Selective Blindness: You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know

Heather Seller's memoir, You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know, concentrates on the confusion and isolation caused by her prosopagnosia, a rare condition the prevents her from recognizing faces.  As an adult, she often accidentally insults friends and co-workers by ignoring them when they meet, or by constantly re-introducing herself.  Even her closest intimates can confound her; she cannot recognize her step-sons when picking them up, and often startles at the sight of a strange man in her house, before he identifies himself as her husband.

Seller's explanation for why it took her until her forties to realize she had a problem lies in her childhood, where she moved back and forth between an alcoholic father and a perhaps schizophrenic mother.  The family explanation for her problems with her situation was that she was crazy, and her frequent confusion seemed only a small part of the chaotic environment she found herself in.  Reading her stories, I did often worry for her sanity; everyone does "crazy" stuff sometimes, but usually we can identify it; Seller's doesn't seem able to differentiate when she is reacting strangely from when she is handling life appropriately.  She addresses some of the problems with memoirs directly; how everyone constructs stories of their lives from the pieces available, and sometimes we choose very carefully to fit the pieces to the story we want to tell, either to ourselves or to the peers we are sharing our past with.

I don't completely feel I understand what was happening in Florida as she grew up, and I'm still baffled by her relationship with her (sort-of-ex-)husband, but Sellers has a deft hand with words and narrative that make this a quick and engrossing read.  B-

Been Working on the Auto Line: Working Words

I've lived in Washington for about five years now, but I don't really feel like a Washingtonian.  I'm not sure how that is supposed to feel.  I don't even know the state flower, or song, or motto.  I'm not even sure we have them, although surely the state senate got bored some time and elected them all.  I'm a bit dubious of most forms of state pride, in fact, not just for Washington but in general.  But anything that leads people to make book lists can't be all bad.  I'm doing a challenge based on Michigan's list right now.  Why Michigan? Because I stumbled across their challenge.  I wonder if other states have Notable Book lists too? Hmm.

The first book I picked was Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams, which celebrates the words and deeds of laborers in America, drawing as much as possible from their own words, poems, and stories.  M. L. Liebler groups the poems, fiction, and essays alphabetically, which leads to some whipsawing between coal mining and assembly line working, between agitating for the right to organize to watching the jobs move overseas.  I wonder what it would have felt like chronologically, but that would be hard since some works move between eras.  As a whole, the book gives a strong impression of the power of work, sometimes the power to grind down a soul, sometimes the power to expand it.

I pulled a few poems for my poetry notebook, which is a good sign in a poetry book, and I'm glad Jumping the Candlestick held her Michigan challenge to inspire me to read it.  And I'll post this on a Friday so I can do a Poetry Friday thing like all the cool people. B

First Challenge! MIchigan Notable Books

I'm picking out some challenges for this year, and making a resolution to document them better somehow.  Maybe I'll make a bookshelf or something.  But one I just found that looks simple -- read two books from the Michigan 2011 Notables list, sponsered by Jumping the Candlestick.  I found two books in my library, requested them, so how hard will it be?

• You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know: A True Story of Family, Face-Blindness and Forgiveness by Heather Sellers 
• Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams, edited by M.L. Liebler