Post B

Dear Mary Karr,

I just started your memoir, The Liars Club and so far I love it! I think it’s amazing how you had such a complicated childhood and yet you grew up to write a book about it. I also think it’s amazing that you were even willing to share your childhood with others. I don’t think I’d ever be able to do that.

I do have one question though. I was wondering why the doctor was asking you to “show him the marks.” Later on you wrote that you knew there weren’t any marks to show, but why would he think there were any in the first place? Did a neighbor call the police on your parents for being so loud? What happened?

I thought it was really brave of you to stand up to your father. When he was beating you, you said, “Go on and hit me then, if it makes you feel like a man to beat on a little girl like me” (45). In all the other memoirs I’ve read, none of the narrators stood up for themselves like you did. When they wouldn’t do anything, it really annoyed me. I’m also glad you stood up for yourself because the one of the things I hated reading about was how your father would beat you.

Another question I have is how do you and your family get along now? In the introduction to The Liars Club, you said that you warned your mother and your sister about what you were going to write about. Did your mother apologize for all the things she’s done or did she not care? Also, what happened to your father? Do you two still keep in touch or has something happened that I haven’t read about yet?

Right now I’m only on the third chapter but I really look forward to reading more!

- Anna

Post A

The Liars Club by Mary Karr
Vocab
Metastasized (10): To be changed or transformed dangerously.
Succinct (47): Expressed in a few words.

Appeals
"I knew that neither of my parents was coming. Daddy was working the graveyard shift, and the sheriff said that his deputy had driven out to the plant to try and track him down. Mother had been taken Away-- he further told us-- for being Nervous." (6) This is an emotional appeal because she wants you to feel bad for her.

"In case you think I exaggerate Leechfield's overall nastiness, Business Week once voted it one of the ten ugliest towns on the planet." (34) This is an emotional appeal and a logical appeal. Karr wants us to feel bad for her because she had to grow up in a bad town. This is also a logical appeal because she is stating that Leechfield was voted one of the ten ugliest towns on the planet.

"My daddy had grown up with three loud brothers and a sister in a logging camp in the piney section of East Texas called The Big Thicket." (14) This is a logical appeal because it is a fact that her father grew up in East Texas.

Quote
In the first chapter of The Liars Club, Mary Karr starts telling the reader about her sharpest memory. She is at home with a doctor and there are policemen waiting outside. The doctor says, "'Show me the marks, come on, now. I won't hurt you '"(3). I think this quote will be important later on in the book because she does not go on to explain why he asked her "show him the marks." I predict Mary Karr will explain what he meant later on and it will lead into the story of why she wrote a memoir.

Theme
Mary Karr has made the best of her very difficult childhood by telling stories about it in The Liars Club.