Courtesy the Lilly Library.
Emily Van Duyne on Loving, and Misunderstanding, an Icon
Found on LitHub.com
In researching my book-in-progress, Loving Sylvia Plath, I came upon a 2019 article in the Los Angeles Review of Books called “Who Gets Emily Dickinson?” Not, as the title suggests, a piece about who has the privilege of understanding the enigmatic poet’s work and life; it was instead a complex treatment of ownership. Dickinson famously eschewed marriage, and died single, making the question of who inherited her work exactly that—a question. Dickinson insisted during her lifetime that only she got herself, reportedly telling her niece, as they stood in her small bedroom which doubled as her writing study, “Mattie—Here’s freedom!” and made, with an imaginary key, to lock the door from within.
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CC's Road Home, by Leah B. Eskine, is a young adult novel that takes place in the early sixties. It is a story about teenage pregnancy in an era where the subject was gingerly tiptoed around. Back then, shame would rain down even on a family of any young pregnant unwed girl.
Eskine's beginning chapters captivates the reader who'll wonder why an estranged, alcoholic mother would be abandoning her teenage daughter. The protagonist, Cicely, also known as CC, is a sixteen-year-old girl from New Orleans whose mother is leaving her in Ruston, Louisiana, a small town in the northern part of the state. It isn't total abandonment; she is just relinquishing Cicely to the grandparents who own a small farm. It is a safe place where Cicely can hide away while she takes care of her problem. Back then, pregnant teens — unlike today — had no choice. They were kicked out of school, and if they were also employed, they were terminated. Where was a 16-year-old girl to turn?
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