Will you mentor me?

I t’s always an honor when someone ask you to be their mentor but it is not possible to accept the responsibility of mentoring any more than the four or five young women I’m currently trying to help.  I prefer to use my website, writing and interviews to get my message:  You can make it! across and give suggestions that may help a lot of people at once  or work with mentoring organizations like MexEd and masany (see Causes.)<p>

However, the other night, my niece came into Zarela and touched my heart.  First, I must explain how many upper middle class young women along the border are raised. Most marry within their social circle and become housewives or set up a small business.  Though it’s changing, few of them go to college, read the newspaper or work,  let alone leave town to an uncertain future in Washington, DC as an lowly gofer to the local congressman like Ana Isabel did.   She discovered that she is passionate about politics and is dtermined to work in that field (an even more surpringing part of the story.)<p>

As she tells it, her friends were impressed by her courage, her parents are supportive and she left feeling pretty good about herself.  But when she settled in she realized how little she knows and how much she needs to learn to achieve the kind of success she desires.  She asked me what do I do?  How do I start?  I told her the same thing I told my children as they grew up:  “Read the newspaper, be informed and read, read, read.  i promised a list of books that had influenced me or that are classics that give you a general understanding of the world and human nature.  I wrote up my list and started asking friends, associates and people I admire for their list of must-reads.  I include them and ask you for your suggestions. <p>

To kill a mockingbird and Catcher in the Rye keep cropping up so I will eliminate them from individual lists.  Most Mexicans will mention Labyrinth of Solitude and Juan Rulfo so I will not repeat any titles already mentioned.

My list:

1. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand whose  philosophy is controversial but certain aspects like always doing your very best, sticking to your ideals and beliefs, not being a second-hander helped form who I am today.

2.- The Little Prince by St Exupery

3.- Shogun by James Clavell

4.- The Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

5.- Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham

6.- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin

7.- Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

8.- Labyrinth of Solitude by Octavio Paz

9.- Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo

10.- Twenty Poems of Love and One Desperate Song by Pablo Neruda, specifically Poem Number 20

My beau is more well-read than me.  He graduated with honors from Columbia with a degree in English literature, is a voracious reader and has more sophisticated tastes than me.  His list includes:

1.-The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kozinski

2.-Lolita by Nabokov

3.- 12th Night by Shakespeare

4.- All of Henry Miller

5.- Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

6.- Marquis de Sade

7.- On the Road by Jack Kerouac

8.- Our Town – Thornton Wilder

9.- Cherie by Colette

10.- Waiting for Godot and others by Beckett

My friend Lorea who is a lawyer and is getting her masters degree in writing a NYU

1.- Ana Karenina – Tolstoy

2.-The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

3.-for Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

4.- Eugenie by Balzac

5.- Rayuela (hopscotch) by Julio Cortazar

6.- Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Garcia Marquez

7.- Everything by Jorge Luis Borges

Charlotte Rodriguez, my 16-year old goddaughter and her sister Giselle’s are also voracious readers. Their combined list for oday is

1.- Harry Potter series Riordan

2.- Ring of Endless Light  Madelyn L’Engle

3.- A Wrinkle in Time by same

4.-The Call of the Wild – Jack London

5.- Arabian Nights –

6.- Lightning Thief – Riordan

7.-Number the Stars – Lois Lowry

8.-Night by Elie Weisel

9.-Where the Sidewalk Ends – by Shel Silverstein

10.- The Princess Bride

Kathleen Turner, Actor and friend, partial list

1.- The Book of Daniel – E.L. Doctorow

2.- A Brief history of Time  –  Richard North Peterson

3.-Sonnet # 30 – Shakespeare

4.- Last dance in Havana – Eugene Robinson

5.- Death and the Maiden – Ariel Dorfman

6.- Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff –

7.- On Liberty – john Stuart Mills

To be continued