I Am Me

Book excerpt: I Am Me is a two-way book that contains twenty short stories, divided into ten individual pairs. Each story in a pair has a corresponding "mate" on the other side, which shares the same title, theme, and to an extent the same concept, but is presented in an entirely different way. One half of the book examines reality, while the other half explores the realms of fantasy. The stories examine various aspects of life, from birth to friendship, love, desire, ambition, prejudice, spirituality, death and the afterlife. Through the two-way structure of the book, I Am Me depicts each tale in two distinct ways, offering a reader a choice between residing in a realistic world, or being lost within the labyrinths of fantasy. The stories are populated by an eclectic group of characters, ranging from a lonely boy who attempts to determine the value of friendship, to two birds named Max and Macs that fight for territory on an apple tree. I Am Me attempts to challenge the segregation of literature into "fact" and "fiction" as well as life into "reality" and "fantasy." These labels are not mutually exclusive, for there is as much truth to every lie, as there are lies in every truth. It is perception that paints the difference between these concepts.