EARTHSHINE

McBride’s collection of true stories highlights the triumphs and tribulations that make us all human.

Over the course of a dozen stories, the author narrates her experiences with various people who have moved her in different ways. She shares their tales as jumping-off points for reflections on the meaning of life itself. In “When Life Tosses You Up,” for example, she describes her first meeting with author Henrietta Delancey Henkle (later Buckmaster), whose donation to a local low-income minority community center sparked a years-long friendship between the two that ultimately helped inspire McBride’s own writing career. “Because We Are” depicts the many nightly conversations the author shared with Demba, a community organizer she met while assisting a friend in the small village of Faoune in southern Senegal. Their quietly reverential discussions reveal the fundamentally different questions they ask themselves while contemplating existence, from McBride’s individualistic query, “Who am I?” to Demba’s more community-focused inquiry, “What is the purpose of life?” It is through Demba’s question that this personal story quickly zooms out to relate to existence (generally) and focuses in on “the philosophy of shared wellbeing and reciprocity that undergirds an age-old, life-sustaining social ethic” (specifically). This basic narrative construction—moving from individual experiences to broader meditations—undergirds each of McBride’s stories, whether she is chatting with a Kansas cowboy or reuniting with a Chinese professor who gave group English lessons in Beijing during the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. Through it all, McBride shares her own ideas about the choices we make and the gifts we contribute while periodically touching back upon the overarching moon metaphor (“And like the moon, we shine more brightly in some situations than in others”) that informs the entire work.

The author expertly applies the art of storytelling to more philosophical musings that are sure to nudge readers toward their own epiphanies. The dialogue is not exactly what one would call realistic; the language is massaged and clearly deployed for maximum emotional impact. When Demba asks the author to explain how people search for themselves, for example, McBride responds, “It’s usually done solo – in a quiet corner at home, or outside on a walk, atop a mountain or staring up at the moon and stars on a night like this.” But the lack of naturalism doesn’t diminish the stories’ impact—the message behind the words is clearly much more important to the writer and, ultimately, the reader. The author’s prose brings her subjects to vivid life, whether she’s describing “skin the warm brown hue of tamarind nuts” or setting the scene for the opening of a new chapter (“As a Kansas boy reared on a cattle ranch, Kurt rarely felt dazzled by life…Time and time again he had sniffed the scent of his own sweat mingling with the musty odors of broad-faced bulls digging in the dirt to raise dust and shield themselves from flies.” While McBride’s ruminations might not be particularly groundbreaking, they do raise insightful questions that will likely fuel plenty of late-night deep thoughts about life and our respective roles in it.

An insightful compilation deftly highlighting the “big picture” lessons found in individual experiences.