her beautiful brain Archives - A Geography of Reading

What does it mean to leave no trace? This laudable goal of many a traveler can go awry when we get caught up in the “what does it mean” and forget that “leave no trace” is meant to apply to the outer environment and not to ourselves. In reading Maps Are Lines We Draw: A Road Trip through Haiti, I have no doubt that Haiti left traces on Allison Coffelt’s heart and soul, but the book gets caught up enough in the headiness of her experience that I too often missed what the journey felt like. Worse, I missed the opportunity to feel myself transformed by her journey.

To be fair, much of Coffelt’s most obvious travel transformations probably happened before she even left home when she read Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains, the book that inspired Coffelt’s trip and in the international journeys she undertook before this one. And I deeply appreciate that she was trying to give us a more complex experience than the standard “I went abroad, I saw a lifestyle unlike my own, I was transformed” trope, but the fact that she’s visibly still processing this complex experience makes it harder to follow along with her, as does the fact that we are exposed as much to her thoughts about events (or even her thoughts on thinking about events) as we are to events themselves.

Scene vs. Summary

One of the lessons drilled into me in an early writing class is that readers need scene (the depiction of events) in order to engage with events rather than summary (the narration of outcomes) which can keep a reader on the outside of a story. It’s a lesson I rebelled against (like most lessons) and we can all cite examples of long, in-depth narrations that made a book for us. In truth, though, those examples are rarer and in our modern life of direct access to video and other first-person accounts, not to mention the unreliability of many “truths” spouted at us from innumerable political mouths, scenes connect readers with events in ways that allow us to both feel what’s happening and to trust the experience (even though all books, like all photographs, are in some way framed). Or maybe I’m just one of those “need to see the foreign brilliance before it’s spoiled by visitors” kind of people.

So in the moments when Coffelt is sharing glimpses of the scenes she experienced while in Haiti, I’m right there with her as she and Dr. Gardy pull to the side of the road to sample douce macoss or as she uses a headlamp to illuminate a man’s medical treatment. These scenes allowed me to feel like I myself was the traveler (without even a single visit to the travel clinic).

Contrast that with the moments where she’s reflecting on the tropes of the mission-trip story or the self-interrupting nature of travel writing (something she’s consciously doing). This latter brings me as a reader back to the level of watching the book being constructed—separating me from experiencing what I think Coffelt wants me to experience of Haiti.

Other Comments on Craft

Because I was often engaged with this book more at the craft level than the experience level, I was very interested in what Coffelt was doing with tense. In the moments when she does use scene, especially as she’s traveling with her guide, Dr. Gardy, the action that makes up the spine of this book, she uses present tense narration, which is a wonderful way to squeeze the most immersion possible from those scenes and a strong way to counteract the distancing effect of the rumination that intercedes. It’s a trick a lesser writer would not have thought to use.

Coffelt also knows her way around a metaphor. Whether it’s turning a moment of crushing garlic into a commentary on the messy history of Haiti or the staging of a photograph that encapsulates what it means to even write a book like this. These comparisons can allow us to fathom some of the complexity she’s grappling with without having it narrated for us.

Travel is Complex

Was it Pico Iyer who called out the difference between a tourist and a traveler? Maybe not, but it’s an important distinction in this type of literature. While many will feel that a book like Eat, Pray, Love delves into the realm of traveler, I’m actually looking for narratives that go even deeper than looking at how experiencing other cultures changes us as humans. I want the Anthony Bourdain effect of literature—to see those cultures as much as possible as they are and to learn from them what I’m missing about the world at large. This is something Lindsay Clark does brilliantly on No Madder Where and it’s something Coffelt clearly values as well.

I loved the way she included quotes like “The poor don’t want you to dress like them. They want you to dress in a suit and go get them food and water.” reminded me of the Mormon missionaries we came to know in Chile. There was something so interesting and complex about these young, white, tie-wearing boys’ success in converting the poor that continues to inform my own (evolving) thoughts about religious fervence. I also appreciated her reminder about the roots of travel: travail (to work), and I was interested to learn about Haitian’s relationship with the American culture of disposal and the dependence of relief organizations on having a population that needs relief.

Before reading Maps Are Lines We Draw I knew about Haiti only from one chapter in Ann Hedreen’s Her Beautiful Brain and from decades of news accounts of disasters there. I’m glad to now have a fuller picture of the place. Do I love how honest Coffelt was about the inability to form a pat narrative about her Haitian experience? Yes. I actually do. Do I also wish that I’d been able to engage deeply enough with the book to come away with my own picture of Haiti? Yes. That too. But I did learn a lot about Haitian history, watch a fellow traveler grapple with some larger questions about travel, and get to pay some careful attention to craft, so there’s a lot to recommend in this book.

If you want to learn more about Haiti or just the intricacies of structuring a travel memoir, pick up a copy of Maps Are Lines We Draw from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Reading Books by Friends

I only know the post-Alzheimer’s Ann. She had already lost her mother when we met. She was already volunteering for research to help others and she was already advocating for awareness and funding to fight this terrible disease. I met the Ann who was writing this very memoir on the first day of grad school as we both sought to get our chops up and find the writer within.

So reading this book at times felt like a revelation—learning about the story of Ann’s family and her life, watching her become the person I came to know—and at times it felt overly intimate—like I was skipping ahead in our friendship to stories she wouldn’t normally reveal for years to come—stories of adultery and spousal abuse. All of these essays together form the picture of one woman’s life as she grapples with the hand dealt to her and her mother.

I’ve resisted writing a review of this book for a long time (so long that I had to re-re-read the book before sitting down to write) because reviewing books by friends is an impossible task. I can’t be objective. I don’t even want to be. That’s not to say it isn’t an honestly good book. It is. I’ve bought extra copies and pressed them into the hands of caregivers I love. It’s also a very personal book, and I struggle to separate the book from the person I know.

Searching for Impossible Answers

In many ways this book is a quest for answers—an exploration of “how could I not have seen what my mother was suffering earlier?” and “is there any way this could have been avoided?” All of that is moot, of course, but it’s so very human.

As Ann recalls a trip to Haiti where she “should have” noticed her mother’s failing brain, we see signs noticed in retrospect, but in Arlene (Ann’s mom) we also get to know a schoolteacher who not only raised the kinds of kids who venture off to Haiti in the Peace Corps and as filmmakers, but also visits them there despite recent lapses in memory she’s started to find troubling.

When Ann delves into her mother’s early childhood in the blighted mining town of Butte, Montana, we see the environmental devastation that may (or may not) have contributed to the Alzheimer’s, but we also get to understand a life much different from our own—one that bred hardy people.

We don’t know what causes Alzheimer’s or how to stop it, that’s part of the frustration. And Ann does a wonderful job in this book of showing how maddening and important that search for answers is.

On Motherhood

(Aside here, my dad says all I write about is pregnancy these days, to which I respond, duh… 🙂 )

One of the things I related most closely to in this book is Ann’s story not just of being a daughter but of becoming a mother in this time where she was watching her mother decline and eventually waste away. It’s a particular space in life where you get to see aging, birth, and the essence of who you yourself are becoming, and I was grateful for the window into that time (especially at this time for me).

In many ways I think this book is more about those relationships between mothers and daughters than it is about the disease (which makes the book all the more universal).

The Art of Memoir

I’m not a memoirist and any attempts I’ve ever made in that direction have been failures, so I often wonder what makes a good memoir. In Her Beautiful Brain I learned about telling a bigger story than what you think you’re telling. I learned about staring hard at the particular to ground a reader in the moment. And I learned about building analogies between the “small” stories of your life and the “large” stories that make the memoir universal.

I am grateful to Ann for revealing herself in this memoir. I am grateful that she shares how hard caregiving and watching a parent subsume to a disease like Alzheimer’s can be. I am grateful that she also shows how much of the joy of life continues no matter what else is going on.

If someone you love has been affected by Alzheimer’s or you just want to know more, pick up a copy of Her Beautiful Brain from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.