The Crack In The Teacup

By Joan Bodger

Book Overview

Joan Bodger, well-known storyteller, born in 1923, is now a self-proclaimed old woman. Finding strength in stories, she has lived a life that fell apart not once but several times, and each time, she pieced her life together again.As a child, she was steeped in English and American children's books. As a young woman, she joined the army (working as a Pentagon cryptographer), married, and attended Columbia University, where she took -- and was struck by -- a course in storytelling. Living in Shanks Village, N.Y., a hotbed of political activism and social experimentation, Joan read, wrote, and studied folklore and anthropology.When tragedy struck, in the form of mental illness, marriage breakdown, and the loss of her seven-year-old daughter to cancer, Joan drew on what she had learned during these years. She became director of the first Head Start Program in New York State, directed a therapeutic nursery school in a New York City orphanage, and began teaching, writing, and reviewing children's books. On a trip to Toronto in the early 1970s, she met her second husband. Moving to Canada, she again rebuilt her life on the foundation of story, helping to start the Storytelling School of Toronto and training as a Gestalt therapist.Joan Bodger has lived in awareness of the history of her time, and has frequently been swept up in its events. She writes frankly of the discoveries of childhood, the mysteries of family life, the power of sexuality, the devastating effect of loss, and, through it all, the transforming influence of literature, of story.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0771011202
• ISBN13: 9780771011207
• Release Date: September 2001
• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
• Length: 424 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.7" x 1.2" x 5.5"