After devouring her memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, I found it appropriate that author Cheryl Strayed chose the last name ‘Strayed’ for herself. She truly has strayed far and wide in her personal life and has had many unique experiences. Her writing style has been directly impacted by what she’s gone through. Strayed’s blazingly honest wit and wise, gentle voice make her books a perfect fit for those of us on the verge of transitioning into adulthood. Collegiettes, I definitely recommend taking her books Tiny Beautiful Things and Wild to the beach this spring break to read underneath the sun. Take a highlighter with you too. There will be some lines that will ring so true you’ll want to revisit them again and again.
I first learned about Cheryl Strayed in one of my English courses here at FSU. Our instructor told us to read a few passages from an advice column called “Dear Sugar” on the Internet. You can find it here: http://therumpus.net/sections/blogs/dear-sugar/.
Strayed posed as “Sugar” and wrote for this advice column for a couple years. The column became so popular that the best passages were selected and combined into a book. This is Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar, which is the first book I recommend to you, dear readers. This advice column is unlike any other I’ve ever read before. Strayed answers each letter with a sincere and deeply personal essay, sharing her own stories and relating them back to the letter in question. When I read her advice to a group of English/Creative Writing majors who were about to graduate and were nervous about facing the real world, I was hooked. Here’s a link to that particular article:
http://therumpus.net/2011/05/dear-sugar-the-rumpus-advice-column-72-the-future-has-an-ancient-heart/.
My second recommendation is Strayed’s memoir, entitled Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. In Wild, she writes about her journey backpacking from the Mojave Desert through California, Oregon, and finally to the border of Washington State. 1,100 miles. She does this alone in her twenties, as an attempt to heal from a devastating loss. The memoir contains a detailed account of her adventures on the trail, experiencing extreme heat and cold, learning how to live off of only what she could fit into her backpack, and rediscovering who she wanted to be. The book is beautifully written, with flashbacks into her childhood and an overall empowering message that says, “you can do it” without ever being overly optimistic or faking enthusiasm. Strayed is real, and she knows the struggles that young people face. Although her alias might be “Sugar,” she never sugarcoats the challenges that life throws her way, but rather offers up a warm hug and says, “Where do we go from here?”
Here are a few quotes from Tiny Beautiful Things: