Building Solid: A Life in Stories

BUILDING SOLID

A Life in Stories

JOAN RUDD joan.rudd@comcast.net STRUDEL PRESS MAY 2022 478 pages | 6×9

1 timeline, illustrated with 283 photographs of people, drawings, and sculpture,

”IN FRANK AND EMOTIONALLY REWARDING STORIES, A WOMAN RECALLS HER LIFE…

from a feminist, Jewish, and largely humorous perspective. Her stories and her prose are delightful and sometimes hilarious. Each one is a lovingly crated memory, “

Joan Rudd is an independent sculptor living and working in Seattle, Washington state, US

“I just finished your book and I loved it! Very well written, insightful, candid, and beautiful.”

“I found it a page turner”. “I was very moved by your account.”

“An incredible job, a lot of work, and very well done. I was awestruck by how courageous you are and have been, and how successful you have been with your courage. This book is rich in evoking how you were able to hold it together through many very difficult events with creativity as well as courage. The writing is highly nuanced and very well written."

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09ZFNQR2V and Barnes & Noble (BN.com) as well as independent bookstores

From Seattle Review of Books

Building Solid: A Life in Stories Star Rating: 5 / 5

By Joan Rudd/Strudel Press, $22.31, 478 pages, Format: Trade

Rome was not built in a day, and neither is a life. Both are built piece by piece, each piece seemingly unconnected, until over a long period of time, the life emerges, as from a fog, into a whole being. Joan Rudd, in Building Solid: A Life in Stories, presents a stunningly beautiful autobiography that evokes myriad emotional states in the reader, ranging from joy to sadness.

Rudd is a sculptor who lives in the Pacific Northwest. She was born and raised in the New York City of the 1950s and moved to Portland, Oregon, to pursue her education, ultimately earning a BFA. While in the Northwest, she married and joined the back to the country movement of the 1960s, purchasing land in rural Washington and living a communal farm life. Her Jewish background influences much of her outlook on life.

Rudd’s knowledge of the physical processes of sculpting informs her approach to writing. She brilliantly constructs a written “negative” image of a sculpture. Imagine a block that is carefully chipped away until the sculpture is a completed and finished likeness. The chips, transformed into written form as stories, are gathered up to form the negative image. They are intrinsic to the sculpture because, without their existence, the sculpture would remain a block. Rudd uses these “chips” to present her life in ten categories: Childhood, Physical Strength, Autonomy, Connectedness, Resilience , Resistance, Serendipity, Perspective, Wholeness, and Unity which constitute the raw material of her collective whole.

Rudd delivers short sketches of her experiences, which form the totality of each chapter. For example, her childhood growing up as the child and grandchild of Holocaust refugees living in NYC, her early fight with cancer that makes her an above-the-knee amputee, and having Central Park as a playground, are all pieces of the Childhood whole. Throughout the book, Rudd speaks in the tone of a strong and powerful woman who has experienced both trauma and triumph. A powerful soul inhabits Rudd’s corporeal form and shines through in her stories. Nuggets of wisdom are spread throughout the book, such as “One has to learn how to be safe around sharp edges and crooked people.”

This is a wonderful book. The vignettes deliver stories of family life, the joys and fears of parenthood, the losses and triumphs of personal achievement, and the sorrow of losing connections to loved ones. Each chapter connects to the larger whole of the book, to the whole of Rudd herself. Readers will experience many emotions as they connect Rudd’s story to their own lives and experiences. If you read one book this year, make it this one. A true masterpiece.

Reviewed by David Keenan

OUR STAR RATING SYSTEM

1 star: Reviewer wouldn’t recommend this book at all.

2 stars: Reviewer wouldn’t read it again. Needs work.

3 stars: Reviewer enjoyed the book.

4 stars: Reviewer liked and would recommend the book to friends/family.

5 stars: Reviewer considers the book to be something that everyone should read. Reviewer would definitely read it again.

See other books about growing into womanhood:

https://shepherd.com/best-books/growing-into-womanhood-in-different-locations