Dear friends,
I’d like to share with you some musings as I look back on this adventure of writing a memoir that is set primarily in childhood. I also want to introduce you to a few of my favorite memoirs. (I could add another ten or more!). When we are kids we are protagonists in a one person play as we measure up against a world that is completely new. Everything is vivid; feelings are fierce.
This is pure gold for writers.
On Friday nights when I was little, Patricia, Carlitos, and I piled up into our carro de capota with papi, clad in our pajamas, headed to the drive-in. We experienced the wonder of seeing the movie screen light up like the moon and cowboys galloping across the night. My memory of this is tied up with feelings of daddy love and the sweet protection he represented. There’s a quiet happiness that doesn’t tell you it’s happiness when you are young. That “H” word is a grown up word.
At the Olympic sized pool at the El Panamá I was scared of the tall diving board—but one day I climbed the twelve narrow metal steps. The side rails stopped suddenly, and there I was on the flexible plank. It would have been too embarrassing to climb down, so I jumped. I was stunned by the deep plunge into watery oblivion, and after that I felt triumphant, or maybe only normal, which is important to a girl.
Unintentionally, in the process of writing At the Narrow Waist of the World I discovered long held sorrows carved in childhood and sturdy ways in which I’d learned to cope. When I revisited (in memory) my mother’s tiny boxes of matches set exactly so at her bridge table, her gaiety and energy and self performance, I arrived at more complex emotions--now in my adulthood--a new kind of understanding. Girlhood returned to me subject matter that mattered to play with. I recommend this journey.
As to playing - Writing is playing, as is any creative activity. You go at it without a predetermined outcome. You want to find something, but it’s not always clear what it is you want. If you are lucky the right words and pictures spill out from the top of your head. You dig and dig and you find who you are, at that moment.
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So here’s the mini list of exquisite books set primarily in childhood and early adulthood. These types of memoirs are sometimes called coming-of-age stories.
Exquisite, every one! There’s one more in the list, Brown Girl Dreaming, that couldn’t be in the picture because I’ve lent it to someone.
The Coconut Latitudes: Secret Storms and Survival in the Caribbean- Rita M. Gardner - A childhood in paradise (in the Dominican Republic) turns into unexpected misery.
Not for nothing: Glimpses into a Jersey Girlhood - Kathy Curto - Gritty and funny with huge amounts of feeling told by the youngest daughter of an Italian-American, working class family in the 70s.
Brown Girl Dreaming - Jacqueline Woodson - African American girl tells about her childhood in South Carolina and New York in the ‘60s and ‘70s as she tries to find her place in the world. In free verse. it has received many awards.
Looking for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy- Carlos Eire - The life of a boy before leaving Cuba. An oldie but fabulous book.
Mary Karr, author of The Liars’ Club, a hardscrabble memoir set in Texas that rocked the publishing world in 1999, has said that Memoirs are held together by happenstance, theme, and (most powerfully) the sheer convincing poetry of a single person trying to make sense of the past.
And here’s my take on all of this:
Writing is a lens through which I see myself. Zooming in. Zooming out. Focusing and opening up the grain and looking in between the grain. That’s where I am hidden.
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One more thing:
Now that my book is a book and on its way to readers, I will be resuming the Soy/Somos series—interviews with Hispanics—that is still very close to my heart (and yours too, I hope). Also, I want to dig into the creative process and talk to artists—painters, poets, musicians, tap dancers, and more—who are driven to push forward, obsessively doing what they love. I’m looking for candidates in both worlds—Latinos and artists and of course a blend of the two.
Spanish Word of the Day:: TACO - English: TACO
