On finding your memoir in the kitchen: dinner is served

Today on Huffington Post I'm sharing (in words) one of my seven video essays on the art of memoir. Here I'm thinking about those memoirs that begin in the kitchen and about the writers (MFK Fisher, Mary Gordon, Lavinia Greenlaw, Diana Abu-Jaber, and Chang-Rae Lee) who lead the way.

The link is here.

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Reflections on the European Migrant Crisis—and a matter that lies at the heart of GOING OVER, on HuffPo

Today, on HuffPo, I'm reflecting on the European Migrant Crisis—and on a primary theme, the Turkish guest workers, that sparked the writing of my Berlin Wall novel, Going Over (Chronicle Books).


The entire piece can be found here.

A brief excerpt, from the end of the piece, below:

When I set out to write my 1983 Berlin Wall novel, Going Over (Chronicle Books, 2014), I thought my research would primarily take me to the divided lives of those on either side of the wall. To the failed attempts at freedom. To the successful passages. To the lives of graffiti artists and stymied stargazers.

I found that. I wrote that. But there was something more, something bigger at the heart of this Berlin story -- the lives of the Turkish immigrants, those "guest workers," who had been called to West Berlin to help mitigate a rising labor problem in the wake of the war. Vaccinated, packed onto planes and trains, and redirected to worlds they couldn't foresee, these Turkish citizens left often-rural homes to become poorly paid semi-skilled laborers on German assembly lines. They were crammed into ghettoized apartments, left to their own societal devices, sometimes despised. Those who sought protection from German police -- women, mostly, seeking to escape abusive marriages or challenging conditions or threats of "honor" killings--were often foiled in their search for help. The Turkish immigrants were resident foreigners. They were a culture within a country, both separate and essential.

This Turkish story, it seemed to me, was as resonant, as relevant, as supremely timely as the story of walls and divisions and political strikes against family life. It contained lessons that even today disrupt ideas about German identity and about diversity -- anywhere, in any country. It had to be written about, to stand beside the better-known Wall story.

Those who are fleeing ravaged homes in Syria, Afghanistan, and elsewhere know only that which they are leaving. They cannot imagine what is next -- who will help them, who will open doors, who will allow them to maintain their dignity. As governments, agencies, and families all around the world watch the exodus in horror and with broken hearts, it becomes an urgent matter to also imagine what happens next.

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growing into happiness: the Guardian, Little Flower, the Penn community, Hodgman

The annual Little Flower Teen Writers Festival is a school-wide celebration of writing and reading—a marvel of an invention in which a school, on a sunny Saturday, opens its doors to story weavers and student hearts. The dynamic, unstoppable Sister Kimberly Miller leads the way. Her girls wouldn't be anywhere else. And yesterday all of us who were in attendance were given keynote words from A.S. King that leapt us to our feet (yes, that's a deliberate inversion of language logic, but that's so what happened). King is one of those writers who has earned her status as a star. Her stories are essential. Her sentences are prime. And when she gets up there behind a microphone she has something actual to say—words that belong to her, ideas unborrowed.

I left Little Flower, rushed home, put on a skirt, swapped out my graffiti boots for a pair of four-inch heels, picked up the cake I'd made the day before, and headed out again to celebrate the career of Greg Djanikian, the exquisite Armenian poet whose life and work I profiled in the Pennsylvania Gazette last year. Greg is stepping down from full-time administrative duties at Penn so that he might write more and live less bounded-ly. Saddened as we are by the thought of seeing him less, last night was anything but a sad event. It brought together (in true Greg fashion) the teachers, writers, and student advocates who give Penn's creative writing program and Kelly Writers House their aura. Oysters, sherbet-colored shirts, an undaunted cat. Talk about food carts, the meaning of words, 1960, serial memoirists (the third Fuller), astonishing turns in storied careers, the art of the frittata, and the costs and high rewards of loving students. Sun when we arrived and stars when we left.

In between the two events, Kit Hain Grindstaff sent word of something wholly unforeseen—a Guardian review of Going Over. It begins like this below and can be read in full here.

Lyrical prose, beautiful and sensual imagery, a dark setting; yet, hope: there is always hope – because for the stars to shine, there needs to be darkness. Going Over just shot to my 'favourites' of 2015 list and I regret nothing. This book is graffiti, and colour and play dough and bikes. It is love, it is death, it is life; it is astronomy, maps, escapes and archery. It is a wall, splitting the earth with dark and hateful ideologies, and it is a spring in your step on one side: pink hair and coloured moles with a quiet and thoughtful being on the other; scope in hand, love clenched in heart and freedom circling though mind. Going Over is Ada and Stefan, Savas and Meryem, Turks and Germans and kids and adults. It is a story of humans and their plight in this world, and it is a story of love.

As is perhaps clear in this recent Huffington interview, I've been thinking a lot of late about what happiness is. I wrote toward that in today's Philadelphia Inquirer story, which has Frenchtown, NJ, as its backdrop. (Thank you Kevin Ferris and your team for another beautiful presentation of my photographs and words.) I've been also thinking a lot about kindness (never simple, often rare), thanks in part to George Hodgman's glorious memoir, Bettyville, which I reviewed for the Chicago Tribune, here.

Today there is sun out there, flowering trees, wet-headed daffodils. I'm going to celebrate by finishing the fabulous Between You and Me (Mary Norris) and later checking into Chanticleer garden for the first time this year. I'm way overdue for a visit.

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On Why Living a 'Small Life' Is Big, interviewed by Annie Scholl, on HuffPo

On the campus of St. Albans there is this rich and purple light. There is this calm.

Yesterday morning, I talked with Annie Scholl for close to an hour by phone. Annie, a writer and photographer, is an interviewing pro. She asked questions I sometimes found difficult to answer. I was glad, in the end, to be pressed, for I knew that, with Annie, I was heard.

There are—make no mistake—deep frustrations that attend this writing life. I don't always successfully rise above them. I can sink to confusion and also to despair. I can wonder why, and also, why not? I can grow confounded.

But I'm happiest and more whole when I climb to whatever elevation is required to gain the broader view.

We talked about all of that. A fraction of that conversation is here now, on Huffington Post.
The final question is below:

You're not openly seeking to be a popular writer and make millions, but if that were to happen, how would you feel about it?
I actually think it's a scary thing to be in the glare and blare of the spotlight. I feel very lucky to have the life I have. I'm able to publish books that matter to me. I am not in the cross fire of envy. I am, in the end, enormously grateful for what I have. My ambition is to do well enough to be allowed to publish again. To remain rooted in the work. To participate in the literary conversation. Small ambitions. A fulfilled existence.

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In today's HuffPo: writing toward fear, as I wrote toward One Thing Stolen

 

I have made reference to the challenges that beset me (self-afflicted, surely) as I set out to write One Thing Stolen. Today, in Huffington Post, I'm write of the fears I was writing toward during the process.

The piece begins like this, below, and carries forward here.

There is a girl who only just recently knew who she was, what she wanted, the dimensions of now. A girl who has a retro-minded best friend and a reputation for ingenious ideas about night snow, urban gardens, and the songs that rise up from Philadelphia streets. She has a mother and a brother, both loved. She has a father obsessed with the Florentine flood of November 1966--that unforeseen spill of the Arno River, that mud that clawed through homes and stores and across the face of Cimabue's "Crucifix," among so many other treasures. This girl has moved with her family to Florence. This girl is losing herself.

It's hard to say, precisely, when she began to peel away. When an obsession with nests and nest building became her terrible secret. When thieving erupted as a necessary part of her existence. When words began to clot and clog and answers became elusive.

It's hard to say when all this started. It's impossible to know how it will end.

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In HuffPo: On teaching the Berlin Wall, at a Philadelphia High School

A few weeks ago I taught the Berlin Wall at a Philadelphia school where graffiti is part and parcel of the capstone process. 

I tell that story today on Huffington Post.

I speak of this young man, the interim librarian at Science Leadership Academy, among other things.

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A few things happened while I was gone:

And so I share them here, briefly, for the day ahead is burstingly full of kitchen things, and family.

And so, first, my defense of memoir officially appeared in Printers Row/Chicago Tribune, with the really wonderful illustration above, by Robert Neubecker. I just had to share his work. The essay itself can be found here.

A condensed version of my Bank Street keynote—in which I focused on teaching the truth sideways—appeared on Huffington Post, here.

Kirkus Reviews released its online Best Children's Books of 2013, and Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent appears here, on the middle grade list.

And a story I wrote about my grandmother and her home on Guyer Avenue in southwest Philadelphia appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, along with this photograph of a time long ago. That essay can be found here.

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