The Diary of Anne Frank
How to you write about a work that transcends each and every genera that it is thrust into? Can I be critical of a book like this? Is it even fair to try to compare it to other stories? All of these questions have crossed my mind when I was reading Anne's diary. The first rule of criticism is does the book reach out to its intended audience? Well, this is a diary. Anne never meant for anyone to read it. At that point the rest of conventional criticism evaporates. It is difficult to call this book dull because it is about how life goes on even in the middle of a hellish war. The glimpse of normalcy and beans for dinner is extraordinarily moving.
Part of the reason I selected this book is because it was never required reading when I was growing up. Somehow my English teachers never selected this work. Looking back that makes me sad. I wish I could have read Frank's diary. Her detailed anguish of not fitting in would have resonated with me. I would have discovered I was not alone. As much as this book is used to teach classes about the Holocaust, it can also be used as a way of showing young people that their emotions are not isolating. A young girl felt them in 1943, and you may feel the same in 2012. Asking people to read this book is almost a cliche, but I am going to do it anyway. Even if my readers have picked it up as young people, read this again. If Anne Frank reminds us of one thing it is that we are all wonderfully human.
After a week of gulags and the Holocaust I am switching gears to a something funny. Baratunde Thurston's How to be Black should make me laugh out loud. Also, the inside cover said that if I didn't buy the book I was a racist, so I did.
How to you write about a work that transcends each and every genera that it is thrust into? Can I be critical of a book like this? Is it even fair to try to compare it to other stories? All of these questions have crossed my mind when I was reading Anne's diary. The first rule of criticism is does the book reach out to its intended audience? Well, this is a diary. Anne never meant for anyone to read it. At that point the rest of conventional criticism evaporates. It is difficult to call this book dull because it is about how life goes on even in the middle of a hellish war. The glimpse of normalcy and beans for dinner is extraordinarily moving.
Part of the reason I selected this book is because it was never required reading when I was growing up. Somehow my English teachers never selected this work. Looking back that makes me sad. I wish I could have read Frank's diary. Her detailed anguish of not fitting in would have resonated with me. I would have discovered I was not alone. As much as this book is used to teach classes about the Holocaust, it can also be used as a way of showing young people that their emotions are not isolating. A young girl felt them in 1943, and you may feel the same in 2012. Asking people to read this book is almost a cliche, but I am going to do it anyway. Even if my readers have picked it up as young people, read this again. If Anne Frank reminds us of one thing it is that we are all wonderfully human.
After a week of gulags and the Holocaust I am switching gears to a something funny. Baratunde Thurston's How to be Black should make me laugh out loud. Also, the inside cover said that if I didn't buy the book I was a racist, so I did.
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