the hiding place and the finding place

I always like JW’s writing. When this book came out in 2011, I ordered it but did not read it immediately. I thought that it was the fact-version of Oranges are not the only fruit. The online bookstore introduces the book this way:

"Heartbreaking and funny: the true story behind Jeanette’s bestselling and most beloved novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. In 1985, at twenty-five, Jeanette published Oranges, the story of a girl adopted by Pentecostal parents, supposed to grow up to be a missionary. Instead, she falls in love with a woman. Disaster."

This confirms my prior. I left the book on the shelf. I prefer the fiction-version of life. The fact-version might be too depressing.

Recently a woman emailed me with a picture, telling me that she is my biological sister. We have been separated for twenty-eight years since I was given away to my adoptive father. I knew that I was adopted but did not really want to confront the fact. I had a hard time with my adoptive father and his repeated divorces, but this did not make me long for my birth parents. The reluctance to face the fact of life has been protective for many years. Now my sister contacts me. I have to face the fact, or the facts because of different versions.

I started reading Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal, because I knew that it would be a hiding place. I knew that she would be handling the painful memories with candor, humor, and wisdom. In fact it gives me more than a hiding place. As she brilliantly wrote, “a tough life needs a tough language – and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers – a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.”

After finishing the book, I listened to audio book read by JW herself. I like the book even more when it is read. Listening to a story is different from reading a story. Stories, cheerful or sad, are to be told and to be listened to.