Power to Read

The note we received on the nightly read-along book for Ms. Thang.

We are so proud of her progress with literacy, and so thankful for her wonderful teachers.

Speaking of reading, I finally managed to finish reading my first book of the year. The first that did not include the character of Adobe Creative Suite CS5 OR Fancy Nancy OR Sam I Am. A groundbreaking feat for me.

Twice Upon a Time is the true story of the Christian conversion of two straight-edge punk rockers whose lives are unknowingly entwined in a number of marvelous ways. I had been wanting to read this book as Pastor Asscherick's preaching has had a profound effect on my own conversion. I knew much of the Cliff's Notes of the story, but little details that each man remembers about their childhoods (e.g. their grandparents' homes, the first time they saw a grown man cry) add to the robustness of the retelling.

The writing throughout the book is consistently beautiful, and the way the story is organized is engaging, even if you have no investment or knowledge of Asscherick or Renner. I would have liked for a little bit more first-person narrative. The third person works but it is hard to really get to know the characters from the jump. By the end, one has a well-rounded understanding of the men's characters but it was an uphill climb. Haha, you will understand that shameless pun if you read the book :)

Dealio Du Jour

I'm trying my best not to turn this bloggo into a 24-7 infomercial but I did want to note that I'm test-driving a new set of ads on the sidebar.  Also, I've made a few recent purchases and wanted to share some fieldnotes from the land of online retail. Also, I tell my daughter seventeen times an hour to stop picking her nose and eating it. I am part woman, part Chinese octupus with all the plates I have spinning in the air at once. Serious. I cannot speak to the quality of all the products the proprietors on the sidebar manufacture, but the deals are yours and I encourage you to take advantage of them as most expire after 30 days.  I will stuff your locker full of marshmallow Peeps (hardened ones!) and battery juice if you don't.

But for now, here are some of my latest recommendations from the field:

1. I bought these prints for Loverpants' new office from Fab.com. They are the archival echoes of New England bus lines.  Because don't we all want to remember the fun times we had riding the Greyhound for 8 hours from Boston into Hartford, the bus with the ceiling that dripped and the mold on the windows that wouldn't open?  The posters came swiftly and were to expectation. I've really enjoyed ogling the wares on this site.

2. I've enjoyed the stock that The Foundary keeps. I have had a couple of friends enjoy the spotlight that The Foundary offers its vendors. If you like interior design, this is the clearinghouse for you. If you don't like interior design, you should still subscribe to these e-mails so that maybe you'll take down that Nacho Libre poster from your living room.

3. Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Fast Dry Nail Color. I used this over the weekend. When you have a baby and a toddler, there is no other way to paint one's nails (if you prefer not to use your whole home and your own clothes as added canvas).  I went with the Blue Streak color but they have a lot of haut colors.

4. MediaBistro courses. I took the online Personal Essay course with Alyssa Giacobbe and the feedback I received from that class was instrumental to writing my manuscript and getting my book deal. What? Oh, haha, yeah, I'm already climbing the NYT Bestsellers list with my personal memoir?  Maybe you've heard of it? It's called The Help? Anyway, these courses are clutch if you're interested in writing as a creator or as a professional and don't have the wherewithall to take a class in-person.

Bon Apetit very much, xoxo Kendra

Review: Kissing Outside the Lines by Diane Farr

Artsy Irish-Italian girl falls in love with cool Korean dude in America.  Their parents are less than pleased. Sound familiar?

When I first read Diane Farr's piece in Modern Love, which ended with the bio indicating she had just published Kissing Outside the Lines on her life as the aforementioned Irish-Italian girl, I believe I ordered the book from BN.com in four seconds flat. I needed to read it. There were other cardholding members out there!  Besides just my sister-in-law and I!  American white girls who wouldn't let go of their Korean men!

Given my vested interest in the subject matter, I have a significant mammoth bias in reviewing her book. In fact, I am so deeply committed to exposing the truth about smooching outside those invisible yet indelible lines that I am probably the worst person to review this book.  Because Farr's book was billed as funny. And reading about another of my countrywomen getting the silent treatment from her beloved's auntie? Is the opposite of funny to me. It ties my stomach in Boy Scout-strength knots.

The content of this book is about 50% of what I would call intuitainment. That is, super amusing writing infused with a lot of intuition and cultural awareness. Farr is a good writer. And a good thinker. Her voice is consistent, even though she ranges from incredulous to earnest to hysterical to so dagnab clever. She really bares the condition of her mind and heart throughout the book.

The investigative nature of the book is a bit lacking, however. Farr essentially interviews a motley assembly of interracial couples in the interest of serving her own curiosity about What It Takes to Make It in this country as an interracial couple. She tells each couple's story in a way that is very conversational and rife with imagery. However, there are many instances in each story where the reader wonders, Really? You're just going to drag those in-laws' reps through the mud and not even allow them to comment on their side of how things all went down when they became estranged from their daughter for marrying the Latino dude? I found this a major shortcoming of the book, even though Farr indicates that this was intentional.

But if I drill down to what the book meant to me, put simply, it was a reminder of how very young I was when I met my husband. And by young, I mean stoopit. Because Farr and her main K-squeeze were in their thirties when they met. They had careers and a few moneys in their bank accounts. They had traveled. They knew stuff about the world and about themselves that I didn't know when I was BARELY OLD ENOUGH TO VOTE. I was 19 when Loverpants and I came together as cookies n' milk. I didn't know what I didn't know. I made a thousand mistakes with his family, not because I was rude, but because I had no guideposts, no manual, no one in the same boat rowing against the current with me.

Looking back, I don't regret all those blunders, all those awkward meals and tense conversations in Korean within my earshot where I would just listen for my name to see if Loverpants and his parents were talking about me.

This book is an important one. It rehashed of a lot of troubling aspects about the culture into which I married, but it also sheds light on a lot of the troubling aspects of American culture that are keeping us from entering that quasi-mythical land of post-racism. I respect the body of work Farr has produced and I hope many more people will read it and discuss it and be nicer to women in hanboks on their wedding day.

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