The Blue Jay's Dance: A Birth Year

Rating:
Summary: Is this just a woman's book?
Review: The Blue Jay's Dance, by Louise Erdrich is not a book solely for women, though I believe that primarily women will be drawn to read it. The story of a birth year is much more interesting to women than it is to men. Men are more likely to read about other kinds of heroism. My experience has taught me that the heroism of birth doesn't interest men much, nor do tales of the enduring devotion of motherhood. However, this is a book that I think men should read and could read with as much interest and a feeling of comradery as any war novel. Men like to solve problems and to build things. So do women. This book is about building a family and about solving the problems that arise everyday in the heat of battle. Erdrich centers her book on the strength, courage, stamina, and sheer artful intelligence that she is able to draw on to get through her childbearing years. She draws from a vast crows of living beings: grandparents, parents, birds, foxes, cats, flowers, spiders, and food. She uses everything she observes in her world to learn from and to use as friends to help guide her in her journey. Nothing is touched without being turned over at least once for investigation. Is this useful for me? Will it help me? What does it teach me? She is searching for paradigms that she can associate with her interior world and she finds many. The tone of this book is soft, lulling, cooing like a lullaby. We feel like babies rocking in the arms of its author. And this is where the book hits a center for both men and women. A mother's loving, patient, caring arms are important in helping to develop the emotional and spiritual life of a child. She gives us a mirror in which we can recapture our soul. The Ojibwe word is wabimujichagwan, or "looking at your soul." She guides us into a way of finding our boundaries for ourselves. Through her words she does for the reader what a mother does for an infant. She is "helping to form a spiritual soul self" through the concentrated "love gazes" that comprise her descriptions and observations of the dance of life. My sense is that Erdrich would like to heal everyone with this book. She reaches out to whisper in our ear that everything will be fine. She worries about our mental health, our physical well-being, our emotional selves, and our capacity for enjoying life. But it all seems to take its toll on her and she is not always up to the task. Through the pages of this book, Erdrich discovers her own inner strength and is able to "outwalk her loss"--any loss--like the mallard duck, who, despite being raped and bloodied by her attackers, walks on with a "little force field around her, a frail armor of determinations." I don't know a man alive who could resist such a brave tale.

Rating:
Summary: Is this just a woman's book?
Review: The Blue Jay's Dance, by Louise Erdrich is not a book solely for women, though I believe that primarily women will be drawn to read it. The story of a birth year is much more interesting to women than it is to men. Men are more likely to read about other kinds of heroism. My experience has taught me that the heroism of birth doesn't interest men much, nor do tales of the enduring devotion of motherhood. However, this is a book that I think men should read and could read with as much interest and a feeling of comradery as any war novel. Men like to solve problems and to build things. So do women. This book is about building a family and about solving the problems that arise everyday in the heat of battle. Erdrich centers her book on the strength, courage, stamina, and sheer artful intelligence that she is able to draw on to get through her childbearing years. She draws from a vast crows of living beings: grandparents, parents, birds, foxes, cats, flowers, spiders, and food. She uses everything she observes in her world to learn from and to use as friends to help guide her in her journey. Nothing is touched without being turned over at least once for investigation. Is this useful for me? Will it help me? What does it teach me? She is searching for paradigms that she can associate with her interior world and she finds many. The tone of this book is soft, lulling, cooing like a lullaby. We feel like babies rocking in the arms of its author. And this is where the book hits a center for both men and women. A mother's loving, patient, caring arms are important in helping to develop the emotional and spiritual life of a child. She gives us a mirror in which we can recapture our soul. The Ojibwe word is wabimujichagwan, or "looking at your soul." She guides us into a way of finding our boundaries for ourselves. Through her words she does for the reader what a mother does for an infant. She is "helping to form a spiritual soul self" through the concentrated "love gazes" that comprise her descriptions and observations of the dance of life. My sense is that Erdrich would like to heal everyone with this book. She reaches out to whisper in our ear that everything will be fine. She worries about our mental health, our physical well-being, our emotional selves, and our capacity for enjoying life. But it all seems to take its toll on her and she is not always up to the task. Through the pages of this book, Erdrich discovers her own inner strength and is able to "outwalk her loss"--any loss--like the mallard duck, who, despite being raped and bloodied by her attackers, walks on with a "little force field around her, a frail armor of determinations." I don't know a man alive who could resist such a brave tale.