Editorial Content for Show, Don't Tell: A Writer, Her Teacher, and the Power of Sharing Our Stories

It’s not often that I find the lack of previous experience with an author a disadvantage when reading or commenting on a new release. This time I did, even though SHOW, DON’T TELL by New York Times bestselling author Kristine Gasbarre really tries to hold up its end.

But --- another word I rarely use so early in a book review --- Gasbarre’s admirable purpose of celebrating the lifelong influence of a truly remarkable high school teacher on both her student and adult life doesn’t quite achieve what most of us have come to expect of mature memoir-writing. Even after reading some sections of the book twice, I’m still not sure what makes her, or the dynamic Mrs. Korthaus, really tick.

"[P]erhaps it doesn’t even need to be said that the title itself, SHOW, DON’T TELL, is a fundamental daily mantra for walking the talk. But I’ve said it anyway because it’s true."

The subtitle itself is revealing of perhaps having cast the topical net a little too wide to do the Writer, the Teacher, or the Power of Sharing Our Stories enough individual justice. There are captivating anecdotes within each subject that could be ample material for a full-length book. This trait makes the reading experience an often disjointed and abrupt series of hops and skips from one to the other, without enough connective tissue to hold them together.

In particular, Gasbarre’s autobiographical thread often competes with her sporadic biography of Mrs. Korthaus, creating rather interrupted portraits of both women --- teacher and student, retired teacher and friend. That sense of discontinuity is exacerbated by unexpected shifts in narrative tense from past to present and back again, creating moments when it’s unclear whether Gasbarre is reminiscing or eulogizing. In fact, we are never told whether the elderly but still energetic Mrs. Korthaus, who is described near the end of the book as suffering from a chronic recurrence of cancer, is still living.

For all that, however, I actually liked more about SHOW, DON’T TELL than I disliked, even though its various “not quite” parts have taken up more words.

Gasbarre reminds us all very forcefully that, despite the advancing median age of the North American adult population, our society seems to care less and less for the experience and wisdom of its elders. Let’s make that right in how we ourselves interact with seniors going forward!

She focuses passionately on the under-appreciated importance of good teaching --- a tragic irony just when the American federal government is about to eliminate its Department of Education and download that mandate to state administration, regardless of the vast economic disparity between have- and have-not states. That really scares us up here in Canada.

Another powerful current running through the book, and maybe the closest element to an overall connecting theme, is an urgent assertion of women’s rights and how much there is still to fight for. The lives of both Gasbarre and Mrs. Korthaus (and mine as well) straddle the era before and after the early 1970s, when women could not have credit cards or take out loans solely in their own names. For her students, boys and girls alike, Mrs. Korthaus embodied progressive feminism long before it was even a thing.

And perhaps it doesn’t even need to be said that the title itself, SHOW, DON’T TELL, is a fundamental daily mantra for walking the talk. But I’ve said it anyway because it’s true.