Reading on a Bias

   

     
       Writing on a Bias by Linda Brodkey is written academically in such a creative way. Brodkey jumps through time and space, she is an adult reflecting on her youth. She paints vivid scenes and refers to her younger self as her. We, the audience follow Brodkey from her first year of school to her college years and then the present.  Brodkey loved to reads a child, she also loved rules. Something I didn't think could mix. Generally the creative types aren't so fond of rules.  I got the impression that as a child Brodkey was in her own world most of time, which is true of most children. She would pretend she owned her library books until she had to return them. This piece reminds me a lot of myself, especially when Brodkey states she almost became a reader and not a writer. I don't know when I discovered the magic of books but it changed my life. I read all through middle school and was so astonished by the magic the authors seemed to make with words I thought I might try my hand at it.
       She describes a time in her life when she would follow a strict list of books to read and meticulously document them. I didn't understand if she was reading for joy then or just reading those vast number of books  to prove that she could. I went through a phase like that as well.

       Her frame is shaped by her experiences. In fifth grade she wrote a report on her favorite country; Africa. Her teacher did not know that Africa was not a country but a continent or that there were people who lived there and not just wild animals. She admits her privilege. She was a white middle class girl on the college track. She learned how to speak in fluent bourgeois. She was a spectator to racism, forbidden to speak to a female Negro classmate who was a fellow catholic.
       Brodkey gets into the action of writing towards the end of this piece. "… One writes on a bias or not at all." That's one thing all readers know, or at least should. I agree there is no way to remove your experience from what you write, if a writer manages to do that their work no longer has any meaning.