Kate McShane – Google

I loved this movie. I didn't know what to expect, because I'm not Buddhist, but I heard it was good. I loved every minute of it. The love that the older monks felt for the younger ones in this monastery blew me away. I was once in a convent when I was younger, for three years, and this film pointed out a glaring difference between the way these Buddhist men approached the world and those in training that showed me for the first time what was so extremely wrong with the way we were treated as novices. These kids were allowed to be human beings and the older men around them delighted in everything they were. I've seen the film many times.

I read this book 30 years ago when it first came out and I credit it with opening up channels within me that I didn't know existed. Since then, I've taken a writing course on which the course was based, worked in writing groups with other people who have used this book with their own writing. I've given the book to people who have never written anything before they read it and now have their own practice. And now I'm about to begin to teach a course in which this will be the main guide we'll use. I could not recommend it more.

When this book was published, people were just beginning to realize we were all in trouble -- no jobs, no matter what your qualifications, and very little pay. School loans in spades and pathetic salaries. Snyder was stunned when he couldn't find work. He wrote beautifully about the crisis in which his entire family was plunged. The book sold like mad. I worked in a bookstore at the time in Harvard Square. We couldn't keep the book on the shelves. New copies came in every day and sold out. I met the author, when he came in one day and signed copies. Really decent, down-to-earth man. His second book about his mother is deeply moving.