Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow
It has been such a joy to study Tamora Pierce’s storyworld this semester. As a child I read her books over and over again, soaking up every word. I loved the characters and emulated them whenever possible learning things about life that I never would have learned from another. Going back and rereading the Daughter of the Lioness duology made me want to go back and read all of the books. I found myself still connecting with the books but in different ways than I had when I was younger. I am now older than most of the characters and have gone through many of the personal things that they have. As a girl I looked up to Aly and her friends and wondered about things like sex and relationships. But now I feel like I empathize and I understand the narrative on a more personal level.
This is one of the things that I enjoyed most about rereading the books. I was worried that now that I am older and more educated that they would feel juvenile and that I would be disappointed to discover that some of my favorite books were not as good as I had thought they were. My goal with this project was to analyze the first books of Pierce’s that I ever read and see how they stood up 10 years later. I knew that Pierce was known for writing strong, intelligent, and flawed female heroines but I had forgotten how complexly layered the books were with topics from race to religion addressed along the way. I set out to look primarily at the plot and timeline of these two novels but once I got started I realized how much information there was outside the text.
Through interviews, Q&As, and forums Tamora Pierce has released so much information about her writing process, the inspiration for the world she built, and tidbits about what happened to the characters after the last page. As a young reader, I never read anything outside the text but I think that that is in some ways a function of the times more than my level of curiosity. Now having reread the story, I find myself looking for every little tidbit whether its the name of Aly’s children or the books Pierce used to do architecture research. As I discussed in one of my posts, I know that there are those that would object to what they would call oversharing on the part of the author but I have always felt that these extratextual comments and explanations add to rather than detract from my overall understanding of the world.
As we moved through the semester, in some ways my investigation mimicked the path of the class. Initially I did what I would consider the shallow analysis, looking at what is physically present in the novels and comparing them to real life scenarios in order to comment on their applicability. But then I moved outside of the text and addressed the storyworld more as a fan, writing fanfiction and putting together character edits in order to get a sense of the fan perspective and add to the fan art and literature that exists. Finally, as we wrapped up the semester, I attempted to turn my eye more towards Tamora Pierce as an author and evaluate her words and actions and explore their affect on my experience of the text. I really felt like Pierce wrote not only to inspire young girls but also gave so many details of the writing business and process potentially inspiring young writers as well. In that same vein I looked into potential reasons that her work had not been adapted beyond the page and found that the best evidence came from her own words and the words of her publisher.
Upon setting out I had several ideas of what this project would end up being. I expected it to be more of a topical breakdown of themes addressed in Pierce’s work. However, I found myself much more drawn to a few of those themes and then to places outside the work itself like author and fan participation. I feel like I tapped into these outsider viewpoints fairly successfully as well as touching upon the more interesting themes in the specific work I chose. I do not think there is anything I would change about the work that I did however, if I could expand my project there are several ways that I would go about doing it.
The first way is that I would expand the scope of works that I considered and bring in the first quartet that Pierce wrote in this world which is about Aly’s mother. I think that the addition would provide some contrast for some of the concepts that I analyzed. For example, in terms of length I talk about how after Harry Potter was published, writers were able to present manuscripts to publishers that were much longer than before. The 200-page limit is highly in evidence in the Alanna books so including them would provide further evidence. It would also be interesting to see how Pierce developed characters differently at different times in her writing career. Other than expanding the scope there was only really one other post that I would have made within the project concept that I developed. Rereading I forgot how pivotal the sex scene in this and other books was to my understanding of and expectations for sex. If I could write one more post that is what I would have tackled, the expressions of sex and how I perceived them before and now in the books.
Overall, I really think I achieved what I set out to do. I deepened my understanding and appreciation for a writer and a set of books that I had not reread in several years. I got to tackle some complex topics and try to unravel how the author dealt with them and depicted them. In the end I had a really good time jumping head first back into this universe and the project made me want to go back to the beginning and reread all the books. I would even consider giving Pierce’s other story world, the Circle of Magic, a chance after realizing how well her work translates to and older audience. Thank you for following me through this journey, I hope my readers enjoyed it as much as I did!
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