Lessons from the Borderlands

by Bette Lynch Husted

"Stories can change us," Bette Lynch Husted says in this brave and compelling memoir about her own life as a poor rural girl who became a college teacher and author. As she tells us how she continually confronted unacknowledged borders of class, gender and race, we realize that true stories such as hers have the potential to change all of us.
Historian Sue Armitage , coeditor of The Women's West Lessons from the Borderlands speaks truth. Truth about the working poor, about class in America, about possibilities and barriers in small town culture in the West. In this book I saw myself and my family, and the stories that have gone largely untold-stories about race and gender and the heroism of ordinary people struggling to live a decent life. It is a brave book, a necessary book, and moreover a beautiful book, rich with the language of poetry and of our Western landscape. Read it, please, and pass it along.
Molly Gloss , author of The Hearts of Horses Bette Lynch Husted's Lessons from the Borderlands leads an impeccable entry into lives along lines long fissured and crosshatched true. Her love of land and living gifts us with tomboy tastes, a black-checkered mackinaw, velveteen, painted welcome doorsteps, partnership, rehabilitation, rushing with whitewater, and circles where halves of bodies merge and baby's heart beats against our chests. A textbook case, Husted's formidable sense of reckoning delivers a hearty meal of a story bringing peace to a place a village once renewed. Like the roots called little sisters, we are pulled from our ground and brought to our knees in the wing-brushed walk we share in this tale. This is exactly the story we need to breathe some camaraderie back into our bones. The skeletons in us reach for more and this story settles truths.
Allison Hedge Coke , author of Off-Season, City Pipe "The truth is, I am trying to change things," says Bette Lynch Husted. Yet throughout these essays there is no polemical ranting; rather there are small stones set like prayer beads upon the page. These polished stones, the words themselves, examine through a gentle and reasoned voice, a teacher's voice, the kind of teacher we have all wanted, one who listened as she opened up new a vision on a known, or accepted, world. These stories have components of personal journey, history, and hope. "Who have we been? Who do we want to be? Why are we here? How should we live?" "Do the people who find their way through the world without wading down creek beds simply know the right stories? The ones that will keep them from getting lost?" Husted asks. But her stories are not myth. They convey what it is like to still feel less than, other, apart, not deserving - and how hearing such labels used, and misused, can give us "the feeling that my real self was all wrong" and even limit ourselves. In these essays such limits are not confined to just race, or gender; they include the great unspoken (not spoken of) class divisions. But again we are offered possibilities, more stones to carry; we can listen to one another, we can offer each other stories and truths, about our lives, what we need, what we want. We need to be quiet. We need to listen. Lessons from the Borderlands gives us tools to begin.
M.E. Hope , author of The Past is Clean

Genres: Memoir

174 pages, Paperback

First published January 20, 2012

About the author

Bette Lynch Husted lives in Eastern Oregon, the dry side of a notoriously wet state, where she studies T’ai Chi and welcomes Northwest writers to Pendleton’s First Draft Writers’ Series. Her drive to her Portland-area Side Porch Poets workshop group takes her through the Columbia Gorge, where she sees bighorn sheep, bald eagles, coyotes—once, even a mountain goat. She has been a Fishtrap fellow, an Oregon Arts Commission recipient and a finalist for both the Oregon Book Award and the WILLA Award in creative non-fiction. She writes a monthly column, From Here to Anywhere, for the East Oregonian.

Reviews

[Janice · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a shame that the author of Lessons From the Borderlands has not received national attention. These essays have a regional interest, Northern Idaho and Eastern Oregon where she grew up and taught. But her writing has much broader themes of class distinctions, the importance of family and generations, her love of teaching writing and her philosophy of education. These wonderful essays can be read separately but read together become a beautiful memoir.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the best book I have read about class issues in the US in a very long time.

[Steven Shook · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like Husted, I am a university professor at a state-funded institution. In fact, I teach at the institution where Husted earned her undergraduate degree. My students cut through the entire swath of social classes - those barely able to afford attending the university to those that worry very little about the affordability of their education due to family support, scholarships, etc. Similarly, my students' life experiences vary widely. I strongly agree with Husted that education, regardless of the discipline area, has the ability to be an equalizer among social classes.

While reading the various essays in Lessons from the Borderlands, I found myself thinking how I and others that I work with at the university perceive the discipline of teaching. I also thought about how administrators believe education should be delivered to students. Is education a product/service? Are students simply consumers of this product/service? What is academia's contribution to making society, as a whole, better off? Does a product/service approach to education lead to better individuals, or simply more employable individuals given the "flavor of the month" job skills that are currently required? How adaptable are we making students through our delivery of education, or are we making students more rigid and unable to move with change?

I found out long ago that students of lower social class are not unintelligent rubes out of place in the world of higher education, something that I think many folks in the general population truly believe. Quite the contrary...these students provide texture classroom conversations because of hardships they have experienced. Their value structure is different.

Lessons from the Borderlands will make you examine your own beliefs about social class, whether or not you are involved in education. Husted's writing is lucid and personal. A good read.

[Rrshively · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book really spoke to me as many of the experiences were close enough to my life or my husband's to be totally believable. I also appreciated the life-long search for ways to bring intellectually challenging literature to the lower class. The issues the author brings forth about attitudes towards the poor and lower class, the "business" model of education, unnecessary roadblocks to just living, and many more are well worth thinking about. I've heard some feel uncomfortable with her complaints about her experiences at the community college, but they ring very true to me as a former elementary teacher who has heard some give the opinion we should "train' children for jobs rather than open the wide world for them. I also found her experiences at the U. of I. totally amusing as she could have been speaking of Colorado State College (University of Northern Colorado now) when I attended. While some girls left for Denver to secretarial school and lived in apartment houses with apartments for both sexes, we were in segregated dorms with hours, bed checks, and room checks for cleanliness. The dress code of dresses or skirts only for classes, evening and Sunday dinners was very familiar to me. All in all, it was one of the most enjoyable books of essays that I have ever read with the bonus of lots of food for thought.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Did not realize I'd not written a review--it has been about 9 months since I finished it. I remember feeling like it jumped around a lot as I started reading, and then I caught on to the stream-of-consciousness cues. One chapter moved to smallpox and Native Americans in a surprising spot, but when I looked back, there had been discussion of smallpox vaccination and suggestion that the child had had a light case of smallpox, beyond the usual reaction.

The book deals with feeling an outsider because of moving from working class to middle class. I found it easy to empathize with the author.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this personal memoir engaging and beautifully written. She grew up in western Idaho in a poor, struggling family. Her commentary on race, gender and class distinction as a child, a teenager, and as a teacher in the rural west reflects on all of us. Her essays are gentle, but powerful.

[Deanne · Rating 1 out of 5]

Awful. Couldn't finish.

[Kathleen E · Rating 4 out of 5]

April 2014. Started slow but writer's style grew on me.

[Patricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for Kenton Library Book Group.
Essays written by a woman living in Eastern Oregon, who grew up poor in Idaho. There were things I could relate to, which makes for good essay reading

[Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent collection of essay-reflections centered on poverty and class divisions.
Favorite Chapter/Essay: "Hope, for the Dry Side."