| Coming of Age When we think of "Coming of Age," the most common connection is a passage into adulthood. However, the term has a broader meaning: change brought about through reflection Changes can happen at any age, regardless of social class, gender, family, time period, culture, and personality. This issue showcases perspectives on change of life; explores their many flavors of depth and complexity. As a forty one-year-old, I am recently going through some major changes myself, so this issue hits home for me. At the head of the list for this theme are two reviews by our publisher, Elizabeth Ross. Both bring attention to pieces that serve as front line achievements in "Chick Lit." These two share a common twist: fear and regret over atrocities committed during the main characters' adolescence. The first, gods in Alabama, by Joshilyn Jackson, is about a woman who promised God that she would never lie, sleep around, or return to Alabama, if He kept the body of a boy she killed in high school from being found. Martha O'Connor's The Bitch Posse is about three high school friends who grew apart - one a writer/teacher, one a housewife, one an inmate in an asylum - who come to terms with the sins of their youth and begin to reconnect in their thirties. Another interesting, and important, dimension of "coming of age" deals with gaining insight on yourself through relationships of those close to you, especially family. Sandra McDow's "Second Chance" is just such an example. Her protagonist, a young boy growing up in a small southern town, comes to terms with himself when his long lost father returns to heist a local bank. "Grave's Duty," a creative non-fiction piece by Michigan-based writer, Joseph Guest, is the same way, but here the writer reflects on his childhood relationship with his father while visiting the latter's grave. The narrator realizes how significant his relationship was with his father and how that relationship defined whom he was and what he had turned out to be. Some cases of intergenerational bonding, however, are not so regretful, as Mike Harvey's "How to Treat Girls" attests. His account is a dandy little telling of an experience between him and his grandfather as they share some thoughts on girls and what it takes to seduce them. This is a grandfather-grandson bonding moment if there ever was one, and the boy gains insight on himself through his grandfather's wisdom and experience. |
Linda Boroff and Geralynn Maisano's accounts both explore finding meaning in life through childhood interactions with others outside the family. Boroff's "A Journey from which Many Do not Return," is a tale about a woman's alcoholism and the strength she discovers by forming relationships with others in her AA group. Maisano's "Living a Life with Hyperlexia," is a collection of stories that relate the author's insights growing up in a private school.
Then there is the significance of the act of reflection itself as a part of coming of age. This is especially evident in this issue's in poetry offerings. Here, reflections are distinguished through imagery and the use of metaphor, such as in the cases of Daniel Barbare, David McCoy, and Lynn Strongin. "Northwind," Barbare's brief but insightful contribution, illustrates a single moment in time as symbolized through wind, as if to suggest that each moment we live, as fleeting as a breeze, is important Reflection is taken to the level of memory in the other two. McCoy's "Pinewood Derby" and Strongin's "When Life Went out like a Light bulb" show how memories function through reflection to serve an individual's connections to past and present. The boys described in McCoy's "Pinewood Derby" conduct themselves diversely to achieve a common end. The poet in "When Life Went out like a Light bulb" - supposedly Strongin herself - refers to a single child who chooses a single memory of herself as a child playing the piano to serve as a parallel for her adult life. In both poems, patterns, whatever they may be, are an important part of reflection that leads ultimately to self-realization. In Jan Gero's "Aunt Jeanne" the poet strengthens her identification as a Cherokee through reflection. Gero's use of a banquet image highlights her pride in an elegant and exuberant fashion. All these works are brought together here in an eclectic assemblage that I think serves as a splendid display of the complexity of becoming. We all go through our own respective rights of passage, gain the insight that will help us understand ourselves more and more as life goes on. These passages usually bring change, which is healthy and necessary for us; without these rites of passage and the changes that come about through the process, we can never understand who we are, were, or are meant to be. Mark Hopkins |