form of spirituality appeals to the psychology of an individual. Through an understanding of how one’s own thoughts influence one’s actions, people who practice some Eastern spiritual rituals, such as Tai Chi, believe that the godhead dwells within oneself. By stilling one’s thoughts, a person can cultivate an inner peace, which allows a more direct communication with the spiritual aspects of life.

It is through Tai Chi that Ava learns to live in the present moment and to face her fears of death. She does not embrace the Eastern philosophy fully, but rather she mixes the Eastern beliefs with her own Western understanding of religion. She uses Tai Chi to reawaken her sense of spirituality, thus giving her a reason to stop numbing herself with alcohol. Once she begins to cleanse herself of her destructive nature, she becomes more compassionate with the people around her. She takes an interest in her sister’s community actions. She opens up her heart to the baby that her sister is trying to adopt. She also allows herself to imagine the possibilities of falling in love with Eddie, rather than simply enjoying the thrills of their sexual relationship. Through the characterization of Ava, Cleage states that it is impossible to run away, or hide, from life’s challenges. The best path, Cleage implies, is to confront one’s fears. For Ava, this confrontation requires that she use a mixture of beliefs that combine a trust in oneself as well as a faith in a god-figure, whom she describes as a man who reminds her of her grandfather: “tall and tan and like he’s been working too hard.”

Eddie’s story is in many ways similar to Ava’s, although the circumstances differ. During his involvement in the Vietnam War, Eddie was taught to kill and was forced to exist in a world of horrid atrocities. “I saw the worst things you can see human beings do to each other,” Eddie tells Ava. Upon returning home, he felt lost. He says: “By the time I got back to the world, I was a bad man.” For Eddie, like Ava, the spiritual dimension in life had disappeared. He had faced death—both his as well as his victims—and he did not like what he had seen. In an attempt to rid himself of those memories, he too had turned to drugs and sex. He thought that these things would numb him. Instead, they put him in such a desensitized state that he thought nothing of murdering again.

Not until Eddie spends time in jail does he allow all the memories of Vietnam to flood back into his consciousness. When they do, he says they first made him angry. He was angry about having gone to Vietnam, angry about what he was taught to do while he was there, and angry that his subsequent actions, once he returned home, landed him in jail. Fortunately, while in prison, Eddie meets a man who reminds him to slow down and think, not just about what has happened to him but also about the lessons he has learned from all his experiences. It is at this point that Eddie turns to Tai Chi to help him process all the emotions that are stirred by his memories. The ritual of Tai Chi enhances the concept of slowing down, as those who practice it learn to move in very small, concentrated patterns with a full awareness of every muscle that is involved in every little step. With a well-sustained practice, the slow, ritualistic movements become a form of meditation, which helps Eddie to slow down his thoughts, to better understand and accept them, and then to comprehend the lessons behind them.

It is through meditation that Eddie begins to realize his self-destructive nature. His reawakening to the spiritual aspects of life allows him to understand that the fast-paced city life he had been living was counterproductive to his need to be reflective, to learn the lessons of his previous experiences. So, he moves away from Detroit and reestablishes himself in his hometown of Idlewild. He gives up alcohol and replaces it with herbal teas. He changes his diet to one that is more nurturing and continues his Tai Chi practice.

Eddie knows better than to believe that all his problems are behind him, however. When Ava asks if he has learned all his lessons, he replies: “I’m working on it.” He understands that his anger will always be there, just as Ava’s HIV-positive status will never go away. Reawakening to spirituality, Cleage states through Eddie, is not some magical pill that one can take to relieve all the pain and rid oneself of all misery. Rather, it is a process. It is a way of coming to terms with life’s problems and challenges. Eddie implies that he was not raised in a Christian belief system, so his belief in the Eastern philosophy is more concentrated than Ava’s. By focusing on the concept of intentional living— eating the most nutritional foods, meditating to be aware of his thoughts, staying conscious of the present moment—Eddie is able to control his anger and forgive himself for the deaths he has caused. In learning to accept his flaws, to forgive himself, and to learn the lessons of his experiences, Eddie, too, opens up to the community. He is sympathetic to the older folks who are having trouble adjusting to the changing culture that surrounds them, and he is extremely protective of the women around him, willing to risk his own life to protect them.

Ava’s sister, Joyce, has a very different list of problems. She also has slightly different ways of dealing with them than Ava and Eddie. Joyce’s problems are those of tragedies that have been sent her way without her being an active participant in them. There was nothing that she did other than love her children and her husband and later have to witness their deaths. Her challenge is to accept the losses she has had to suffer through and move on. However, Joyce, too, at first tries to numb herself. Her agent of choice is not drugs or sex. Rather, Joyce turns to food to find solace. When Ava confronts her sister’s weight problem, Joyce responds:

“I had a couple of months when all that stood between me and taking a tumble was a bowl of Jamoca Almond fudge and some homemade Toll House cookies.” Joyce’s reference to “tumble” suggests the way that her mother dealt with her father’s death. Joyce’s mother had committed suicide. To keep herself from falling into that depressive state, Joyce appeases her mourning with sweets. On a psychological level, she might also have seen the extra weight that she gained as a padding that might help to protect her from any more emotional tragedies. Although Joyce’s choice of food, on a social scale, might be more easily approved of, it nonetheless falls into the same category as Ava’s and Eddie’s addictions. Joyce used food to hide behind because she had lost a sense of the spiritual. It did not take her very long, however, to reunite herself with the church of her childhood. Af- ter her husband’s death, Joyce started attending services on Sundays, and as Ava explained it, “I think she wanted to pray and she was too self-conscious to do it at home.” Whether that was the reason for her return, Joyce admits that her purpose was twofold. Her reacquaintance with the Baptist church was more than a spiritual quest. Joyce, like her sister, believed in a mixture of various philosophies. She was the product of several 1960s concepts, such as those purported by New Age and feminist movements. She was also familiar with many Eastern philosophies and practices. When she had a need to make contact with spirituality, she sought out books on Buddhism, yoga, and meditation. She was also comfortable with creating a godhead figure who might just as well be feminine as masculine. Although she had been struck with tragedies and had temporarily lost sight of the spiritual dimension, she knew, as she later tells her sister, that life was “not just the physical stuff.”

Once Joyce regains her equilibrium, her first movement toward recreating her life is to seek out the members in her community who most need her help. She finds them through her church and uses the church as a meeting place until she can find a more liberating one. It is through Joyce’s character that Cleage demonstrates the power of helping others in order to heal oneself.

There are many different ways, Cleage seems to imply, to find misery in this life, whether or not one is looking for it. However, there are just as many ways to find one’s way through it. In developing these particular characters, Cleage demonstrates that it is not the religious, or spiritual, practice that is important but rather that one finds some way to keep the spiritual and physical balanced.

Source: Joyce Hart, Critical Essay on What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day, in Novels for Students, The Gale Group, 2003. Hart has degrees in English literature and creative writing and focuses her writing on literary themes.

What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day was selected in 1998 for the Oprah Winfrey Book Club, which boosted its sales enormously and brought it attention that might otherwise have been placed elsewhere. There is a certain kind of book that catches Winfrey’s eye. Such books often feature women, usually minorities, facing up to difficult, dangerous lives, courageously overcoming obstacles through a sense of solidarity with other women and establishing their independence. A dose of New Age spirituality about taking control of one’s life and finding the core of truth within oneself does not go amiss either. Given the talk show host’s persona, Cleage’s first novel and Oprah’s Book Club were a perfect fit. What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day, for all its literary qualities, is a self-help book. It points the way to how to live a productive, useful, happy life, especially for women. It is also a book with a social conscience. It highlights social problems such as AIDS, domestic violence, and the devastation caused by cocaine addiction. In that grim context, it shows women empowering themselves, making better choices about life, and tackling problems themselves when institutional structures (in this case, the local Baptist church) fail them. In fact, when Joyce, the social activist who thinks there is a solution for every problem, writes her statement of purpose for the Sewing Circus, it comes close to the message of the book as a whole: “To create and nurture women who are strong, mentally, physically; free of shackles, both internal and external . . . women who . . . choose their lovers based on mutual respect, emotional honesty and sexual responsibility.”

So it is that Ava Johnson, although carrying the weight of being HIV positive, succeeds in making a complete turnaround in her life, both physically and mentally. She is the perfect New Age heroine, the ideal example for everyone who writes or reads those ubiquitous articles in women’s magazines that outline a seven- (or eight- or nine- or ten-) point program for physical/mental/spiritual well-being. She begins an exercise program, regularly walking three miles a day; she starts to learn Tai Chi from Eddie; she meditates twice a day; she and Joyce begin referring, in fashionable New Age feminist style, to “Mother/Father God”; she eats better and virtually eliminates her consumption of alcohol (giving up caffeine, however, proves too big a hurdle). Ava also learns to value what she has and to appreciate the present moment rather than dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. Going back to her roots in Idlewood, she finds that home can be more than simply the place you come from.

Ava is undoubtedly an attractive heroine. Her informal, chatty, confessional, diary-like narration has considerable verve and panache. She is resilient and able to learn. She has an innate decency and a sense of humor that carries her through the most difficult situations—and it is hard to imagine a more difficult situation than being diagnosed HIV positive, which, despite the recent advances in drug therapy, remains a slow death sentence for almost all of its victims.

However, there is an odd paradox about Ava’s narration of her story. It is considerably wittier, earthy, irreverent, and entertaining in the early part of the novel, when she is at the height of her alienation from herself and her situation, than it is by the end. At the beginning, when she travels to Michigan and has to get used to living again in Idlewood, there is a gritty edge to her personality, as seen in her frequent use of street-slang, her self-confessions, her defiance, and her refusal to sugarcoat her situation or to lie to herself. All this sounds completely authentic; Ava has a genuine voice of her own. But, as her relationships with Joyce and Eddie deepen and she comes to terms with her situation, valuing the good that is in her life, she softens. She loses that street-smart edge to her language and becomes more bland and predictable. No doubt Cleage softened Ava on purpose, but the result is unfortunate. Instead of the heroine becoming progressively more interesting as the novel unfolds, she becomes considerably less so as she learns to do and say all the “politically correct” and “spiritually correct” things that her creator, who understandably wants to use her to convey a positive social message, requires her to say and do. The result is that Ava loses a quality that few people in real life ever do: the capacity to surprise or startle us.

Just to give one example: when early in the novel Ava describes her inability to adopt the kind of self-help program to reduce stress she sees described in magazine articles, she is humorous and engaging:

I read those articles all the time and I look at the things they recommend and I usually am not doing a single thing on the list. I consider doing them all the time, but I rationalize not starting to work on them immediately by thinking how they’d be so easy to do if I ever really wanted to do them. This is bulls— , of course, since every one of them would require a major redirecting of energy and since I’m already so guilt-ridden about not having done this stuff a long time ago, I could never just take one at a time. I’d have to tackle the whole righteous group simultaneously, or not at all.

This will surely be familiar to any woman who has been unpleasantly reminded by Glamour, Cosmopolitan, or any number of other women’s magazines of the vast gap between what her life is and what it might be if she were not so lazy—and then decided to do nothing about it. And, how much more interesting, in style and sentiment, are Ava’s comments here than her later dutiful remarks about how much better she feels when she finally musters the will to put some of the anti-stress practices into effect!

This is not an unfamiliar problem in literature, since vice, despair, unhappiness, and other negative states of mind are often easier to portray than their opposites. Darkness appears to make more of an impact than light, which is why Dante’s Inferno is more widely read than his Paradiso and why William Blake’s Songs of Experience are more complex and interesting than his Songs of Innocence. Virtue, although undoubtedly good for us, does not always make the most compelling reading.

This slide into virtue (if one may put it that outrageous way) is noticeable in other aspects of Ava’s use of language. At first, she peppers her narrative with a commonly used vulgar term that even in these permissive times the New York Times refuses to print, referring to it instead as a “barnyard epithet.” When, late in the novel, Ava has to find a word for a bodily function for which the barnyard epithet would be the literally correct, if vulgar, choice, she opts instead for the dainty euphemism “call of nature.” One suspects that the Ava who waited at the airport in the first chapter of the novel would not be caught dead using such a mealy-mouthed phrase. In spite of these observations, Ava remains for the most part a genuinely complex and believable character. Such cannot be said, however, of the principal male character, Eddie Jefferson. He may strike many readers as simply too good to be true.

In spite of his wild past, he does not appear to have a single flaw. His lifestyle, for example, is beyond reproach. He does not drink or eat meat (he once raised rabbits with the intention of eating them but could not bring himself to kill them); he meditates twice a day; he practices Tai Chi; he grows much of his own food (organic, of course); and he has a habit of showing up on Joyce’s doorstep with fresh bread and a smile. He is unfailingly sensitive, wise, tactful, understanding, and protective. He is at home with his emotions; he does not waste words and is often content with silence. Physically, he moves like a dancer, and in Ava’s eyes there is a mystical quality about his presence: “There was something really quiet about Eddie. I don’t mean just not talking. Something about him that was still.” When Ava describes Eddie physically, she comes within a whisker of sounding like a character from a Harlequin romance novel. Watching him exercising while stripped to the waist, for example, she observes: “Eddie’s body was more muscular than I had thought. . . . I was surprised at the power in his chest and back.”

Given that there are no chinks in Eddie’s perfection—even his pick-up truck is so clean and polished that Ava can see her reflection in the passenger door—it may come as no surprise to the reader to find a hint that this bearded, long-haired wise-man looks the way Jesus Christ himself might have looked. The hint is repeated when Joyce reports having seen a child in the hospital with a Tshirt bearing the slogan, “Jesus Was a Black Man.” Wisely, Cleage refrains from pushing this allusion any further, which would have strained credulity beyond its proper limits.

It is not unusual for an author, in her eagerness to create a positive character who carries the special qualities and virtues that she wishes the story to convey, to fall into a trap such as this. Barbara Kingsolver, in Animal Dreams (1990), another book that often appears in the high school curriculum, cannot avoid it either. Animal Dreams has a certain amount in common with What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day. In both, the female protagonist (Codi in Animal Dreams; Ava in Cleage’s novel) returns to the town in which she grew up, much changed from the person she was when she left it. In both novels, the protagonist meets up with a man whom she had known before and who chose to remain living in his hometown. (In Animal Dreams, this is Loyd Peregrina.) In both cases, too, the man concerned was a notorious womanizer known also for his anti-social behavior, but he has reformed and calmed down. It takes a while for the protagonists to realize that these men are now very different from what they might have been expected to become, given their wild youth. (This tactic also has the advantage of creating a surprise for the reader too.) Both men are also representatives of a certain kind of spiritual wisdom. Loyd embodies the wisdom of the Native-American tradition; Eddie has come to a not dissimilar perspective partly through his own introspection and partly through a knowledge of Buddhism. The problem in Animal Dreams is that Kingsolver strives to get her spiritual message across. Like Eddie, Loyd is far too perfect; the author’s urge to instruct has won out over her instincts as a writer to create multi-dimensional, realistic characters.

Such criticism of What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day may seem harsh. In spite of its faults, this is a novel that is full of compassion and understanding. It makes a valiant attempt to chart a path beyond the depressing realities of many people’s lives today: AIDS, domestic violence, drug addiction, and the breakdown of community. Cleage’s promotion of AIDS awareness and “safe sex” is laudable, and she makes the emphatic point that a diagnosis of HIV positive does not of itself mean that a person must give up sex entirely. Some sex educators, however, might quarrel with the impression the novel gives that as long as condoms are used during sexual activity, there is no need to fear the transmission of disease. Most experts would agree that this is not a foolproof way to avoid contracting AIDS or any other sexual disease. That caveat aside, the humor with which Cleage deals with the matter is irresistible. The brief comic scene in which the entire Sewing Circus watches as Joyce uses a jumbo hot dog to demonstrate how to use a condom is worthy of John Irving, a master of this kind of irreverent humor.

For all these positives, Cleage deserves credit. Her novel says a large “yes” to life; it refuses to take refuge in fashionable pessimism or nihilism in the name of entertainment. This is shown vividly in the incident when Eddie reacts negatively to the movie that Ava, in a misguided attempt to keep him informed about popular culture, shows him. The movie shows violence as routine. Killing a human being is presented as of no more consequence than swatting a fly. As Eddie puts it, “They’re training people to look at this for fun.” In that swipe at contemporary Hollywood entertainment, and in many other respects, What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day reaches into the darkness and brings in some badly needed light.

Source: Bryan Aubrey, Critical Essay on What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day, in Novels for Students, The Gale Group, 2003. Aubrey holds a Ph.D. in English and has published many articles on twentieth-century literature. In this essay, Aubrey argues that, although the novel

In What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day, Cleage introduces the reader to Ava, a woman whose HIV-positive status ruined her social and professional life in Atlanta. Deciding to start a new life, she chooses San Francisco as her new home but first wants to visit her older sister, Ava, in Idlewild, Michigan, for the summer. Ava and Joyce grew up in Idlewild, and Ava’s reaction to the declining resort town is similar to that of most people who revisit their childhood hometowns. She is struck by the changes, but she is also surprised at the things that have not changed and the people who still live there or who have returned to live there again after some time away. What Ava does not know when she first arrives is that she too is returning for more than just a visit.

Ava comments that in the early days of Idlewild, the town was full of idle men and wild women. Once a popular resort town, Idlewild is now declining and no longer draws tourists. Ava’s impression is that the town is stagnating, and there is little evidence of its exciting past. Still, the town’s name is fitting; the youth in the town are both idle and wild. With the exception of Aretha, they seem to lack ambition or vision; they do not even have the attitude shared by so many teenagers of being eager to get out of their hometown and see other parts of the world. They expect to stay right where they are and do not even consider other possibilities. The youth are also wild; their lives revolve around sex, drugs, alcohol, and violence.

From Ava’s perspective, the frequency of teenage pregnancy and crack use in Idlewild is unexpected. She is stunned because she thought that these problems would be out of her life once she left the big city of Atlanta. Instead, she finds them as commonplace in Idlewild as they are in Atlanta and, probably, San Francisco. Although she may have expected to enjoy a break from urban ills, she learns that these ills are universal. Because she has seen the problems of the urban youth in Atlanta, she quickly recognizes the same defiant attitudes in some of the young men in Idlewild. Commenting on Tyrone, Reverend Anderson’s grandson, and his friend Frank, Ava observes:

I felt sorry for them. I’d seen boys in my Atlanta neighborhood grow into swaggering young men who were suddenly scary until you looked into their still baby faces and realized who they used to be, but I also knew how dangerous they were. I’d seen Frank hit that girl like he didn’t care if he broke every bone in her face. I’d seen Tyrone smoking dope right behind his grandmother’s back. It was tempting but foolhardy to focus on their vulnerability instead of your own.

Realizing that social ills are everywhere is an important part of Ava’s learning that she cannot outrun her HIV-positive status. The same devastation and discrimination she experienced in Atlanta, where she contracted it, will follow her to Idlewild and to San Francisco, where she expects to start a new life. At one point, Ava remarks, “I felt like I was back in Atlanta listening to people talking in tongues, trying not say HIV.”

Idlewild was once a resort town, a place where people went to escape temporarily the demands of their everyday lives. Tourists came to Idlewild for respite, just as Ava does. She expects to take a break from worrying about her life and its new demands, but she finds that she must still confront her uncertain future and the regrets of her past. In this light, it is appropriate that Idlewild is no longer the haven from the city that it once was; it cannot offer Ava a place to leave her problems behind. Late in the story, she confides that the problem with knowing the truth deep down is that it makes it hard to pretend. She adds that, ever since she arrived in Idlewild, she has been trying to pretend that “this place is so far away from the scene of the crime that the consequences can’t catch me.”

Ava and Idlewild have three important similarities. The first is that they are seemingly on the decline yet still have much to offer. The second is that their histories demonstrate what is temporary and what is permanent. And the third is that they reflect major social issues of the 1990s. Anyone visiting Idlewild can see that it is a town in decline. Its exciting past contrasts sharply with its troubled present. Although it is no longer a resort town and social problems are a growing issue, it is still rich in history and potential. While some of its residents represent the worst of society, there are also people who represent the best of human nature. In these ways, Idlewild mirrors Ava. She is in decline, waiting for the inevitable destruction of her health and quality of life, but she is still engaged in life and working to improve herself and her community. She has the wisdom and perspective she lacked in her younger years, so she too is rich in history and potential. As a woman who is HIV positive, she embodies a major social problem, but through her loyalty, generosity, and humor she also embodies the resilience and strength of the human spirit. Idlewild is not all good and not all bad, so Ava is not in a position either to give up on it or to declare it perfect. Instead, she is compelled to participate in it, attaching herself to what is good and promising about it and working to repair what is destructive and frightening about it. The more she learns to deal with her HIV-positive status, the more she responds to herself the same way she responds to the town.

The second similarity between Idlewild and Ava is that they illustrate the passing fun of temporary excitement and the stability of lasting character. Idlewild was once a thriving resort town for African Americans. It was rich with entertainment, nightlife, and interesting visitors. Now these elements are gone, but they were never really a fundamental part of the town. Touring entertainers came and went, the nightlife came alive only when the sun went down, and the interesting visitors finished their stays and returned to their homes. What was always constant about Idlewild was its population of permanent residents. Families like the one in which Joyce and Ava were reared, and notable people like “Wild Eddie” Jefferson, stayed in Idlewild throughout every season. For Ava, the things in her life that were fleeting, such as parties, one-night stands, and alcohol, are now gone. But the permanent fixtures, like her intelligence, wit, perseverance, and family, are still available to her. Idlewild and Ava illustrate the temporary nature of flashy, exciting chapters in the lives of towns and people, and they also show the lasting value of stable, caring people and strong character.

Third, Idlewild and Ava represent important social ills of the 1990s. Ava is surprised to see the same problems in Idlewild that she saw in the urban landscape of Atlanta: teenage pregnancy, domestic abuse, crack addiction, alcoholism, illiteracy, and sexual abuse. Throughout the story, she comments on the blurring line between urban and rural communities’ problems. Just as Idlewild represents various social problems of the 1990s, Ava represents one of the most frightening new realities of the time. As a woman who is HIV positive, she serves as a constant reminder to those around her that AIDS is not a disease that attacks only male homosexuals and intravenous drug users. Cleage creates a character who reminds readers that everyone is potentially vulnerable.

Despite Ava’s intention to pass through Idlewild and then move on to San Francisco, she finds the new life she desires in Idlewild. The town she was so eager to leave when she was a young woman becomes the perfect place to marry and live out the rest of her life. It is to Ava’s credit that although Idlewild is not where she thought she would find happiness, she is open enough to recognize the opportunity for happiness when it presents itself in the forms of Joyce, Eddie, Imani, and the Sewing Circus. When Eddie and Joyce decide that they can buy an old house and renovate it for the Sewing Circus, Ava shares their excitement. She wants to be a part of it, and she says, “San Francisco seemed more and more like somebody else’s dream.” She adds:

I felt more alive here than I had for years. I had my sister, the lover of my dreams, a role as part of a longterm project that excited me, and a big-eyed, baldheaded baby girl to take on my morning walks. I was meditating morning and evening, walking three miles a day, and I hadn’t had anything stronger than a glass of wine with dinner in a month. It was my choice that had brought me back here, and for the first time, it really felt like home.

As if affirming Ava’s decision to stay in Idlewild and forget her dreams of San Francisco, the new pastor (a woman named Sister Judith) and her husband come to Idlewild from San Francisco. Ava asks her, “Why would anybody leave a city like San Francisco to come to Idlewild?” Sister Judith reminds Ava that she herself left Atlanta to come to Idlewild and asks her, “Then what are you doing here?” Ava tells the reader, “Watching the sun rise, I wanted to say. Walking in the woods. Falling in love. Raising a child. Helping my sister. Protecting my family. Living my life. ‘Planning my wedding,’ is what I said.” To Ava’s surprise, she finds a kinship with Idlewild, and she finds her future within its community. She has no need to see what awaits her in San Francisco or anywhere else. Idlewild mirrors her, suits her, embraces her. It is home, after all.

Source: Jennifer Bussey, Critical Essay on What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day, in Novels for Students, The Gale Group, 2003. Bussey holds a master’s degree in interdisciplinary studies and a bachelor’s degree in English literature. She is an independent writer specializing in literature.