Today, May 2nd, is the second discussion question for the Beyond Busy Global Monthly Book Club. We just finished Anne Lamott’s Some Assembly Required, A Journal of My Son’s First Son and now we will spend seven days discussing it. Anyone who has read the book can participate by commenting.
Our next book selection is the hot-off-the-presses Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel. You can join our public BBGMBC Facebook group, if you would like to join us in reading one excellent quality book per month and then discussing it here.
Some Assembly Required, A Journal of My Son’s First Son is written by Anne Lamott with Sam Lamott and published by Riverhead in 2012.
Grandparents do not seem to often get to take center stage in memoirs…is this true?
One of the most refreshing aspects of this book for me was the opportunity to hear what it’s like to be the grandmother from a grandma-in-the-trenches, who writes unflinchingly about her feelings and foibles, without necessarily having to hear this perspective from my own mother.
Through Lamott and her scintillating (and sometimes sizzling) takes on personal relationships I was able to imagine what it feels like to be the grandma. And this alone was worth the price of the book and the time spent reading the book.
Would you agree or disagree?
And are grandparents’ points of view adequately represented in the memoir genre?
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I also enjoyed her vantage point as a grandma since I’m not one yet but look forward to being one some day. I appreciated her transparency as she struggled in the relationship with her daughter-in-law in regards to her grandson and could understand the feelings she went through.
I haven’t read enough memoirs to give an answer to whether grandparents’ points of view are adequately represented or not and look forward to how others comment on that.
I completely agree, Christina. It was so much fun to read Anne Lamott’s take on grandparenting, especially since I am a grandmother myself. She is so involved–I thought I was a busybody grandma, but nothing like her. It was completely entertaining to be able to read such an intimate account of Anne Lamott’s family life. I’ve idolized her for years, and this was a real treat. I believe memoir is a wonderful venue for writing about grandparenting, and there is not nearly enough of it–yet! I bet we boomers will make a big contribution there.
I enjoyed this second selection for your new book club, Christina. I love Anne Lamott’s writing, and she’s almost exactly my age, so it was interesting to see how she’s navigating the grandmotherly waters.
She’s so self-effacing and flat-out hilarious, but to be honest, this wasn’t my fave Lamott book. She’s kind of meddlesome! Okay, this is her first grandbaby of her only child, and the kids are really young. Way too young to be parents. It would be hard to find the middle ground between trying to support them and stay the heck out of their biz. Rough balancing act. But I sense heartache on the horizon.
I wasn’t sure why she included the trip to India. It’s almost out of context from the rest of the book.
Here’s a gem: the idea of “tending to one’s own emotional acre.” As a grandma I’m constantly going back and forth between feeling like I’m growing an umbilical cord to my son’s family (the babies, not him), and then guilty for running off and living my awesome carefree grownup life. Anne dealt with that dichotomy too. She writes, “I had no choice but to (do my chores). It’s always the same old problem: how to find ourSELVES in the great yammering of ego and tragedy and discomfort and obsession with everyone else’s destinies.” Amen, sistah.
Dang, I wrote a book review. Think I’ll cc it to Goodreads. Looking forward to our next selection.
I think that memoirs tend to be more of the writer remembering their relationship with their grandparents rather than the grandparent writing about their relationship with their grandchild. What a gift that would be to the grandchild to receive when they got older, especially after their grandparents are gone. I am not a grandparent yet but this has inspired me. I would have liked to write a book of my children’s first years as they were growing up (blogs didn’t exist back then!) but when you’re a parent you’re too busy. I’m hopeful as a grandparent I can find the time to do it.
I loved that perspective. I intend to suggest the book to my mother-in-law, with a thank you note for not being like Anne. You say the grandparent point of view is under represented. I suspect that will change as our population ages.Perhaps if that grows our culture will increase the value it places on our older generation.