Oh this book this book this book. How is one person able to read an email and sift through it to the core and then respond in such a way that is so honest and breathtaking and raw and vital and real? How? I do not know, nor is it important.
Also not important is how I came across the book. I don't even know. It was like it was like non-existent one second and in my hands the next. I am so grateful for it.
In a nutshell, Dear Sugar, is a collection of columns. That's it. Many people would probably just go, hmm okay, and move on. But if you see the bright orange cover at your bookstore, library or on your e-reader DO NOT PASS THIS BY!
Dear Sugar is a slice of all that is human. It is a chronicle of different people and their different issues and they all need help in some way and there seems to have never been one to help them out until Sugar came along. Seriously. All Dear Abby's and Agony Aunts combined do not measure up to this woman who isn't even "qualified" to do the writing. I don't think you need credentials that are on some certificate to be able to offer your opinion but you do need a brain and heart and experience and the courage to open up and expose all the little vulnerable bits of yourself to say, see? look here, i'm the same as you and here's what happened. That's what Sugar does. She will hear the person out and feel their pain and somehow be able to weave in her experience in a way that doesn't even feel like you're listening about her life. You are her life and for the time being she is yours. She tells it like it is but not in a way that is over done with vulgarity or tritely coated with blanket statements. Nope this woman puts thought into every word and each response is it's own true short story. She is eloquent and sassy and sweet and flawed and fearless. I can go on and on. I won't. But I will say there is a little something in each letter that's a little heartbreaking but so necessary. People are all wanting to be heard and told what to do and mostly they do know what they have to do but are looking for it to be encouraged. This book, to me, is like a bible of sorts, but not about the God in the actual Bible, but about the psalms of how to live with mistakes or lost love ones or awful parents and betrayals and the deep dark things that you think about or have done or want to do that you swear is the most horrible thing ever. And then you find out that it's not as bad as you think it is. And someone out there can relate to you and all this comes across through the words experienced by a woman named Sugar...who is actually the woman who wrote Wild, a book I haven't read yet but now have to read. It is huge now and Cheryl Strayed is a woman to look out for, both on the rumpus.net where she writes as Sugar and in her fiction (she has a book called Torch) and in her memoir where she hikes 1100 miles by herself when she was in her early 20's. I hear it's also incredible but I'm glad to have read Tiny Beautiful Things first. It's truly an amazing read.
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