Book Review Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven
It's 1986 and Gilman has just graduated from higher. Instead of getting a job right away, she and a coincidental friend from college make up one's mind to embark on an around the world backpacking trip starting in China, which had been newly opened to Western travelers. In addition to having a rosy, glorified idea of what a year spent backpacking in foreign cultures would be like, the girls didn't even know each other nearly equally well every bit 1 might have expected, nor did they consider how traveling together would be in actuality. The eureka moment that led them to their trip went from being inspired and spontaneous to exist existence scary and unplanned.Gilman faces homesickness almost as soon equally she and Claire bear on ground in Hong Kong, wanting naught more than to cash in her render ticket and caput home immediately. But Claire talks her out of information technology and they autumn in with a swain backpacker, Gunter, as they apply for visas and tickets into China. Once on board ship, they meet an array of other Westerners and a Chinese man, Jonnie, who makes it his priority to introduce them to Shanghai and his own hometown in hopes that they volition help him with the American Embassy in Beijing. Even with the kindness of strangers, Susan and Claire soon find out that they have romanticized Red china and that they are in fact, uncomfortable both physically and emotionally. The crowds and existence stared at highly distresses Claire, a kid of the suburbs while Susan is a bit more blase about the experience, even while she however wants to get home.
The experiences these two young women experience as they move around China are surreal, existence interrogated by the armed forces police, wandering without a map through a city non officially open to Westerners, escaping from a hospital and a doctor waving a rusty syringe, then on. Their experiences are clearly not usual, non even for backpackers who like to hold "one-upmanship" conversations. But they also met some wonderful people as they moved around. The swain backpacking customs came off every bit generally charming and freewheeling. Just ultimately the culture daze was likewise much for the girls and while one deteriorated physically, the other deteriorated mentally so that it became imperative that they get out of People's republic of china.
As the saying goes, Truth is stranger than fiction, and that is certainly proved by this book. In the beginning, this seems similar a simple travel narrative nearly ii girls post college who intend to sightsee and run across boys effectually the world. Merely then the surreal starts to pitter-patter into the narrative and tension starts to build as the journey descends into waking nightmare. Gilman deftly handles both her own and Claire'southward experiences, never whitewashing the interactions of either of them. She has to imagine many of Claire's feelings towards her simply recognizes that her antagonism and annoyance with Claire is probably equally felt towards her by Claire. The personal, friendship and relationship, is clearly a large portion of the book but in that location are also interesting insights into how we react to other cultures and to being "the other" in them. There are hints of the political, particularly knowing that Tiananmen Square was still to come and September 11 was far in the distance but as befits a memoir of backpackers in 1986, Gilman doesn't delve too deeply in the political situation of which both she and Claire can't have been overly cognizant. This is, though, more than than just a travel narrative. Yes, there is sense of humor and new experiences. But it is too a await into the claiming of travel and surviving another culture and of a descent into instability that colored everything. I do savour this type of volume and call back fans of travel narratives that haven't been prettied up to be guide books will savor this was well.
Author, announcer, inadvertent humorist.
Groundwork: Made, born, raised in New York City
Career: Author of three nonfiction books, Undress Me in the Temple of Sky, Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress, and Kiss My Tiara (encounter bookshelf). Have contributed to numerous anthologies, worked equally journalist, and written for New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Ms., Real Simple, Washington City Paper, Us mag amid others. Won New York Press Association Accolade for features written on consignment in Poland.
Areas of specialty: politics, women'due south issues, cultural criticism, arts, satire.
Idiot box: Appeared twice on "The Today Bear witness" for promotion of books equally well every bit ABC World News; WGN-America; WCAU-TV "The 10!" in Philadelphia; "AM Northwest" on ABC in Portland, OR; NBC affiliates in New Haven & Seattle; "Connie Martinson Talks Books";"The Iyanla Show"; "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus."
Radio: Review books for National Public Radio's "All Things Considered." Co-host "Bookmark," a monthly book show on World Radio Switzerland. Take done commentary for Globe News Radio in Washington, D.C. Guest on dozens of radio shows across U.S. and Australia, including WNYC's "Leonard Lopate Show," WGN in Chicago, Pacifica Radio in Berkeley, the Buzz in Portland, the Kim Wilde Show, ABC Radio Australia "Breakfast Club," ABC Radio National "Life Matters," ABC Canberra "Sunday Brunch."
Fiction writing: Short stories published in Ploughshares, Story, Beloit Fiction Journal, Greensboro Review, Virginia Quarterly Review; awarded VQR's 1999 Literary Award for brusque fiction.
Sordid by: Worked as Washington D.C. speech communication writer and every bit staff writer for Member of U.South. Congress.
Not-so-sordid past: Columnist for now-defunct HUES magazine and NYPerspectives paper. Taught writing and literature at Academy of Michigan and Eastern Michigan University. Also: cocktail waitress, legal aid, food service worker, inept receptionist.
Teaching: University of Michigan (MFA in Creative Writing), Brown University (BA in Literature), Stuyvesant High School.
Writing teachers: Nicholas Delbanco, Charles Baxter, Al Young, Rosellen Chocolate-brown, and terminal, but near pivotally, beloved Frank McCourt (RIP). I learned volumes from all of these slap-up writers and bow before them. I bow before all teachers, in fact. (Don't get me started on how under-appreciated and underpaid they are...)
Fun facts: As said kid, I was forced to learn Transcendental Meditation (see "Love and the Maharishi" in Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Apparel.) Agape of clowns and puppets. Kicked out of Betty Owen Secretarial School.
First literary influences: The three Johns: Steinbeck, Updike, and Cheever. Also Dorothy Parker, F.Scott Fitzgerald, Truman Capote, J.D. Salinger -- the usual 20th century local suspects.
Funny, simply... I never set out to write books that fabricated people laugh. My principal honey has always been literary fiction, and the first volume I completed (which has yet to be published) was a drove of serious brusk stories. Notwithstanding, fifty-fifty with my darkest piece of work, people would e'er tell me that parts of it were funny. This annoyed me because I aspired to be an American Dostoevsky with Breasts. Simply in 1999, I took a writers' workshop at the Bethesda Writers' Center. The get-go story I submitted was a heartbreaking tale of a man'southward addiction, which impressed the grade. The 2nd was an absurd story about mistaken identity full of Jews, Rastafarians, and dental hygienists. To my slap-up irritation, the class liked this one infinitely more. After class, a human being pulled me aside. "I have to tell you lot," he said. "My wife has been battling breast cancer. I read her your story last night, and information technology was the start fourth dimension in two years she really laughed. Yous've got a gift. Please don't ignore it. Not everyone can make a sick woman laugh in her hospital bed." That'due south when I finally saw the merit in my own, lurking smart-ass and stopped fighting it.
Advice for aspiring writers: Don't do information technology. If you're good at anything else besides writing -- and you have a modicum of passion for it -- spare yourself. The majority of any writer'southward life is spent in complete isolation, staring catatonically at a blinking cursor, and so rewriting each sentence fifteen thousand times in what is essentially a codified form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Perversely, if you do this often enough and are successful at it, people volition tell you that your writing "is so simple -- information technology sounds simply like you talking" and that they, too, now are thinking off "taking a few months off" to write a book. Meliorate to become a process-server, a bartender, or a taxidermist if you're that masochistic.
Visit Susan Jane Gilman'southward website and weblog. (She's really quite funny.) And make sure to read her other books: Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Clothes and Buss My Tiara.
Thank you lot to Miriam at Hachette Books for sending me a review copy of the book.
Source: http://booknaround.blogspot.com/2010/02/review-undress-me-in-temple-of-heaven.html
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