Acquired Book By: I was selected to be a part of the blog tour for this unique collection of stories hosted by iRead Book Tours. I haven’t been reviewing or hosting iRead authors in quite a long while – for most of the year, outside of the fact I did host the Marilyn Wilson blog tour as it was her second release. I couldn’t find stories which excited me to read and/or there were a heap which I felt would fit other readers better than they would my own readerly inclinations. When I came across ‘Old Algiers’ I thought it was such an interesting collection of personal history, experience, reflective insight and philosophical enquiry – it was something I was keenly looking forward to reading.
I received a complimentary copy of Looking to the Stars from Old Algiers direct from the author Jan Risher in exchange for an honest review. I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein.
On why I was eager for this book & how life interfered with my plans in
reading ‘Looking to the Stars from Old Algiers’:
When I first learnt about this collection of stories – I thought it would be wicked interesting to read which is why I was excited about signing on for the blog tour! I had wanted to read the stories and curate a conversation with the author to coincide with my review, however, a few things ended up derailing all my lovely plans for this blog tour – which is in effect, why I am posting off-tour instead. In fact, I’ve been attempting to get this review put to order since a week ago Friday, except to say, my physical unwellness has been a bit extreme these past three weeks ever since I came down with a beast of a Winter virus. Secondly, my father had a medical emergency where we spent 4+ hours in the ER which rattled my nerves and my emotions never did quite settle down that particular week until the start of the next one. My father, is fine – thankfully, the fall was not serious but we had to ensure it was nothing major as Thanksgiving weekend marked his 2nd year past his stroke.
To return back into reading, I had to wait til a) my health was less stricken and b) my mind could re-attach into reading and blogging. It wasn’t until Sunday (last weekend) where I felt well enough to resume where I had left off with a lot of different stories but my return has been slow going which is why my posts are populating at a bit of an odd rate of progression. This review is one I wanted to finish earlier in the week, but I’ve literally been plagued with health issues and honestly, it took extra time to compose.
Having said that, I decided to make my journey into this book a bit uniquely different than most readers might have approached it. I knew in my heart I couldn’t traditionally read this start to finish, as I just didn’t have the capacity to do that right now – therefore, I hope you’ll enjoy the notes, ruminative reflections and takeaways I am sharing on behalf of Old Algiers!
Likewise, I am hoping my note of apology reached the author – somehow, for whichever reason, life became a bit of a determining factor of how I was unable to release this review in step with the blog tour itself whilst I had to realise also, the conversation would have to remain unknown as just to get this featured before the New Year I felt was more priority after having missed the blog tour.
Looking to the Stars from Old Algiers
Subtitle: And Other Long Stories Short
by Jan Risher
Source: Author via iRead Book Tours
Jan Risher took the long way to get from Mississippi to Louisiana with stops in between in Slovakia, Mexica, China, Burkina Faso and more than 40 other countries. Since moving to Louisiana, she has been a Sunday columnist for The Daily Advertiser and has written a column every single Sunday since 2002.
Looking to the Stars from Old Algiers and Other Long Stories Short is the collection of columns written over 15 years. Arranged in chronological order, the collection creates a narrative of one woman's aim to build her family, build up her community and weave the stories and lessons learned from the past into the present.
From her family's move to Louisiana, adoption of a daughter from China, covering Hurricane Katrina, travels near and far, author Jan Risher attempts, sometimes failing and sometimes succeeding, to do her small part to make the world a better place.
Places to find the book:
ISBN: 9781946160331
Published by Lafayette Press, Sans Souci Books, University of Louisiana
on 11th September, 2018
Format: Trade Paperback
Pages: 312
Published by: Sans Souci Books
an imprint of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press
Formats Available: Paperback and Ebook
Converse via: #NonFiction & #ShortStories
About Jan Risher
Jan Risher is an award-winning journalist and investigative reporter. She was managing editor of The Times of Acadiana. Before and after her time as a full-time journalist, she was an English teacher. She has taught English near and far, in its most basic and most lyrical forms. She continues her career as a freelance writer and now owns Shift Key, a content marketing and public relations firm. She, her husband and their two daughters have made their home on the banks of the Vermilion River.
As per my usual disclosure – when it comes to anthologies and/or collections of stories – I never know which of the shorts, novellas or essays are going to whisk out a fanciful attachment on my behalf, which is why I may or may not mention each story inclusive to the anthology/collection but rather focus on the stories which moved me most or which gave me something to chew on even if it wasn’t one of my favourites.
Unlike moving strictly start to finish through this collection of stories, I chose instead to focus on certain years as the writer moves through different periods of time from 2002 to 2017. I elected to choose five years I felt most attached to for personal reasons and see what she had to say about those particular marks in time. Of those years, I am highlighting the stories which appealed to me the most which keeps in step with how I read anthologies/collections.
Ahead of the individualised sections of this book is a lovely quotation by a Greek philosopher I haven’t stumbled across previously. Which reminds me of course, I need to dig into my Classical Studies at some point in my readerly life as I’ve placed them on hold for a bit too long now. Irregardless, the words and the sentiment behind his quote really staid with me. I also found such a well of truth in his reflection upon how we walk through life & how the eras of our lives alters our individual perspectives – happily I found a biographical page devouted to him!
2003 | the year my grandmother moved to Heaven
| Following a Red Thread to Motherhood |
I can personally relate to this essay about mumhood – not only from the perspective of how your life re-directs to your children once they come into your lives but from the fact I am a Prospective Adoptive Mum who will be adopting children out of foster care in the future. There is an internal change for all mothers – whichever route we take into motherhood, for those of us who are ready for it, know we evolve forward by stepping into a new chapter of our lives where all considerations for where our path shall walk next is interlinked to the child(ren). We’re no longer living strictly for ourselves, we’re endearing to raise a child in an unforgiving world where we owe it to them to remain vigilant and aware of everything we can whilst we embrace the journey of mumhood. Being a Mum is a path I am looking forward to starting (in the future) and one I know will have a well of grace attached to it.
As I’ve been an observer of adoption practices since I was a young girl (my parents wanted to adopt a young boy when I was young enough to where we’d have grown together a few years apart had children been actively released and not withheld from adoption procedures) whilst I have been a researcher of adoption pathways since my early twenties. Initially, I was opting instead to seek International Adoption routes like Ms Risher, as at the time during my self-study of adoption agencies there was an undertone of negativity towards single parent adoptions on the stateside ledger of adoption. This has since changed – to where foster care adoptions domestically are now much more open to single parents and blessedly, far more open to all non-conventional families who are seeking out adoption.
This is why I knew rather instantly the breadth of angst Ms Risher was eluding about in regards to the red tape and the insanity of ‘road blocks’ that alight on your path into adoption. Something I garnished through conversations with adoption specialists for International Adoption options as well as domestic advisers as well – especially if you take into account how we do not have a universal interstate compact agreement to streamline adoption from state to state. In many regards, interstate adoptions are as difficult as International Adoptions.
I also understood fully (even at this stage in my adoption story) how people can attack you on your choices – I never in my life thought you’d have to defend yourself in regards to seeking parenthood or of choosing to adoption children who are awaiting forever families. To me it was quite illogical to be questioned about what ‘motivates’ you to be a parent or even, the snarkier enquiries about why you wanted to ‘raise someone elses’ child. I honestly do not know when the tides will turn to where people can simply embrace the story your sharing with them without their prejudicial prejudgements attached but I felt so close to Ms Risher within this story and I haven’t even gone through the process yet!
I agree with Risher too, about how people have these pre-conceived ideas about choosing adoption – how they don’t understand why you want to adopt and why they make your choices in your own life a wrinkle of angst for their own paths. Almost as if something we are choosing to do ourselves is somehow directly affecting them in the negative. I digress. As I can relate to this sentiment of negativity in other avenues of life such as when I talk about wanting to lead a more vegetarian and vegan lifestyle – talk about having to have a lot of static thrown in your face!
I hadn’t heard of the philosophy behind the ‘red thread’ of connection either until I read Red Thread Sisters – one of my very first reviews on Jorie Loves A Story wherein I had the chance to talk to the author about her own Chinese Adoption Story. It was one of the first stories I loved finding for how openly honest and real it related adoption from all persons involved. Including how the transition into American life is at times a struggle for those who were living in group homes or orphanages overseas.
I personally love this sentiment – it speaks so much to the heart of adoptive parents and the close connectedness of non-biological parents to their children.
I could only smile in quiet awareness of how I shall feel the day I enter mumhood – as the final thoughts from Risher mirror my own sentimentality on the subject!
What a lovely recapturement of the highs and lows of an adoption passageway and how one mother found herself in the course of mothering two lovely daughters from two very different routes of entrance into her life! They are blessed to have her in their life but she is forever blessed by being their mother. Children enrich our lives in so many uniquely original ways it is hard to know how much we gain by their presence until we are fully invested in the journey of being their parent. Children help us see the world the way we endear to see it ourselves – they give us back the innocence which is sometimes muted out of the anguish of living as an adult and they erase the jadedness we all attempt not to embrace whilst re-affirming the beauty of life itself.
| Flying is an important part of being a bird |
This felt like a continuation of the thoughts revealled in Following a Red Thread to Motherhood – as we get to tuck close into the lives of Ms Risher and her young daughter Greer. Greer is taken with a family of finches which is housing their life inside the single potted plant that has taken residence on their porch. The beauty of this story is in the simplicity of what is being explored through its revelations – how you can not just re-direct life lessons from nature into the life of your child but how nature can teach of things about our own lives that we sometimes forget to observe!
I have loved being close to nature since I was a young girl – I seem to carry with me the memories of all those furry and feathered friends I’ve met along life’s passageway as there is never a day where I haven’t noticed their presence. Similar to this story, it is how our observations of the natural world can relate to us a moment of clarity and internal recognition for our own cycles of life that is the most interesting of all.
Here, young Greer is sorting out the unique moment where all youngsters must flex their own wings to fly – to take the risk and to leave their homes in order to seek out where their feet must walk next. It is a difficult concept for a young child to realise that a day will arise where you are not in the cosy comfort of your childhood home but rather, you’ve gone off to carve out your own passport of discovery where your life may or may not always be able to revolve round your immediate family.
The lesson is well placed – as this family of finches is learning the same lesson as Greer. The thoughtfulness of how Ms Risher told this story is what staid with me the most. She took on the role of narrating the lives of the finches and thereby opened a new door of understanding from the perspective of a bird family who allowed a portion of their feathered lives to intersect with hers!
| Love is a Mathematical Equation |
Laughs with mirth. Honestly, this one is a story only prospective Mums and current Mums are going to understand!! It is about the quiet ways in which children try to understand their environments, their worlds and their place within their families. Herein, young Greer is tackling an ethical and philosophical quandary about ‘mother’s love’ and how affects her and her younger sister Piper.
I wasn’t sure which direction this conversation of intuitiveness would take from a six year old – as was she going to mention the different birth origins between her and her sister or was it something more tangible and closer to home? Meaning, was it something she had overheard or interpreted from Risher herself that led her to this conclusion she was basing out of the data she had compiled about sisterly love and motherly affection?
In the end, Risher leaves you musefully intrigued – not just for how she approaches sibling issues but how she humble acknowledges that each moment of being a mother is not always a well-lit outline of procedure! You have to shoot from your hip and embrace your motherly instincts – otherwise, your going to overthink (and rightly, over tax!) yourself to death! Be mindful of the moments as they arise, listen to your children and give them what they need in the hours in which something is needed most.
| Big Mama’s Teacakes |
I should preface this by saying as soon as I have all ingredients on hand, I’d love to try this recipe which Risher kindly included in this section!
Ironically or not, despite having international friends no one was quite able to give me an explanation about Boxing Day quite explicitly like Ms Risher! And, I’m thankful for her care to enlarge our perspective of this holiday (the day after Christmas) as now I know which steps I can take next December to integrate it into my own holiday plans! I love finding new traditions and new ways of celebrating moments in our lives.
I never would have felt that Boxing Day was about celebrating goodwill and the beauty of randomly giving joy to others who are in need. To me, this is the best compliment to Christmas – as I was also raised with an awareness that what we feel at Christmastime is not meant to expire solely on the day of its arrival but we are to strive to embrace and give Christmassy acts of kindness throughout the year. Kind-hearted deeds never need a day to exploit them but similar to the days where we embrace Indie Book Shoppes (in a sea of online marketplaces) and Small Business Saturdays (to ensure people remember there are bonefide brick and mortar stores) – it has self-purpose in highlighting a pursuit of what we believe is important to carry forward into the future.
On a personal note – I could well envision the running’s of the cousins to exchange the ingredients! You must read this tale to fully understand the mirth it reveals about Risher’s childhood! I also loved how part of her memories of her family are entwined with food! This blessed my foodie heart as a lot of my own sentimental memories are also evocative of food and food related moments shared with family members! I think it is because food is a soulful connection and the love we have for our families is on the heart and soul level; if you combine food with family, you are endearing to experience a heart and soul catalyst of emotion.
I agreed with Risher on another point too, about how you don’t need a lot in life to have happiness and you don’t have to have a lot of flash and glam moments to be fulfilled. The best hours in our lives are spent in the simplicity of the moment and in the simpler joys which serendipitous arise.
2004 | the year the Red Sox won the World Series
| Rock-a-bye Bargains |
A humbled truth if there ever is one is that the price of something isn’t the truer value it has in our lives. Risher relates to us how she found a second hand rocking chair which became the pivotal object in how she bonded with her young daughters. I loved how the chair changes between the girls’ time spent with Risher and how those changes effected the entire family! It says something about attachments and how we process our memories – are memories tied to certain familiarities or is there something else that triggers a memory for us?
The innocence of girlhood wonderment for our mothers’ voices is not lost on me. It wasn’t until I started listening to audiobooks in [2016] where I discovered a long lost secret of my own: my favourite moments as a young girl was listening to my Mum read stories aloud! This was my first initial experience with ‘audiobooks’ as Mum had a way of narrating the heart out of a story to where the story felt ‘alive’ and it rang inside my heart long after the years we read together. This in effect led me into an addiction for audiobooks and the narrators who give me that emotional anchour into the stories they are narrating. The circle enlarges and resumes from whence it left off,…
I could immediately connect with this story – of the ways in which daughters inter-relate to their mothers to the sentiment expressed by Risher for how a seemingly ordinary rocker can become the magical foothold of joy for a woman who fully embraced mumhood every minute and hour of her daughters’ lives!!
| Thanksgiving Dreams |
The beauty of this story is how spirituality and spiritual intuitiveness can alight in our lives at moments where we are not expecting to find anything extraordinary to be revealled. In this modern day retrospective on the inner truths we’re aware of but of the outward difficulty in embracing those truths into our lives, Risher takes a candid look at what would happen if someone called us to task for not vocalising a truth that is inherently our own to own.
2008 | the year I won Nanowrimo
| Kitchen Tools, Christmas socks and Living Memories |
This vacuum of time which moves throughout our lives is moored and timed in step with our memories of not just our experiences but of the people who endeared us to them. Those people might never realise the individual impact they made on our lives or how their presence affected us years after their own lives have expired in this portion of their time-line, but what endures is something they gave us whilst they were here to give it.
As we go backwards with Risher to the times in which she was given a physical object by a friend, she re-addresses her own nostalgia by talking about how these singular objects are not affirmed by their simplicity of purpose in her life but of how effective her memories are tethered per object to each person who gifted them to her over the years. In effect, she is exploring how the gifts of our friends acts as a conduit of purposeful reflection and how in the giving, they gave us more than the gift itself which she can tangibly touch.
It speaks well to how we all can get lost inside our mind’s reflective reel of moments in time where someone else endeavoured to give us a gift of friendship. An item they felt would have purpose in our life and would give us a bit of unexpected joy to receive. Yet, in the giving – they perhaps did not realise how long lasting those moments are – how cherished they become and how the act of re-living through our memories of those people and those moments become the cherished treasures of our lives.
I love living memories – as this is a tradition that my own family has maintained but by extension, even if a friend in the past has exited my life in the present, it doesn’t stop me from lingering on their memory, of re-aligning myself with our experiences together and of pulling forward out of time and sequence with the living ‘now’ something which re-connects me to that particular friend. This is a lovely story about the temporal ways in which time and memory are forever walking within us.
| Changes |
I immediately was taken back to my own school years where many of my own yearbooks were signed by acquaintances and friends alike (as you know how your yearbook somehow magically makes the rounds without your intervention) who wrote rather strongly: never change! To which at the time, I also questioned the reasoning behind that particular bit of advice as it was written with gusto and empathsis by so many different people – some I knew of directly, some who I considered a friend and others, I am not even sure how they knew me as our paths were not interconnected and yet, they took the time to enscribe something so personal inside my yearbook?
I had a theory of thought myself – it is not the prospect of remaining stagnant and the same throughout your life that they wanted me to remember but I think as I was a bubbly chatterbox who had a keenly happy-go-lucky outlook on life – I think they didn’t want me to lose a part of myself I would regret losing in the future. The part where I could still gush over the joys and burst with affection with the highs of my experiences as I walked through the upper portions of my life. In many ways, I never changed – some might say being a book blogger heightened how I share my joys and that my gush fest over stories is a big clue into my own quirky personality – but I digress!
I also could relate about how sometimes the best thing to do in life is to leave your hometown – to endeavour to live outside that space and to find a new place to nest. Not everyone is meant to stay status quo and live their futures in the same places as their past. Some of us love the freedom of living elsewhere and of interacting with new people; for others, remaining in place with one’s origins is a better fit for them. We’re all uniquely different in many regards but what remains true is how we process our lives – we have to live forward in order to re-examine the past and in so doing, recognising that sometimes the past is never better understood until you reach the future!
| Turning 11 |
I agreed there are pivotal milestones in our lives – I could also relate to when I noticed the change of being able to laugh at my family’s jokes and zingers and being able to take a more active role in owning my own sarcastic wit. There are moments in our childhood where we see the personal growth we are undertaking but we still need to seek out understanding from our Mums and Dads to see if the chart of growth we’re observing is actually one they can observe themselves. For this, I understood her daughter’s plight and why she needed to verify her own observations with Risher.
It was a cheeky smile I was wearing when I read the passage about how Risher related a moment in her own life where her mother did not exactly criticise her for a choice she made but wanted to instead allow her the grace of knowing she’d reached a point where she could stand by her choices and own her own living truth therein. It is a moment all mothers and fathers give us – they stop attempting to correct something we’ve done in error (in their eyes) and allow us the breadth of hope to recognise we can make our own choices and own them.
There is a certain layer of freedom in seeing how we grow and how we mature into ourselves. In relating this story, Risher is contemplating her own marks of grow with her daughter’s and thereby, connecting the ancient truths we all see in ourselves.
2013 | the year I became a book blogger
| Have a suitcase heart |
I believe I always did and I never heard of this expression! Mostly as my Mum and Dad raised me to endeavour to embrace every experience and adventure I could. Whether that meant spending summers at the science center or travelling across the states or into Mexico solo, they wanted me to get out there and live. They wanted me to see other people who were not necessarily of a similar background to me (though my ancestral lineage is a hodepodge of European and UK descent – there is a lot of lovely cultures out there outside of my own ancestral past) wherein I could eat and breathe different versions of living by each new person I would encounter.
Just to travel outside my home region of the states was a unique map of lives – you don’t have to go any further than a bus ride to a different city or part of your own state to find a uniquely different view of life as its being lived. I grew up in a metropolis of culture and religion, a place where you could literally meet the crossroads of the world without having to ride or fly to a different locale.
I loved how I was raised because it opened the world to me. It gave me the freedom to live inside the larger expanse of the world and to bring the world closer to home. I hope others can embrace this philosophy for their own lives and those of their children. By extension, for each story we read we are also bridging the gap between our own existence and those lives of characters who are composites for real persons living different lives of our own. Empathy can be increased in so many different ways – whether we travel in the literal sense or the figurative.
| Driving Miss Crazy |
The beauty of this is the time capsule aspect of it – of how in the past things were a bit more easier to achieve and acquire than they are today where there are far more rules and regulations to jump through in order to say get a drivers licence! I also liked how Risher continued to cross-relate her journey as a young woman with the life of her daughter(s) – this collection of stories became so much more than a biographical sketch of a woman who loved being a traveller and a mother – it owned itself to the ruminative explorations of how the past and the present reshape the future.
Of how by revisiting our own past and intuitively re-examine our present, especially through the lives of our children, we get to see how the past affected the future but also, how the present is still giving measure of hope for the days still not lived. There is a quiet somberness about it all but also, the aliveness of finding connection and redirection of what we felt we learnt by what we remember.
2016 | the year my father had a stroke and I became his caregiver
| Quiet Heroes |
There is a fine line of intervention in all our experiences – of the moments where we have to assert whether or not to interfere with someone elses choices and therefore, re-directing an event that could have become a worse incident to observe. I think we can all relate to this story – for me, the beauty was not just what happened in the article being revisited by Risher but in the surprise revelation at the end!
There are moments where I think we all wish we could have done more or said more; intervened at times where we might have questioned our own safety but wanted to reach out to effect someone elses right to feel safe themselves. It is a question about how we internalise our experiences outside our homes and outside our lives so to speak with our families – where we are in observation of the others in our communities.
It speaks to ask when do you act and when do you remain silent? And, if you act is what you did impacting the people you tried to help or was it forgotten as soon as it happened? A curious tale to ink out self-contemplation about how interconnected we all are even in moments where we might feel isolated from one another.
| She Knows Too Much |
This story reminds me of how we love to curate our dreams before we can sort out how to reach for them and how to access a path towards embarking into them. It is a moment in everyone’s life where there is a tenderness of innocence about how we think about the future and our role inside it. As we grow, we either move closer to our plans or we re-invent the wheel so to speak on what we expect out of our lives after having moved forward from the original starting point.
For me, it reminds me of where I was at eighteen endearing myself to write three different manuscripts (two fiction, one poetry) and where I was at twenty-eight endeavouring to walk into Nanowrimo with hopeful optimism but without knowing the sacrifice on my health that month would take out of me. Or, how at thirty-four I decided to launch myself into the book blogosphere and become a book blogger – whilst at the same time, exercising my writing voice and sorting out who I am as a writer. I wasn’t merely moonlighting after all as a book blogger focusing on the stories already published – I was re-aligning myself back onto course where my own trajectory had gone a bit askew for a few years.
All of life is measurable by what we gain and by how much we grow as individuals. Everything we take into our conscience minds is viable for retrospection and personal growth markers. Yet, it cannot be denied in those formative years where we’re still evolving into ourselves, there is something to be said for reckless dreaming – of thinking about the largely impossible epochs of self-discoverable goals whilst contemplating the truer expanse of how much curiosity plays a part in what we dream. If we’re curiously curious throughout our lives, our dreams take-on the proportional largeness of what we endeavour to envision for ourselves. Which in of itself is a gift.
I felt guided through these stories as I was moving between the sections of Risher’s time capsuled collection of biographical travelogues and motherhood journals – it is a happy respite of joyfulness to route yourself through her living histories – to see where your own life intersects with her experiences and of how what she lived is a measure of what she’s experienced.
Her self-awareness is palpable and enjoyable – she gives you honest impressions about what she’s observed throughout her life and how her impressions of what she’s remembering is cross-examined against her role as a mother. It is a beautiful collection of tangents of life – bursting with philosophical intuitiveness which is a pleasure to read but it also evokes such a strong presence of contemporary life.
I am wicked thankful I was finally able to get myself attached into her prose and to relive some of my own memorable moments where I felt connected to her own passage in time. I hope others who are reading these stories for the first time will see the beauty in how they are assembled and how as you move through the years, time is happily condensed and explored through all the different facets of her life.
This blog tour is courtesy of: iRead Book Tours
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Copyright © Jorie Loves A Story, 2018.
I’m a social reader | I tweet my reading life
My ruminative thoughts of Looking to the Stars from Old Algiers might have been delayed but the journey I gained through these stories is immeasurable #mustread #autobiography #shortstories
by @janrisher | @iReadBookTours https://t.co/HeEmgEp13Z
— Jorie Story 📖🎧 (@joriestory) December 29, 2018
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— janrisher (@janrisher) December 30, 2018
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