FRANCIE AND JESSE: GROWING WHERE YOU\u2019RE PLANTED<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A while ago, I introduced a rather unusual word: BILDUNGSROMAN\u2014the literary term for a coming-of-age story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of my favorite examples is Betty Smith\u2019s “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Francie Nolan grows up poor in Brooklyn in the early 1900s. Her family struggles to make ends meet. Her father loves his family, but his drinking creates hardship and uncertainty. Francie learns early that growing up sometimes means facing things children shouldn\u2019t have to face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That sounds familiar to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jesse Hall, the boy at the center of my “Searching for Family” series, grows up decades later in Ohio. His family also struggles with poverty. His father\u2019s alcoholism brings fear and instability into the home. Jesse learns to work, accept responsibility, deal with disappointment, and keep going when life doesn\u2019t seem fair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Francie and Jesse are the same age but living in very different places.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But both are growing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s one reason the title “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” has always seemed so powerful to me. The tree in Betty Smith\u2019s story manages to grow in a place where you wouldn\u2019t expect much of anything to flourish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Children can do that, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sometimes growing up isn\u2019t about having the perfect home, the perfect parents, or an easy childhood. Sometimes it\u2019s about discovering hope when circumstances give you plenty of reasons to lose it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Francie did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jesse does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And perhaps, somewhere along the way, most of us have had to learn how to grow where we were planted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Have you read “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?” What do you remember most about Francie and her story?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
FRANCIE AND JESSE: GROWING WHERE YOU\u2019RE PLANTED A while ago, I introduced a rather unusual word: BILDUNGSROMAN\u2014the literary term for a coming-of-age story. One of my favorite examples is Betty Smith\u2019s “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.” Francie Nolan grows up poor in Brooklyn in the early 1900s. Her family struggles to make ends meet. Her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vicsnotes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhess.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhess.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhess.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhess.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhess.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=262"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhess.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":263,"href":"https:\/\/victorhess.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions\/263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhess.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhess.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhess.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}