Writing her own life : Imogene Welch, Western rural schoolteacher

Mary Clearman Blew?s aunt Imogene Welch embodied the hard-working values of depression-era western America. In Writing Her Own Life, Blew builds a narrative around excerpts from the diaries Imogene kept during World War II while she taught in rural Montana schools and later in Washington State. Through her diary entries we learn of the war?s effects on Imogene as she moved from rural, family-centered life in Montana to independent if somewhat lonelier life in Washington State.

After growing up on an impoverished homestead in Montana, Imogene enjoyed the modest comforts of living in a small town in Washington, including electricity and running water. And she experienced the dramatic changes in a school system under stress from the war: separated families, crowded classrooms, and an increasingly mobile population. Imogene?s diaries find her exploring a new landscape, worrying about distant friends and family, coping with her newfangled automobile, enduring roommates, and eventually learning to cherish her independence.

Blew explores the transitional experiences of the young schoolteacher and examines traditional and non-traditional ways in which fiction and creative nonfiction recreate the life recorded in the diaries. Moving beyond Imogene?s experiences, Blew asks what an inheritance of family stories and text means to a generation of readers who are experiencing transitions different from Imogene?s but no less intense.

Author Notes

Mary Clearman Blew is Professor of English & Creative Writing at the University of Idaho, Moscow. She is the author of "Bone Deep in Landscape", "All But the Waltz", "Balsamroot" (University of Oklahoma Press) & "Sister Coyote: Montana Stories" & is coeditor of "Circle of Women: An Anthology of Contemporary Western Women's Writing".

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Publisher's Weekly Review

In this well meaning but heavy-handed biography, the author attempts to decipher the life of her aunt Imogene Welch. A schoolteacher in Washington state and rural Montana during World War II, Welch left behind a series of diaries in which she jotted down a line or two nearly every day of her life. Surprisingly fascinating, these diaries contain her plain notations about poverty ("Could sure use more money") and her unmarried life in a world of married folk ("Oh-I'm lonely-lonely"), as well as her brief descriptions of getting by in a war-torn country. Welch lived quietly, but her world of school, PTA meetings, civil patrol, dinners with friends, knitting and reading is involving, especially when shown in contrast to the ranching life she left behind. Large extracts of the diaries are printed in this volume, and in the sections where Blew sticks to explaining and amplifying Welch's words with her own knowledge of the family's past, readers won't be able to put the book down. But too often, Blew pokes in silly asides to her aunt, writing "Oh, come on, Imogene!" when Welch makes a catty comment about a friend's engagement ring and "Sorry, ghosts" when she can't remember an important fact. Blew also makes proclamations about Welch that reveal nothing more than her own desire to force a clear narrative onto her aunt's complicated life. In the final chapter, Blew suddenly reveals that this book served, in part, as a distraction from her daughter's mental illness, and the revelation will leave readers feeling that Welch got shoved to the margins of her family yet one more time. As her diaries reveal, she deserves better. 12 b&w photos. (Apr.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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Reviews (1)

Publisher's Weekly Review