The Reading Dragons @UWCSEA East discussion

Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

When the PAEast Bookclubbers met on the Wednesday afternoon, we were delighted to have a couple of members-at-large join us after a very long time. It was a pleasant start to talk about a book in which people are endearingly called 'sweet pea' or 'honey bun' as we shared our feelings and our potluck lunch.

Tiny Beautiful Things grabs the reader from its opening pages. A book about a collection of Agony-Aunty advise columns collated together, is not an obvious subject matter for a book. Nor is it an obvious choice for a reading material before going to bed at night, which is when most of us Bookclubbers read it. Writing under her adopted name Dear Sugar, Cheryl Strayed wrote an online column in response to readers who wrote to her, seeking advise about their life and living matters. This book is a collection of some of those letters.

Dear Sugar is not a psychologist. She isn't formally trained to advise you on the "WTF stuff" that happens in your life (her choice of words, not mine, little peaches). What she is, is a non-judgemental comforting voice who offers you her virtual shoulder to cry on and guides you to seek your own answers, with a little nudge and hug from her. A parent grieving his dead child, a friend stealing her best friend's man, a struggling writer, they are all treated with the same gentle love and understanding.

What truly makes her a voice that you want to believe and accept, is that she is unafraid to offer you glimpses into her own personal struggles. Her ability to connect the little dots of her life experiences with the dilemmas faced by the people, while not putting herself at the centre of the issue, but instead, adding a dash of perspective to the troubled hearts who seek her out.

We debated about what stories we would want our teenage kids to read, if any. Her loving ‘foody’ endearments to all those who write to her, interspersed with a generous dash of motherf∗∗∗∗ and other such profanities, keep her liberal advise very real and close to the ground. Would a man writing as Dear Sugar, and addressing his readers as ‘peaches’ and ‘sweet peas’ be as comforting, we wondered.

We came away touched and awed by the acceptance that she extends to all those who write to her, without being condescending, or judgemental, but always seeking to guide her readers to re-examine their inner selves and their own motives, to seek out the ‘roots’ of the issue, and to be brutally honest in the process. Which is what she truly is.
- Neetu Aggarwal