Windows
Cód:
491_9781936671243
These letters from great-grandmother Jean to great-grandaughter Ayla not only illuminate Jean Zipps life but also supply a vivid documentation of twentieth-century American life.WINDOWS: LETTERS TO AYLA demonstrates how revisiting ones memories can spark and kindle a surge of previously forgotten details. Jean smells Grandmothers bread, recalls cookies locked in the fruit cellar, purrs with the cats in the sun room, and plays with cousins in the cement-and-grass strip driveway. She celebrates lifes complexities, without denying us the true and sometimes dark details of the world.What were the Roaring Twenties like for a child in an Ohio steel mill town? Aunt Marcys flamboyant dresses and record collection; relieving summer heat by splashing in a laundry tub to the rhythm of Mothers piano music; running after ice flakes as the ice man chipped the block in his truck; an electrifying live Rachmaninoff recital; diphtheria, fatal peritonitis, and large red quarantine signs on neighborhood doors.What was the Great Depression like for an adolescent girl? Helping Father tally shoe store chits (notes akin to food stamps); Mother taking on extra piano lessons; helping young women with a place to stay and housekeeping work; no longer the glow from the blast furnaces with the mills shut down; and still Shirley Temple, Tarzan, Fred and Ginger at the weekly matinees where the chorus lines sang, Happy days are here again.Cleveland, Youngstown, the East Coast, Palo Alto, Colorado Springs, San Diego, Tucson-Jeans life has been a cycle of moves, desire to conquer boredom with meaningful work, and unforeseen serendipities. Her sensitivity to art, color, texture, and space mirror her insights into life. Her education in literature (Mothers library book lists; meeting Robert Frost in her college poets circle; adult writing groups; reading blue books for a blind literature professor) enables her to communicate eloquently and entertainingly the stories of her life.L
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