Jo Ann Beard
Jo Ann Beard is an American essayist.
Life
Beard graduated from the University of Iowa with a BFA and MA. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.[1]
She worked as an editor for a physics journal at the University of Iowa and was a colleague of the victims of the University of Iowa shooting, which became a subject for her work. Her writing has appeared in Tin House,[2] and The New Yorker.
Awards
Works
Essays
- "Maybe It Happened", O, The Oprah Magazine, August, 2008
- "The Longest Night: Saying Goodbye to My Beloved Pet", O, The Oprah Magazine, June 2009
- "The Fourth State of Matter", The New Yorker, June 24, 1996
Books
- The Boys of My Youth. Little Brown & Co. 1999. ISBN 9780316085250.
- In Zanesville. 2011.
The Boys of My Youth
- The Boys of my Youth, Jo Ann Beard's memoir, focuses on the defining moments of her life, written with strong detail and captivating memories. Each chapter scans over a certain aspect, as she creates the sceneries and emotions to match. It's a personal narrative that gets a closer look on her feelings towards the things that came and gone in her life like her friends, family, her favorite toy Hal, and of course, the boys. She manipulates imagery in such a way that makes the memoir more personal, relatable, and in many ways interactive. Her glances at different parts of her life are captivating are set into autobiographical essays about youth and adulthood. There is strong detail on the struggles of life like death, acceptance, divorce, and uncertainty, but she also justifies the pleasures like friendship, relationships, childhood, and the beauty of memories. The book does not go in chronological order. She skips around in her life, grouping events that share a common theme or focus, and ties it together with it's ultimate lesson or affect on her. It's fair to say that the memoir is just a story about a young girl in the midwest often times finding herself stuck in her own mistakes and fears, but written in a way that can be reflective to many others in how she deals with it. Referring to the title, The Boys of my Youth, various crushes in her younger years play a large role in the book. There were the short lasting relationships in dark bars, and longer relationships. This is a contrast throughout the book. She refers to small memories like being in a parade as a little girl, and really important one's like the murder case of six victims, where she was the friend of one of the victims and the shooter. It just so happened that she left the school earlier the day the event occurred. She talks about her emotional involvement serious moments like this. There's the detailed background and the forward, intentional feel to all of her stories. A few of her chapters have appeared in The New Yorker.
Anthologies
References
External links
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