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Going Where I'm Coming From: Memoirs of American Youth
14 short memoirs about growing up in America's diverse society by Susan Power, Luis Rodriguez, Willie Ruff, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Ved Mehta, Gary Soto, Naomi Shabib Nye, Lee Daniels, Graham Salisbury, Lensey Namioka, Helen Epstein, and more.
- GenresNonfictionAnthologies
166 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
6 people are currently reading
81 people want to read
About the author
Anne Mazer
73 books103 followersQuite a lot of Anne Mazer’s writing education took place while she was unconscious. Her parents wanted desperately to become writers and made themselves get up at 4:00 a.m. Every morning in order to have writing time before their three young children awoke. The first thing Anne heard every day was two big, noisy electric typewriters. The furious sound of typing was her childhood wake-up music. During the day, her parents endlessly discussed ideas, plot, and character, and before she was seven years old, Anne knew about revisions, first and second drafts, and rejection slips. It was like growing up in a twenty four hour, seven day a week writer’s boot camp.
In order to escape from her parents’ obsession with writing, Anne turned to books. She was an avid reader from an early age and credits her love of reading for her writing career. Her favorite works were fantasy, fairy tales, historical fiction, humor, realistic fiction, and adventure. Her other interests were language, art, history, and science. At the age of twelve, she wanted to be an actress, a ballerina and a nuclear physicist. These careers were rapidly eliminated as she realized that a) she couldn’t dance, b) she couldn’t act; and c) she hated math.
Although at the time Anne thought writing was nothing but a nuisance, she now considers herself very lucky to have grown up with two aspiring writers. She learned a lot about discipline, perseverance and dedication to a craft from witnessing her parents’ struggle. They eventually became successful and award-winning young adult novelists.
It took Anne a long time to figure out that she, too, wanted to be a writer. During early adulthood, she worked as an au pair, a bank teller, a pill bottle labeler, a receptionist, an English tutor, and an administrative assistant, as well as other jobs that she was ill-suited for. She attended three universities, spent several years in Paris, traveled throughout Europe, and worked in Boston and New York City.
Anne’s “eureka” moment about writing came while she prepared a research report for one of her bosses. As she lovingly polished each sentence, and meticulously organized the paragraphs, she realized that no one really cared how beautifully she wrote about the latest models of air-conditioners. Except her, of course.
Using her parents’ model of daily writing and discipline, she began to write. It took her seven years to publish her first book, a picture book inspired by her then two year old son, Max.
Anne is the mother of an adult son and daughter. Over the last twenty years, she has written over forty-five books for young readers. She has enough ideas to last for another quarter century and hopes that she will be writing for a very long time.
Fun Facts About Anne Mazer
Her favorite foods are popcorn, rice pudding and blueberries.
When she was a kid, she would sometimes read up to ten books a day.
If she had magic powers, she'd choose invisibility.
She painted the rooms in her house yellow, orange, and violet.
One of her favorite childhood books was The Twilight of Magic, by Hugh Lofting.
When Anne was a teenager, her room was so messy that she needed a map to get from the door to the bed. (sort of)
In school Anne often flunked her favorite creative subjects, like writing and art.
In order to escape from her parents’ obsession with writing, Anne turned to books. She was an avid reader from an early age and credits her love of reading for her writing career. Her favorite works were fantasy, fairy tales, historical fiction, humor, realistic fiction, and adventure. Her other interests were language, art, history, and science. At the age of twelve, she wanted to be an actress, a ballerina and a nuclear physicist. These careers were rapidly eliminated as she realized that a) she couldn’t dance, b) she couldn’t act; and c) she hated math.
Although at the time Anne thought writing was nothing but a nuisance, she now considers herself very lucky to have grown up with two aspiring writers. She learned a lot about discipline, perseverance and dedication to a craft from witnessing her parents’ struggle. They eventually became successful and award-winning young adult novelists.
It took Anne a long time to figure out that she, too, wanted to be a writer. During early adulthood, she worked as an au pair, a bank teller, a pill bottle labeler, a receptionist, an English tutor, and an administrative assistant, as well as other jobs that she was ill-suited for. She attended three universities, spent several years in Paris, traveled throughout Europe, and worked in Boston and New York City.
Anne’s “eureka” moment about writing came while she prepared a research report for one of her bosses. As she lovingly polished each sentence, and meticulously organized the paragraphs, she realized that no one really cared how beautifully she wrote about the latest models of air-conditioners. Except her, of course.
Using her parents’ model of daily writing and discipline, she began to write. It took her seven years to publish her first book, a picture book inspired by her then two year old son, Max.
Anne is the mother of an adult son and daughter. Over the last twenty years, she has written over forty-five books for young readers. She has enough ideas to last for another quarter century and hopes that she will be writing for a very long time.
Fun Facts About Anne Mazer
Her favorite foods are popcorn, rice pudding and blueberries.
When she was a kid, she would sometimes read up to ten books a day.
If she had magic powers, she'd choose invisibility.
She painted the rooms in her house yellow, orange, and violet.
One of her favorite childhood books was The Twilight of Magic, by Hugh Lofting.
When Anne was a teenager, her room was so messy that she needed a map to get from the door to the bed. (sort of)
In school Anne often flunked her favorite creative subjects, like writing and art.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 20, 2017
A collection of short memoirs (some excerpts from longer pieces).
Some I loved, others I had to force myself to read.
Favorites include:
"One More Lesson" by Judith Ortiz Cofer
"Ice" by Graham Salisbury
"Math and After Math" by Lensey Namioka
"A Call to Assembly" by Willie Ruff
""A Boston Latin School Boy" by Lee A. Daniel
"Dinnertime" by Helen Epstein
Some I loved, others I had to force myself to read.
Favorites include:
"One More Lesson" by Judith Ortiz Cofer
"Ice" by Graham Salisbury
"Math and After Math" by Lensey Namioka
"A Call to Assembly" by Willie Ruff
""A Boston Latin School Boy" by Lee A. Daniel
"Dinnertime" by Helen Epstein
September 11, 2012
Note: This is a very long and very detailed review, with a paragraph or two on each short story. If you want my general opinion on the entire anthology, go to the very end of the review.
Here, we have a collection of memoirs written mostly by authors who write realistic fiction for a Middle-Grade audience. All of them are written by writers who aren’t white, aren’t Christian, or both. Most of them feel like they were written specifically to be featured in a middle school Language Arts text book, and some of them probably were featured in one. (Actually, I know for a fact that One Last Time was.) I’m going to go through and describe each one of them more specifically.
Wings by Thylias Moss: 2/5
The anthology starts out with one of my least favorite stories that it features. I feel this way for several reasons. First, the writing is awful; the sentences are overly long and filled with unnecessary phrases that would work better if split up. They’re usually grammatically correct (although there are a few run-on sentences), but it’s still very annoying. It had very god imagery that stuck out to me, but other than that, the writing was terrible.
The second and even more prominent reason for my disliking this book was that there was no focus; Moss appears to be trying to describe Moss’s entire childhood without focusing on any particular aspect or event. This was a huge mistake, because looking back on it, I wasn’t really sure what I was supposed to get from it; different parts had different potential themes, and they were about different subjects. Many of the subjects were potentially interesting (in particular, I would’ve enjoyed it to focus on the power of her voice; Moss was mute for a few years in her childhood), but if it focused even on one of the subjects that wasn’t, it would’ve been better than jumping around for no particular reason.
One More Lesson by Judith Ortiz Cofer: 3/5
This story is basically the stereotypical diversity memoir; a girl from a Hispanic country moving to America. Once you get over that it’s not going to offer much unique in that regard, it’s not terrible. The writing is much better than in Wings, although it was sometimes flat. But as I mentioned earlier, the story is only mildly interesting. When these stories work well, they have a focus on one particular aspect of moving to America, whether it’s the contrast between the home country and America, or the new language, or any other aspect like that. This lacks in any real focus in that regard, mirroring my complaint with Wings, although this works much, much better in that regard. Don’t get me wrong, it tries to create two main focuses; the contrast between Pueto Rico and America, and the new language. The new language worked well; the contrast did not. The information about Pueto Rico mainly focused on Christmas, which was completely irrelevant to life in America, which made the story seem disconnected from itself. The language, however, works much better, I just wish it was longer. It could’ve made this entire story more worth reading than the contrast thing. It wasn’t a bad story, but it could’ve been much, much better.
Ice by Graham Salisbury: 3/5
A very interesting story with terrible execution. And by that, I don’t mean the prose is bad; it’s actually some of the best that the book offers. By that I mean that literary devices are used to terrible effect, and the story’s potential effect is completely destroyed. The first problem comes right after the exposition. The exposition itself effectively tells us what the story is about. It ends with a mention of ice and cuts to a new paragraph. For the next three and a half pages, we get an overly-detailed backstory that doesn’t mention ice at all. This mirrors the problem with One More Lesson; the story feels detached from itself. Once we get the actual story, it would’ve been worth it, except that the events aren’t given the emotional weight that they would’ve needed to make the story effective. This makes it feel very slow and boring, and it’s overall not an entertaining read. Had it been handled better, the story could’ve been very good, particularly coupled with Salisbury’s excellent writing style, but it’s completely ruined by bad storytelling.
Math and After Math by Lensey Namioka: 4/5
This is probably my third favorite story in the anthology. The writing is good, although it’s often flat. But the thing that really makes it a standout is the focus. Lack of focus in the memoirs has been a huge problem throughout the anthology, so it’s a very, very big relief to see one that focuses on one idea and runs with it. And the idea is a good one, at that. It’s not only interesting, but relevant and real; there are probably many people who’ve gone through a similar experience – being good at something that no one expects them to. (The way I put it there makes it sound like a really good and fun experience, but for Namioka, it really wasn’t.) Overall, this is an unusually good story in an anthology filled with ones that are mostly mediocre-to-awful, and I’d like to see more like this. If only there was more.
Stone Women by Susan Power: 1/5
This is easily my least favorite short story here. Looking back, I can’t think of one single aspect of the story that I liked. The writing was awful – so many sentences were too long, so many were fragments, and so many were awkwardly phrased. I could go on, but the point is that the horrible writing squandered what little potential the story had.
And the story didn’t have much potential. It had no focus at all. For the other stories, even the ones that had little focus, I could at least say that they focused on the childhoods of the authors. Here, I can’t even say that. It skips around the childhood of Power’s mother for the most part, with some attention to the lives of her other relatives and the Power’s childhood, the result being that I didn’t have a handle on how any of them lived. The fact that this was originally written to be the first chapter of Power’s autobiography just shows that she missed the point even more. It even got to the point where I wondered why the hell this was here – wouldn’t a memoir focus on the author’s life? I might be able to ignore this if the stories were interesting, but they weren’t. A few of them had potential, but they were ruined by the fact that Power didn’t see them – she could only tell us what her mother told her about them. The result was not only that the stories were uninteresting, but many of them were downright confusing. There were many explanations that were necessary but absent, probably because Power didn’t have them. All of this resulted in me being constantly distracted when I was reading this, and I was tempted to skip over it after about 3 or 4 pages.
Always Running by Luis J. Rodrὶguez: 2/5
(Sorry if I got the author’s name wrong. I’m not sure if I used the right symbol for the ‘i’ or not. Because of this, I’m going to refer to him as Luis so I don’t offend anyone who speaks Spanish more than I already maybe just did.)
Just like Ice, this is a great idea ruined by poor execution. The writing is mediocre; there’s nothing technically wrong with it, but it felt very flat and boring. But the story here was the real problem. First off, it had tons and tons of potential. If it had been executed well, it probably would’ve been the best story in the anthology. But the thing that entirely ruins it is that the events are given no emotional weight at all. The characters were going through horrible things at times, yet the author didn’t make it seem like they gave a crap. The only scene that averted this was the one where Luis’ brother got ruthlessly beaten by some white kids, and even this scene didn’t have as much as it should’ve. The other element that made it terrible was its focus (sound familiar yet?). It had some, but not enough. If it had focused more on one particular story or event, or even if it hadn’t skipped around in time the way it did, I might’ve enjoyed it more. But no such luck. These two elements make it feel basically like a less-focused version of Ice. For all its flaws, I could at least say that Ice was focused and it was somewhat enjoyable. Here, no such luck.
A Call to Assembly by Willie Ruff: 5/5
This is by far my favorite story in the anthology. The writing was good, but nothing special. What I really love about it is its theme; it is quite brilliant, and this is one of the only stories here that I really walked away from thinking that the writer had really learned something important from the experience. This makes it unique from all the other stories in here. The focus is excellent; it tells a story with a definite beginning, middle, and end. Not to mention the fact that the story is not just interesting, but also relevant and real. I really wish the rest of the stories had been this good, because this one was quite excellent.
Sound-Shadows of the New World by Ved Mehta: 4/5
This is my second favorite story, only behind A Call to Assembly. Its writing is pretty good, although it's often flat, which is a shame, because I would've loved to experience the world Mehta lived in (he's blind) more vividly. But other than that, I loved it. The focus was excellent (I like the story; are you really surprised?). But most of all, the story it told was not only interesting, but relevant and real, which is true of all my favorite stories in here. This is probably something that many blind people go through. It all worked very well.
A Boston Latin School Boy by Lee A. Daniels: 2/5
This wasn't really bad, but it wasn't great either. The writing was good. (This is all I have written about the prose in the notes I took for school, and that's what I'm basing the review off of. I'd love to elaborate, but I don't want to go back through and read it again.) The story had almost enough focus, although there were many parts that seemed irrelevant, such as the part where Daniels talks about why he remained a virgin until his sophomore year, and the first 5 pages, which I wouldn't have missed if they were removed completely. The story was completely uninteresting; the experience he had at the school he describes is so mundane that no one would care. Probably contributing to my feeling this way is that the writing was more analytic than emotional; he described exactly why he felt a certain way, but he didn't describe why he felt that way. The last thing I have to say is that it didn't have much clarity; I didn't know the school was a high school and not a college until about halfway through the book.
Dinnertime by Helen Epstein: 4/5
This one was another one that was pretty good, but could've been better. The writing was good, but a more fanciful (for lack of a better word) style would've fit this story better. It had almost enough focus, although it wasn't entirely clear whether it was describing one particular event or a general norm. I also wish Epstein had gone into more detail about her ignorance. But despite these problems, it was quite enjoyable. The events were given a proper emotional weight, for once, and and the story is relatable in the general sense. (Once you get to the specifics, it's not relatable at all, but the story doesn't stress the specifics too much, so it works.) The story was very, very interesting, and it felt quite authentic. (You would be surprised at how many stories feel inauthentic for one reason or another.) It described a very real situation, and many could relate to it.
Absolutely Someday by Tracy Marx: 3/5
This story was Marx's debut, and she was in college when she wrote it. I'm sorry to say that it shows in the prose. Many sections are awkwardly phrased, and it seems to overdo the grammar, with an abundance of simple sentences. I could tell she was an amateur, and is coming from someone who's never had his work published in anything more prestigious than a literary magazine.
Overall, this wasn't a great anthology. There were a couple stories that were awful, a few that were great, and a bunch that were just mediocre. The second half of the anthology was much stronger than the first, although it had its share of weak ones. Highlights include Math and Aftermath, A Call to Assembly, and Sound-Shadows of the New World. The worst include Wings, Stone Women, and The Enormous Piano.
(I will finish the rest of it later. I promise.)
Here, we have a collection of memoirs written mostly by authors who write realistic fiction for a Middle-Grade audience. All of them are written by writers who aren’t white, aren’t Christian, or both. Most of them feel like they were written specifically to be featured in a middle school Language Arts text book, and some of them probably were featured in one. (Actually, I know for a fact that One Last Time was.) I’m going to go through and describe each one of them more specifically.
Wings by Thylias Moss: 2/5
The anthology starts out with one of my least favorite stories that it features. I feel this way for several reasons. First, the writing is awful; the sentences are overly long and filled with unnecessary phrases that would work better if split up. They’re usually grammatically correct (although there are a few run-on sentences), but it’s still very annoying. It had very god imagery that stuck out to me, but other than that, the writing was terrible.
The second and even more prominent reason for my disliking this book was that there was no focus; Moss appears to be trying to describe Moss’s entire childhood without focusing on any particular aspect or event. This was a huge mistake, because looking back on it, I wasn’t really sure what I was supposed to get from it; different parts had different potential themes, and they were about different subjects. Many of the subjects were potentially interesting (in particular, I would’ve enjoyed it to focus on the power of her voice; Moss was mute for a few years in her childhood), but if it focused even on one of the subjects that wasn’t, it would’ve been better than jumping around for no particular reason.
One More Lesson by Judith Ortiz Cofer: 3/5
This story is basically the stereotypical diversity memoir; a girl from a Hispanic country moving to America. Once you get over that it’s not going to offer much unique in that regard, it’s not terrible. The writing is much better than in Wings, although it was sometimes flat. But as I mentioned earlier, the story is only mildly interesting. When these stories work well, they have a focus on one particular aspect of moving to America, whether it’s the contrast between the home country and America, or the new language, or any other aspect like that. This lacks in any real focus in that regard, mirroring my complaint with Wings, although this works much, much better in that regard. Don’t get me wrong, it tries to create two main focuses; the contrast between Pueto Rico and America, and the new language. The new language worked well; the contrast did not. The information about Pueto Rico mainly focused on Christmas, which was completely irrelevant to life in America, which made the story seem disconnected from itself. The language, however, works much better, I just wish it was longer. It could’ve made this entire story more worth reading than the contrast thing. It wasn’t a bad story, but it could’ve been much, much better.
Ice by Graham Salisbury: 3/5
A very interesting story with terrible execution. And by that, I don’t mean the prose is bad; it’s actually some of the best that the book offers. By that I mean that literary devices are used to terrible effect, and the story’s potential effect is completely destroyed. The first problem comes right after the exposition. The exposition itself effectively tells us what the story is about. It ends with a mention of ice and cuts to a new paragraph. For the next three and a half pages, we get an overly-detailed backstory that doesn’t mention ice at all. This mirrors the problem with One More Lesson; the story feels detached from itself. Once we get the actual story, it would’ve been worth it, except that the events aren’t given the emotional weight that they would’ve needed to make the story effective. This makes it feel very slow and boring, and it’s overall not an entertaining read. Had it been handled better, the story could’ve been very good, particularly coupled with Salisbury’s excellent writing style, but it’s completely ruined by bad storytelling.
Math and After Math by Lensey Namioka: 4/5
This is probably my third favorite story in the anthology. The writing is good, although it’s often flat. But the thing that really makes it a standout is the focus. Lack of focus in the memoirs has been a huge problem throughout the anthology, so it’s a very, very big relief to see one that focuses on one idea and runs with it. And the idea is a good one, at that. It’s not only interesting, but relevant and real; there are probably many people who’ve gone through a similar experience – being good at something that no one expects them to. (The way I put it there makes it sound like a really good and fun experience, but for Namioka, it really wasn’t.) Overall, this is an unusually good story in an anthology filled with ones that are mostly mediocre-to-awful, and I’d like to see more like this. If only there was more.
Stone Women by Susan Power: 1/5
This is easily my least favorite short story here. Looking back, I can’t think of one single aspect of the story that I liked. The writing was awful – so many sentences were too long, so many were fragments, and so many were awkwardly phrased. I could go on, but the point is that the horrible writing squandered what little potential the story had.
And the story didn’t have much potential. It had no focus at all. For the other stories, even the ones that had little focus, I could at least say that they focused on the childhoods of the authors. Here, I can’t even say that. It skips around the childhood of Power’s mother for the most part, with some attention to the lives of her other relatives and the Power’s childhood, the result being that I didn’t have a handle on how any of them lived. The fact that this was originally written to be the first chapter of Power’s autobiography just shows that she missed the point even more. It even got to the point where I wondered why the hell this was here – wouldn’t a memoir focus on the author’s life? I might be able to ignore this if the stories were interesting, but they weren’t. A few of them had potential, but they were ruined by the fact that Power didn’t see them – she could only tell us what her mother told her about them. The result was not only that the stories were uninteresting, but many of them were downright confusing. There were many explanations that were necessary but absent, probably because Power didn’t have them. All of this resulted in me being constantly distracted when I was reading this, and I was tempted to skip over it after about 3 or 4 pages.
Always Running by Luis J. Rodrὶguez: 2/5
(Sorry if I got the author’s name wrong. I’m not sure if I used the right symbol for the ‘i’ or not. Because of this, I’m going to refer to him as Luis so I don’t offend anyone who speaks Spanish more than I already maybe just did.)
Just like Ice, this is a great idea ruined by poor execution. The writing is mediocre; there’s nothing technically wrong with it, but it felt very flat and boring. But the story here was the real problem. First off, it had tons and tons of potential. If it had been executed well, it probably would’ve been the best story in the anthology. But the thing that entirely ruins it is that the events are given no emotional weight at all. The characters were going through horrible things at times, yet the author didn’t make it seem like they gave a crap. The only scene that averted this was the one where Luis’ brother got ruthlessly beaten by some white kids, and even this scene didn’t have as much as it should’ve. The other element that made it terrible was its focus (sound familiar yet?). It had some, but not enough. If it had focused more on one particular story or event, or even if it hadn’t skipped around in time the way it did, I might’ve enjoyed it more. But no such luck. These two elements make it feel basically like a less-focused version of Ice. For all its flaws, I could at least say that Ice was focused and it was somewhat enjoyable. Here, no such luck.
A Call to Assembly by Willie Ruff: 5/5
This is by far my favorite story in the anthology. The writing was good, but nothing special. What I really love about it is its theme; it is quite brilliant, and this is one of the only stories here that I really walked away from thinking that the writer had really learned something important from the experience. This makes it unique from all the other stories in here. The focus is excellent; it tells a story with a definite beginning, middle, and end. Not to mention the fact that the story is not just interesting, but also relevant and real. I really wish the rest of the stories had been this good, because this one was quite excellent.
Sound-Shadows of the New World by Ved Mehta: 4/5
This is my second favorite story, only behind A Call to Assembly. Its writing is pretty good, although it's often flat, which is a shame, because I would've loved to experience the world Mehta lived in (he's blind) more vividly. But other than that, I loved it. The focus was excellent (I like the story; are you really surprised?). But most of all, the story it told was not only interesting, but relevant and real, which is true of all my favorite stories in here. This is probably something that many blind people go through. It all worked very well.
A Boston Latin School Boy by Lee A. Daniels: 2/5
This wasn't really bad, but it wasn't great either. The writing was good. (This is all I have written about the prose in the notes I took for school, and that's what I'm basing the review off of. I'd love to elaborate, but I don't want to go back through and read it again.) The story had almost enough focus, although there were many parts that seemed irrelevant, such as the part where Daniels talks about why he remained a virgin until his sophomore year, and the first 5 pages, which I wouldn't have missed if they were removed completely. The story was completely uninteresting; the experience he had at the school he describes is so mundane that no one would care. Probably contributing to my feeling this way is that the writing was more analytic than emotional; he described exactly why he felt a certain way, but he didn't describe why he felt that way. The last thing I have to say is that it didn't have much clarity; I didn't know the school was a high school and not a college until about halfway through the book.
Dinnertime by Helen Epstein: 4/5
This one was another one that was pretty good, but could've been better. The writing was good, but a more fanciful (for lack of a better word) style would've fit this story better. It had almost enough focus, although it wasn't entirely clear whether it was describing one particular event or a general norm. I also wish Epstein had gone into more detail about her ignorance. But despite these problems, it was quite enjoyable. The events were given a proper emotional weight, for once, and and the story is relatable in the general sense. (Once you get to the specifics, it's not relatable at all, but the story doesn't stress the specifics too much, so it works.) The story was very, very interesting, and it felt quite authentic. (You would be surprised at how many stories feel inauthentic for one reason or another.) It described a very real situation, and many could relate to it.
Absolutely Someday by Tracy Marx: 3/5
This story was Marx's debut, and she was in college when she wrote it. I'm sorry to say that it shows in the prose. Many sections are awkwardly phrased, and it seems to overdo the grammar, with an abundance of simple sentences. I could tell she was an amateur, and is coming from someone who's never had his work published in anything more prestigious than a literary magazine.
Overall, this wasn't a great anthology. There were a couple stories that were awful, a few that were great, and a bunch that were just mediocre. The second half of the anthology was much stronger than the first, although it had its share of weak ones. Highlights include Math and Aftermath, A Call to Assembly, and Sound-Shadows of the New World. The worst include Wings, Stone Women, and The Enormous Piano.
(I will finish the rest of it later. I promise.)
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September 27, 2013this was a great book with interesting stories such as math and after math and always running
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