 "A poignant chronicle of the disapora of the heart--and the heart's quest and longing for the universal place called home." -Wall Street Journal |
"Rainlight"A collection of memoirs of deeply personal experiences from South America to Africa, Unrooted Childhoods presents a cultural mosaic of today's global citizens. In twenty stirring memoirs of childhoods spent packing, writings by the famous and the new...make universal the experience of growing up without the opportunity to ever "put down roots." From "Rainlight": A blur of hand-shaking made up our first weeks of life in the yellow brick house, as we met other embassy families and Dutch dignitaries. Andy and I were installed in a school--a small, American school in the old heart of The Hague. There, for several days, I stood at the edge of the blacktop, pretending to be interested in my fingers and swallowing tears. Then, and many times thereafter, it seemed that my whole life has consisted just of this; standing at the edge of the blacktop, swallowing tears... Holland filled up the romantic openness of my heart. I'd heard of Hans Brinker, of course, and of the boy with his finger in the dike, but it was more than that: the mossy-banked canals with the small boys and men in caps fishing from their banks; the dilapidated stone windmills thrumping away in the wind; the pannekoeken houses at the bends in the winding country roads; the cows grazing in the flat green fields... |
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