Praise for Grammar Lessons
*Starred Review* Morano has a broad perspective
on both grammar and traveling. To her, grammar as language
and storytelling are key to understanding culture. Traveler
is a term she associates with a way of being in the
world. Here, in a deceptively slim volume comprising
13 essays, Morano shares experiences living and traveling
in Spain during a year of teaching English to university
students. Readers will long remember this unusual book--because
of the author's premise and perspective on living in
a new language, to be certain, but also because of the
imaginative effect the places she has been have on her.
Enjoy her remembrances of motion sickness, hiking and
enjoying views of the Spanish Alps, dining alone, witnessing
an accident, and getting her hair cut. The final section
of the book is particularly memorable. Here, the author
concentrates on the aftereffects of travel. What does
it mean to retell and understand the stories of our
lives? For readers who pay close attention to language,
who are drawn to new contexts both on the page and on
wilder shores, and who are not afraid to come to a place
of insight, this book will provide much satisfaction.
Sarah Watstein, Copyright © American Library
Association. All rights reserved
>>BOOKLIST
"In 13 lyrical essays, Morano details the personal
impact of her long relationship with Spain, beginning
with her first visit at age 18, continuing through a
post-graduate year teaching English in Oviedo and a
series of return trips a decade later. As a guiding
theme, Morano uses the rules of grammar to organize
and explain how Spain has affected her life. (The word
"grammar," she notes, has Latin roots meaning "the process
of ingesting experience.") Against a dichotomous Spanish
backdrop of stillness and bravado, Morano proves her
versaility in topics such as grammatical moods, motion
sickness and having (or not) the panache to dine alone.
Teaching and being taught provide a recurring through-line.
One lesson she teaches is that "language is power,"
urging her students to "take notice, again and again,
until a word feels less like an enemy than like a piece
of fruit they want to pick and bite into." Learning
experiences include an awe-inspiring jaunt into an ancient
cave and a moving visit to Guernica, in which Morano
narrates, superbly, the attack that inspired Picasso's
famous painting. Having carried the angst of a failed
relationship with her across the Atlantic, Morano does
not lack for internal dialogue and thoughtful self-questioning;
these slick travel stories hide a wealth of lived experience."
>> PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY
"...Grammar Lessons flowed nicely, without the
overwrought narcissism that travelogues often have.
Morano powerfully uses her personal stories to illustrate
the principles of grammar—or is it the other way
around? The principles of grammar exist to shed light
on her highly personal narrative. Perhaps that is why
this nonfiction book is so engaging.
>>Elizabeth Cho, KGB BarLit
"I've never read a book quite like Michele Morano's
account of her love affair with the Spanish language
and with contemporary Spain. Without pretension, GRAMMAR
LESSONS accomplishes so much: it is prose poetry, a
traveler's tale, reflexive ethnography, a meditation
on the possibilities of translation, and a gorgeous
memoir of a woman's search for a new language that can
help her to know better who she wants to be. This book
sings to me--to say it in Spanish, me encanta."
>> RUTH BEHAR
"On one level, Grammar Lessons is a vivid, compelling
meditation on traveling abroad. On another, the author,
Michele Morano, uses her travel experience -- the exhilarations
and dislocations, the unbidden surprises and disappointments
-- as a lens through which she examines more deeply
what it means to be human."
>> MICHAEL STEINBERG
Additional Press Chicago Magazine, "Critical Mass: Noteworthy
New Releases," March 2007.
Authortrek.com interview, March 2007:
http://www.authortrek.com/michele-morano-interview.html
"People to Watch in 2007" Time
Out Chicago, Jan. 11, 2007
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