Rise and Shine

 

For the past year or two, I have had trouble reading. Not trouble reading, actually. Just trouble finding a book I wanted to finish. For the past year or two, I’ve picked up, started, and then discarded more books than I can count.

That is until I rediscovered the kind of books I truly enjoy – books by women, about women. Right now, I’m delighting in a book by Anna Quindlen called Rise and Shine.

It’s a story about a woman named Bridget who lives in Manhattan and works in the Bronx. (Why is Manhattan called Manhattan and the Bronx called the Bronx?)

It is also a story about a young, black girl (called Princess Margaret) who lives in the Bronx and goes to an exclusive, private high school in Manhattan. When asked if she found it difficult “to ricochet between a school in which most of the students consider it a tragedy if a cashmere sweater had a moth hole and a neighborhood” in which the housing project smells – well, unpleasant, Princess Margaret answers, “It’s pretty easy…You’re just two different people. One there and the other here. And you have the whole ride on the train to turn from one into the other.”

And, although the story is about the dissimilarities between the very rich and the very poor, our protagonist likes to revel in the similarities. Like how from the top floor window of the projects, the Bronx looks every bit as magical at night as Manhattan does atop Fifth Avenue.

Now let me give you some examples of why I love books written about and by women via an excerpt or two from the book. While describing the poor odors in the projects, Bridget says: “Fortunately, the community room smells most of the time like frying chicken and cake because of the elderly woman who lives next door and who salves her loneliness by cooking as though her children are still home, or at least likely to visit. I love the smells of grease and sugar; if I were to create a signature perfume, I would call it Donut Shop and would smell just like the community room…”

I love it! And I’d be willing to bet that men would love it too.

Another example involves Bridget’s older sister Meghan, who is the popular anchor on a morning television show. The first time Bridget heard her sister announce the name of the show, Rise and Shine, she said it reminded her of the way Meghan woke her up every morning when she was little. Those words, she said, “sounded so promising, as if this would be the day: the day to ride a bike without training wheels, to make it through the afternoon without a stained blouse and a scolding, to persuade the girl next door to like me. To meet a man. To make a mint. To prosper. To love. To live fearlessly.” Or to be. Simply to be!