John Gregory Hall

Gladrags Aspires John Gregory Hall

Gladrags Aspires collects the writings of Gladys Maudie Gregory Hall (1905-91) from her letters and notebooks, unfolding gradually her capacity to be alone. Yet telling a story was always her deliberate purpose that here overrides privacy and conventional decorum. The reader is invited to experience with empathy the major milestones in the long playing-out of her singular life. For more than fifty years Gladys will live in a remote place called Mulberry, Texas, in a looping bend of the Red River, sending out and receiving numerous letters. Among these, the letters to Gladys from a Chinese woman, Vung-Tsing Pao, between the years 1923 and 1950, hold a central place in this volume. They reveal not only an intensely patriotic and culturally committed life "on the other side of the world," but also the inspiration planted early in Gladys' life to discover meaning in the day to day experiences of family and community. Gladys' mother Maudie whispered to her one evening when Halley's Comet was passing high overhead, "When it returns you will be an old woman, and I will be dead." Her mother passed away far too soon, and when the Comet returned at last, dark clouds so obscured the sky that there was nothing then to see, say, or hold in shared memory. Instead, this volume enfolds riches that would otherwise be lost.