Mirrors: and Other Reflections (Univ of Louisiana at Lafayette 2023) is a collection of essays most of which were published elsewhere before inclusion is this “memoir in pieces” title. In a brief opening narrative, the author says that these are interconnecting essays provided mostly in chronological order. This is easy reading, and the writer, despite his rough early life and teenaged “adventures,” comes through as likable even as he engages in bad behavior.
In the opening essay it’s clear that while his natural family had severe challenges, the situation with his adoptive family was little better. One adoptive parent was compulsive, while the other slid into alcoholism with expected employment issues. Late in the piece, after Katrina, the author returns to the small town of his youth, searching for the home he remembers, but it is gone. Years after we bought the house I still live in, a young man knocked at the door, girlfriend in tow. It was the house he grew up in. He wanted to see it, to show her where he came from. I have returned to two homes, one I remember and one I do not. I suspect more people than not have returned to or thought about returning to “home,” even if that home wasn’t great. In this, the writer seems to be searching for an anchor in his past, though he found none.
Through several essays, he writes about how tiny his hometown was, literally, one with a single traffic light. It’s not surprising that teenagers found ways to entertain themselves, sometimes getting into trouble and sometimes getting away with it.
Several times he talks about books and then writing, having saved him. In this he is not alone. Many other writers have shared their stories of finding friends or escape or something else in the books of their youth and then working through their experience and feelings on the page.
As the essays develop, he paints a more detailed picture of his adopted life and his efforts to live in a world that didn’t have much to offer in emotional or material support. He sought relief in peers. A good example is in the Driver’s Ed essay where he leaves class and goes to a friend’s house where they have a few mini’s before he returns to class, now drunk. While he’s trying to cover it up and take his final test, his adoptive family drives up, dad with a beer between his legs, mother with a baby on her lap — not in a seat.
The teacher says, “I want you to go out and tell them I work for the Sheriff’s office, and I can have them both arrested.”
He walks out into the rain, toward the car, trying to consider his alternatives, any alternative that won’t set one or both of them off, that will smooth over this potentially volatile situation between them and the teacher. He gets to the car and his adoptive dad says, “That guy who came out here, that’s your teacher?”
“Yeah.”
“I should go in there and beat his fucking ass…”
In the last few essays, the author begins to reveal what he has learned about his birth family, how he comes to terms with the dying and death of his mother and what he finds out about himself on the journey.
Throughout, he contrasts, off and on, his experience versus the experiences and memories he’s trying to foster in his own children.
“My hope is that perhaps someone will read about me on the back of one of my books and realize, as I did a while ago, that there is not always a clear path from one point of being to another,” he wrote.
It’s something we should all keep in mind.
The first essay opens with memories of his birth mother and grandparents. There’s a brief reference to his mother not being able to see him anymore when he’s adopted. For the rest of the book, he refers to this adoptive family as “stepparents” and “step brother and sister,” though he notes that in life they remained simply “mom and dad.” Each time I read “stepparents” it brought me to a halt. A stepparent is married to a birth parent, so the logic didn’t work for me.
It’s clear that the writer managed to develop some empathy for the boy he was. It’s warranted. Small town. Tragic family circumstance underscored by sad adoptive situation. Trying to work through who you are while trying to work through tenuous circumstances is no small undertaking. This award-winning writer shares his journey and while it’s uniquely his own, there are spaces and times readers can relate to.
David Armand was born and raised in Louisiana. He has worked as a drywall hanger, a draftsman, and as a press operator in a flag printing factory. From 2017-2019, he served as Writer-in-Residence at Southeastern Louisiana University, where he currently holds the Leola R. Purcell Endowed Professorship in English. In 2010, he won the George Garrett Fiction Prize for his first novel, The Pugilist’s Wife, which was published by Texas Review Press. He has since published three more novels, three collections of poetry, and a memoir. Armand is also the 2022 recipient of the Louisiana Writer Award, which is presented annually by the Louisiana Center for the Book in the State Library of Louisiana, which recognizes outstanding contributions to Louisiana’s literary and intellectual life exemplified by a contemporary Louisiana writer’s body of work. Armand’s next novel, Walk the Night, is forthcoming from Texas Review Press.
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