43: Flashlight on My Library of Life

I was privileged to have a mother who read to her children. My early recollections are of nightly huddles on the bed as Mama read and reread our favorites. Later, we older siblings read to our younger brothers and sisters. After reading to them, past the call for “lights out,” were nights spent under the covers with my flashlight, the one Uncle Buss had given me on one of his visits home during three tours of duty in Vietnam during the war (1954-1975). The warm glow of the light connected me to him as it opened my world to places and people I was unable to connect with in any other way. I journeyed to Tolkien’s Middle Earth, LaFarge’s America, Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County; then, Wiesel’s Night, Blake’s Paradise and Dante’s Purgatory; later, Bohannan’s West Africa and Achebe’s Nigeria, Evita’s Argentina and Aphrodite’s Rock. My life became peopled by Shakespeare’s Othello, Iago, and Desdemona; Faulkner’s Benjy and Joe Christmas, Dilsey and Sam Fathers; Dreiser’s Roberta, Crane’s Maggie, Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, and Kingston’s Woman Warrior; Wright’s Black Boy, Gorky’s Girl, and Tolstoy’s Man¹—people sharing seats in my library of life.