I still can’t keep up with all the blogs I want to read. I think there are around 638 unread posts in my Google reader lineup. Oops, 831. I’m always overly ambitious.
There’s one blog I always read though, when she posts, which isn’t all that often. Jane Devin’s blog.
I like her smile.
She’s one of a short list of writers I follow whose words cut deep. She says what others won’t, because they’re too timid, shallow, prissy, or busy with “branding.” (wince)
This is all she says about herself:
“Jane Devin is an essayist and storyteller. Her memoir, Elephant Girl, has recently been completed and will (fingers crossed) be available soon. Jane recently ended an extended road trip across the U.S., which was blogged on Finding My America. She also occasionally blogs at The Huffington Post.”
I “met” her on Twitter, and while I find memoirs of childhood and other suffering difficult for a multitude of reasons (she would tell why. I’ll wimp out and allude to it indirectly) hers is one I’ll buy.
Because she’ll tell it in a way that, while exposing nakedness, helps us realize we’re all naked together.
Here’s a bit out of her latest blog post:
“The girls from the Java Hut got used to seeing me after just a day and would sometimes have my coffee ready by the time I reached the window. They all looked like aspiring models, even in the black of morning. Sixteen to nineteen years old, they shared spiky salon cuts, thin bodies, thick makeup and perfect smiles. I didn’t know any girls who looked like that when I was sixteen. Even the pretty girls always looked like they were holding something in reserve. They were the Marcia Brady’s and Laurie Partridge’s of my generation. I was more like one of the cautionary-tale girls in an ABC Movie of the Week: A juvenile delinquent, a runaway, a girl who had her face broken with a baseball bat. I wasn’t pretty, especially after the assault, and I didn’t know how to be. I wore faded jeans, flannel shirts, and a naked face. I plaited my unruly hair into a single braid so it would fit neatly under my factory-issued hair net. Back then, even plain and gritty, I was considered exotic—perhaps not as much for my small brown eyes and yellow skin as for my fiercely independent minimum wage existence. I had my own little rundown apartment and an old pink car. When I closed my eyes at night, I imagined that I was in a log cabin in Santa Cruz and the sound of traffic was really the waves of the Pacific.” Jane Devin, Beggars can’t be choosers.
Check her out. You might be shaken, moved, touched or sorry, as I’ve been. But you’ll be a better human for it.
