By Susan Voelkel
The book jacket of her autobiography ironically is symbolic of the clashing divergence of the appearance and the reality of Sharon Jean Hamilton's life.
Hamilton (pictured), associate professor of English at IUPUI, was inspired by the problems some of her students faced to write "My Name's Not Susie: A Life Transformed by Literacy." It is the story of how becoming literate opened up the world of possibilities and helped her overcome her tragic and tumultuous early years.
"I saw my students struggling so hard to go to a university, balancing classes with families and jobs, and often without much encouragement. And I realized that they perceived a huge gap between themselves and me, their professor. I wanted to dispel that perception and encourage them in their efforts."
Thus she began the book she had earlier resisted writing.
Hamilton spent much of her first four years as a ward of the court, shuffled from one awful living situation to another. Her behavior as she reacted to physical, sexual and emotional abuse led social workers to perceive her as almost incorrigible.
Then, in 1948, she was adopted by William and Katherine Hamilton. But the scars of the earlier years, coupled with the backgrounds and circumstances of her new parents, did not make life easy for any of them. Hamilton's experiences did not miraculously transform to "happily ever after."
Why does the book jacket seem symbolic? It pictures Hamilton before she was adopted, a little girl then named Karen Agnes Fleming, in a smocked dress feeding a graham cracker to her baby doll. To many women the scene elicits happy memories of childhood.
But that is not what the author sees and it is not the reality. For one thing, the actual photograph has been cropped and the viewer does not see the whole picture, just as the students in Hamilton's classroom do not see the whole of her.
In the book, Hamilton describes the photo and the circumstances behind it:
"I mutilated every doll and stuffed animal they [foster parents who wanted to change her name to Susie] gave me, by banging them against a wall and then discoloring the eyes. [In a] photograph...I am seated at a little table with a child's tea set, determinedly shoving a graham wafer into a doll's mouth. The doll beside me [not shown on the book jacket], in frilly bonnet and dress, has her cheek and one eye smeared with what looks like nail polish."
Using the tools of literacy, her own intelligence and her steadfast perseverance, Hamilton rechanneled this rage into a creative and productive life -- and that is her triumph.
"Publishers Weekly" calls the book "stark and troubling," but also a "homage to the role of literacy in the evolution of the self."
"My Name's Not Susie" is published by Boynton/Cook.
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