Meditating on Memoir: My Beloved World, Traveling Heavy and Men We Reaped

We are not publishing our journals, or imagining ourselves to be so important that people are actually interested in the details of our lives.  No.  We are taking those details and lining them up, amazed, astonished, rapt the way a child might be, building blocks to form a tower.  We are attempting to make sense out of what we can -- to reach out a hand to the reader across a rough sea of isolation and separateness and offer up something that has shape, integrity, even beauty and symmetry.

Just like life?  Hardly.  But that isn't our job. ~ Dani Shapiro, On Memoir

In April, I started working on my memoir in earnest.

Maybe this sounds like a simple thing, but it was complicated. I have written this story before, so many times, so many different structures. It's a little like watching the same movie over and over. I feel like I've lived a thousand lives since I was little. My parents were around, then they weren't; Mom smothered me with love, then she snatched it away, last year for good, forever.

I have never been able to empathize with people who complain about writer's block. I have writer's diarrhea. I can, and have, vomited on the page, a flash flood of emotions, random memories, dreams, fears and when I look up, an hour is gone, and I've written 5,000 words and I realize that even though I was grounded in place at my kitchen table, I was transported back.

A friend reminded me of the funny exchange between Adam Sandler and an elevator guy in the movie Mister Deeds. Adam Sandler asks the man how its going and he says, "It has its ups and downs." This is what writing memoir is like. It has its ups and downs.

The downs: In the face of the second anniversary of my mother's death which I've written a bit about in a few places, there is the downer of Mother's Day. What to do with myself. How to be. Maybe deciding to do nothing. Possibly doing everything that I can so that I exhaust body and brain. Writing through it, no matter what. I wrote a piece about it I hope will be published on the monumentally sad/frustrating annual reminder of the mothering I didn't receive, the day that makes me wrestle with the fact that I was nurtured in other ways by other mothers. That I am a kind of mother -- to my craft, to my dog, to my family, to my friends.

The ups are incredible. Not manic, euphoric or even particularly beautiful. But noteworthy.

I interviewed Ruth Behar about her beautiful book, Traveling Heavy. Ruth reminded me of the power of being a professional nomad. Though I have been making travel plans for summer and fall, I am actually physically grounded in a place in Austin in a way I never have been anywhere before.

The photographs and details of her memories in the book, as a little girl leaving Cuba and later as an adult who returns, remind us that while we may not physically bring things with us on each journey, we still carry much more than baggage and things. "We travel heavy with our memories, our histories," she says. "In that sense, we all travel heavy with the things that make us who we are. We travel with all our traumas and maybe we relive them when we're elsewhere with strangers. The emotional baggage may be heavier than all the things we carry with us." 

Behar is an anthropology professor at the University of Michigan and, among other things she has been awarded a MacArthur "genius" grant. Her work takes her around the world and she estimates that she travels an estimated 50,000 miles annually. Anthropology has allowed her a passport to all the places she's ever wanted to go.

There is also, too, at the center of Traveling Heavy, the question of whether we ever return home. I mentioned to Ruth during our discussion that I think we all have multiple homes -- at least I know I do. My spiritual home, my physical home (where I grew up) and the place where I am located in the present that feels most like home.

I've been thinking about this as I slowly make my way through Sonia Sotomayor's beautiful memoir, My Beloved World. This has been a great year for Latina memoir - Raquel Cepeda's compelling Bird of Paradise, along with My Beloved World and Ruth Behar's book to me, all published in the first quarter of 2013 to me signals the growing diversity of women of color telling our stories and they all have unique power and of course, a unique perspective to bring to the craft.

I am a huge fan of Sotomayor, and as I await -- like most people -- the outcome of the Fisher vs. University of Texas case, I found it particularly interesting to read about her personal experience with affirmative action. She is a master storyteller and I love that she embeds Spanish in the text without translating it. Her story reads like New York City. She is a New York City girl, even when she visits Princeton, even when she is navigating academic spaces that no one ever really encouraged her to pursue. It is inspiring.

On the horizon is a beautiful memoir by Salvage the Bones author Jesamyn Ward. Men We Reaped is elegiac, heartbreaking and harrowing. It is the story of Ward losing five black men she loved deeply, but it is also the story of the black men we all lose to depression and violence. It will be released in September. It was a devastating but important read.

Reading these memoirs while writing my own has revived a sense of commitment that I hope will show in the work. Writing is such a solitary, often lonely pursuit. You wonder, "Who cares?" But you still can't stop writing. It's strange and beautiful in its own way, a process that feels heavy but it worth the weight of the journey.

Bird of Paradise by Raquel Cepeda

I've been a fan of Raquel Cepeda's journalism for a long time, so I was excited to get to interview her for Kirkus Reviews. The first time I interviewed her was a decade ago, and it's nice to see a powerful writer and presence emerge in a different way on the page. I thought the book was engaging and charming, and particularly important given the absence of contemporary books that blend a hip-hop aesthetic with an emotionally honest and compelling personal story of being Latina. 

Here's Dr. David J. Leonard, too, with an insightful take on Raquel Cepeda's new memoir, Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina:

Bird of Paradise speaks to the growing intersections of ethnography, memoir and science. It points to the changing nature of looking backward not only for exploring personal histories but those of the communities. The work points to a growing willingness among the hip-hop generation to push aside conventions, to expose personal vulnerability and uncertainty alongside of scientific discovery.

At one level it is a story of hip-hop, and how it influenced her life. Hip-hop offered acceptance otherwise unavailable outside of paradise. As with many books on the history of hip-hop and memoirs about members of the hip-hop generation, Cepeda highlights the environmental factors that gave rise to the hip-hop generation. Violence, alienation, invisibility and failing schools all shaped Cepeda's childhood, which was defined by instability resulting from abandonment, abuse, and difficulty finding acceptance and peace. For Cepeda these painful experiences didn't simply define her childhood but contributed to her love of hip-hop, which spoke to her, have her voice, and provided a nurturing home that had been absent through her early years.

The Next Big Thing: The Beautiful Darkness

My writing sister Vanessa Martir, who I met at VONA last summer, my first writing conference, mentioned the Next Big Thing Meme to me in an email a couple of weeks months ago, so I thought I'd try it out.


1) What is the working title of your book?

The Beautiful Darkness: A Handbook for Orphans. The subtitle will likely be A Memoir of the Seasons or something like that, since it's a little more accurate. As I've been writing it, I've realized that A Handbook for Orphans would make a better fiction collection.

2) Where did the idea come from for your book?

I've written a couple of drafts of the memoir over the past decade but it wasn't until I had the opportunity to read Mira Bartok's great book, The Memory Palace, that I saw in the manuscript a description of winter in another part of the world referred to as The Beautiful Darkness.  Since the book is about survival and overcoming adversity and grief, it seemed like the most appropriate title. I believe that there is something beautiful about coming through darkness and working our ways toward light. For me, it's a tall order but a very worthy endeavor.

3) What is the genre of your book?

Memoir. 

4) Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie version?

I would love it if the great Quvenzhane Wallis played the younger me, since I saw so much of my younger resilient self in Hush Puppy (from Beasts of the Southern Wild). I admire the elegance and grace of Angela Bassett, so that would be my first choice for me as an adult. I've been told I favor everyone from Tracy Chapman to Whitney Houston (I miss her) to Lauryn Hill, so I'm not sure who would play the adolescent version of me. I'm quite the actress, so I could do it.

5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

The Beautiful Darkness is the story of how one survives without a traditional safety net.

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

When I'm done with the writing process, I'll look for an agent for awhile. If nothing shakes out, I will self-publish it as both an ebook and as a print-on-demand title.

7) How long did it take to write the first draft of the manuscript?

I've written several drafts of this memoir in one shape or another for 13 years. So the truest answer is 13 years. The most recent answer to that question is that it took me about six months to come up with a fresh draft that was closer to my final vision for the book.

8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I didn't think about it until after I fell in love with my title, but I enjoy Ta-Nehisi Coates' writing and I think there may be some similarities to his memoir, The Beautiful Struggle. My hope is to write a classic coming of age story about a young black girl overcoming adversity in a crosscultural way - so Learning Joy from Dogs Without Collars by Lauralee Summers meets The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls meets I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou meets Claire Bidwell Smith's The Rules of Inheritance.

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I've had so much inspiration over the years, but I have to say that the death of my parents - my father in 2010 and my mother in 2012, was the catalyst for a new urgency and a better understanding of the narrative arc of my life. What really helped me survive more than anything else was reading the work of great women writers like Alice Walker, bell hooks, Toni Morrison, Ntozake Shange, Nikki Giovanni, Rita Dove, Gwendolyn Brooks, Gloria Anzaldua, Audre Lorde and many, many more. I'm inspired both by my ancestors and by the well-crafted work of my memoirist peers, as well as by a number of black musicians and filmmakers who have offered up narratives that have elements of what I'm working on that have helped me craft a more cohesive story.

10) What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?

As a side note, I'm so happy that you spelled pique right, meme-starter!
There is no other memoir that I've been able to read that writes deeply about how young black women in particular, but people in general who are self-parented can navigate the many complicated factors that come with the territory. In my case, that was mental illness, resentment, poverty and to some extent racism, sexism and anti-intellectual boosterism as I found mentors, friends and angels along the way to help me along the path. We know much about self-reliance and the Horatio Alger narrative in our culture as it relates to the white male hero's journey, but very little about people of color who manage to cultivate the same kind of individualism and rugged determination that is so praised in other races and/or groups. We have all been, in one way or another, abandoned or left to fend for ourselves, either figuratively or literally, at some point in our lives. The Beautiful Darkness is about learning to lean into that pain, to transform it into something light enough to carry without letting the burden weigh us down, to know that darkness is only the temporary absence of light.

Sonia Sotomayor's 'Beloved World'

I hope one day to read this because Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is a fellow Bronx girl, along with being an inspirational success story.

There's been a ton of publicity, a crush of book love that is as rare as Sotomayor's story itself.  I've learned a lot about her already and it's refreshing. Few other Latina memoirists may get the same attention or accolades that will come with Sotomayor's book, which reportedly earned her $1.2 million.

I listened to one of her interviews featured on NPR earlier this week. Here's a bit from the NPR review:

In the forward to her book, Sotomayor writes: "I have ventured to write more intimately about my personal life than is customary for a member of the Supreme Court, and with that candor comes a measure of vulnerability. I will be judged as a human being by what readers find here. There are hazards to openness, but they seem minor compared with the possibility that some readers may find comfort, perhaps even inspiration, from a close examination of how an ordinary person, with strengths and weaknesses like anyone else, has managed an extraordinary journey."

I also love that her book was released in English and Spanish. It'd be interesting to see statistics for how many copies it sells in both languages. In her interview with NBC Latino, she said:

 ”When people look at me on television, especially young Latinos-they make me an icon,” she explains.  ”But I don’t know that when the times get tough — that image on television is really going to give them strength. And that’s why I wrote this book,” she says.

Women of color writers on Flavorpill's Most Anticipated of 2013 list

The list is short, as it has been for a lot of anticipated 2013 books, (the Atlantic's list of the best books of 2012, though, has no women of color on it - not even the acclaimed Zadie Smith for NW) but I'm looking forward to these nonetheless:

Jamaica Kincaid, See Now Then (February 5)
Isabel Allende, Maya's Notebook (April 23)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah (May 14)

Other releases that are worth mentioning include Sonia Sotomayor's memoir,  My Beloved World, which will be released on January 15th and former editor Raquel Cepeda's Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina, which comes out in March.







 

My favorite books in 2012

My name is J. and I have a Goodreads addiction. Nice to meet you.

To be fair, my fascination with Goodreads is a natural extension of my book addiction, which started when I was in first grade, led to my three-year adventure in library school and continues to this day.

For my holiday vacation, I arrived at my destination with a library book and a thick book for review under my arm, and I will attempt now to make it home with three additional books (two for review) along with the e-book I checked out to read for fun.

Not only is Goodreads like carrying a bookshelf around in my computer and on my phone, but it
also helps me keep track of the books I've been reading, and makes it easy to come up with a list of books I loved in any given year.

So here they are in no particular order:

She Walks in Beauty: A Woman's Journey Through Poems 
edited by Caroline Kennedy
This was published in 2011, but a friend gave me a copy for my birthday, so I got to read it early this year, between my birthday and Valentine's Day. Here's what I wrote on my blog, with longer excerpts: "One of my favorite women in the world gave me this book of poems selected by Caroline Kennedy. May the sweet, enormous love in some of these lines fill you with enough passion to share -- with yourself &/or with others. The book is full of greatness."

Gathering of Waters 
by Bernice McFadden
I interviewed Ms. McFadden over the summer ahead of her visit in Austin. Gathering of Waters is a beautiful in the soul-stirring, spirit-infused tradition of Gloria Naylor's Mama Day. It is connected to the story of Emmett Till, but it is fundamentally a love story.

The Rules of Inheritance
by Claire Bidwell Smith
Claire Bidwell Smith writes in this touching memoir that grief is like another country. The writing is honest, raw and poetic. It is unlike a book like Cheryl Strayed's Wild in that it has more of a quiet levity and far more dark contours than light sarcasm.

Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change
by Pema Chodron
I love Chodron everything. Here's a bit more of a review: "In Living Beautifully, Chodron writes with her trademark simplicity and directness about living with uncertainty, opening our hearts to transitions and pain through tonglen practice and learning that the “time of the lone wolf is over” and we cannot make any real changes to ourselves or the world on our own."

Quiet
by Susan Cain
I almost never read any book about introverts that doesn't make us seem like crazed, abnormal hermits. So it was really refreshing to read this, and I'm really happy Susan Cain got all the press and accolades she did for her work. The TED talk was also great.

The Power of Habit
by Charles Duhigg
Fans of Malcolm Gladwell's books will enjoy this one. Duhigg, a business reporter at the New York Times, looks at important brands, like Starbucks, Febreze, Target and even Alcoholics Anonymous to give readers a sense of how habit shapes what we purchase. Most of it is fascinating, though I was less interested in the parts describing lab rat experimentation. I learned enough about Target's practices to give me pause when I purchase products there.