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A Piece of Sky, A Grain of Rice: A Memoir in Four Meditations
In this layered collage of memory within memory, Hale recreates for readers her kaleidoscopic experience of a decades-long journey to acceptance and insight. Writer, prodigal daughter, single parent, Buddhist disciple, and, late in midlife, a newlywed, she is transformed through an unconventional relationship with a female spiritual teacher and an odd ritual of repeated tattooing with her two young adult children. "Christine Hale's evocation of the bewildering complexities of life as a mother, daughter, wife (and ex-wife), and student of Buddhism is both a poem and a letter to those she has worked so long and hard to understand. On a journey that takes her through emotional and actual hurricanes, love and cruelty, urgent losses, and painful gains, she climbs to sometimes unnervingly high altitudes as she experiences "the joy and the sorrow of samsara." In beautiful, clear language, Hale explores the wounds life gives us, the wounds we give ourselves, and the long process of healing." -Sarah Stone, author of The True Sources of the Nile Christine Hale is the author of a novel, Basil's Dream (Livingston Press 2009); National Book Award finalist Joan Silber says, "Basil's Dream...seems to prove fiction can go where other forms can't." Ms. Hale's creative nonfiction has appeared in Arts & Letters, Spry, Still, Hippocampus, and Prime Number, among other journals. A fellow of MacDowell, Ucross, Hedgebrook, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, she earned her MFA from Warren Wilson College. She teaches in the Antioch University-Los Angeles Low-Residency MFA Program as well as the Great Smokies Writing Program in Asheville, North Carolina, where she and her husband live.
- GenresMemoir
274 pages, Paperback
Published July 1, 2016
160 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
June 30, 2016
What a wonderful and profound memoir. Christine Hale burrows into her childhood with fierce honesty and unflinching intimacy. The places that we usually don’t want to go—she goes there. And takes us with her. We resonate and reverberate. No, we didn’t have that mother or that father or those particular first two husbands, but still we know exactly what she is talking about. The power and clarity of Christine Hale’s voice reminds us of the common human condition—betrayal and loneliness—and of the indomitable human response—devotion and self-sufficiency. As a parent, as a partner, as a Buddhist, she illumines the struggle to transcend our burdens and our flaws.
Hale’s story of spirituality and liberation includes wonderful, vivid descriptions of such things as getting a tattoo , watching cats play, her mother’s death, and food poisoning. At one point, the author says, “I tried to be a good Buddhist and a good sport,” and my response to that was total agreement: isn’t that, really, what life is all about.
Hale’s story of spirituality and liberation includes wonderful, vivid descriptions of such things as getting a tattoo , watching cats play, her mother’s death, and food poisoning. At one point, the author says, “I tried to be a good Buddhist and a good sport,” and my response to that was total agreement: isn’t that, really, what life is all about.
July 24, 2024
I read Christine Hale's essay "His Body," in the Cincinnati Review and had to find out if she had written any books. Her essay was one of the most vulnerable, tender, honest, difficult, searching, loving and sorrowful, reverent and real things I had ever read, anywhere.
I immediately purchased her memoir and though I have a substantial and ever increasing book mountain, my heart pressed me to read her book.
And wow.
I found my own parents and upbringing mirrored here with such startling accuracy - every page is highlighted. I was constantly rushing to read parts aloud to my husband, my hand on my heart. There are differences, of course, I was raised in rural Iowa, and very religious as one of Jehovah's Witnesses, however, my father was a farm boy, my mother raised by an abusive alcoholic, and page after page, I kept seeing them both, sometimes the very actions, the very words my own parents had spoken - as if Christine's parents and mine were in a play and shared the same script!
I, likewise, sought my refuge in trees, and still do. I, too, write about my coming-of-age, the realization of abuse, my horrified fight against that word, the work I had to do to claim it and leave. The toll of emotional and psychological abuse - on one's whole lifetime.
Christine's memoir is proof that writing this story is vital. I have never found my story written down like this with such brutal, unflinching non-redemptive honesty - and when I say non-redemptive, I mean that some writers try to tell this story and end up fighting against the hard truth as they write - apologizing for it, rationalizing, explaining it away.
We need the hard truth. We need it. And Christine remained faithful to that even as I could feel her anguish weeping through the print.
I also, while reading, had occasion to help someone using her book.
My neighbor is a young girl, just turned eighteen, currently enduring emotional and psychological abuse in her home. Knowing my own past experience, and that I write about this topic, she turns to me for support, validation, and guidance. She is trying to get assistance to move out of her home, and her helpers are denying - because the abuse isn't physical - she is really being harmed.
I sent this girl a part of Christine's text I highlighted for myself as one of the most incisive and direct representations of emotional abuse I'd ever read: "I took in my mother's rules and in my small-child years observed them religiously but ended up, again and again, on the wrong side of her law. I left the yard with permission, came home on time or early, found myself overdue on her clock by an hour. I was punished. I arranged to bring home a school friend to appease her worries I had no friends; afterwards the visit was an imposition my thoughtlessness cost her. Retribution followed. I could, for no reason I understood, walk into a room unsuspecting and her fury, as from divine right, ambushed me. No matter how I listened, I could not avoid mistakes. I heard her say yes; she shouted she'd said no."
The girl forwarded this to her therapist and caseworker and they recognized the trouble she was in. They now believe that she is being harmed in the home, and are helping her find other housing.
Thank you, Christine.
It cost a lot to tell your story.
I want you to know you helped me, and another young woman - and who knows how far your truth-telling will ripple. Into what dark corners the liquid edges of your story will seep, bringing the healing light of hard truth.
Truth removes pain from the world.
Thank you for telling it!
I immediately purchased her memoir and though I have a substantial and ever increasing book mountain, my heart pressed me to read her book.
And wow.
I found my own parents and upbringing mirrored here with such startling accuracy - every page is highlighted. I was constantly rushing to read parts aloud to my husband, my hand on my heart. There are differences, of course, I was raised in rural Iowa, and very religious as one of Jehovah's Witnesses, however, my father was a farm boy, my mother raised by an abusive alcoholic, and page after page, I kept seeing them both, sometimes the very actions, the very words my own parents had spoken - as if Christine's parents and mine were in a play and shared the same script!
I, likewise, sought my refuge in trees, and still do. I, too, write about my coming-of-age, the realization of abuse, my horrified fight against that word, the work I had to do to claim it and leave. The toll of emotional and psychological abuse - on one's whole lifetime.
Christine's memoir is proof that writing this story is vital. I have never found my story written down like this with such brutal, unflinching non-redemptive honesty - and when I say non-redemptive, I mean that some writers try to tell this story and end up fighting against the hard truth as they write - apologizing for it, rationalizing, explaining it away.
We need the hard truth. We need it. And Christine remained faithful to that even as I could feel her anguish weeping through the print.
I also, while reading, had occasion to help someone using her book.
My neighbor is a young girl, just turned eighteen, currently enduring emotional and psychological abuse in her home. Knowing my own past experience, and that I write about this topic, she turns to me for support, validation, and guidance. She is trying to get assistance to move out of her home, and her helpers are denying - because the abuse isn't physical - she is really being harmed.
I sent this girl a part of Christine's text I highlighted for myself as one of the most incisive and direct representations of emotional abuse I'd ever read: "I took in my mother's rules and in my small-child years observed them religiously but ended up, again and again, on the wrong side of her law. I left the yard with permission, came home on time or early, found myself overdue on her clock by an hour. I was punished. I arranged to bring home a school friend to appease her worries I had no friends; afterwards the visit was an imposition my thoughtlessness cost her. Retribution followed. I could, for no reason I understood, walk into a room unsuspecting and her fury, as from divine right, ambushed me. No matter how I listened, I could not avoid mistakes. I heard her say yes; she shouted she'd said no."
The girl forwarded this to her therapist and caseworker and they recognized the trouble she was in. They now believe that she is being harmed in the home, and are helping her find other housing.
Thank you, Christine.
It cost a lot to tell your story.
I want you to know you helped me, and another young woman - and who knows how far your truth-telling will ripple. Into what dark corners the liquid edges of your story will seep, bringing the healing light of hard truth.
Truth removes pain from the world.
Thank you for telling it!
August 3, 2016
Originally posted @ https://readaholiczone.blogspot.com/2...
I am a lover of both nonfiction and memoirs always learning new things and seeing the world through other people's eyes so therefore I was delighted to have the opportunity to read and review this book that is until halfway through I realized this book is not for me.
“Driving home alone after dropping B (her son) off at his dad’s, I can’t fail to notice how J (her daughter) is right, again: we never do anything together...and I keep on making mistakes I cannot fix”
The book is set up in four different parts yet as a reader I could not decipher what the difference between them actually is. The prose is written in small segments jumping around randomly throughout Christine’s life, yet it is easy to follow. Topics consisted predominantly of her children, ex-husbands, Buddhist retreats, also her parents and childhood. Most topics are vague with scant details that is except for her childhood and her parents, which she goes into considerable detail about.
“I put my father’s shoes and a few other items of street clothing I knew he’d never need again into the cupboard on his side of a tiled, sparsely-furnished room that appeared clean but stank in the urine/cleaning solvent/diseased flesh way every nursing home does. I sat on the bed he lay in...having delivered him like a parcel to the holding pen for the dying.”
I dislike giving negative reviews it leaves me feeling distraught and lousy but not being honest about how I feel regarding the book is even worse. As a reader, I looked forward to learning about Buddhism but I didn’t. The blurb states of her decades-long journey to acceptance and insight and I relish learning how I might better my life from others yet the only insight I obtained is the author’s unhappiness. It is as if this book was a way for Christine to purge all of the negative experiences that had happened to her including the mistakes she’s made in life. Therefore, if as a reader, you are looking for a positive reading experience, this book may not be for you. I found very little positive narration. Truthfully, since finishing the book I still have little idea the message Christine is attempting to deliver to her readers.
“Thank you, TLC Book Tours, for allowing me to give an honest review”
I am a lover of both nonfiction and memoirs always learning new things and seeing the world through other people's eyes so therefore I was delighted to have the opportunity to read and review this book that is until halfway through I realized this book is not for me.
“Driving home alone after dropping B (her son) off at his dad’s, I can’t fail to notice how J (her daughter) is right, again: we never do anything together...and I keep on making mistakes I cannot fix”
The book is set up in four different parts yet as a reader I could not decipher what the difference between them actually is. The prose is written in small segments jumping around randomly throughout Christine’s life, yet it is easy to follow. Topics consisted predominantly of her children, ex-husbands, Buddhist retreats, also her parents and childhood. Most topics are vague with scant details that is except for her childhood and her parents, which she goes into considerable detail about.
“I put my father’s shoes and a few other items of street clothing I knew he’d never need again into the cupboard on his side of a tiled, sparsely-furnished room that appeared clean but stank in the urine/cleaning solvent/diseased flesh way every nursing home does. I sat on the bed he lay in...having delivered him like a parcel to the holding pen for the dying.”
I dislike giving negative reviews it leaves me feeling distraught and lousy but not being honest about how I feel regarding the book is even worse. As a reader, I looked forward to learning about Buddhism but I didn’t. The blurb states of her decades-long journey to acceptance and insight and I relish learning how I might better my life from others yet the only insight I obtained is the author’s unhappiness. It is as if this book was a way for Christine to purge all of the negative experiences that had happened to her including the mistakes she’s made in life. Therefore, if as a reader, you are looking for a positive reading experience, this book may not be for you. I found very little positive narration. Truthfully, since finishing the book I still have little idea the message Christine is attempting to deliver to her readers.
“Thank you, TLC Book Tours, for allowing me to give an honest review”
February 18, 2017
I thoroughly enjoyed reading A Piece of Sky, A Grain of Rice. Spiritual memoirs exist in the form of Eat, Pray, Love and the like, but I appreciated the quiet, authentic spiritual journey portrayed in this memoir. It was also refreshing to read something honest, and also unflashy, about being a daughter, a wife, and a mother. It wasn't a sensationalist, over-the-top harangue against traditional women's roles; but it was a clearheaded and true account of what it's like to live and question them.
December 10, 2016
This book really resonated with me. The writing is amazing; her life more so. Her use of "You" to represent those others in her life was interesting. Whether she meant to or not, she made me reconsider my own life, in part because of that indefinite pronoun use. Thank you, Christine, for this sad, sweet, endearing lyrical look back at your life. I heartily recommend this book. Give yourself a final gift for this year and read it.
August 9, 2016
I had enjoyed the excerpts from this memoir that appeared in a number of online journals and was looking forward to its publication. But Christine Hale's memoir is so much more than the sum of its parts. Her non-linear 'layered collage' approach reveals memories within memories in prose that is exquisite.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews