My Memories of Flora Banks by Jasmaine

My Memories of Flora Banks by Jasmaine - October 2023 Scholarship Essay

Books are passageways into the thoughts and desires of a person. They have drastically changed my life. I go through literature like a lioness tearing through meat. Though my adventures through pages have led me to life changing discoveries, a book that I would like to think of that has deeply impacted me would be The One Memory of Flora Banks by Emily Barr.
Emily Barr wrote a groundstopping book about Flora, a character who has memory issues. In the book it was described to be from a surgery gone wrong. Flora is a teen girl who is often infantilized due to her issues and is treated more like a child then she is her age. We see this most with her mother; who is extremely protective over her daughter and almost never lets her out of sight. Though, when Flora goes to a party with her friend and kisses a boy she becomes fixated on it, it being the only memory she was able to keep since she was ten. This leads to Flora going off on a self-discovering adventure to get her one memory back, as well as to unlock the possibilities of having more.
Through the book Flora is shown building a relationship with Drake, the boy she kissed on the beach; this is mostly through email. What we learn later was that due to Flora's hyperfixation on the one memory she went to compose these emails herself posing as Drake, but due to her memory issues she forgets she does this and takes it as Drake wanting to be in a relationship with her. I believe at this part of the story we get to see Flora's development as a character and how much of a crutch her mother had put on her. With Flora now having the capabilities of developing socially like other kids her age. At this point Flora had gotten on a plane to Svalbard and found herself a safe place to be, using a series of notes to remind herself. I think this shows the resilience of the character and Flora being able to do this on her own shows what she is capable of. Due to her mothers protective nature Flora is almost constantly relying on the people around her to help, but with this adventure she learns to rely on herself; even if it doesn't go as she planned.
I think the reason this book impacted me so much was due to the fact I was pushing my way through with my own crutches. Most of my schooling career I left myself to push myself up with the shoulders of friends and family, through socializing as well as education I was constantly getting help from them to give myself a boost. But after this book I saw the similarities to my behavior and Floras at the beginning of the story, I didn't like that I wasn't able to stand on my own. After reading this I started working on myself, moving away from people who pushed me down and rising on my own to become the better version of me. I don't think I would have been able to do this without my eyes being opened by this amazing book, and I think it is a very important part of my life and how I have grown as a person.