Laura hosted this month at her beautiful new dream home. Congratulations, Madden family on the completion of your long held dream. Laura's barn-like home is nestled on a heavily wooded lot. Walking up the front drive we were greeted by a beautiful evergreen wreath and beyond the door by the new, very tall, Christmas tree and a blazing fire.
We definitely missed Lou, Denise and Darby as we like having all our members at the holiday meetings to celebrate with but also understand the demands of the season. Congratulations, also to Lou, who recently discovered her son and his wife are expecting twins in the coming year.
December's book was The House on Mango Street. This book had come up several times and we mostly decided on it for two reasons. 1. Terry and Darby highly recommended it and have both taught it in their classes and 2. It was 110 pages. This makes it perfect for the busy holiday time. The book is written by Sandra Cisneros and is a series of short chapters that she describes as "lazy poems", vignettes that are not quite poems and not quite full stories. Terry brought a chapter of the book in play form with copies for us all and we read aloud. This little exercise, which at first seemed a simple reading, actually deepened our understanding the material, made it more real somehow.
The book is set in a Puerto Rican "barrio" near Chicago and focuses on Esperanza's coming of age. After living in a series of apartments the family moves to The House on Mango Street and though it is a house, it is not the home that Esperanza dreams about. The short chapters are like reading excerpts from a young girl's diary. It is full of the day-to-day details of friends, family, and school. But also of deeper issues, her budding sexuality and the drama of sexual assault. She tries to rectify her fairy tales with reality and to make sense of the world around her. Girls that long for nothing except to marry out of their families only to find themselves in similar or worse circumstances. Out of the frying pan, into the fire. She observes this as she sees woman after woman trapped in her home staring helplessly out the window. Esperanza longs for something more and finds her way out through her writing.
The book rated a 4.4. The food was wonderful as always.
January 2013 - our first book club of the year will be held at Diana's. Our first book will be Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver. This book is not 110 pages, however, and we've decided to check the pulse on our progress. We might need two months for discussion on this one.
Diana has decided to keep with our "pajama party" tradition with breakfast foods for dinner.
Happy New Year Everyone - he is hoping for a Happy, Healthy and Blessed 2013.
