Light and Silence Growing Up in My Mother’s Alaska eBook Janet Brown
Download As PDF : Light and Silence Growing Up in My Mother’s Alaska eBook Janet Brown 
Janet Brown is a former bookseller who lives in Seattle and travels to Asia whenever she can. Born in Manhattan and brought up in Alaska, she tends to be attracted to extremes. This is the story of her mother and a tribute to the unique and indomitable spirit of the great ladies whose labor, devotion, and love shaped Alaska.
Light and Silence Growing Up in My Mother’s Alaska eBook Janet Brown
At 137 pages, "Light and Silence: Growing Up in My Mother’s Alaska" by Janet Brown is a relatively short book, but it's nonetheless a most fascinating and moving one.If you've read any of her other books ("Tone Deaf in Bangkok" and "Almost Home") then you know that Janet Brown is a very talented writer, one who knows her craft and can vividly describe a setting and the people who populate the story. In this book she deftly relates her experiences of growing up in rural Alaska, a place, as she puts it, that was “still locked in the nineteenth century.”
Basically, this book is a tribute to Janet’s mother who passed away a couple of years ago. Her mother had not wanted a memorial service or legions of mourners gathered by her grave, so this book became Janet’s way to “honor and remember her in a form that would have pleased her.” Indeed, the love of reading books was one of the strong bonds between mother and daughter, and you feel that closeness throughout this moving book. On the back cover Janet describes her mother as “a woman with persistent optimism in a life that was studded with tragedy, this New Yorker with eccentric dreams had the courage to build a life for herself and her family in a place that was truly wilderness, a domain of wind, grass, and trees. The daily life she lived was difficult, but it was her own. She chose it all, she crafted it, and she savored it.”
Not only does Janet offer a glimpse of her mother's non-traditional life, she takes the reader into the heart of the beautiful and sometimes cruel geography of rural Alaska. Growing up on this "last frontier", Janet and her mother--- and so many others --- were deprived of things that us city dwellers take for granted, yet you never sense that she felt deprived or cheated. Instead, as she writes, this remote setting "was simply a launching pad for new exploration."
I look forward to reading about more of Janet Brown's explorationd. Long may she roam!
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Light and Silence Growing Up in My Mother’s Alaska eBook Janet Brown Reviews
The memoir may seem like the most personal form of writing but when it’s done right, as it is in this book, it touches on enough universal concerns that the reader will feel like it’s been written for and about them.
What could be more universal than family? In examining the branches of her family tree, especially her mother’s life, Janet Brown has given us a saga that will resonate with many people.
She has also made it into an archetypal American story of pioneers exploring new frontiers. During the 1950s, you could not have chosen a more remote frontier of the US than Alaska. Cut off from the rest of the world except for radio and the post office, inhabited by only a few hardy souls, Alaska becomes not only the backdrop for this story but a character in itself.
Having grown up reading Jack London’s wilderness adventures of the frozen north – his famous short story, “To Build a Fire,” is referenced in one part – I had to marvel at all the vivid descriptions of Alaska, such as this description of their new home in an even more remote location. “There was no road to this place, only a hunting trail that snaked through trees and swamps. In the winter, after freeze-up, vehicles could drive through the muskeg but when the ground thawed during break-up, it turned to a bog of mush that horses could sink in right up to their bellies.”
The state’s wildlife and the family’s dogs, Siamese cats and horses also play key parts. The latter appear in a funny anecdote in which the author describes how badly they want to come into the house – to the point where they stick their heads through the back door, and another time, eat a pumpkin pie from the kitchen counter.
The author has a photographic memory for childhood games and that magical way children think. Surely these references will also set off plenty of mental trip-wires and spark some synaptic flashbacks for older readers.
For those familiar with Janet’s last books, the voice is as down to earth, but this memoir is much more ambitious in its scope than those travelogues and more literary in its execution. The way the narrative moves back and forth over time, with rarely a seam showing, is particularly impressive. It also makes for a more varied narrative that is not dependent on chronology.
The memoir, or non-fiction narrative, resembles the novel in that it demands certain dramatic set pieces. “Light and Silence” does not contain any such long scenes. Certain incidents like the fire that burned down the family home cried out for more dramatic treatment. In memoirs, the fall out from such scenes can echo through different parts of the narrative, providing cohesion and a greater sense of how those events can ripple through a family history, causing fractured loyalties or new unities to emerge.
The lack of dialogue also makes it difficult at times to get a real sense of how these family members act and who they are. But addressing those concerns would have made for a much longer book. As it is, this is a very pared-down narrative, only 137 pages, which includes lots of historic photographs from the author’s archive. I was surprised by how fast and how compelling the narrative is.
Without sentimentality but a good deal of empathy, “Light and Silence” is the sort of rare book that hits you on some very primitive and personal levels – right in the marrow of your family’s genetic code.
At 137 pages, "Light and Silence Growing Up in My Mother’s Alaska" by Janet Brown is a relatively short book, but it's nonetheless a most fascinating and moving one.
If you've read any of her other books ("Tone Deaf in Bangkok" and "Almost Home") then you know that Janet Brown is a very talented writer, one who knows her craft and can vividly describe a setting and the people who populate the story. In this book she deftly relates her experiences of growing up in rural Alaska, a place, as she puts it, that was “still locked in the nineteenth century.”
Basically, this book is a tribute to Janet’s mother who passed away a couple of years ago. Her mother had not wanted a memorial service or legions of mourners gathered by her grave, so this book became Janet’s way to “honor and remember her in a form that would have pleased her.” Indeed, the love of reading books was one of the strong bonds between mother and daughter, and you feel that closeness throughout this moving book. On the back cover Janet describes her mother as “a woman with persistent optimism in a life that was studded with tragedy, this New Yorker with eccentric dreams had the courage to build a life for herself and her family in a place that was truly wilderness, a domain of wind, grass, and trees. The daily life she lived was difficult, but it was her own. She chose it all, she crafted it, and she savored it.”
Not only does Janet offer a glimpse of her mother's non-traditional life, she takes the reader into the heart of the beautiful and sometimes cruel geography of rural Alaska. Growing up on this "last frontier", Janet and her mother--- and so many others --- were deprived of things that us city dwellers take for granted, yet you never sense that she felt deprived or cheated. Instead, as she writes, this remote setting "was simply a launching pad for new exploration."
I look forward to reading about more of Janet Brown's explorationd. Long may she roam!
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