'The Glass Castle'- A Memoir About Resilience

This is not a "normal" post for this blog, but this is not a normal week. I've been experimenting with writing on Mondays, but I don't think it's the best day to post blogs because people are just starting their week and are too busy. So this is a mid-week extra, and I'll try blogging on Thursday or Fridays from now on. So here we go... Today is not about 'business as usual', it's about...

The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls
As semester and holiday breaks approach, in case you are interested in extra curricular reading that can give you a taste for some aspects of American culture, I really enjoyed The Glass Castle. It is a memoir about a woman who was raised by unconventional parents who traveled around America. It gives you a taste for some of America's smaller towns, as well as the culture of the bigger cities. It is important from a sociological perspective. The memoir is also valuable for demonstrating impact resilience and will power can drive success even for people with huge challenges to overcome. Here is my book review, which I published recently on GoodReads. 
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The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Please note that I do not think the following is a spoiler because the very start of the book reveals what I'm discussing here... I'm going to share my perspective both personally, and as a school counselor who is very interested in power structures and how they affect our ability to control our own lives.

Memoirs usually do not appeal to me, but I could hardly put this one down. I truly enjoyed it, and was sad when it ended. It reminds me a bit of a fictional movie that I love called Captain Fantastic. Both feature families who are educated, but eschew social norms, choosing to live unconventionally. Both have parents who believe challenges will help their kids build character. Having grown up mostly in an enclave for artists in East Oakland, with parents who questioned the validity of societal rules.. in many ways both remind me of my upbringing, which makes this a story that feels close to my heart. I've had people tell me my parents should never have raised my brother and me in a rough neighborhood, sending us to public schools where we were exposed to urban violence, and so on. But I've also realized that parents are only human, that for better or worse I wouldn't be who I am if it were not for my upbringing, and I never for a moment doubted their absolute love for us. They also valued education at home, and believed in us, as Jeanette Walls' parents did, too. The mixture of love, education as a value, and belief in a child's success -- these things go a really long way in building resilience to overcome challenges in life.

I am still wrapping my head around all of this, but I'll share my loose thoughts. In discussing the advantages that even the poor can be born into if they come from an educated family, I am reminded of Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist and anthropologist who looked at how societal power dynamics delineate how agency is transferred and social order maintained. I think about these ideas, and how even when one chooses to abandon their advantages the dynamics that maintain power remain in the very habits of their life.

As a school counselor it strikes me, too, that here is a story about an educated family that chooses to live a live of extreme poverty, yet career and college success somehow still remain options for Jeanette, the daughter who authored the memoir -- not to mention her siblings. It reminds me of a kind of social, if not financial, privilege that the educated are born into... that even despite poverty there can remain an assumption that "college can be for me," or even "poverty is not for me." Those who experience poverty and have parents who did not attend university, on the other hand, are less likely to have this assumption. There can even be guilt about going to college in some cases. The contrast can be so stark.

This book has been recommended to me on multiple occasions, and I'm glad. Obviously it left me with a lot to think about! I welcome input on these topics if anyone just so happens to be interested!

View all my reviews