The Start to the Telling.

    The book I am reading is called "Telling Women's Lives" by Linda Wagner-Martin. A pretty simple and straight forward book. The book starts on page five after the preface and introduction. I think that the organization to the book is well played considering that it starts comparing women's biographies to men's. I mean what is the similarities between a women's biography and a men's biography anyway?. The author expresses her opinion by giving an example of Henry Adam's biography that looked over his whole college and job accomplishments rather than his thirteen year marriage and grief held when his wife died. The author compares this idea to the idea that women's biographies have to be well played at every specific detail. Because its like adding sugar to a coffee if you add to much of a traumatic event, or sentimental emotions then it becomes the central characteristic of that person. I think her way of starting the book in a comparison makes the reader feel intrigued by how difficult it is to write a simple biography of another person and pushes the reader to open a whole new eye for this type of writing. I also liked how the author Linda uses the meaning of art to express her feelings on biographies. She explained on page nine just how important it is in a biography to use witnesses and other views to a situation rather than just one persons because it makes real art. The art of biographies isn't how a person accomplished something they knew they could do but how the reader perceives the struggle and real goal. The idea I took from this book and the amount of reading I did left me walking away with a new perception on human beings and their life stories. Whether its a biography or an auto-biography it makes me think twice about what it really means. I could remember of the time I researched Mae Jameson for a project and many biographies I read and think of how many of those really sucked. Because they were just facts and not real opinions about the choices she made. It was just an accomplishment list but had nothing to do with her real life. I came to that conclusion because Linda explains that we accept biographies through the way the person made the choices in their lives as well as how well we accept their struggles. In many biographies we only get to read the birth date, the place they lived and the people that influenced them the most and this shapes the identity you make in your mind about a person.