary to your own understanding of your own circumstances, and read it slowly. Do not read it like I read it—fast, wanting to know what happens next but also trying to escape the difficult subject matter of death that Didion forces her reader to confront.

The Sex-Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific

Anyone who knows me knows I’m not really an adventurous person. I’ve lived a pretty typical American life, and I’ve never been out of the country. Reading The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift In the Equatorial Pacific by J. Maarten Troost is almost like reading a fantasy novel of another realm. Whereas I’ve never even seen the countries that border the US, author Maarten and his wife Sylvia travel to the Kiribati, a country consisting of a series of atolls spread throughout the Equatorial Pacific.

After finishing grad school and flitting around through random temp jobs, Maarten doesn’t really know what to do with his life. Sylvia is in a similar boat, and the two of them begin searching for jobs in remote parts of the world. As someone who is in a similar stage of confusing unemployment, I can't help but admire Sylvia and Maarten for being so brave. I won't even contemplate moving out of my state, and these two apply to move halfway across the globe. Eventually, Sylvia gets an offer to join a development team on Kiribati’s capital atoll Tarawa, and when the two arrive Maarten assumes the role of homemaker on an island known for its subsistence living.  Sylvia’s predecessor told them that the island was hell, and Maarten and Sylvia begin the adjustment process.

This is what Tarawa is like: It is hot. So hot. So hot that when one I-Kiribati (the name for people native to the island) went to Hawaii, he returned complaining how bitterly cold the trip was. Water is hard to come by on the atoll, and the only real type of vegetation is coconut trees. Fish are the main staple of the Kiribati diet. The average I-Kiribati consumes over 400 pounds of fish per year. There are no seasonings to put on the fish, and many of the types of fish that surround the atoll are toxic. Disease is common on Tarawa. Maarten and his wife suffer from all kinds of illnesses during their stay. But somehow, the island becomes their home, and they are more than a little bit shell-shocked when they return to America two years later.

The book is full of funny and terrifying anecdotes. For example, at one point, Maarten attempts to create a garden. He builds a fence for it, only to discover that the piece of plastic he plucked out of the reef to use as a latch is actually a hospital IV full of blood.

The Sex Lives of Cannibals is a really fantastic travel book, but also one that is great for the reader interested in international development. Maarten takes ample time in the book to discuss the pitfalls of the international aid industry and developmental politics. He goes into the complex history of Tarawa and Kiribati while also describing the internal politics of the country.

As someone who studied politics in college and has read many books and articles on the international aid industry, The Sex Lies of Cannibals stands out as a more relatable exploration of the issues that plague the developing world and the aid industry. The book is a personal look, written by someone who has seen the aid industry at all angles.

After returning from Kiribati, the Troosts are strapped with debt. Maarten says to Sylvai at one point in the book after they return from Tarawa, "Remember that meal we had in Annapolis three years ago? Well, after three years of interest and late fees and finance charges, that meal is going to cost me $1,500" (266).

Their unfortunate financial situation pushes Maarten into accepting a job with the World Bank, where he receives a large pay check but eventually becomes the kind of person he used to hate. Maarten's experience with grassroots development projects like the ones Sylvia started on Tarawa, and his knowledge of the projects the World Bank starts makes him a reliable source. He has seen both, and knows that the large-scale ones created by international institutions are out of touch with the reality of the places they claim to help. But he also understands that even at a grassroots level changing a society is no easy feat.

The book is hilariously and masterfully written, while also being educational and illuminating. This is a must-read. And if you're an inexperienced traveler like me, the book offers a lens into a world that is both foreign and engrossing.

A Song For You

When I reviewed Patti Smith’s Just Kids, I discussed the nature of the relationship she had with artist Robert Mapplethorpe in the 1960s-70s. Smith achieved great notoriety since those prior decades and Mapplethorpe—although less well-known—did achieve some fame as well.

Just Kids reminded me of a book I read last summer, A Song for You by Kathy West. The book is another merging of creative non-fiction, autobiography, and memoir—much like Smith’s book—and also follows the era of the 60s and 70s through the lens of music and art, as well as transitions from young adulthood to adulthood. Unlike Smith and Mapplethorpe, writer West and her lover and friend Rick Philp ended up pushed to the side of musical history, left out of the mainstream tales the 60’s—although their story is just as important as Smith’s.

West’s writing style is different from the romanticism and thick imagery offered in Just Kids, although it has the same slow but thorough pace. Unlike Just Kids, A Song for You offers more of a colloquial retelling of West's life and relationship with Philp through concise prose instead of poetic language.

Philp joins a garage band called the Myddle Class as the lead guitarist. They headline for the Velvet Underground before anyone cared about the band, back when Al Aronowitz, the blacklisted journalist, was their manager (not the legendary Andy Warhol). They tour and meet Jimi Hendrix. The band and 

West befriend Carole King and Gerry Goffin. West continues to have a friendship with King and Goffin through most of the book. Just as Smith did in Just Kids, A Song for You offers an intimate portrait into the lives of the 60s most well-known names.


West’s friendship and romance with Philp changes throughout the years and throughout the book. Things begin to take a grim turn as Philp’s friendship with his roommate, a man nicknamed Dog, begins to get possessive and terrifying. Dog seems to believe he has some type of control over Philp—Dog resents West and other women for their closeness to Philp. One night, Dog brutally murders Philp. The Myddle Class disbands and Philp and West’s story becomes buried in the past. Their names disappear from the limelight for decades, until West decided to publish this book. 

A Song for You is surely to be of great use to anyone who wishes to learn more about the garage rock scene from an inside perspective. The book serves as an entranceway into the lost tales of the 1960s and 70s. Where as Smith achieved her success as a musician, Philp's was unfairly and violently cut short. The Myddle Class is band that represents transition, for they will be forever cemented in the phase between a promising start and major fame.

A Song for You playlist--Listen on Youtube playlist--Listen on Youtube

1. Don't Let Me Sleep Too Long--The Myddle Class (This video was created by author West herself)

2. All Along the Watchtower--The Jimi Hendrix Experience 

3. Gates of Eden--Myddle Class

4. So Far Away--Carole King

5. Wind Chime Laughter--The Myddle Class

6. Sweet Jane--The Velvet Underground 

7. Free at the Wind--Myddle Class

8. Up on the Roof--Carole King 

9. Mr. Tambourine Man--Bob Dylan 

Just Kids

My dad gave me Patti Smith’s Just Kids for Christmas earlier this year, but I took forever to get around to reading it. As a Writing and Politics double major in college, I always had mountains of books to read for school and found that time to read for pleasure often just didn’t exist. After I turned in my very last final paper of my college career, I immediately plucked Just Kids off of my bookshelf and dove in.

I didn’t know very much about Patti Smith’s life, although I had been a fan of her music for quite sometime. I knew she dated Tom Verlaine of Television, who coincidentally looks like a male Patti Smith. I knew she grew up in my home state of New Jersey and lived in the city like many other artists of her era. But I didn’t know much about Smith’s relationship with artist Robert Mapplethorpe. Their relationship is the focal point of Just Kids, the lens through which Smith sees the 1960s and 70s. When Smith embarks into New York City for the first time, she scrambles around trying to find jobs. Eventually, she meets Robert Mapplethorpe, a young artist and the two join together, kindred lost souls on the streets of New York City.

The two strike up a romance, one that morphs over time. More important than their romance, however, is the artistic space and spirit that Smith and Mapplethorpe nurture between them. They—especially Mapplethorpe—are constantly creating. Smith writes poetry, records songs, paints. Mapplethorpe takes photos, paints, and always tries to push the envelope with by depicting things like S&M imagery. Smith musical inspiration—Bob Dylan, the Velvet Underground—and her love for poet Rimbaud inspire her work. Mapplethorpe’s never-dying admiration of Andy Warhol plays a significant role in shaping his art.

A cast of 1960s/70s artists weave in and out of their lives and the pages of the book. Mapplethorpe and Smith stay at the famous Chelsea Hotel for a period of time where they meet Janis Joplin. Hendrix makes an appearance later on. Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell, the punk poet, are there as well.
An important narrative in the book is how Smith and Mapplethorpe remain tied in different ways until the end of his life. The art they create in the shared space of their trust for one another carries them from lovers, to friends. It helps them through Mapplethorpe’s battle with defining his sexuality and his later struggle with AIDs. And it helps them through the inevitable poverty that comes with being a young artist.

Beautifully crafted, Just Friends is a long, articulate portrait of the 60’s and Smith and Mapplethorpe’s world. Patti Smith has proven herself not only as a musician and a poet, but a wonderful crafter of long-form creative non-fiction, autobiography, and memoir. My only complaint is that the book can be slow-paced at times, but even when it is slow the language is consistently rich.

While reading the book though, I couldn’t help but think how different the world was at that time—
their room at the Chelsea was $50/week, for example. Smith has said herself that the East Village is no longer hospitable to young artists like her and Mapplethorpe. Even Brooklyn, which served as the artists’ haven only a few years ago, is now a pretty pricey place to live. The world has changed since the 60s into a place where the room and ability for the young artist to grow has gone from challenging to near impossible. 

That isn't saying that Smith and Mapplethorpe had it easy. In one part of the story, Mapplethorpe is so malnourished that he gets horribly ill and contracts trench mouth. If anything, Smith also disproves the notion that it was easy for people to go to the city and become an artist without any struggle. She illuminates just how hard things could be, even if at the end of the day 1960s East Village was a better scene for the starving artist than it is today. 

Just Kids playlist--listen on Youtube
1. Gloria--Patti Smith 
2. Me and Bobby McGee--Janis Joplin 
3. Marquee Moon--Television 
4. Because the Night--Patti Smith
5. Blank Geneartion--Richard Hell and the Voidoids 
6. Hey Joe--Patti Smith
7. Touch Me--The Doors
8. Voodoo Child--Jimi Hendrix
9. Piss Factory--Patti Smith 
10. Heroine--The Velvet Underground