Some of my favourite books that deal with themes of ageing are alluded to within the text of my novel, books such as Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea and Paul Auster's Winter Journal.
I particularly enjoyed Hemingway's depiction of his elderly character, Santiago, whose courage and tenacity lie at the heart of that story, and I enjoyed Auster's uncanny ability to write of a life through a history of a body (his body).
I also remember enjoying Philip Roth's Everyman. While writing my book however, I began to notice that while there were many books dealing with old age as experienced by men, there were fewer books about older woman. I found even fewer stories about the lives of older immigrants, and none featuring an older African female protagonist. Yet, in real life, I was hearing so many incredible real life stories about older women - stories that were not reflected in literature. And so, to paraphrase something Toni Morrison once said, if you can't find the stories you're looking for then you must write them. This is what I tried to do.
It was only while writing my novel that I read Kazuo Ishiguro's The Buried Giant, which has now become one of my favorite stories on ageing and the nature of memory and forgetfulness with an elderly couple at its centre. However, of all the literary forms, I think that poetry speaks most profoundly to me on the topic of ageing. It's no surprise then that the title of my book, Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun, is taken from one such poem - "Donkey On" by Mary Ruefle. Other current favorite poems would include Gwendolyn Brooks' "The Bean Eaters," Kay Ryan's "Age" and Sylvia Plath's "Mirror."
Like A Mule Bringing Ice cream to the Sun