So apparently "Dear Sugar" is an advice column that existed in an online literary journal (or website, of sorts? I never fully understood where the column was but it doesn't really matter), where people write in with their questions and problems and get a response from "Sugar." Sugar was always anonymous, but her identity was revealed for the publication of this collection of the best of her responses. I feel like Cheryl Strayed is vaguely familiar to me, but I've never read anything else she's written. But I really enjoyed powering through this book. I started it this afternoon and already finished it by this evening because I just didn't want to put it down. It seems odd to be that interested in an advice column (although I'd always loved Dear Abby and Ann Landers in the newspaper), but Strayed writes so beautifully and so empathetically and gives such clear-headed, reasonable but emotional advice that I couldn't help but going on to the next one to see what she would be asked and what she would respond next. I was almost moved to tears by some of the letters people wrote in, about the sad, hard lives that some people have and the things they are struggling with--children dying, drug addictions, heartbreak, chronic low self-esteem. And Sugar somehow is able to respond in a compassionate and supportive way to everyone, on every topic, revealing things about herself as she does so. She shares about her mother's death, her father leaving her family, her failed first marriage, becoming a mother herself, and all of these terrible and formative experiences that she'd had and somehow is able to give parts of herself to help other people heal themselves. I feel like the beauty of this Sugar persona is that she really had empathy--she really felt people's pain when she wrote back to them and really wanted them to be happy, and tried to help them heal themselves and therefore heal their situations.
The one thing I didn't like about this book was some of the advice that she gave on marriage and relationships, repeatedly throughout the book. Mostly, I felt like her thoughts were really emotionally healthy and would really lead people in the right direction they needed to go. But I felt like Sugar was too cavalier about the marriage commitment, in the face of infidelity or other desires and problems. It seemed like over the course of the entire book, marriage was painted too often as a thing you can and maybe should easily get out of when you might want to just go do other things or that infidelity was painted as not really that big of a deal--no, it IS a big deal, but it's so common that it happens to everyone so you just have to work your way around it. And I know that I'm very young and very naive but I do not agree with those sorts of portrayals and it makes me almost sick to hear that sort of advice being dispensed to people, especially since its source makes it seem so reasonable and commonplace. (There was also a bit of language, or maybe a lot, just as a warning.)
But overall, I think reading the messages from the majority of these columns made me think more about how to be a better person and how to love other people better and treat them right--all good things that really felt heartwarming and definitely made the book worth the read.
No comments:
Post a Comment