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Get all the key plot points of Annie Dillard's An American Childhood on one page. From the creators of SparkNotes. An American Childhood Summary from LitCharts| The creators of SparkNotes. Sign In Sign Up. LitCharts: Sign Up. PDF downloads of all 905 LitCharts literature guides. I got it at a yardsale for free.it was in the quarter box, but the. Stories of an American Childhood Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth The Last Boy. AMERICAN CHILDHOOD Pat Murphy Nadya Rybak was five years old when she realized that her family was not like other famili. AN AMERICAN CHILDHOOD Download An American Childhood ebook PDF or Read Online books in PDF, EPUB, and Mobi Format. Click Download or Read Online button to AN AMERICAN CHILDHOOD book pdf for free now. AN AMERICAN CHILDHOOD SUMMARY An American childhood is a narrative by Annie Dillard who grew up in Pittsburg. The author is know for making. Description of the book 'An American Childhood': A book that instantly captured the hearts of readers across the country, 'An American Childhood' is Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard's poignant, vivid memoir of growing up in Pittsburgh in the 1950s.
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Annie Dillard remembers. She remembers the exhilaration of whipping a snowball at a car and having it hit straight on. She remembers playing with the skin on her mother's knuckles, which 'didn't snap back; it lay dead across her knuckle in a yellowish ridge.' She remembers the compulsion to spend a whole afternoon (or many whole afternoons) endlessly pitching a ball at a t...more
Published October 13th 2009 by HarperCollins e-books (first published September 1st 1987)
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Allie McintoshIt is a memoir!
National Book Critics Circle Award Biography/Autobiography Winners and Finalists 1983-1999 83 books — 1 voter
100 Books Across America 99 books — 1 voter
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Dec 20, 2012Chrissie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition Shelves: history, science, usa, arts, bio, audible, 2016-read, philo-psychol, classics, life-stages
I adored this book from start to finish.
First let me praise the audiobook narration by Alexandra O'Karma. She reads slowly. She reads softly, but you hear every word she says. She leaves it up to the listener to interpret the lines, to recognize the subtle humor. Some may think she doesn't read with enough spark. For me the soft tone fit the beauty of the lines. Parts read as prose poetry. She gives you time to think.
I loved this book because of the wisdom of the author, what she says about gr...more
First let me praise the audiobook narration by Alexandra O'Karma. She reads slowly. She reads softly, but you hear every word she says. She leaves it up to the listener to interpret the lines, to recognize the subtle humor. Some may think she doesn't read with enough spark. For me the soft tone fit the beauty of the lines. Parts read as prose poetry. She gives you time to think.
I loved this book because of the wisdom of the author, what she says about gr...more
Dec 02, 2013David rated it liked it · review of another edition
Already at twenty-three, childhood seems to me a very remote region of my past, and as I was impinged upon with a small pang of nostalgia for youth, I picked up Annie Dillard's An American Childhood - her memoir of her Pittsburgh youth. While there are a number of poignant moments, and elegant turns of phrase, the work as a whole feels a bit shallow, a bit too much on the surface of things. In his Nobel Speech, William Faulkner said that the only thing worth writing about was the problems of the...more
Jan 08, 2016Bentley ★ Bookbastion.net rated it did not like it · review of another edition
I finally made it through what I can only refer to as the worst book I have ever read in my life. Assigned reading for a Contemporary Literature course I'm taking in college, I had no idea what to expect when I went into this book. I knew it was a memoir, and although I am not the biggest nonfiction fan, I started it with an open mind, expecting to come away with some frame of reference about Dillard's life and times growing up as a child in the 1950s. What I came away with instead was a headach...more
Jan 05, 2009William rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
An American Childhood Essay Pdf
What is it like to 'grow up?' How thrilling and disconcerting is it to discover our distinctness from our parents? What do we do with freedom as found in a bicycle? What changes when we discover boys (or girls)?
Annie remembers, and helps you remember, too. Some of her memories seem like my own, and this is one of those great reads as an adult where you feel the reality of a book blending with your soul. I have many such books in my heart of hearts from childhood. I can't remember if I felt wet m...more
Annie remembers, and helps you remember, too. Some of her memories seem like my own, and this is one of those great reads as an adult where you feel the reality of a book blending with your soul. I have many such books in my heart of hearts from childhood. I can't remember if I felt wet m...more
Nov 09, 2009Ellen rated it liked it · review of another edition
In An American Childhood Dillard traces her life from early childhood into adolescence. Her self-stated project is to show how a child “wakes up” to life, moving from the self-absorbed now-ness of early childhood to the rumblings of consciousness, the awareness that one is alive.
As if to underscore Dillard’s position as an “example” of childhood rather than the work’s actual subject, she begins her autobiography by describing Pittsburgh’s topography and history, followed by a chapter about her...more
As if to underscore Dillard’s position as an “example” of childhood rather than the work’s actual subject, she begins her autobiography by describing Pittsburgh’s topography and history, followed by a chapter about her...more
Apr 30, 2013Krista rated it really liked it · review of another edition
My mother is just a year younger than Annie Dillard, so I kept thinking of her as I read this memoir. Their places in time might have been the same, but their circumstances could not have been more different: While Dillard was raised with privilege in the big industrial city of Pittsburgh, complete with private schools and lake homes and country clubs and wearing white gloves to the right Presbyterian church, my mother was raised in relative poverty in an Irish Catholic family in Charlottetown,...more
Jul 24, 2012Cheryl rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Annie Dillard grew up in Pittsburgh during the 1950s, and she captured those days in this memoir, documenting her childhood, while also detailing the rich history of Pittsburgh--I especially loved the information on Andrew Carnegie and of Pittsburgh's wealth which came from, 'aluminum, glass, coke, electricity, copper, natural gas--and the banking and transportation industries that put up the money and moved the goods.'
Reading with the expectation of drama does not get you anywhere because Dill...more
Reading with the expectation of drama does not get you anywhere because Dill...more
Dec 20, 2011Michael Canoeist rated it did not like it · review of another edition
Annie Dillard has an odd style that grates on my readerly ears. She makes big, dubious generalizations to talk about a small detail. That wears on me enough. Then, a paragraph later, she sometimes simply contradicts the original generalization. The first time or two were when I wanted to throw the book across the room, had it had enough heft to make that enjoyable.
It doesn't. And this is no more 'an American childhood' than yours, mine, or a thousand thousand others might be considered. I tried...more
It doesn't. And this is no more 'an American childhood' than yours, mine, or a thousand thousand others might be considered. I tried...more
Jan 19, 2009Holli rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
I chose this one for the Book Discussion group because I was looking for a memoir and I remembered really liking this when I read it 21 years ago on the eve of Gabe's birth. I liked it just as much the second time around and reading it again now, on the eve of Gabe's transition into adulthood, made me realize what an impact this book has had on my life and the way I have raised my children.
When I read it the first time, I kept thinking about how I spent too much of my own childhood watching Gil...more
When I read it the first time, I kept thinking about how I spent too much of my own childhood watching Gil...more
Jul 19, 2017Lori rated it liked it · review of another edition
I liked that contemporary window into the Salk polio vaccine trials.
“In 1953, Jonas Salk’s Virus Research Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh had produced a controversial vaccine for polio. The small stories in the Pittsburgh Press and the Post-Gazette were coming out in Life and Time. It was too quick, said medical colleagues nationwide: Salk had gone public without first publishing everything in the journals. He rushed out a killed-virus serum without waiting for a safe live-virus one,...more
“In 1953, Jonas Salk’s Virus Research Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh had produced a controversial vaccine for polio. The small stories in the Pittsburgh Press and the Post-Gazette were coming out in Life and Time. It was too quick, said medical colleagues nationwide: Salk had gone public without first publishing everything in the journals. He rushed out a killed-virus serum without waiting for a safe live-virus one,...more
Dec 01, 2016Mark rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
'What can we make of the inexpressible joy of children? It is a kind of gratitude, I think—the gratitude of the ten-year-old who wakes to her own energy and the brisk challenge of the world. You thought you knew the place and all its routines, but you see you hadn’t known. Whole stacks at the library held books devoted to things you knew nothing about. '
“Private life, book life, took place where words met imagination without passing through the world.”
I could just pack this little review with q...more
“Private life, book life, took place where words met imagination without passing through the world.”
I could just pack this little review with q...more
Aug 23, 2016Lena rated it it was ok · review of another edition
This is a lie, I didn't finish this, but I feel like I've spent too much time on this book and it's going to push me into a reading slump. It was well written, but this book is exactly as the title suggests, 'An American Childhood.' I guess the genius or whatever behind this is Dillard managed to reenter her younger selves' minds. And that's fantastic and all, but ask this, 'Do I really want to read about your childhood?' What is it about your childhood that makes it worthy of being written down...more
Feb 05, 2013Carol rated it it was amazing · review of another edition Shelves: memoir, annie-dillard, writing-life-stories
Dillard's writing is amazing. I couldn't put her memoir down. Born in 1950 to her parents, Frank and Pam, Dillard tells us vignettes of her life-- first part focused on her childhood and her family; second part covers her preteen and teenage years; and the last section when she rebels (quits, and later returns, her Presbyterian Church.) The Epilogue reflects her adulthood. What I loved most was how she shared vivid memories of her life, which in some cases brought back some of my childhood memor...more
Dec 30, 2015Mya Burns rated it did not like it · review of another edition
this book was too boring, couldn't finish it. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek was good, there were a few redeeming parts, but this one just felt like someone was holding me hostage at a party, telling me stories from their childhood that I couldn't care less about.
Sep 17, 2018Hannah rated it liked it · review of another edition
A lovely, maddening book. It’s not the suspenseful or exotic or tragic kind of autobiography that kept me turning pages well past my bedtime, but it did capture certain childhood longings and sensations with such clear familiarity, that it felt at times like reading pages out of my own life. Dillard’s way with words is hard to match; her metaphors startle, and her similes shine. Every time I read her magnificent prose, I’m filled with an admiration that borders on envy.
But. At the same time, sh...more
But. At the same time, sh...more
May 14, 2018Amanda rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Excellent. I think anyone who is curious and bookish would love Annie Dillard.
Mar 14, 2018Amy rated it really liked it · review of another edition
This is actually a re-read; some teacher gave it to my class back in middle school. Unusually, I remembered phrase, images, and pieces of this after reading it just once, and I can remember thinking yes, this is exactly how I feel -- how did she capture it? It stayed with me long after I had forgotten the title, and the storyline, and the plot. I googled to see what book it had come from; quite coincidentally, my parents shipped it over with some other books of mine.
At any rate, as a child/teen...more
At any rate, as a child/teen...more
This book makes me want to know Annie Dillard. The writer, sure, but I really want to know the person.
Sep 29, 2016Connie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Memoir
I am glad I read her memoir before reading others of Annie's books. Though I would like to hear her tell about her life after her childhood and teen years, I feel as if I almost know her in person.
Annie was born in 1945. Most of her young life was lived in Pittsburg with her two younger sisters and her intelligent, adventurous, jokester parents who provided what Annie needed for her explorations, explained science and reviewed history to her in details, but otherwise did not express intere...more
May 10, 2013Melody rated it really liked it · review of another edition
I tried to read Annie Dillard when I was in college, but I just didn't get it. Last summer I read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek for the second time, and this time it made sense, not just intellectually- though it was intellectually gratifying-but this time somewhere in my soul.
So I approached _An American Childhood_ with expectation, and I was not disappointed. Dillard manages to create a memoir at once both nostalgic and brutally honest, hazy but precise, idealized yet imperfect--as though this is wh...more
So I approached _An American Childhood_ with expectation, and I was not disappointed. Dillard manages to create a memoir at once both nostalgic and brutally honest, hazy but precise, idealized yet imperfect--as though this is wh...more
Mar 11, 2018Leah rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
There is so much to say, I can’t say much at all. I can count on one hand the books and writers I have read that have provided me a profound and transformative experience. This is one of those books for me. I’m grateful. I will read this again and again throughout my life. It’s a thinking book, an intimate book of the heart and mind, best read slowly.
Aug 08, 2015Rebecca McNutt rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
This book captures the steel town industrial look and rolling hills of Pittsburgh and the nostalgia of growing up with vibrancy and extremely well-written characters and scenery. I loved it, I'm glad I found a copy of it. :)
Feb 01, 2018Shirley Showalter rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
I wrote about this book in my blog this week: https://www.shirleyshowalter.com/lear...
This is my second Annie Dillard and I had the same two conflicting feelings reading both books: One is that some of the passages are just so beautiful. The other is that she seems to be putting on airs or showing off in writing instead of just communicating clearly. The book is about a certain kind of childhood in a bygone era. It's lovely and self-aware. She perfectly captures what she felt like as a child, but I really could not relate with any of it. I don't know if it's because my childhood...more
Aug 23, 2018Courtney Clark rated it it was amazing
I expected a 'good old days' vibe about how amazing childhood was BACK THEN. But really Annie Dillard managed to encompass what is universal while maintaining a truly personal narrative. This is a beautiful, and beautifully written book.
Apr 08, 2017Emily rated it really liked it · review of another edition
This was a delightful read that brought back wonderful memories of living in Pittsburgh. It was a wonderful chance to get into Dillard's childhood head. I'd give it 3.75 if I could as it had some less captivating moments, but overall an enjoyable read.
Oct 28, 2012Dan added it · review of another edition
i like to think i'm old enough to no longer require brooding, existential 'grittiness' from every object on my bookshelf. that said, i have real trouble believing anyone's childhood was idyllic as the world described in annie dillard's an american childhood.
i loved the author's earlier pilgrim at tinker creek, which provided an acute, worm's-eye view of the natural world around us. pilgrim seemed to recognize the small-scale 'otherness' of our physical surroundings - the way that leaves, insects...more
i loved the author's earlier pilgrim at tinker creek, which provided an acute, worm's-eye view of the natural world around us. pilgrim seemed to recognize the small-scale 'otherness' of our physical surroundings - the way that leaves, insects...more
Jun 26, 2010Larry Bassett rated it really liked it · review of another edition
I loved Pilgrim many years ago, one of my lifetime favorite books. After reading An American Childhood I should go back and read Pilgrim again.
You could open this book randomly to any page and likely find a great paragraph that by itself might make it worth reading the book. The 'chapters' are short following chronologically Dillard's growing up year. I had not realized it before that she grew up a very priveleged family with private schools and full time mom with home help. I must admit that th...more
You could open this book randomly to any page and likely find a great paragraph that by itself might make it worth reading the book. The 'chapters' are short following chronologically Dillard's growing up year. I had not realized it before that she grew up a very priveleged family with private schools and full time mom with home help. I must admit that th...more
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Jan 17, 2011Mike rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
I was hooked from the very first sentence:
'When everything else has gone from my brain—the President's name, the state capitals, the neighborhoods where I lived, and then my own name and what it was on earth I sought, and then at length the faces of my friends, and finally the faces of my family—when all this has dissolved, what will be left, I believe, is topology: the dreaming memory of land as it lay this way and that.'
And how could she not think that, having grown up in Pittsburgh, the city...more
Aug 06, 2007Nathanial rated it liked it · review of another edition'When everything else has gone from my brain—the President's name, the state capitals, the neighborhoods where I lived, and then my own name and what it was on earth I sought, and then at length the faces of my friends, and finally the faces of my family—when all this has dissolved, what will be left, I believe, is topology: the dreaming memory of land as it lay this way and that.'
And how could she not think that, having grown up in Pittsburgh, the city...more
Shelves: fiction
Okay, Dillard, show us what you got. She bluffs, she holds, she raises the stakes. I love her broad scope and her precise portraits. Also, her self-consciousness is crucial in this - her narrator doesn't take herself too seriously as she addresses serious topics like race prejudice, class discrimination, and religious intolerance. However, Dillard's own limitations remain irksome, even as she points towards them: on one page, she claims that 'Every woman stayed alone in her house in those days,...more
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Annie Dillard (born April 30, 1945) is an American author, best known for her narrative prose in both fiction and non-fiction. She has published works of poetry, essays, prose, and literary criticism, as well as two novels and one memoir. Her 1974 work Pilgrim at Tinker Creek won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Dillard taught for 21 years in the English department of Wesleyan Unive...more
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“Like any child, I slid into myself perfectly fitted, as a diver meets her reflection in a pool. Her fingertips enter the fingertips on the water, her wrists slide up her arms. The diver wraps herself in her reflection wholly, sealing it at the toes, and wears it as she climbs rising from the pool, and ever after.” — 468 likes
“What does it feel like to be alive?
Living, you stand under a waterfall. You leave the sleeping shore deliberately; you shed your dusty clothes, pick your barefoot way over the high, slippery rocks, hold your breath, choose your footing, and step into the waterfall. The hard water pelts your skull, bangs in bits on your shoulders and arms. The strong water dashes down beside you and you feel it along your calves and thighs rising roughly backup, up to the roiling surface, full of bubbles that slide up your skin or break on you at full speed. Can you breathe here? Here where the force is the greatest and only the strength of your neck holds the river out of your face. Yes, you can breathe even here. You could learn to live like this. And you can, if you concentrate, even look out at the peaceful far bank where you try to raise your arms. What a racket in your ears, what a scattershot pummeling!
It is time pounding at you, time. Knowing you are alive is watching on every side your generation's short time falling away as fast as rivers drop through air, and feeling it hit.” — 138 likes
More quotes…Living, you stand under a waterfall. You leave the sleeping shore deliberately; you shed your dusty clothes, pick your barefoot way over the high, slippery rocks, hold your breath, choose your footing, and step into the waterfall. The hard water pelts your skull, bangs in bits on your shoulders and arms. The strong water dashes down beside you and you feel it along your calves and thighs rising roughly backup, up to the roiling surface, full of bubbles that slide up your skin or break on you at full speed. Can you breathe here? Here where the force is the greatest and only the strength of your neck holds the river out of your face. Yes, you can breathe even here. You could learn to live like this. And you can, if you concentrate, even look out at the peaceful far bank where you try to raise your arms. What a racket in your ears, what a scattershot pummeling!
It is time pounding at you, time. Knowing you are alive is watching on every side your generation's short time falling away as fast as rivers drop through air, and feeling it hit.”
Anne Dillard, now a middle-aged woman, recalls her childhood, from the time she was five all the way through high school. Over these years, she provides her own childhood as a model for happiness in adulthood. Adult needs not leave behind the spirit that causes children to stand in perpetual awe of the world; rather, to be truly happy, one must resist the world's attempt to stamp that spirit out.
The account begins with what are probably Anne's youngest memories. She is a five year old who is just starting to be conscious of herself and the world around her. She compares the differences between herself and her parents, how their skin is loose and saggy, while her own is beautiful and taut. She loves her parents but is especially enthralled by her mother. Her mother is a vibrant, brilliant woman who, by the conventions of the 1950s, is locked away in the household, destined to be a housewife until she dies. She amuses Anne and her sisters constantly with clever jokes and elaborate pranks. During these early years of Anne's life, her father quits his job and attempts to take a boat down the Mississippi to New Orleans. The voyage fails, however; it is too long and too lonesome. He sells the boat and returns home.
As a child, like any other child, Anne is filled with curiosity. The world amazes her and what might seem mundane to others is often an object of intense study for her. During these childhood years, Anne studies, among other things, the French-Indian War, mineralogy, biographies of famous biologists, insects, drawing, and forensics. As she grows up and becomes more aware of the way the world works, she realizes that hardly any adults retain this same spirit of wonder. Most get married, find jobs, and work until they die. However, Anne finds hope in some few individuals, most of all, her mother.
As Anne grows older and enters into adolescence, she watches with horror as she starts to turn into an adult. Boys had always delighted her and she would look at them with awe, but now they had a different, more mature appeal to her. As she started high school she become obsessed, like all her friends, with wearing the most fashionable clothes and having the best tan. This fixation on worldly pursuits coincides with a darkening of her world. For the first time in her life—at least, for any extended period of time—Anne is unhappy. She seems to have lost the childish wonder of years past which made her so happy, and she nearly resigns herself to her fate. She is filled with anger during these years, though it is not clear towards what. As a result, she starts getting into trouble. She gets into a drag-racing accident, starts smoking, and writes a letter to the church's Reverend, angrily citing the reasons why she is quitting the church. As the story ends, Anne is finishing high school and preparing for college life.
Lest the book ends in this gloomy fashion, the epilogue vindicates the curiosity of young Anne. It is necessary to compromise with the world after all. Rather, Anne found that she could be happy, no matter what her circumstances and no matter how old she is, by simply living in her own consciousness and admiring the beauty of the world as it is.