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Aug
05
"Becoming" [Guest Post by Tanya Egan Gibson]
2009 at 8am Posted by Rebecca Joines Schinsky
Yesterday I posted my review of Tanya Egan Gibson’s debut novel How to Buy a Love of Reading, which I absolutely loved. Today, Tanya joins us to share this guest post about the important difference between being and becoming.
Lately, my four-year-old daughter has been telling me about all the things she will one day do, including (but not limited to): “going all over the world to take people’s pictures,” owning as many pets as she wants, being a mommy who gets to make all the rules, and buying “that big, pretty, shiny” jewelry her own mommy inexplicably has no interest in purchasing at the mall.
I love hearing about her dreams (though I confess to hoping she’ll outgrow the penchant for necklaces composed of miniature tchotchkes). I love that every possibility is ahead of her. I love that when I read to her about things she’s never seen, places she’s never been, and things she’s never done, she looks at me solemnly and says, “One day, I could…” She imagines futures, sees beyond her experience. Her eyes are filled with becoming.
As children we talk about becoming. As adults, we talk about being. When at cocktail parties people inquire about what we do for a living or how we spend our leisure time, they’re asking, in a roundabout way, “Who are you?” (To ask what you’d like to become would be tantamount to saying “What do you want to be when you grow up?”)
Stories, on the other hand, don’t presume you’ve grown up. They extend to adults the same invitations as they do to children: come inside and imagine being someone–something–new. Books, because they grant us egress into the heads of characters, encourage us to take journeys rather than just witness them. They let us “practice” being other people. They remind us that change is possible.
Though at the beginning of my novel, How To Buy a Love of Reading, Carley Wells, the teenage protagonist, claims to have never read a book she liked, she does recall a passing interest in the Choose Your Own Adventure series as a child. Over the course of the novel, Carley learns about how difficult (and sometimes irrevocable) the choices we make to move forward in life can be. But she also learns, through thinking about stories and how they “work,” that we always have choices, and that life is an ongoing adventure. Books offer to Carley–and me–the hope of becoming instead of just being.
Read my review of How to Buy a Love of Reading and visit Tanya’s website to learn more.
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Lovely! I remember telling my parents that when I grew up I would go to Toys R Us every day. And they just smiled knowingly.
I loved reading this…I’ve decided that I’m still becoming the person I want to be!!
What Tanya said is absolutely beautiful and so true – I’m going to have to go out and get that book now!
My daughter is going through the exact same stage right now- in the past week she’s told me she wants to be a truck driver, a mommy, a princess, a trapeze artist, a veterinarian, etc! It’s so wonderful to listen to her dreams. Today she saw me reading this article and now she wants to be “like that lady” and read the most books in the world!
Such a wonderful post – and so true! Don’t worry about your daughter growing out of that stage anytime soon – I’m still there at the age of 20 (though it sometimes is a stressful stage to be at currently…). This only renews my desire to read this book – thanks!
I addded the book to my TBR list yesterday. If I had not, I would have today based on this alone–I love Gibson’s explanation of why we read.