In My Book: Sometimes we must suffer in order to learn

Columnist Rosella LaFevre digs into the struggles faced by "Long Run, Short Catch” author.

Many of us, I believe, have asked the question, “Why me?” When we face tough situations, we wonder why those things had to happened to us. I’m not the only one who has begged for an answer to this question, I am sure.

Asama Iwuoha, a Nigerian-American and the author of the self-published memoir “Long Run, Short Catch: One Woman’s Desperate Attempt to Discover If Normalcy Actually Exists on Earth,” posed this question on the first page of her book.

Iwuoha, whose memoir encompasses the sexual abuse which she suffered as a child and the years she spent as a student here at Temple University, wrote at the start of her memoir that she has never found the answer to this question.

In her book, Iwuoha recalled the time her mother discovered her father in the act and called the police. When her father returned from prison to live with the family, Iwuoha had to learn to deal with his presence. Understandably, she continues to hold a grudge against him, getting fancy clothes and accessories out of him and finally, by marrying a Jamaican man to spite him.

Sometimes, when we ask the question, “Why me?” we seek to absolve ourselves of any guilt, as did Iwuoha. She asks the question without pausing to consider that perhaps her ill-fated marriage happened because she chose to marry a man for the wrong reasons.

As a sophomore at Temple, Iwuoha was finally fitting into a group of girls. One of them introduced her to Michael Williams, a polite Jamaican man. He immediately took a shine to her despite being more into light-skinned girls, as Iwuoha’s account tells us.

His father had brought him to America using someone else’s passport. Advised by his father that marriage would be the quickest way to solve his problems, Williams recognized that Iwuoha could solve his problems and he set out to marry her.

Action was taken so that he might go to college, but it caught up to him when a student enrolled at Temple with the same Social Security number. That was when his father told him he must find a woman to marry and soon after, he met Iwuoha.

They started dating, and soon after, he told her his dilemma. Unsure, she said she’d think about marrying him.

“Is it possible he just wants to use me as his ticket?” Iwuoha wrote. “Either way, marrying him could be my final valediction from father.”

The outcome of the situation is surely undesirable, but this could be the very answer to the Iwuoha’s question.Why should her marriage end the way it did? Perhaps because, as much as Williams was using her for a green card, she was using him to get back at her father.

Often, we beg the question, “Why me?” because we hope that should the answer come to us one way or another, that it will give meaning to our suffering.

Perhaps Iwuoha’s supposed inability to find her answer is because in writing the book, she sought to answer the questions her family had about the choices she made in life.

“Not only does my book entail many of those answers, but it also served as my catharsis, releasing me of emotional baggage that had been haunting me,” Iwuoha said of why she chose to self-publish her story now.

Ultimately, Iwuoha’s book raises more questions for the reader than it answers, but this could be considered its greatest charm. By questioning Iwuoha’s actions, reactions and feelings, we learn that sometimes the answer we’re looking for is right there. And sometimes, it’s not so important why you suffered as how you championed that suffering.

This fourth installment of my book column for The Temple News appeared in today's issue, under a different headline.

In My Book: Trading others' support for a path toward self-guidance

Columnist Rosella LaFevre dives into “Speed Shrinking” and learns to be alone after leaving her best friend for college.

Leaving our high school lives behind for college means a lot of change – at least it did for me. A childhood spent on campus with a parent who works at Temple meant adjusting to college life wasn’t that hard.

Only, I hadn’t counted on how lonely I would be without my best friend. Adjusting to life without your support system is hard, as Julia Goodman, the narrator of Susan Shapiro’s touching first novel “Speed Shrinking” would tell you.

The novel opens with an announcement from her best friend, Sarah, that she will leave New York City after her wedding that weekend. That same day, Goodman’s husband Jake told her he was departing for TV work in Los Angeles, and at her weekly appointment, her beloved shrink Dr. Ness divulged plans to move to the Midwest.

With all three of her “pillars” leaving, Goodman, the Manhattan self-help author, is in a tizzy. What will she do without them?

To read the rest of the third installment of "In My Book," click here.

The journey to self discovery unfolds through ancestors' eyes

Columnist Rosella Eleanor LaFevre sets out to solve the mystery of her grandmother’s past.

There tends to be one question the most introspective people ask themselves at one point or another – “Who am I?” I feel like I’ve been working to figure that out for my entire teenage life.

As far as I can tell, there are several factors that make a person who they are. There’s your name, your childhood, your morals, your family and your friends. These are only parts of the whole equation, but for me, I find a large part of my identity comes from my name: Rosella Eleanor LaFevre.

And for some, such as Lucy Jarrett in the novel “The Lake of Dreams,” by Kim Edwards, part of how we define ourselves is through our family history and our knowledge of our relatives.

To read the rest of the second installment of the "In My Book" column for The Temple News, click here.

In My Book: Where you come from is part of who you are

Columnist Rosella Eleanor LaFevre explores ideas of self discovery in Anna Fields’ book “Confessions of a Rebel Debutante.” 

The summer before high school, I had to read three books, one of which was Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women.” It became one of my favorites, not only because it had been the longest book I had read at the time, but because I felt a connection to the character Jo March.

Since that summer, my favorite books have tended to be the ones with characters I could relate to, especially books about female characters who are as strong-willed and rebellious as March was.

Recently, I had the pleasure to read Anna Fields’ “Confessions of a Rebel Debutante,” which will appear in paperback this February. Fields’ memoir is about a chubby white kid with dreams of being Scarlett O’Hara who grew into a full-fledged rebel debutante living among Yankees.

For Fields’ sophomore year of high school, she transferred from public school to a single-sex boarding school called Wellingham – a place of tradition where girls had various lessons on ladylike behavior and tradition rules.

The high school I attended, Philadelphia High School for Girls, is the only single-sex public school in Philadelphia. I chose it because it was a place where tradition ruled. Like Fields, I believed I could learn better without boys to distract me.

I was mostly right.

To read the rest of this, the first installment of my column "In My Book" for The Temple News, click here.