Writing My Godmother

November 29, 2011 By 10 Comments

By Tiah Marie Beautement, Author, “Birds of Promise: A Letter to My Godmother” in Wisdom Has a Voice: Every Daughter’s Memories of Mother

I began 1998 in Professor Rosemary Graham’s class, The Art of the Personal Essay, which was based around an anthology of the same name. Sounded rather boring, people writing dreary “Dear Diaries” about their memories. I yearned to take a course in creative writing, to learn how to spin a tale that would captivate.

Dear Dr. Graham, Mea Culpa.

The art of writing about one’s life is to take a moment, or many, and create a story that stretches beyond your own experience. Like business economics: finding the micro and applying it to the macro. Richard Rodriguez accomplishes this in his essay “Late Victorians,” which takes the architecture of San Francisco and weaves in gay history, religion, family, and AIDS.  An essay about houses becomes both personal yet profound.

Yet this art also bends the truth, with its careful editing and splicing of life. Human beings are complex creatures who can be painted as saints or as demons depending on how the writer angles the lens. Nor can it be helped that the writer speaks from her own camera, leaving the majority of perspectives out. So as I sat down to tackle my first draft for Wisdom has a Voice I found myself contemplating a long stretch of years. It was difficult to decide which threads to unpick in order to reweave into a story that both made sense and yet fit the theme. For the cold hard fact remains that I was writing about a woman who never had children for a motherhood anthology.

But that was my point.

Society is supposedly advancing, yet women who remain unmarried and childless are judged harshly. Nor is society kind to the memory of those who die by their own hand. Both of these scenarios often accompany the mindset of two words: selfish, failure. However, the woman I knew and loved was anything but selfish nor was she a failure.

Tiah Marie Beautement

My aunt and godmother was a flawed person, but also possessed a very large heart while living a life I have been privileged to admire. A role model who was plagued with a disease, a disease so often misunderstood. But even when one tries to understand paranoia and depression, it cannot be denied the hurt her death caused has yet to vanish.

People often yearn for easy answers, a place to point the blame. The essay would have been easier to write if my aunt had harboured blatant desires of her own children. Her death would have been simple to compartmentalise. Instead, like most instances of real life, my aunt’s own does not fit neatly into a preconceived box. In the end, all I could hope to achieve was to chip away at societal judgement while capturing a few verbal photographs of a whole human being.

By Tiah Marie Beautement, Author, “Birds of Promise: A Letter to My Godmother” in Wisdom Has a Voice: Every Daughter’s Memories of Mother

 

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Writing From a Place of Sadness

November 18, 2011 By 18 Comments

by Barbara Toboni, Author, “A Moon Song,” in Wisdom Has a Voice: Every Daughter’s Memories of Mother

I knew that writing my story, “A Moon Song,” for the anthology would be a challenge. How could I honor the memory of my mother without feeling the sadness of losing her again? As a professional singer my mother traveled often while I grew up, and as a child I struggled with missing her. I began my memoir with a scene that tells what that pain felt like. Why did she decide to leave her young family?

As I wrote I began to see it was not only my struggle, but hers too. In the 60’s most women stayed home to raise their children. I wanted that kind of a mother desperately for a time. I believe my mother tried to fit into that mold, but it didn’t sustain her for long. My mother had a wonderful gift to share, her voice, but it was difficult for her to explain her absences to a young child. Adding a scene about gazing at the same moon, how mother and daughter connected while she was away, provided not only insight, but gave my story a symbol.

I delighted in hearing my mother sing. I wanted to share happy moments too, to balance the sadness of our separations. I found them by remembering how she shared her passion with my older sister and me, how we helped her rehearse the lyrics to her songs, and danced around the house with her. I loved remembering my mother in that way.

Barbara Toboni

Finding the connection between my mother’s wisdom and what it brought to my life was also challenging. I reflected on my own life as a young mother. What had I learned about raising children?  When my oldest son was a baby I tried being the mother I wanted as a child. The one that stayed close to home, cooked and cleaned and went for play dates with other moms, but I longed for something more. I imagined my mother feeling that same way.

Mother tried to set aside her own dream of having a singing career for the good of her children. But was that good for us? She wasn’t happy. It wasn’t until she started to realize her dream that she felt whole. Didn’t that make her a better mother in the end?

In my process I compared my life to hers and realized that for a time I was headed down the same blue road. My mother taught me that it was okay to pursue my dreams.

Sadly, Mother died at the age of 48 from Lou Gehrig’s disease. I avoided writing about her for a long time because I wanted to avoid the pain. There was also the risk of sounding like a victim.

In the end I’m glad I took the risk. How can I be a victim if I am only searching for my mother’s truth?

by Barbara Toboni, Author, “A Moon Song,” in Wisdom Has a Voice: Every Daughter’s Memories of Mother

 

 

 

 

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Uncovering What’s Universal

November 7, 2011 By 11 Comments

by Katrina Norfleet, Author, “My Hero,” in the anthology Wisdom Has a Voice: Every Daughter’s Memories of Mother

I am a writer paid to develop content that informs and persuades on a daily basis. I have published creative nonfiction work and created a blog intended to encourage and inspire. However, I had never attempted to write a memoir piece until I saw the call for submission for the Wisdom Has a Voice anthology—less than a week before the deadline.

I let the events I wanted to record and share rerun in my memory for a few days before sitting at my laptop to tell the story through written words. It is a story of two closely related incidences that I remember with vividness, which my mother and I have never discussed since they happened about 30 years ago.

In the memoir, the second incidence is the one I use to create the conflict and becomes the climax of the story. I’m a 19-year-old who comes home from college the summer after her freshman year and “has words” with her mother. The argument in itself was a first. Talking back to your mother was an uncommon occurrence during my generation and in my African American culture. If you’ve ever heard the Bill Cosby joke, “I brought you in the world and I’ll take you out,” then you understand the African American parents’ childrearing motto of my generation.

Mother, Maya, and Katrina

The memory of that argument had stayed with me with great clarity through the years and I wanted to figure out why I have always thought of this as a defining moment in our mother-daughter relationship.

I’d never taken a class or workshop on memoir writing so I took to the Internet and tried to piece together a sense of the genre from various blogs and writing sites. There were many useful tips to help get me started, but there was one in particular that confirmed I was on the right track. It was an excerpt from William Zinsser’s chapter, “How to Write a Memoir,” from his book, On Writing Well.

It read: Look for small self-contained incidents that are still vivid in your memory. If you still remember them it’s because they contain a universal truth that your readers will recognize from their own life.

The trickiest piece for me became how to uncover that universal truth or that “nugget” that would connect with the reader. In my mind it has always seemed the incident was about the subject matter or a coming- of-age experience for me, a good-girl who until that moment had yet to demonstrate rebelliousness.

That’s what I thought until I started writing the memoir. I didn’t realize how little I identify with that college girl and how much the woman I am right now relates with what my mother must have been feeling at that time in our lives. I’m the single mother of two—a son already in college and a daughter, Maya, who is a high school senior with plans to attend college away from home. As I prepare for this new normal, I often catch myself wondering if my single-parent mother was experiencing the same mix of emotions when I was a senior about to go away to school and she was preparing to send off the last of her children—a daughter at that.

In retelling the events of time period I was able to squeeze my size eight and a half (sometimes nine) into my mother’s size seven shoes. Three decades and a full-life experience later, I could write that moment from the point of view of the teenage daughter I once was and the mother I am today—one well acquainted with the mothering emotion and the fear that manifested itself into the quarrel that day all those years ago. It became clearer, as I wrote about my mother from this vantage point, that a loss of mothering takes place when you are forced to accept and ultimately encourage your daughter to become more separate from you. Loss takes place for the mother and the young adult, whether you are ready for it or not.

I found the nugget.

What a twist of fate that I unearthed this “aha! moment” by journeying back to that that place in history through memoir writing, just as I am becoming my mother and my daughter is becoming me.

by Katrina Norfleet, Author, “My Hero”

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Beginnings Are Not Easy

October 25, 2011 By 11 Comments

by Deborah Jones-Norberto, Author, “Three Mothers” in the anthology Wisdom Has a Voice: Every Daughter’s Memories of Mother

While in college, I had a wonderful English professor who had been published several times over. She was fond of saying that she “hated to write, but loved having written.” Although somewhat grammatically incorrect, I have always identified with that statement. I hate to write—well, more specifically, I hate starting to write.

When I first saw a small post in the Tiny-Lightsonline newsletter about an upcoming anthology and the search for submissions, I was excited and terrified at the same time. It seemed a daunting task to me. I read about Kate Farrell’s Wisdom project and was moved by her idea to produce a “multi-media project to gather and produce every daughter’s memories of mother.” Her desire to chronicle the “wisdom learned” from our mothers was an amazing catalyst to me.

Deborah Jones-Norberto

Deborah Jones-Norberto

However, as I said above, I hate “starting” to write. Don’t get me wrong—I write all the time—but beginnings have always stymied me. Thankfully, once I get going, the words seem to spill forth like an unleashed torrent. I’m not always eloquent or grammatically correct myself, but the very essence of my soul can pour out– I have to leash it in on most occasions.

So, on a snowy February morning, one week before the deadline for submissions, I sat and frantically began to write. I began to tell the story of my mothers and my unique family background. I wasn’t sure where it would go or if I could really tell the story of my heart properly. I just had to trust that whatever was coming forth would be worthy of reading.

Over the years, I had realized the wealth of knowledge I gleaned from my short time with my own mother and the myriad ways I have tried to distribute it to my own children. It was time to share the journey I took to get to where I am today. In short, it lit a fire under me and compelled me to get going!

Writing about one’s self is never an easy task. I’m always reading in the media about memoirs and this person’s story and that person’s story—some famous and others not. Some critics are not so kind to those who produce memoir, but as I read between the lines, I think that for whatever reason, they are just not there personally yet. The critic as a person is not ready or willing to reveal a truth about themselves, so it’s easy to pan those who are. Again, I stress, it’s not an easy task.

As I’ve read over the other memoirs that are in Kate’s anthology, I’m constantly moved by the differences and similarities that exist within it. We all have been born from a mother; we all have had an experience with them or without them. We all have a story to tell. There is not a single mother-daughter relationship that doesn’t resonate within us. I once read or heard a quote that said, “even those of us who hate our mothers, love our mothers.” Isn’t that so true?

I’m forever grateful for Kate and the other editors to be willing to accept not only mine, but the other stories of life with “Mother.” Kate’s willingness and guidance to lead us all on this storytelling journey has been nothing short of amazing and cathartic. Whether female or male, mother or father, daughter or son, we all should look towards these relationships, as they are the very foundation from which we are wrought. I can only hope that the storytelling has only begun and the sharing of lives and souls can continue to unwind and fulfill us all.

~Deborah Jones-Norberto, Author, “Three Mothers”

 

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Story Studio Chicago

October 8, 2011 By 1 Comment

Diane Hurles, a contributing author to Wisdom Has a Voice: Every Daughter’s Memories of Mother, is a former professional journalist who moved to Chicago and began to write memoir, her own story.

Her memoir in this anthology, “The Bed,” is a powerful and touching recollection of her mother who struggled with cancer most of Diane’s childhood. It was certainly not an easy memoir to write, but Diane continued to develop the piece until her vivid scenes and dialogue invited the reader into a world of confinement and distilled wisdom.

Recently, Diane wrote about her experience as a memoirist in “Cooler by the Lake,” StoryStudio’s online magazine. Here is an excerpt:

Diane Hurles

Diane Hurles

“In my Introduction to Memoir class, taught by Annette Gendler, I learned the importance of detail, and of balancing scene and summary.  I read excerpts of writings by masters like Joan Didion and Frank McCourt.  I experimented with sensory writing.  It opened up a new world for me. When I nervously sat down to begin my first piece for class, I had every intention of writing about my recent move to Chicago – the transition from suburban home to city condo, from mother to empty nester, from divorcee to newlywed the second time around.  Instead, I wrote about my mother, whom I lost to cancer when I was 12. I hadn’t planned to go there, but the story came to life after I discovered an old stack of letters one weekend while unpacking some boxes after the move.  In the pile was a small note I had written as a child to my mother during one of her long hospital stays.  ’Come home soon. I am waiting for you,’ it said.  It had a pencil-smudged drawing of a sad face with tears. I felt a wave of inspiration to share that little girl’s story.”

Diane has shared herself and her mother with an honest and revealing story that opens a door to the intimate world of mother and daughter. It is almost impossible to read without shedding a few tears. One of the memorable sections of her memoir are these few lines:

“With her illness so all-consuming, staying connected to us was a priority for Mom, so much so that she once wrote about the importance of communicating with your children for a mother-daughter banquet at our church. The banquet was an annual event, a celebration of all the women in the church, with the men volunteering to cook and serve dinner….If only by proxy, Mom was determined to have a presence there and composed the special message that she asked Mrs. Lang to read aloud during the program.

‘Take time out of your too-busy day to truly look at your children and honestly listen to them,’ Mom wrote to the audience. ‘I have lots of time now to do just this and I’ve learned so much more about my children than ever before. Knitting and embroidery keep my hands and mind busy, but the best part of my day is when school is out and the door flies open and the kids yell, ‘Mom, I’m home!’ then flop on my bed with all their news of the day.’ “

The truth of this wise advice is undeniable. I am so grateful to Diane for writing a memoir about her mother. It is a healing story well told.

 

 

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Sonoma County Book Festival

September 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment

What a successful first book tour event this was for Wisdom Has a Voice anthology! What I enjoyed the most was discussing the anthology with mothers and daughters who attended the Book Festival together. Many showed immediate interest in the project and purchased the book. One observation (a surprise to me) is that mothers and daughters attended the Book Festival together. Fascinating! I wonder what that means about the legacy between mothers and daughters?

To see just how much I enjoyed this literary launch and what it meant to the project, please view this short video on You Tube, produced by Teresa LeYung-Ryan!

VIDEO-Click:  Kate Farrell talks about the Sonoma County Book Festival

I was happy to showcase the anthology, Wisdom Has a Voice: Every Daughter’s Memories of Mother along with my booth partners, Margie Yee Webb and Teresa LeYung-Ryan. With this anthology I hope to convey the wisdom of our mothers and the meaning daughters bring to this unique and deeply bonded relationship—through memoir. I was excited that some of the local authors in the anthology read on the Reading Circle stage in the Redwood Village, sponsored by the Redwood Branch of California Writers Club. A big thank you to our authors!

Wisdom Authors

Coach Teresa LeYung-Ryan says: “I had a delightful day. Fun with booth partners Kate Farrell & Margie Yee Webb; saw colleagues and fans old and new; was able to see Maxine Hong Kingston and her circle of Veterans; met Rod Shaw of National Alliance for Mental Illness NAMI; sold many copies of Build Your Writer’s Platform & Fanbase In 22 Days; got to be on stage at Redwood Writers Reading Circle. Thank you, everyone!”

Margie Yee Webb is author/photographer of Cat Mulan’s Mindful Musings: Insight and Inspiration for a Wonderful Life a gift book for cat lovers and their finicky friends!  “Through my book, I promote pet awareness and encourage people to make a difference in the lives of cats and other companion animals.” says Margie.  She adds, “With the photographs of my cat, Mulan, complemented with words of wisdom, I bring people joy, smiles, and laughter.”

 

 

 

 

 

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Recognized in Top 50 Memoir Blogs

September 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The kind people at Adult Education Course.org have named Wisdom Has a Voice in the top 50 memoir blogs. I am HIGHLY honoured. If you like reading memoir, then check out their impressive list of memoir blogs.

Here’s what they had to say about the Wisdom Has a Voice Blog:
“With the mission of gathering memories that daughters possess of their mothers, this website hopes to tell a remarkable story. Readers can find out more about the magical nature of words and connect with fellow writers.”

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Representing through Personal Story

September 18, 2011 By 2 Comments

The other evening I attended an event hosted by the No Name Women’s Club in Sonoma County, the wine country north of San Francisco. The NNWC has no name, no place, no address, and no website; communication about events is by phone and word of mouth. Nevertheless, it is a strong and effective women’s group with a commitment to supporting women’s issues in public policy. So well regarded is NNWC that our honored guest that night was Congresswoman Jackie Speier who spoke to a packed audience of hundreds.

Representative Speier has always been heroic to me, dating from her near death in 1978 during the Jonestown massacre when she visited Guyana with Congressman Leo Ryan. One of the few survivors, she was shot and left for dead, lying under the escape airplane.

But it was last February 2011 when Jackie Speier again caught national attention, speaking on the floor of the House of Representatives late one night. She abandoned her prepared remarks and spoke about her own experiences as a mother when forced to face a tragic decision. Whether or not one agrees with her decision, her ability that night to tell her own story and speak her personal truth was once again, heroic. Her words cut through the rhetoric of the day and reached an international audience.

Representative Speier told our club that her success that night taught her the power of the House floor “megaphone.” Through it she hoped to reach audiences directly and to speak for women who are ignored or undervalued. Now, each week, she tells personal stories of women who are victims of sexual abuse or human trafficking. And she has been effective in catching the attention of others who happen to hear her on C-Span or in government.

After her Sonoma county speech, I stood up and commended Representative Speier on giving voice to women and for sharing her personal truths as a mother. Later I gave her a copy of the book, Wisdom Has a Voice: Every Daughter’s Memories of Mother (though I have only a few copies to spare). I hope she enjoys reading the 25 memoirs about Mother.

Once again I was struck by the power of an authentic woman’s voice, the voice of a mother who is both powerful and compassionate –who tells truth in personal stories.

 

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Corner Grocery Store

August 29, 2011 By 3 Comments

A remarkable revelation in gathering the memoirs for the anthology, Wisdom Has a Voice, was learning about real women, mothers, who extended their nurturing care beyond the home and into the community. One of the contributing authors gave us a vivid glimpse into the character of her mother, Nell, amid the everyday work of an old time, neighborhood grocery store. Read this brief excerpt for a tantalizing visit.

“Even Then” by Shelley Chase Muniz

Families had charge tags and children called our store the “free store,” without ever realizing that the groceries they picked up for their parents were actually paid for. The Quality Food Store, nicknamed The Little Green Store by locals, was a landmark, a place neighbors used as a starting point when they gave driving directions to their friends. People used the store as a meeting place; parents told their kids to come and see “Nell and Chuck” if they ever needed help, that Nell and Chuck would know what to do and who to call in case of an emergency. My parents were at the center of The Little Green Store’s reputation: my father, wearing his bow ties and white butcher’s apron; my mother, with her gray curls swept into an up-do, her simple dresses and soft leather walking shoes.

As the nickname suggested, the store was painted a happy green. It was always clean and orderly, inside and out. Stocking the shelves was a job relegated to my sisters and me. Once homework was done and playtime was over, we would go to work in the store, checking shelves for empty holes, restocking them from a supply we kept in a back storage room: cans of Campbell Soup, Del Monte Creamed Corn, Green Giant Peas. Little boxes of Jell-o Tapioca, Star-Kist Tuna, and Hormel Deviled Ham.

Mom would work beside us, teaching by example. Her warm smile, honesty, and thoughtful consideration of her customers’ needs were woven into a fabric of pride and professionalism. Together we would rotate the cans and boxes on the shelves, placing the old in front of the new, dusting and cleaning. I loved the store’s small assortment of lipsticks and mascara, imagining what brand I might use when I grew up, what shade of blush I might rub on my face.

 

 

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Mother, A Silent Icon

August 21, 2011 By 2 Comments

Mother and SonIn the wall-to-wall media that surrounds us, images of women are dominated by pencil thin celebrities who seldom speak. They are known simply for their latest outfits or sensational personal dramas touted in tabloids. Though we might hear them perform skillfully as actresses or vocalists, we rarely hear their authentic self expression.

What of the rest of us, the majority of women, who live our lives in obscurity, loved only by family and friends, respected by colleagues? Next to the often air-brushed images of celebrated femininity in the media, we can hardly measure up.

In the memoir anthology, soon to be released on September 1st (Wisdom Has a Voice: Every Daughter’s Memories of Mother), we purposely collected memoirs of everyday women who wrote skillfully about their mothers. We realized that the image of the typical mother is even less attractive to the media than that of a single young woman. And so, we wish to bring that very woman, the mother, into view. Without an understanding of mother, our culture is certainly at a loss. From the beginning of this anthology, we begin to see her. In the Introduction, Kate Farrell, editor, writes:

“Mother is the silent icon of our times. Shrouded in myth or dehumanized by high expectations, she often remains hidden from view. Daughters whisper about Mother to friends, vent about her to therapists, or honor her with reverence and respect. But in all cases, mothers matter to their daughters and it is through their eyes that we can begin to see the mothers around us. We discover who she really is and learn from Mother. This…collection of twenty-five memoirs about mothers written by their daughters reveals a legacy between them.”

 

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