I started out enjoying this book quite a bit: it was like a grown up version of Little House on the Prairie, which is one of my favorite book series. However, I quickly grew uncomfortable and annoyed with the amount of talking down I feel Kalish did to the reader. I felt much of this book was her talking down to today's society, today's culture, today's youth, and today's people. It was as if she was trying to make us feel guilty for modernization and the life we have now, which isn't fair. I found much of her tone to be snooty, high, and mighty.
Here are some of the phrases she used that led me to these feelings: "Is there any sense in trying to make the modern reader understand..." "I don't know anyone today who knows that..." "I've never met anyone else who can..." and so on. The one I especially did not like was "The current generation will never know the sublime taste of the tomatoes and the strawberries we picked sun-ripened from the vine and ate on the spot." We do have tomatoes and strawberries, and many of us actually do pick them straight off the vine and eat them. I know I have on countless summer days picked a bright red tomato and eaten it right there among the plants. I really struggled to appreciate Kalish's life when the whole time she was telling me that I will never have as fulfilling a life as she did.
It's so hard to compare today's life to that of the life Kalish lived. There are just too many differences that each comparison can't hold up, I think. Sure, we have indoor plumbing (praise God) and electricity, which assuredly make things easier, but they also bring a lot of complications too. For each benefit of today's life, I'm sure there's a negative to follow that, just as with Kalish's life, for each negative, there is a positive.
The other issue I took with this book is that Kalish never brought up hardships she faced due to the Great Depression. Sure, she talked about how cold winters were, but even those cold winters, she had a blast sledding and skating, and she always kept warm. So although the title brings up "Hard Times," those hard times aren't made known to the readers, and I can't help but feel this is because she wants us to feel how much better her life was, and if she brought up the bad, we wouldn't be as jealous.
Maybe I'm being too hard on the author, but I couldn't shake the feeling that Kalish is better than anyone reading this book, and there's nothing we can do about it because we don't have to work hard for the lives we live. That makes me very unappreciative of the stories she shares, and it led me to have a very difficult time enjoying this book.
**Also, I know I'm totally stretching the "own-voices" thing, but I figure, she's writing about a time she lived through and how she made it through the challenges she faced, so oh well.**
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