Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith, Anne Lamott (Random House, 1999)

Part of what I do in our non-traditional Family Literacy class is to prepare students to take their GED exam. After a few weeks/months/years (students move at their own pace) of study skills, reading comprehension, and math drills, most students feel a bit more confident about the whole process, but even the fearless are apprehensive when it comes to the essay portion of the test. One way I address this tension is by putting concrete examples, from other reading material, on the board; that way, we can examine and address the writing issues together.

I have used many books for this exercise, but my forever favorite is Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith. These essays are honest and detailed, incorporating astoundingly simple moments of everyday euphoria, mirrored against the struggles of being human in a world with few answers but many questions. Her language of love, selfishness, and addiction use and abuse speaks directly to my students in ways that I never could.

Capturing the Reader's Attention
One of the things I tell my class is that it doesn't matter if they are writing a cover letter requesting an interview, a note to a far away friend, or an essay to pass their GED exam; their first job is to capture the attention of their reader. On the board I write these words: ordinary night, lunar eclipse, and cystic fibrosis. My questions are, "What type of feeling do you get from each word? Are they positive, neutral, or negative words?" Then I ask, "Can you use all three in a single sentence?" After a discussion that usually includes comments regarding my sanity and the impossibility of using this combination, I copy the first sentence from Lamott's essay, "Barn Raising." She writes: "On an otherwise ordinary night at the end of September, some friends came over to watch the lunar eclipse, friends whose two-year-old daughter Olivia had been diagnosed nine months earlier with cystic fibrosis." (p. 147)

"Has she commanded your attention?" I ask. We talk about the emotional roller coaster ride provided by this one sentence, from the ordinary word "night" to the anticipatory phrase "lunar eclipse," to the plunge with Olivia and her "cystic fibrosis." As they nod, I see that are invested in both the lesson and what happens to Olivia.

No essay discussion is complete without covering the topic of description. When the students write that they were mad, I have to ask, but how mad were you? (and "very" doesn't count). How can you describe that anger so I can feel it as painfully and powerfully as you do? What kind of thoughts did this type of anger evoke? Anne Lamott writes: "I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish." (p.131) I actually had one student clap after this line. Now those are some angry thoughts!

Using Description
"How would you describe the most beautiful person you know?" I ask the class. Their interest piqued, they are now yelling suggestions to me. Their offerings are impressive: "as beautiful as a sunset, as lovely as the ocean" (remember, we live on the Cape), "as beautiful as my baby's skin." Their efforts are enchanting, and I see them reaching beyond their normal writing parameters. I ask them if they would like to hear/read another selection from Traveling Mercies, and they answer unanimously in the affirmative. I give them this recounting from the chapter "The Aunties," where Anne is describing her son, Sam. "He wouldn't understand: he looks like a cross between God and Cindy Crawford." (p. 206)

Once this description settles in, there seems to be a resounding ahhhhhhhhhhh, leaking from the students into the classroom. Picturing the offspring of Cindy Crawford, representing the societal image of female flawlessness, and God, the unseen image of (Christian) male perfection -- well now, that's a beautiful baby! Suddenly, when I say that "very mad" and "interesting" are empty words that tell me absolutely nothing about the person or the situation, they have a clearer understanding of what I am looking for.

Grammar Groans
The eye-rolling that follows a grammar introduction is quite comical. My students want to learn the basic rules so they can pass their test, but they make me very aware that any frills in this department will not be tolerated.

How do you talk about dependent and independent clauses, compound and complex sentences, as well as coordinating conjunctions in a way that captures what is tangible to the grammar-haters? I used this extraordinary passage:

I can't imagine anything but music that could have brought about this alchemy. Maybe it's because music is about as physical as it gets: your essential rhythm is your heartbeat; your essential sound, the breath. We're walking temples of noise, and when you add tender hearts to this mix, it somehow lets us meet in places we couldn't get to any other way. (p. 65)

With this type of in-class assignment, I hope to present a model of the writing process that is both informative and exciting, and if I can entice my students into reading outside of the classroom, I feel like I have done a good day's work. So far, I've had a request for, and given away, three copies of Traveling Mercies. Yes, I think it's working!

Tina Toran is a part-time family literacy teacher and a full-time coordinator for the Falmouth Parent-Child Home Program. She welcomes any, and all, comments on writing, family literacy, and her obsession with the writings of Anne Lamott. She can be reached at ttoran@cs.com