Page 28 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 94, No. 1 Fall 2013

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REVIEWS
The Milk of Birds
by Sylvia Whitman ’79
Atheneum, 363 pages,
$16.99
Reviewed by Jessica
McQuaid, assistant editor
In The Milk of Birds, Sylvia Whitman ’79
examines the damaging consequences of
a war-torn Sudan against the frustrations
of a young American girl with learning
disabilities. The contrast provides a dy-
namic outlet for Whitman’s prose and
creates a platform for the development
of Nawra and K.C., pen pals matched
through a relief organization and through
whose letters the story unfolds. Whit-
man’s selection of customs and historic
events infuse the story with necessary
drive but do not detract from its true
focus – the coming of age of two very
different girls.
It is Whitman’s careful handling of the
exchanges between K.C. and Nawra that
allows the reader to see the differing
worlds in which these teenagers find them-
selves, without suffering long spouts of
narrative. The letters flow from one set-
ting and time zone to another, with a
precision that carries the reader along
in the tone of a bedtime story. The seam-
less transition allows for a graceful char-
acter arc with desired yet unexpected
outcomes.
Of particular note is Whitman’s por-
trayal of Nawra, the young woman dis-
placed from her village in Darfur. Nawra
easily could become stereotyped or lost
among the ravages of war. But the process
of her maturation in a volatile environment
allows her to become a distinct entity in
the story, one the reader champions. No
one picture of Nawra is perfectly clear,
for the girl’s shifting persona matches
the backdrop of the world in which she
finds herself, emphasizing the common
theme of change throughout the story.
Whitman’s beautiful use of character
interwoven with the customs and historic
developments of both the United States
and Darfur lend this story a dimension
that elevates it above the level of similar
efforts. A story that could easily rely on
the horrors of war to make it memorable
needs no such support.
Eliza Griswold ’91 Interviews
Eleven Days author
Lea Carpenter Brokaw ’91
How in the world did you come to learn
so much about SEAL training? I had a
few friends in the Teams. I reached out to
them; they then connected me with others.
I listened. I read everything I could find. I
went to Coronado, and watched the beach.
One of the most powerful aspects of this
book is the relationship between mother
and son. As the mother of two boys, how
did this inform your writing? How does
your own mom’s life experience factor
in here? I thought about the fact that if,
like my mother, I had married at 19, I could
have a son serving now. Motherhood maybe
gave me confidence to look at something
– war – I might not have had the courage
to look at otherwise. On emotions, I was
coming through loss. Loss and the fear of
loss are interwoven; navigating one is a
route to channeling the other, and the book
is in part about the fear of loss.
I loved the role of landscape and food
in this novel – garden, baseball hat, key
chain, running shoes – all of the objects
of life seemed to tether Sarah to the earth
when nothing else did. What made you
choose some of those specific objects?
If I tried to do anything, I tried to write a
simple story, one that could be read easily,
almost as a fable, but one that for a certain
audience would resonate at a deeper level.
The red laces on the first page are a nod
to Dorothy’s slippers, and Oz, taking the
reader to a mythical place. The garden,
the chain – these are elements in my own
life. The farmhouse, the flag – I have a flag
flown in Yemen. My mother has flags flown
in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Eleven Days has been compared to Denis
Johnson’s Tree of Smoke, a novel of the
Vietnam War. Did you think of Eleven
Days as commenting on war in Afghan-
istan and Iraq? I would be punching way
above my weight to comment on those
wars. I felt I could comment on the choice
to serve in them though, on the character
of men serving. I do feel I’ve had a master
class on it all now – the politics, the players,
the choices, the guns, the acronyms.
There’s very little fiction that’s come out
of the Afghan and Iraq wars. Why do you
think that is? It’s coming. Next winter Phil
Klay’s collection, Redeployment, is coming
and it’s extraordinary. Fiction, as you know,
has never been a leading indicator, though
Ben Fountain set a bar.
You were already writing when we were
15 or 16. You were also on stage inter-
preting Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle.
At Princeton, I remember an adaptation
you worked on of Eliot’s “The Waste
Land.” What did those early years on
stage teach you about language? How
do they factor in to the novelist you’ve
become? Writing is what you experience
plus what you’ve read. In the theater, you
have to rehearse the language, so it stays
with you. SPS left me with a lot of Brecht,
Pinter, and Shakespeare milling around in
my mind. And it’s sort of embarrassing to
admit that Brecht, Pinter, and Shakespeare
all appear in this book.
I know you are deeply committed to
improving the lives of our veterans.
Did that come before you decided to
write this novel or did it come out of
the work? Writing the book changed
the way I see the world. I am working
on something now that would involve
collecting stories of service post-9/11.
But it is early days.
CLIFF BROKAW