As flawed as the Ya Yas are, they are loyal, devoted lovers. They may not have done what we think is best for our children now, but they sure loved us the best they could. I have so many pictures of them pregnant, playing dice (instead of the Ya Ya Bourre) a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other! They didn't know it was wrong. The Ya Yas always remind me of my mama and aunts.
How can we survive if we try to be those things? For every horrid, irresponsible thing they did, there was an equally wonderful, loving, uplifting action. The stories she shows us of how these girls love, support and care for one another through their childhood and entire lives. Divine has a plot running through the chapters, whereas this one and Altars just gives us glimpses back in time to a different age. I actually prefer this book and Little Altars Everywhere: A Novel to Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Her accent was spot on, she did the voices (which I usually hate on audio) perfectly, and if she wasn't tipsy when she was relaying a story from Vivi's POV, then she is one of the best actresses I have ever heard!
#Ya ya yas heads will roll movie
I have read this and the other two books about them before, seen the movie countless times, and often wished to BE a Ya Ya. I enjoyed it and I am glad that I read the entire Ya-Ya saga. All in all, it just seemed as if the characters and author were choosing what to dwell on and were happier for that choice. That’s not to say that everything was suddenly all better or that the past could be ignored or erased. In a lot of ways, it’s like a bright reflection of Little Altars. Ya-Ya’s in Bloom takes that one step future with stories of the high points of growing up Ya-Ya. In Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, there was still pain and anger to process and come to grips with but Wells included some of the bright moments, the things done right, the sense that the mistakes of the past didn’t necessarily have to cripple the future. In Little Altars Everywhere, I felt the author dwelled on the broken, angry, bitter aspects of the Walker family history. The books seem somewhat like a continuum… or maybe more like working through the stages of grief and recovery. Now that I have read all three of Rebecca Well’s Ya-Ya books, I can honestly say that while Divine Secrets was the most intellectually satisfying of the three, Ya-Ya’s in Bloom was the most emotionally satisfying. During this time she worked as a cocktail waitress-once accidentally kicking a man in the shins when he slipped a ten-dollar bill down the front of her dress-and began keeping a journal after reading Anais Nin, which she has done ever since. She performed in many college plays, but also stepped outside the theater department to become awakened to women’s politics. Rebecca graduated from Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge, where she studied theater, English, and psychology. It was an introduction to the natural glories of the park-mountains, waterfalls, hot springs, and geysers-as well as to the art of hitchhiking. The day after she graduated from high school, Rebecca left for Yellowstone National Park, where she worked as a waitress. Acting in school and summer youth theater productions freed Rebecca to step out of the social hierarchies of high school and into the joys of walking inside another character and living in another world.
In high school, she read Walt Whitman’s “I Sing the Body Electric,” which opened her up to the idea that everything in life is a poem, and that, as she says, “We are not born separately from one another.” She also read “Howl,” Allen Ginsberg’s indictment of the strangling consumer-driven American culture he saw around him. She counts black music and culture from Louisiana as something that will stay in her body’s memory forever.
She recalls her early influences as being the land around her, harvest times, craw-fishing in the bayou, practicing piano after school, dancing with her mother and brothers and sister, and the close relationship to her black “mother” who cleaned for the Wells household. Early on, she fell in love with thinking up and acting in plays for her siblings-the beginnings of her career as an actress and writer for the stage.
“I grew up,” she says, “in the fertile world of story-telling, filled with flamboyance, flirting, futility, and fear.” Surrounded by Louisiana raconteurs, a large extended family, and Our Lady of Prompt Succor’s Parish, Rebecca’s imagination was stimulated at every turn. Rebecca Wells was born and raised in Alexandria, Louisiana.
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