I’m a fan of Pamela Druckerman, a New York Times correspondent who has lived in Paris the last 10-plus years. LAST MONTH I attended a lecture by Laura Moriarty, the author of “The Center of Everything,” on the campus of the University of Kansas. DRUCKERMAN’S perspective of the United States grows all the fonder the longer she stays abroad.
She’s the author of “Bringing up Bebé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting,” a book as slight as a Parisian’s silhouette, which drives the rest of the world’s female population nuts. How can a country famed for its bread and cheese produce size 0 women? (They don’t eat; they smoke.)
Their style of parenting is also paradoxical; a borderline negligent approach that somehow results in children eating all their vegetables, complete with good table manners.
Druckerman is contemplating applying for dual citizenship. She clearly loves France and the challenge of assimilating with its people and culture. Becoming a French citizen would allow her to vote — still the gold standard of citizenship. She remains undaunted by the fact the French and their indefinable “je ne sais quoi” characteristics that set them apart will never accept her.
French women seem intent on creating an air of “fragility,” Druckerman says, all the while climbing the corporate ladder. Hints of Eve, don’t you think?
The book is required reading for KU freshmen through its Common Book Program, which works to connect first-year students through a compelling piece of literature.
Moriarty grew up Army, living all around the world. The family settled in Fort Leavenworth for Moriarty’s last couple of years of high school. Besides a brief stint back East, she’s called Kansas home ever since.
Moriarty was attracted by Kansas’ wide-open spaces, of both land and sky. She also felt she could easily assimilate with Midwesterners. We are refreshingly easy to read.
Like Moriarty, she admires our forthrightness.
Of course to write about France is much the same as we would go about discussing New York or California. If placed atop a U.S. map, France is not quite the size of Texas. So the tendency is to relegate the French into specific stereotypes. Druckerman’s column helps illuminate what makes the French … so French.
Learning to appreciate our differences is what makes the world’s fabric a tighter weave.
That’s a lesson that especially resonates around election time when our differences come clear at the ballot box. The key is learning to sift through our differences to arrive at what we have in common and to work together from there.
Mais, oui.
Francophile gives insights to what it means to be American
