Tag Archives: memoir

Book Tour: Found Art

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Found Art (Discovering Beauty in Foreign Places) by Leeana Tankersley

From Found Art (Discovering Beauty in Foreign Places) by Leeana Tankersley:

During this journey, I discovered it was high time I felt the losses, collected the pieces, and reclaimed myself. That’s the thing about these journeys into foreign places. They have a way of making us different if we will let them.

What I like about Found Art:

  • It’s a memoir. (I’m crazy for memoirs.)
  • It’s a memoir of a woman living overseas. (Hey, I lived overseas!)
  • It’s a memoir of a woman living in the Middle East. (Brilliant! I lived in Indonesia.)
  • The 25 Discussion Prompts in the back of the book. (Conversation is one reason we read books, especially a book like this one. Americans really have little understanding of what it is like to live in a Muslim culture.)

What I didn’t like about Found Art:

  • Lack of pictures. Memoirs lend themselves to photographs, don’t you think. I would’ve loved to see images of the places Tankersley visited and lived.
  • The cover. Lovely colors but those swaths of red, yellow green and blue – while as vibrant as the stories in the book – it doesn’t convey what the book is really about. A trifle complaint, but this is my blog, my opinion.

Read Found Art to discover one young woman’s experience of transformation while living in the Middle East.


Disclaimer: This post is part of a Blog Book Tour. The author (blogger) of this post received a free copy of the above book from the publisher in exchange of a written review. The review is the honest opinion of the blogger. This post contains affiliate links that financially benefit the blogger. By making a purchase via an affiliate link, the blogger may receive monetary compensation.

Does the book Eat, Pray, Love preach Christ?

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Comments are still coming in on this post about Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert, so that means it’s time to Educate the Masses.

Are you ready masses?

Class is in session. Here we go -

This is a comment from Adam. First of all, I love, love, LOVE it when normal folks leave a comment here. By normal, I mean the nonbloggers in the world. Bloggers, do you know there are people in the world that have no idea what a blog is?? I’m serious! Isn’t it shocking? I thought everyone and her mother has a blog.

No, my mom does not have a blog. The woman doesn’t even have a computer, we must remember to pray for her.

Monica… the point!

Oops, sorry. Had too much fun poking fun at myself.

Adam, nonblogger, wrote:

Seriously anyone who thinks Gilbert is trying to lead people away from Christianity has not discovered God themselves. I think deep prayer and mediation is how one connects to God and builds a relationship with him and it’s how God can change peoples lives. Just because someone doesn’t say that you have to accept Christ doesn’t make it bad.

Hold on there, mister. How does a person connect to God? You say it’s through prayer and mediation. What do you say class? Hold that thought because Adam is going to correct himself in a minute…

Adam then says:

She is teaching people how to connect to God that may not have normally discovered him and I in no way see how that is not Christlike, it is very Christ like and her book has done a world of good in showing me how I can connect to God on a deeper level.

Really? You’re a Bible-believing, born-again Christian and you think Eat, Pray, Love helps people connect to God?  It’s comments like these that amaze me. (Sorry for picking on you, Adam, but if you disagree, you can start your own blog to refute me.) Gilbert is into Eastern Mediation and Yoga, dude, and a bunch of other stuff I can’t remember off the top of my head. But I’m willing to bet it’s got nothing to do with Jesus Christ.

Christ allows me to return to God and prayer and mediation allow me to connect to God and build a relationship with him. It makes me mad when people attack stuff that can help improve people’s lives just because it doesn’t fit there narrow point of view of how things are.

Look, class! The answer to my first question. Way to go, Adam, you win a star for answering correctly. It’s Jesus Christ who allows us to return to God.

You can pray and meditate, and do all sorts of goofy tricks to try and win the Lord’s favor, but it’s only through repentance and faith in His son, Jesus, that we are connected to God.

By the way, I happen to know that because I read it in my Bible. Don’t bother looking for that bit of info in Eat, Pray, Love, because it’s not there.

And as for that narrow point of view stuff – it’s not my opinion, it’s what Jesus says himself in Matthew 7:13:

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

It’s a narrow way. Sorry to disappoint, but there you have it. Either a book points to Christ or it doesn’t. Eat, Pray, Love does not. It’s a well-written, interesting, personal memoir of a non-Christ-following woman. Does Gilbert point to Christ as the way to God? No. Read it to learn about what she believes; use it as a road map to God at your own peril.

Sigh. It’s uninformed comments like Adam’s that concern me. Christians, we don’t have time to misinformed. We must know what we believe and why, and then when we encounter false teaching, we can answer correctly.

People are still looking for information about Gilbert and her book, so I think I’m going to re-read it, and post my thoughts here; that way if anyone is interested, we can learn together and have the answers we need to have.

Okay. I think I’m done now. Questions? Comments? Smacks to the side of my head for too much sarcasm?

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Hmmmm. I just read the next part of the chapter in Matthew. Do you know who Jesus warns us about in verse 15?

What I’m reading: Monique and the Mango Rains by Kris Holloway

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Monique and the Mango Rains (Two Years with a Midwife in Mali) is a memoir of Holloways’ experience as a Peace Corp volunteer in Mali, where she befriended midwife Monique Dembele.

From the backcover:

Monique Dembele saved lives and dispensed hope in a place where childbirth is a life-and-death matter. This book tells of her unquenchable passion to better the lives of women and children in the face of poverty, unhappy marriages, and endless backbreaking work. Monique’s buoyant humor and willingness to defy tradition were uniquely hers. In the course of this deeply personal narrative, as readers immerse themselves in the rhythms of West African village life, they come to know Monique as friend, mother, and inspired woman.

I know! I know! Yet another memoir. This one I couldn’t resist, mostly because I’ve read hardly anything at all about Africa, except a short story by Hemingway. (Why is it I can’t remember any of the details of The Sun Also Rises and… another Hemingway novel I read? Can’t even recall the title of that book).

Plus, I won this book from the Early Reviewers group over at LibraryThing. I had to read it.

Oh, darn. You all know how I hate a memoir. Ha.

Modern medicine in Mali looks nothing like what we take for granted here in the United States. I look back at my four birth experiences, and nothing that I’ve complained about with those hospital births comes close to what the mothers in Mali have to endure. We American mothers are blessed, and dare I say – spoiled – with the health care we have available.

Have you read any books about African culture? Please share in the comments below. Have you been to Africa? Tell us your experience.