What I am Reading

Cindy Harrison loves books. She reads about 20 books per month and still finds time to teach at her local community college."I am...deeply loyal to writers whose work changed my life in significant ways..." Visit her at Cynthiaharrison.com or email herCindy@CynthiaHarrison

My Five Favorite Books 2 - Page 2

H ow to Save Your Own Life is the story of how Isadora Wing leaves...a loveless marriage in New York for a passionate fling in Los Angeles. Wing is a poet who wrote a bestseller about her life that is now being turned into a movie. The parallels to Jong’s own life after the huge buzz of Fear of Flying are obvious. But what really got me about that book were the ideas that a woman could be a poet, a bad marriage could be discarded, and that it is possible to reinvent yourself even after you thought your life was fixed forever. For many years, I reread that book every summer. It gave me courage and it gave me hope and I loved every single thing about it.

Gloria Naylor has a very special place in my life. I once took a college course with her published novels as the exclusive reading list. It was my favorite course in six years of higher learning, taught by my favorite teacher. Naylor actually came to Marygrove College in Detroit, where I earned my B.A. She did a public reading and met privately with the select group of women who took the course in her work. It was a highlight and a turning point for me.

The English department had sponsored a competition: publication in the college literary journal plus $500 for the best essay about Naylor’s work and $500 for the best piece of fiction that somehow alluded to her novels. My short story, “Cherry Vanilla” was based on a minor character in Mama Day, a white woman with whom the protagonist’s love interest is living when the couple meet. I won the fiction competition and got to have dinner with Ms. Naylor. She told me she’d read my story, and that she liked what I had done with the character. I have never been more thrilled in my life.

Mama Day reminds me a lot of Practical Magic, in that both of these novels deal with women’s secret knowledge, and the often ungovernable power that comes with it, passed down through generations.

Barbara Samuel is the novelist on this list that I’ve had the shortest reading relationship with, but that doesn’t make her work any less dear to my heart. I remember sitting across from her at a dinner for another writer’s fan club, talking about A Piece of Heaven. I told her how much the book meant to me, how I loved the main character, who was a recovering alcoholic and an artist who worked not for fame and fortune but for the love of her craft. Samuel thanked me and confided that some readers were put off by the book because the main character was flawed in such a socially unacceptable way. Not me. I’m a sucker for a good redemption story.

I could talk for hours about these authors and their books --what they mean to me, how they continue to inform my life and make it richer. But new books are calling my name, and I’m off to explore their worlds. – Cindy Harrison

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