Let's Discuss: Are you ever afraid to talk about books?

 

I am very much a mood reader. Sometimes I'm in the mood for something light, sometimes monster romance, sometimes angst, and sometimes I'm looking for something that feels real. Every once in a while we're all going to find one that hits hard. Books that affect us do it in different ways. Sometimes it's a book boyfriend we love or worldbuilding we love or something else. Other times it hits us because of something personal just to us. 

For me, one of those books was Don't Cry for Me by Daniel Black. It's a book about a father, on his death bed, writing letters to his gay son who he has almost no relationship with because he couldn't understand his son as a person, let along a gay person. Most people who talk about the book just call it "heartbreaking" or "so sad" and I get it. I was at a bookstore with a bunch of people, and suggested the book to someone I knew. Another person responded in one (or both) of the previously mentioned ways, which was understandable. The book is in fact heartbreaking and so sad. 

I tried to explain why those aren't necessarily the first words I would use to describe the book. As I mentioned in my review of this title a while back, I've heard from other people who have similar backgrounds to mine, there's something about this book that shines a light of understanding on situations from our childhood that made no sense at the time. Parents who were too strict, who didn't show a range of emotion. The push from family for bootstrapping. The constant push to be the best of the best of the best. While there are a million reasons parents and family members may have acted that way, to have family (alive now) who were born into the Jim Crow south, who had family of their own who were sharecroppers and remembered family talking about life on the plantation... to have that in your real, every day life, and then read a book like Don't Cry for Me... it just does something to you. It puts some of the interactions from our past into perspective. It doesn't change things. It doesn't fix things. But there is power in a narrative that helps you understand the why. Jacob's story wasn't my fathers story or my grandfathers story, but in a way it was. And Jacob's son Isaac's story wasn't mine, but parts of it were. 

This might be one of those "if you know, you know" situations. And I imagine if someone is reading this book, and they were the gay child who was abandoned by their family, the book is going to hit completely differently. Someone once said that everyone reads the same book differently, and they're right. 

Anyway, while I was trying to fumble and explain everything that I just wrote above, the person who'd described the book as heartbreaking and so sad, kind of jumped over me to give a quick synopsis of the book and it felt... I don't know... kind of diminishing? It made me kind of sad that the thoughts and feelings that I was trying to convey were tossed aside. Everyone is entitled to their own thoughts, feelings, and ideas. What one person sees and decides is important in a book may not matter to someone else and that's alright. I believe that whole heartedly, but that experience leaves me with one question. 

Are you every afraid to talk about books that had such an enormous affect on you because of how others might react?