memoir

Book 19 for 2024: “Unearthing”, Kyo Maclear

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Several months after Maclear’s father (who was a famous journalist) dies, she decides to take a DNA test to find out more about her family health and personality history, mainly because of the stories about a particular grandmother. She wonders if certain traits she and her sons have might possibly be inherited. The results of the test are a shock. Her father, the father she adored, who raised her and adored her, is not her biological father. At first, she thinks perhaps it was a sperm donor, but then she discovers this is not the case. Through the DNA test and her detective work, she finds two biological half-brothers (she was an only child before this discovery) who are willing to communicate with her, send her photos, etc. She tries relentlessly to acquire more information from her mother, who is often unforthcoming or tells her contradictory information. Then her mother gets dementia.

This is also a story of plants, of gardening. Both she and her mother are amateur botanists and expert gardeners. When nothing else works in their mother-daughter relationship, their love of plants and gardening holds them together. Even with dementia, her mother knows plants. Their other joint endeavor is ink drawings and love of art.

Additionally, this is the story of family, family secrets, inter-racial marriage, and challenging relationships. Kyo’s mother is Japanese living originally in England and later in Canada who often struggled with her status as a Japanese immigrant. Her “real” father, the one who raised her, was of British and Irish descent; her biological father was a Jewish formula one race car driver.

Nostalgia

/ Juliana Lightle / 1 Comment

Today is the first day of National Poetry Month. I am committing myself to write a poem a day. Here is the first one for the month.

Easter yesterday made me sad,

remembering children, grandson,

egg dying, egg hunting, family

together, laughter, joy.

Found photos of my family,

I, a child, dressed in Easter finery,

a family tradition. Dad bought us

corsages to wear every Easter,

pretty dresses in spring colors–

my favorite a pink dress trimmed

in scarlet, a unique combination

explained why I liked it so much,

felt special wearing it.

Today I wear pink and orange

together, admire the deep purple

and red bougainvillea, scarlet rosebuds,

snowy freeway daisies,

shining in the sun and wonder

will I live long enough to teach

a great grandchild to color

Easter eggs.

Book Eight for 2024: “Being Heumann”, Judith Heumann

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Judith Heumann contracted polio as a child and was subsequently confined to a wheel chair. Doctors suggested to her parents that they send her off to live in a place for the disabled. Having escaped Nazi Germany, her parents were horrified and refused. There were no laws protecting disabled people when she was a child. Her parents, especially her mother, fought for her to go to regular school. This is how her story begins as she tells it. The rest is the story of her activist life.

When the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 was passed, it took months for Section 504 regulations to be signed into law. At this time the author was a young woman living in the SF Bay area. She lead a days long sit-in at the federal building in San Francisco. When this did not work, she went to DC. The entire book is her account of her life as an activist for the rights of disabled persons, beginning with her childhood, her becoming a certified teacher after attending college, and her endless activism for Section 504 and the ADA.

This is an important book for anyone interested in the history of civil rights for the disabled.

Book Six for 2024: “Look At The Lights, My Love”, Annie Ernaux

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Who would have thought a person could write an entire book about a hyper market? I never heard of Auchan until I read this book. For those not in the know, located in France, it is described as a hyper-market on search engines. From Ernaux’s description and those on the Internet, I think there is nothing like it in the US. The author refers to it as a Supermarket, but it is nothing like what we call a supermarket here. It is a superstore, somewhat like the big box stores here but much more. It sells food, clothes, books, you name it, but not like Target or Costco. The bookstore is a separate area, as are many other little shops within the giant store, e.g the fishmonger. It is three stories, open 24/7, and according to the Internet, works toward being something for everyone while caring about the environment and such. The employees wear a uniform so in that regard they all look the same. The store attends to the needs of all the various religions of the people of France, Muslims, Jews, Christians, everyone. This is especially true when it comes to food. During certain holidays, the preferred food for that religious holiday becomes available.

Ernaux decides to go shopping there in 2012 and 2013 over a span of a year. She deliberately goes at different times of day to see if there are differences. There are. Certain groups of people shop early in the morning–like older people. Young singles go later, mom’s with children at a different time. When there is a no school day, gangs of teen girls show up to hang out and shop. When the weather is bad, people go there to escape. Once in a while someone recognizes her, tells her they love her writing, and they have a conversation. At the first floor entry where there are places to sit, she notices that older North African men seem to like to hang out there and watch the passerby’s.

She notices that while a person can shop in a sort of anonymity that is impossible while standing in the checkout line. Here your eating habits, what method you choose to pay, whether you have elderly people at home or babies or children are all on full display laying there on the conveyor belt for all to see. If you have to ask for help with the money, it exposes you as a foreigner. Yet people pretend they do not notice or care–perhaps they do not.

I occasionally go to Target, never to Walmart or Costco. Nevertheless, reading this book has made me notice things I never noticed before, and normally I am quite observant. Now even when I go to smaller grocery stores, I notice who is there, what they are buying. Sometimes people will ask me a question about something in the store. At places near my house, I sometimes see people I know and chat.

Book One for 2024: “Rain of Gold”, Victor Villaseñor

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The lady in charge of the College Center at Mendez Learning Center told me about this book, one of her favorites. I received it for Christmas from my grandson. It is the first book I read this year.

Although it reads like an epic novel, it is non-fiction, the story of Victor Villaseñor’s family tracing back to his four grandparents in Mexico, one set from Jalisco and the other from the rugged mountains closer to the US border. All left Mexico to escape the violence of the Mexican Revolution and eventually settled in Southern California.

Some of the events in this story are heart wrenching incidents of violence, even death, blatant prejudice, and economic poverty. On the other hand, I often found myself laughing out loud, it was so funny. The author’s parents remain perfect examples of strong people who never give up, whose persistence and determination lead to prosperous lives as successful business owners. The author continues to live on the ranch where he grew up in northern San Diego County. Now 83, he has authored many books including a sequel to this one. His website not only talks about his life and writing, but also struggles with dyslexia.

One Book a Week-33: “Narrative of the Life of FREDERICK DOUGLAS, an American Slave”, Frederick Douglas

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Anyone who thinks slavery was useful to slaves needs to read this personal account. By the time Frederick Douglas was in his mid-20s, he had worked for several different people as a slave. Some of these people were decent given the circumstances and helped him learn to read. Others performed acts of abject cruelty. The latter far outnumbered the former. In the past I have read a number of slave narratives. However, he so eloquently describes the beatings, shootings, and other atrocities that it is horrifying to read. The fact that he endured so much at such an early age and became the famous abolitionist, orator, and writer later in life speaks to his remarkable intellectual abilities and emotional strength.

One Book a Week-26: “Holding Fire: A Reckoning With The American West”, Bryce Andrews

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If you LOVE the West, but sometimes struggle with its violent history, this is the memoir for you. Here is a quote from page 178: “I’m embarrassed at how long it has taken me to notice that a rancher’s view of the natural world is blindered in comparison to the hunter’s perspective; that driving livestock from one field to another is nothing like stalking free-ranging herds; that finding, gathering, and preparing a hundred different wild plants bears no resemblance to growing alfalfa or oats…”

Andrews also discusses the difference between sustainability and reciprocity. Before reading the book, I had never thought about this. He notes that sustainability is taking without damaging. Reciprocity entails giving back, e.g. nature, asking, “What can I give back? What can I do to take care of this place that feeds and shelters me?” This is quite different from “How much can I sustainably take?”

Andrews grew up in the West. However, after cowboying on several ranches in Montana, hunting annually, and later inheriting his grandfather’s Smith and Wesson revolver, he begins to question the gun violence and destructiveness of Western culture. This book details his journey. He continues to live on a farm in the Montana mountains, slowly transforming the land to make it profitable but also a place for nature, for wildlife to prosper.

National Poetry Month-2: Butter Love

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Is it inherited?

Six year old me watched Grandmother

look around, take silver knife, cut into pale

yellow rectangular prism, plop a chunk into

her mouth, close her eyes,

smile.

In Aunt Julia’s presence, this never occurred,

Was it our shared secret,

Grandmother and me?

Yesterday, I told the cafeteria lady,

“Please bring me biscuits, extra butter.”

Less courageous than Grandmother,

I use blue corn pancakes, homemade bread, pasta,

excuses to eat butter, lots of golden, melted

butter.

Who eats butter on conchiglie?

I do, scooping out a tablespoon

from the butter bowl, watch it melt

in hot, drained Italian pasta from a

six-hundred-year-old monastery,

sprinkle on some sea salt, plop

a spoonful in my mouth, close my eyes,

smile.

Note: This poem is published in my book “You’re Gonna Eat That? Adventures with Food, Family, and Friends”. My grandmother, Mom’s mom, rarely smiled. When Mom went to the hospital to have my sister, the family story is that Grandmother fed me so many bread, butter, and sugar sandwiches, I became fat. I was two. I remember a mint patch in her backyard. She’d gather mint, boil water, and make mint tea with cream and sugar. I liked it. When Aunt Julia traveled out of town, I remember seeing Grandmother eat butter and smile. This is Grandmother’s wedding photo.

One Book a Week-7: “Memorial Drive, A Daughter’s Memoir” by Natasha Trethewey

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Published in 2020, and a must read for anyone who cares about abused women, their rights, and how law enforcement often fails them, this book by Trethewey, 2007 Pulitzer Poetry Price winner for “Native Guard”, voices her struggle to deal with her mother’s untimely death. When Trethewey was nineteen and in college, her mother was shot and killed by her step-father after the police officer assigned to protect her mother left his post early. Additionally, the memoir details the effects of the racism she experienced as the child of a white father and black mother (married when it was illegal where they lived) in Mississippi and later in Atlanta in the 1970s and 80s before her mother’s murder in 1985. The book gets its title from the street on which her mother lived when she was murdered. Through this memoir Trethewey discusses how her parent’s divorce, her mother’s remarriage to an angry, abusive man, and her mother’s murder has informed her life and affected the enduring love she holds for her mother.

One Book a Week-5: The Importance of Paris by Cynthia F. Davidson

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This memoir take place when the author decides to move to Paris in order to address certain “issues” related to her childhood and young adult years. She grew up in Saudi Arabia before the oil boom and went to high school and lived in Beirut when it was considered one of the best cities in the world. She had to leave when Lebanon became war torn, her dad was kidnapped, and her sister shot. Her return to the US proved traumatizing even though she is not genetically of Middle Eastern descent. Paris was filled with Lebanese refugees so she moves there in an attempt to understand what happened to her beloved Lebanon and why.

This is not an ordinary memoir. I could not stop reading it; I wanted to know what happens next and why. It includes a graphic honesty not found in most memoirs I’ve read. In addition, it contains political and historical explanations for the events that transpired during the time period of the book.

Want to learn more about the background to current events in the Middle East? Want to read about a remarkable life? Then read this memoir.