"reading my novels, "River,Cross My Heart" and "Stand The Storm" at the Anacostia Community Museum on May 26th at 2p - http://ning.it/12r8teM"
I could only write my memoir…After my mother had died
I teach a family memoir class at NYU and, year after year, it’s always over-enrolled. The twenty year-olds carry around a limitless store of tales about their parents, their siblings, and the wrongs they’ve been done. But will they publish them? Probably not right away. A public airing of past struggle can be therapeutic in a class, but terrifying in the broader arena of publication—especially when that struggle implicates the living. Relatives, after all, are easily hurt or angered, they can contest your facts, and they can sue. As Samuel Goldwyn famously said, “I don’t think anyone should write their autobiography until after they’re dead.”
I’m turning 40 next month and I just published my first short memoir, called Mother, Stranger. I had to wait for my mom to die. But this wasn’t because I was afraid of what she might do or say or even feel; I didn’t write about my mom while she was alive because I didn’t have the separate self to do it. I was too angry, too broken, too enmeshed. Despite the fact that I left my mother’s house at fourteen and never saw her again, the pain I felt about my mother kept her close. Too close to see her as both light and shadow, with edges distinct from my own. Her death gave me my voice.
In a book review about six years back, Francine Prose wrote,
“What the memoir writer knows is what readers of Grimm intuit: the loving parent and the evil stepparent may in reality be the same person viewed at successive moments and in different lights. And so the autobiographer is faced with the daunting challenge of describing the narrow escape from being baked into gingerbread while at the same time attempting to understand, forgive and even love the witch.”
Sometimes death provides enough distance for equanimity; it did for me. Suddenly all the unspoken bits of our shared history formed themselves into language, and death gave way to life. I could write a memoir with my mother as a living character, and imagine my way into compassion for both of us.
I know that for some people, an obituary is the green light to finally release the monsters from the closet, since you can’t libel the dead. But I also know that keeping mum on the monsters doesn’t help anyone. Audre Lorde once said, “your silence will not protect you.” She was right, but still, silence can sometimes serve as an incubator for memoirs too raw or unformed for display. Until one day, maybe after a death in the family, that silence cracks and you’re writing, writing writing, like your own life depended on it. Because it probably does.
What allowed you to write (or begin) your memoir? One respondent will receive a copy of Mother, Stranger, available at The Atavist. http://atavist.net/mother-stranger/
Comment
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Comment by Carolyn Barbre on February 21, 2012 at 6:56pm -
Thank you Marcie. My journey was the embodiment of the double standard. I feel like the prototype. I'm a big fan of Marion Roach Smith. I've read her book, follow her blog and read her postings on SW. I appreciate your input.
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Comment by Marcie Bridges on February 21, 2012 at 8:57am -
Carolyn, I think your overview sounds wonderful. I do have a question for you to think about: is your memoir actually about the double-standard that exists or is it about your journey? To me, those are two different things.
Just this past week, Marrion Roach Smith did a series of posts regarding memoir here on SW. Her posts got me thinking about my memoir in ways I hadn't entertained. Might be worth a look-see. :)
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Comment by Heather Marsten on February 20, 2012 at 2:11pm -
Thank you, that is my goal, to make my past into something that helps others - to redeem the past. Have a blessed day.
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Comment by P.Allen Jones on February 19, 2012 at 5:36pm -
@Heather, my family didn't see the abuse I endured either because they were blinded by their own experiences. For that reason, I chose to change their names to tell MY story & not theirs. And, to help my children deal with the truth. This gave me freedom to tell my whole story without hurting them. Keep writing Heather, you won't believe how many people you'll help.
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Comment by Heather Marsten on February 19, 2012 at 4:47pm
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I am working on my memoir - my parents are dead and my sister and brother are older, and sickly. I have show my memoir to my brother and he never knew the extent of the abuse I received. His comment was, "Now I know why Shirley wants to be called Heather." I have others to think about - three young adult children who do not know the full extent of my life - my abuse, my time in the occult, self-destructive behaviors, etc. I have to publish, but am thinking if I should publish under maiden name rather than married name - but I have living nieces and nephews who also would be affected. I'm just writing now, and will decide later - might have to change a few names.
I understand the anger at parents who abandon us - and the anger that eats at you. I had that for years until I could forgive. Not forget - just forgive. I got free of my past when I realized my parents would have to answer to God for their abuse, but I didn't have to carry around their corpses in my present life.
Have a blessed day.
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Comment by Carolyn Barbre on February 17, 2012 at 6:37am
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I’m struggling right now with writing a platform for my memoir, SHOW-CAUSE: A Bicoastal Kidnapping Custody Battle. I’ve started the overview as follows:
More than two million women share a shameful secret that engenders perennial heartache but they dare not tell. SHOW-CAUSE exposes the double standard imposed by a society that often views a father who kidnaps his own children as a renegade hero but a mother who does so is branded a crazed bitch. He was rewarded; I was incarcerated.
I have gotten to this place only because I am running out of time. It is important to leave my sons with a better understanding of the forces that shaped their lives, a story of emotional abuse and a need for control that so many of these battles embody.
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Comment by Taneisa Grier on February 16, 2012 at 5:54pm -
“your silence will not protect you.”
Chris, this resonated with me. I'm not sure why. But you're right. In a very intimate sense, silence doesn't protect you from your own emotions...and speaking, wellll, it may not be the savior either but maybe it can make room for the life you longed to live and the you, you've longed to be free to be. Perhaps finding your voice in your memoir leads you to the sanctuary of permission where all things lost can be found and the hurts can be loosed.
Thanks for sharing Chris.
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Comment by Irene Bynum on February 15, 2012 at 5:57pm
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Excuse me, Cris, not Chris.
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Chris, thank you for sharing your thoughts on this. I have been struggling to write my "Memoirs of the Mad Manicurist" because of that very reason. Most of my inspiration comes from my daily dealings with very colorful clients and when I hear a story that I just have to write about, I get permission from the client and most of the time they gladly give it.
Family is another story. As my writing mentor put it very eloquently, "your family will become your biggest censor if you let them!" I have often thought that I would have to put off writing about these relationships after they pass, but I don't want to wait that long! I am such a novice at this and have many questions about how I could intertwine family stories as client stories and still keep it as a memoir? When I write, I sometimes write about myself as if it had happened to a client. Does this make it not real?
Again, thanks for sharing.
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Comment by Linda Wisniewski on February 14, 2012 at 1:33pm -
Cris, I started to write about my mom while she was still living, but I wasn't ready to publish anything til after she died, mainly because I still hadn't reached that balance between enmeshment and equanimity, as you so beautifully say.
I actually wrote several short memoir pieces before a writing mentor encouraged me to put them together into a book with a common theme - my relationship with my mother! ;-)
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