A Professor’s Advice To Loving Yourself Better
A look at how one woman embraces books in her journey to embrace herself
It’s February, a month where we can’t help thinking of love. And after a year like 2020, we all need a reminder of what’s important. IUPUI English and writing professor, Sara Harrell, speaks to the life-long struggles of learning to love herself and how it has been a continuous journey throughout her life.
Sixty-eight years old, Sara grew up with the Vietnam War, an era of unaffectionate parents, the push for peace and love in the sixties along with the Civil Rights and Women’s movements. Diagnosed with depression in the 1990s and with attention deficit in her thirties, Sara has gone through much to get where she is today: a professor who’s chipper and silly in front of her students, who cares deeply for them with an unwaveringly idealist heart.
Through all of her life, fiction has stood by her. Sara has learned, and continues to learn, how to best love herself through her own love of women in books and movies.
The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
The House of Spirits takes place in South America and follows the protagonist Esteban and the three women in his life - his wife, his daughter, and his granddaughter.
Magical realism is a genre that is not too popular in America, but it has grown near and dear to Sara. “I think if you’re a writer, or an artist, and you have that creativity in your soul, you have to answer to it. It you do not, you can get depressed, you get problems. I started taking classes at Arizona State University and one of them was Magical Surrealism.”
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
The Secret Life of Bees follows Lily Owens in 1964 as she tries to unravel her past and learn who she really is.
Along with magical realism, Sara loves mystery novels of all sorts, such as this story in The Secret Life of Bees. “Lily finds her way to a house of black sisters who live together, three of them, and they’re beekeepers. The sisters take Lily in. It’s fabulous.”
Fried Green Tomatoes
Fried Green Tomatoes follows the story of four women who demonstrate the impact friends have on each other through life.
“That’s definitely a movie about women who persevere who come out on top.”
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
A favorite book and movie of Sara’s, The Help is teeming with strong, well-written women who aren’t just in the story, but are the story.
Chocolat
Follow Vianne as she moves to a small town in France with her daughter and opens up a chocolate shop that is not all that meets the eye—and the townspeople know it.
Sara on how her idealism and love of mystery mix, “I still think I can make a difference for one thing. And I still think [the world] should be better. Yes, and I think that’s what mysteries are, and I hadn’t really made that connection before. Things get solved. You have these people who go out and solve a problem, they solve a crime, they solve a murder, and things are better as they right the wrong.”
Emily Whitcomb is an IUPUI sophomore intern who is majoring in English. She enjoys reading, writing, baking, and watching movies with friends and family.
