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http://www.oregonlive.com/books/index.ssf/2010/08/nonfiction_review_oregon_stori.html

Full disclosure: "Oregon Stories," a compilation celebrating Oregon's sesquicentennial, contains contributions from 16 of my Newport High School students. I rate this as one of my proudest teaching accomplishments but would love this book even if the student stories hadn't appeared. It reads as honest and earthy as any book I've ever read about Oregon.


"Oregon Stories" is the tangible outcome of one of the six signature projects sponsored by the state in 2009 to commemorate Oregon's 150th birthday. In the spring of 2008, a call went out encouraging people to upload their stories, songs, photographs and videos to a website. Many people responded. All the submissions are now archived, and in the future this collection should become an invaluable resource for historians.

Compiled and published by Portland State University's Ooligan Press, the book contains 150 stories, mostly minimemoirs and vignettes, but a few poems too. If any one sensibility dominates this book, it's the "coming to Oregon" narrative. Those of us who grew up in Oregon and lived here most of our lives often fail to realize how magnetic and hypnotic the state's pull is on others around the country.

"You are not reading a book of high literature here," writes Kim Stafford in his introduction. "You are eavesdropping at the family gathering."

Well, amen to that. I've had my fill of precious prose and poetry about Oregon's landscape. How about some fun and grit? How about some unabashed love? How about some blood? How about some writing on "doing a lightning dance" near Lake Billy Chinook, and titling it "Epic Lightning Story"? We get all that and much more from this compilation and many unique perspectives on Oregon that I've never encountered in print.

Of course, I'm biased, but my favorite piece in the book was written by one of my students, India Powell, now a freshman at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. In "Oregon Country Fair: That's How I Live," India writes about the "man who casually walks down the dirt path wearing nothing but a lanyard on his groin," but also how the long-running counterculture festival held every summer near Eugene influenced her:

"The Fair has woven itself into my natural disposition, creating a certain temperament that I carry with me wherever I go -- an open mind, a big heart, eagerness to learn, and no inhibitions."

A couple of inexplicable omissions related to the book's production confounded me. How come we don't learn the total amount of submissions? What was the selection criterion? Why were some contributors accorded special status with brief biographical information? How come contributors' ages and places of residence were left out? Why weren't submitted photographs included or at least used for the cover?

Despite these minor issues, "Oregon Stories" is an entertaining, important and lasting literary achievement. Every secondary school in Oregon should own a classroom set for creative use in social studies and English courses. Is someone at Ooligan Press or the state Department of Education working on this? They should. The more young people who read this book and write their Oregon stories, the better the state will turn out.