Exploring Military Family Culture In Books

Culture in Books Assignment MS Word Doc.

INTRODUCTION

Okay, I’ll be honest.  My first reaction when I saw that I’d be exploring the culture of military families was, “Damn, I was hoping I’d be assigned Israel and Palestine!”  So I went to the library, picked up my books, and I probably (okay definitely) procrastinated in reading them.  Eventually, I started reading my main text for this assignment, a contemporary realistic fiction novel called Back Home by Pulitzer Prize winning author Julia Keller.  Slowly, but surely, I picked through my auxiliary texts: A Year Without Dad by Jodi Brunson, The Impossible Patriotism Project by Linda Skeers, Pilot Mom by Kathleen Benner Duble, and two books from a series called “Uncle Sam’s Kids” by Angela Sportelli-Rehak called When Duty Calls and Moving Again Mom.  Once I finished my texts and looked back on the writing assignment, the idea of exploring the culture of military families began to become more intriguing to me.  I realized that the culture of military families was unique amongst the other cultures I could have explored.  It was just about the only culture on the list that anyboy of any race, ethnicity, color, sexual orientation, etc. could join if they so chose.  You could have a Native American military family, a Palestinean military family, an Isreali military family, and so on and so on.  The military family culture is one that a family joins and isn’t necessarily born into.  This unique quality of the culture I was assigned to explore peaked my interest and set the hampster running on the wheel in my head.

 

MILITARY FAMILY TEXTS

One thing that stood out to me was that my main text, Back Home, was VERY different from the auxiliary texts that I was given in terms of what I’ll call real world harsh reality vs. cartoon picture book reality.  Back Home is not a happy novel; accordingly, since I imagine that most stories of wounded veterans coming back to families aren’t happy stories.  Back Home is a glimpse into the life of the Browning family as told by the oldest of three children, thirteen year old Rachel.  The book begins with Rachel’s mom, Denise, calling her children: four year old brother Rob, eight year old daughter Marcy, and Rachel into the living room.  Denise tells her children that their father Edward, a soldier fighting in Iraq, lost an arm and a leg and suffered a traumatic brain injury when his outfit’s Humvee was attacked.  Julia Keller does a fantastic job interpreting these events through the eyes of a thirteen year old girl.  As Denise is trying to tell her children that something has happened to their father, Rachel assumes that her father has been killed.  She thinks:

“I would get a lot of attention.  I realize that was a pretty awful thing to think.  If my father was dead, I wasn’t supposed to be thinking of myself or about feeling special.  It was a terrible thing to be thinking.  But that was what flashed across my mind.  I thought about how Chris Brookhiser, this guy in my algebra calss that I sort of liked, would look at me differently once her found out that my father had been killed in Iraq.” (Page 8)

This is one of those passages that makes me just cringe at what is sometimes guilty truth and pushed me to continue reading more.  I remember feeling this way sometimes; excited that I would get extra attention despite the fact that that extra attention was due to a horrible event.  Now, at the age of twentyeight, I felt almost vindicated for feeling a little bit lucky to miss school when my grandmother died in fifth grade.  After rading this, I was both shocked and impressed with the honesty Julia Keller was giving Rachel to tell this story.  Often, while reading Back Home, I had to remind myself that I was reading fiction.  Julia Keller did a wonderful job of writing as if she were a thirteen year old girl.  One way she did this was by dividing chapters into small segments separated by a couple of plus signs.  Then, those sections were divided with a space of about four or five empty lines.  This allowed Julia to jump to many different thoughts without a lot of worry over transitions and flow.  Honestly, not many people tell stories off the top of their heads with much flow or rhythum and in my experience, certainly not thirteen year old girls.  This, however, made the writing more authentic and made me feel like Rachel Browning was really telling me s piece of her history.  In contrast, the auxilary texts were all pretty bubbly.  Nobody dies.  Nobody gets hurt.  In every case, dad (and in one case mom) serves in the military and comes home with no negative affects from their service.  This makes me wonder if there are any picture book authors out there up to the task of writing a real world harsh reality picture book about military families.  After exploring so many picture books this semester, I have no doubt that it could be done.  Perhaps the dichotomy between my main text and my auxilary texts shows the dichotomy in military families.  Some military families never go to war.  Some military families have members return different from how they left.  Some military families members never return.  To put it very simply, what these books told me about the culture of military families is that other than sense of pride and patriotism for serving your country, there really isn’t a whole lot of good and happiness that comes from serving in the military.  All of these books show, to varying degrees, that military families make tremendous sacrafices and therefore they “perceive, interpret, and understand the world around them” (Roshan Cultural Dictionary definition of “culture” under the subheading “thought”) VERY differently from the rest of us.

 

JULIA KELLER’S WRITING

In addition to the brutal honest Julia Keller used to write Rachel Browning, she also used great figurative language so that the reader could understand how Rachel felt:

“School was weird.  People – teachers, other kids, our friends – treated us like we were made of paper or something, and if they said the wrong thing, or even if they said the right thing in the wrong way, it would be like poking a finger through a thin sheet of paper.  You’d tear the paper, leave a hole, even if you didn’t mean to.” (Page 74)

The imagery in this passage really expresses me how Rachel felt in school now that everybody knew that her dad was injured in Iraq.  Similies like “…treated us like we were made of paper…” and “…it would be like poking a finger through a thin sheet of paper,” really help paint a picture of what school is like for Rachel and her siblings.  Another line in this passage that sticks to me is, “…or even if they said the right thing in the wrong way…”  We’ve all been there.  It happens when you say something and find yourself overly selfconscious because of the people you happen to be around.  We all do it from time to time; at least those of us who try to be courteous to others do.  You make a comment that in any other situation wouldn’t have been a big deal, except for who happens to be near you.  Personally, I was once telling a story about working at the YMCA in Estes Park, Colorado.  A group of blind adults came to our facility and signed up for archery.  I found this fascinating and some what humerous.  As it turns out, I told this story to some family and forgot that a blind relative was in the next room.  Needless to say, I found out exactly what my foot tasted like, but this passage also made me think about what it must be like to be on the other side of that coin.  What it must be like to constantly have people walking around you on egg shells, afraid of what to say because they don’t want to hurt your feelings.  Treating you with such fragility, and not knowing whether they’re doing it because they care about you or because they pity you.  There’s a big difference.  From Rachel’s perspective, it sounds horribly uncomfortable.  Julia Keller really shows the reader what it feels like to be a part of the Browning family after Edward return from Iraq.

Julia Keller chose another strategy in writing Back Home that whacked her readers over the head with a literary hammer: Edward never gets better.  There is no happy ending.  The cover of the book shows the back of a girl’s head (presumably Rachel) looking at a car and an empty wheel chair.  As I read, I kept waiting for the chapter where Edward makes the turn for the better and starts playing ball with Rachel in his wheel chair.  It never happened.  The story ends with Denise having to admit that she can’t take care of three kids, pay the bills, and care for her husband who’s suffering from a traumatic brain injury that causes him to separate himself from the family and pee himself in his wheelchair.  In the end, Edward goes to an assisted living home where Denise and the kids go to visit on the weekends.  At this point, I again had to remind myself that I was reading a piece of fiction.  Julia Keller wasn’t bound to any reality.  Edward could have gotten better.  She could have told the time of story that they tell at the end of Nightly News with Brian Williams.  You know, the happy send-off story.  But she chose not to.  Instead, she writes:

“It was a moment.  One moment.  Dad sat there in his wheelchair in the doorway, with his fake leg and his fake arm, while the kitchen window got all steamed up with the heat from the oven, and I thought, He’s not a part of us anymore.” (Page 159)

This story, true or not, is important to tell, and tell well, because it’s one we don’t always hear about.  There’s a “Note to the Reader” at the end of the book that talks about that fact that war deaths are low but war casualties are extreemely high because of advances in medical and defense technology which results in more veterans coming home in horrible conditions like Edward.  Julia really just writes a small piece of the life of the fictional Browning family which could really be so many flesh and blood families.

 

SCHOOL

I would be cautious about using some of these books in an elementary school.  Like I discussed earlier, I wouldn’t want to be over sensitive like the teachers in Rachel Browning’s school who were worried about saying the “right thing in the wrong way,” but I also want to be sensitive to my students.  I think a book like the Impossible Patriot Project would be a great book to read in elementary school.  Back Home on the other hand I would use with some caution.  I would want to be aware if any of my students had a close family member in the military because perhaps that student wouldn’t feel comfortable reading some of these books.  I remember reading My Brother Sam Is Dead in fifth grade.  Even more than the story, I remember out teacher preparing us for the book and how some years she didn’t read it because of a students personal life.  I would take a similar approach with Back Home.  If appropriate, Back Home could be used in a fourth grade class to meet the following English Language Arts goals:

2.04 Identify and interpret elements of fiction and nonfiction and support by referencing the text to determine the: plot, theme, main idea and supporting details, author’s choice of words, mood, author’s use of figurative language.

2.05 Make inferences, draw conclusions, make generalizations, and support by referencing the text.

2.06 Summarize major points from fiction and nonfiction text(s) to clarify and retain information and ideas.

All of these goals could be met using some simple written assignments and a class discussion.  Students could write down what they thought was the plot, theme, main idea, and figurative language.  As the teacher, I would select certain passages to discuss how characters in the book were feeling and why.  We could examine the “right words in the wrong way” passage and see if anybody in the class could relate or how they interpret how Rachel is feeling.

 

CONCLUSION

In the end, I’m glad I had the opportunity to read these books and write this paper on the culture of military families.  Though whole heartedly depressing, Back Home was a sort of reality check for me that not all wounded veteran stories end with the veteran throwing out the first pitch to a round of applause at a minor league baseball game or learning how to ski or kayak.  Sometimes, there is no happy ending.  Back Home is sobering and could be tremendously valuable to the write elementary class to show them a worldview and culture different from their own, but that could be right next-door.  The auxiliary text, on the other hand, show a lighter side of the sacrifice made by military families.  Perhaps more appropriate for younger children, they’re an introduction to a culture that not many children may even know about.  In either case, all the books are valuable because they show a glimpse of the life some families live by choice.