A review of "The Invisible Girls" by Sarah Thebarge

A Review of

Sarah Thebarge’s The Invisible Girls: A Memoir

Reviewed by Dan McDonald

 

The Invisible Girls by Sarah Thebarge

 

            The first writing I read by Sarah Thebarge was a blog entitled “Not Blue is Not a Color.”   I was impressed by how she used her blog to invite readers to a discussion of the theme which she addressed.  There seemed to be a kindness written into it, compared to so many of our blogs that express cold ideals or angry arguments.  She wrote as if to invite us to chat like best friends around a table she had decorated and supplied with treats and coffee for us to partake as we chatted away.  That is why I ordered a book she had written entitled The Invisible Girls.   I received the book with a number of other books recommended by people I respected.  I looked into the box of books and wondered “Which one should I try to read first?”  It seemed to me it made sense to look over each book thumbing through it until  I could decide which one to read first.  I happened to pull The Invisible Girls first.  I read the opening words, the first chapter, and the next chapter.  By the time I got ready for bed I had read every page, cover to cover.  You probably don’t know how rare that is for me to read a whole book in one evening.  Some of you readers do that a lot.  But me, I’m one of those persons who if he sits down, usually won’t take long to fall asleep.  If I sit down with a book in my hands that tendency to fall asleep multiplies immensely.  So when I read a book if I can get a couple of chapters finished I’ve considered it an accomplishment.  I don’t ever recall reading any other book in one evening.  I did just that with this book.  Sometimes I read pages through tears, sometimes with joy, and sometimes I almost felt proud for the lady who wrote this book.  Maybe I just needed to read the compelling story she told.  It was a compelling story because she lived it.

            What made this book so good?  I won’t pretend to be a book critic.  I once upon a time received a history degree, but most of my life has been worked out on factory floors, in an oil refinery, and pulling parts in a warehouse.  My intellect has been re-programmed so that my perspective is immersed in a blue collar frame of reference.  But this gal tells a story of how in living her life, life found her.  My job in writing this book review is not to critique her writing but to describe her book like someone would describe a rich exquisite dessert.  Once I have described this exquisite dessert I would turn and look at you and say, “Wouldn’t you rather savor this treat as it melts upon your tongue instead of hearing me describe it?”  That is exactly what I mean to do in telling you a little about The Invisible Girls.

            This book is the story of how Sarah Thebarge’s life intersected with the lives of a Somali mother named Hadhi, and her five daughters.  Sarah’s life and the lives of these Somali family members were so completely different that it meant they had a lot in common waiting to be discovered.  Our author wonderfully weaves and wraps two themes around each other.  She tells us about her story growing up as pastor’s kid, becoming an adult, getting surprised by her acceptance to Yale, and then at age twenty-seven beginning a long battle with cancer that threatened her very existence.  This is a theme woven and wrapped around this beautiful relationship to a Somali family.  It is fitting that the two themes are written wrapped around each other.  You realize that everything that went into the making of the person of Sarah Thebarge was somehow wonderfully invested into a Somali family that so needed the friendship and love she gave them.  But that isn’t the whole story.  The other side of this story is that Sarah Thebarge was like a deeply wounded soldier who had returned from the battlefield but was wounded and scarred in body, mind, and soul.  Her battle with cancer left her deeply wounded.  It wasn’t until she discovered friendship with a Somali family of needy immigrants that she found healing.  The needy Somali family provided the lady named Sarah with healing even as they playfully decided to call her their “Sahara” instead of Sarah.

            You will discover that Sarah grew up in a conservative Evangelical background, as one of the preacher’s kids.  You will discover that though that background expected women to play a support role to men in leadership that her parents never sought to be a barrier as she decided she wanted a profession and career and an independent path.  Her parents left room for their daughter’s need to process the issues of her life before God even though it was not necessarily creating the life they had in mind when they imagined their little girl growing up.  In this context you’ll love the story of how Sarah Thebarge decided to apply to Yale to go to graduate school and how she got accepted.  It is the sort of story I don’t want to spoil for you when you do read it.

Her bout with cancer is a painful story to read.  It tested her, it took from her so much of what a woman feels makes her a woman.  I won’t tell the details, they are probably the sort of a thing a man should not tell, well this man for sure.  I think someone like a cancer survivor should be the one to break this story to you.  The part I can tell you about is how her theology got severely tested, and how her theology added to the severity of her depression that came with cancer.  I know a bit about her sense of Evangelical theology.  On the one hand we like to tell how God loves us in Christ and how Christ came to die for our sins.  But we also emphasize how God deals with sin, even the smallest infraction.  That kind of theology got turned inside out and pointed against our sister Sarah as she battled cancer.  She began to wonder about God’s love for her as the costs of her cancer mounted.  We are not talking about the cost of medical bills, but pain, losses in one’s body, in one’s spirit, loss of friendships, and the loss of normalcy that comes with redefining hope to a hope that even if it is painful you will draw one more breath; not one more breath as long as you are able, but just one more breath.  Hope became something to push her to the next breath.  In the midst of such a struggle she began to wonder if there was some infraction she had committed that God now targeted her.  Then she wondered what sort of God would treat her in this manner for an infraction she did not know about.  Cancer left her wounded in mind, body, soul, and spirit.  She might be declared cancer-free by the physicians but she was far from being healed.  These are the wounds she had suffered and carried with her as she met a special Somali family for the first time.

The story of her meeting this family is actually at the very beginning of the book.  Sarah Thebarge was riding on a commuter train in her new hometown of Portland Oregon.  She was reading a book.  A little girl poked her head around the book and then pulled her head back.  Then she poked her head around the book again until Sarah realized the girl was playing a game of peekaboo.  Sarah played along and then began conversing with the little girl’s mother.  In her battle with cancer, when she was nearest death’s door, her support group had mostly dwindled away.  Sarah Thebarge had imagined herself at the time as an invisible girl which no one realized still existed.  As she met this Somali family, she soon came to realize these girls, the mom and five daughters; they too were invisible girls the world surrounding them never really saw as existing.  Every time I try to shorten this review it gets longer.  So this is it; my review of the book.  Don’t you think if it were an exquisite dessert, you’d want it melting on your tongue right now?  I think you’d like it, yes I do.