Hi
all!
I
hope everyone enjoyed their reading week! I sure did. Coming home was so hard, but putting my winter boots on was even harder.
Anyway
this week I have to write a blog for my J class about A Thousand Farewells - by
Nahlah Ayed. So here I go...
Overall
I thought her book was good. Ayed has a nice style of writing though sometimes
it was a little hard to follow. I liked how she could tie everything together
by the end of a chapter, but throughout certain chapters I was confused about
who people were and where they came into the memory and so on. I also found it
really hard to keep up with all her friends and acquaintances. Of course,
that's my issue because I'm more accustomed to Canadian-English names, but it
still made a difference to the way I read her story.
For
me her writing on a whole 'worked.' There wasn't much throughout the piece that
I found to be bad in anyway (writing, story-telling, etc.). As I mentioned
before the only thing that threw me off was the use of all the different names.
I
found myself wondering about her personal life all through the book. Does she
have a husband? A boyfriend? A girlfriend? A family of her own? Where did she
draw the line between work and life? Is her work her life? To the latter I
decided for my own reading pleasure that it was. How could anyone be away that
long and see all that she saw without having those experiences fully consume
her? It would have been nice for her to include more personal details about her
life just so that I, the reader, could get a sense of why she went back for so
long and so many times and where she was mentally and emotionally when she
decided to return to Jordan.
It
would also have been nice to know what her family was feeling about her return
to Jordan. She mentioned in one of her chapters that had she died in the explosion
in Beirut her father would have been beside himself, but what about everyone
else? What was their reaction when she told them she was going back to a
war-torn country? It would have been nice to have details like that in her
piece.
I
think journalists can learn a lot from this book. Ayed touched on some very
difficult topics and I can only imagine how hard it was for her to write
everything she did to get the story out. I've found it hard to write stories
that are important to me while keeping an unbiased and fair perspective, and I
think Ayed accomplished this. She spoke about how after 9/11 her family and
race were being scrutinized, but she never made it sound as though this was a
problem for her. She continued on with her life – as she should.
I
also think journalists could learn from her perseverance. There’s nothing
better than hearing someone’s story told with passion. Whenever I hear a story I
can always tell when the writer was affected by a situation personally. This
makes stories more interesting. Of course not everything has an affect on
everyone, but I think journalists should look at Ayed’s writing and learn from
her techniques.
This
story doesn’t really compare to any of the non-fiction books and stories I’ve
read. I love autobiographies – I find other people’s lives so interesting and
love to know where they come from, what they’ve done, who they’ve met – but this
was different. This, I felt, was a story about a girl who came to terms with
thousands of years of repression and injustice and still managed to come out
with a positive outlook on life. Honestly, I felt relieved after reading her
story because it’s not often that you hear about stories like hers with a happy
ending.
This
book gave me a larger sense of appreciation for my life. I’ve always been
grateful for everything that I have – my family, my health, my family’s health,
friends, education, good times, bad times, an overall fantastic life – but it
really opened my eyes to just how differently some people live. It’s easy to
forget that your life and living situations are fragile; I won’t be forgetting
that anytime soon.
Well back to school tomorrow, so I'll get on my laundry and putting the finishing touches on some other homework.
Happy reading!
M
