"Space"

For my second quarter outside reading I am reading "Space," a memoir by Jesse Lee Kercheval. In the prologue we are given an idea of what Jesse's life was like at the time she wrote the book and we are given a glimpse of her life through a brief explanation of why she had written the memoir and we get an idea about what roles her different family members played in her life. She starts the process of writing the memoir by having her sister send her some family pictures. We can tell that up until she decided to write it that she was more than happy to put the past in the past, forgetting about any childhood trouble. As she explains the pictures we are continually given the idea that her mother was not really where she wanted to be, she seemed distracted in all the pictures, like she was stuck. Before you even start the official book, you are prepared for a very emotionally detached family.

Jesse was a child during the time of the vietnam and where she begins her memoir she is ten years old, her sister Carol is 12, and they are just beginning to move from Washington D.C. to Florida. She is young and ready for new experiences, wile her mother and sister are less willing to accept the change, all so her dad can switch jobs. She explains how her mother and her mothers mother grew up in families where emotions were not public affair and even the diner table is public. The only really private place is your head, and if at only 10 years old Jesse would begin to show to much emotion her mother would seemingly drift away until she stopped. This is a continuing pattern in the book, the dialogue is very cold, straight to the point with no person feelings clouding it. Even though both her parents had jobs it is evident that the male was considered the bread winner and ultimately the head of the family.