Life Story Links: September 15, 2020

 
 

“If you don’t grow and change in the telling of your life, the reader will not receive your hard-earned wisdom. It’s what editors call ‘the payoff.’ We call it good storytelling.”
Brenda Peterson and Sarah Jane Freyman, Your Life Is a Book

 
On this day 57 years ago, September 15, 1963, four young Black girls were murdered as they prepared for their Sunday School lesson at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, in a bombing by the Ku Klux Klan. This photograph shows Emma…

On this day 57 years ago, September 15, 1963, four young Black girls were murdered as they prepared for their Sunday School lesson at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, in a bombing by the Ku Klux Klan. This photograph shows Emma Bell, Dorie Ladner, Dona Richards, Sam Shirah and Doris Derby—workers from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee—outside the funeral of the girls, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Addie Collins, and Cynthia Wesley. Photograph by Danny Lyons, courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

 
 

Book Craft

DON’T CALL IT A MEMOIR
Sometimes the idea of telling our “life story“ is overwhelming. If we think of memoir as a series of smaller life narratives, though, the way in becomes clear.

MEET THE EDITORS
“There’s no such thing as the ‘best editor’—there’s only the best editor for you,” writes Samantha Shubert of NYC–based Remarkable Life Memoirs in this piece busting three myths about editors (and no, they’re not judgy grammar police).

ONE STORY AT A TIME
Ten seniors met with Nancy West for one hour each to share a story from their lives, and the results were fruitful and lively (and absolutely in line with the mission to help alleviate seniors’ loneliness and isolation). Now Nancy is offering mini-memoirs as part of her services at her Massachusetts–based personal history business.

 
 

Memoir & Memories

ON GROWING OLDER
“This memoir is alive with the urgency of a man in his seventies still yearning to achieve a realized life,” Vivian Gornick says of Lee Gutkind's My Last Eight Thousand Days, due out on October 1. Listen in on a virtual conversation between these two legends of the genre on the book’s release date.

WARTIME MEMORIES
“History is most authentic when you have participants telling you what happened to them, their own personal experiences…. Our core focus is preserving stories that are otherwise going to be gone and forgotten.” As the 75th anniversary of World War II’s end approaches, local interviews preserve war stories for future generations.

OF FOOD AND LIFE
Whether it’s being cooped up during this pandemic and cooking more often or just the warmth our food memories bring, folks have been asking me for tips on preserving their food heritage more than ever. While a few posts are planned, up first is this one with an overview of how to begin.

 
 

Photo Inspiration

PICTURES AND WORDS
Writing from Photographs” is the title of a four-week self-guided online course being offered by Creative Nonfiction, which will include writing prompts and inspiration exploring “the rich possibilities of the space between photograph and experience.”

30-MINUTE DOSE OF INSPIRATION
While the above course caters to those intent on writing their memoir, the free mini-course I created for Save Your Photos Month this year is designed for everyone, non-writers included: It’s called “Save the Story of Just One Photo,” but I can’t fathom you stopping at just one.

A NEW YORK ORIGINAL
“He pulled out old photographs and told of his tales. He read passages from the memoir he wrote nearly twenty years earlier—a memoir to his grandkids. And, in typical Joe fashion, he made us martinis to clink to what was truly a meaningful day.” Meet Joe.

 
 

Remembering 9/11

TEACH THE CHILDREN
With the 19th anniversary of the horrific 9/11 attacks just passed and many families home-schooling their children during the pandemic, I thought I would share these interactive lesson plans for students in grades 3–12 from the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, including one that teaches how first-person accounts and multiple perspectives deepen historical study.

TINY TRIBUTES
Can a remembrance really mean anything when it’s just a little over two minutes? Watch this moving video from the StoryCorp September 11 Initiative, and you tell me…



…then listen to this one-minute-and-24-second audio clip of Ester DiNardo recalling how her daughter Marisa brought her to Windows on the World atop the World Trade Center the day before she perished in the attack:

You may also read the full transcript of Ester’s testimony, or listen in to other recorded oral history accounts from the 9/11 Memorial Museum’s oral history collection.

 
 
 
 

Short Takes

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“He used to tell stories about his ‘odd upbringing.’ His famous line was: ‘If you drove a car through a trailer park with a $20 bill on the bumper-- my whole family would chase after it.’ But it was always a joke. He never spoke of it as something painful. I think he was emotionally stunted like a lot of men of his generation—he never shined a light on the darkness. He buried himself in his work. He’d be at the office every weekend. We should have been spending that time together, but it was always: ‘Once I finish this paper.’ Or ‘Once I grade these tests.’ But when he was on, he was on. When I look at old pictures—we’re always right next to each other. And he always had a hand on me. He wasn’t shy about expressing his emotions. Except for the dark parts of him. One afternoon I found him sobbing on the back porch. He’d just gotten off the phone with his sister, and she told him that she’d been abused by their father. Mark only had one question: ‘Was I home at the time?’ And when she told him ‘yes,’ something broke inside of him. He had only been a child—but still he blamed himself. His drinking became more frequent. He spent a lot of time staring into the distance. But whenever I asked him about it, he’d say: ‘I’m thinking about this paper.’ Or something along those lines. We all have parts of us that we don’t let anyone see. That’s one of the helpful things the police detective told me after they discovered his body. Am I frustrated with him? Of course I am. We were together for forty years. I deserved a conversation—that he was in a bad place. I cared about him more than anyone else in the world. Was I not even worth a good-bye? But I’m not going to turn into a rage-filled shell of who I used to be. Because that would be the second tragedy of this. Whenever I’m feeling overwhelmed with anger, I just think of that eleven-year old boy. And I feel so sad for him. He’d been through so much and couldn’t understand his life. One morning Mark came out of the bathroom. It was a few years before his death, and he had tears in his eyes. ‘I’ll never shave my face,’ he told me. When I asked him why, he said: ‘Because then I’ll look just like him.’”

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#family story ... It’s the summer of 2015 and we’re having dinner at my Uncle Frank’s house. He’s the only person who still lives in the old fishing village my great-great-grandparents settled in (now China Camp State Park - @friendsofchinacamp) and there are picnic tables in his little yard at the edge of the water so there’s enough room for whoever shows up. My Auntie Gette is there and my Uncle Oly and my grandmother, which makes four out of the original six Quan kids, so I bring a genealogy notebook with me. It’s an actual notebook - a 90 cent composition book that I’ve shoved notes and photos into - because we’re traveling and I don’t carry all of my family records with me yet. I show them things I’ve found and bring out old newspaper clippings I want to flesh out in more detail. We talk about old stories but I don’t record anything or write anything down because we’re just talking. My daughter goes down to splash in the water and we have to change her clothes twice because she keeps getting all wet. I tell her that her great-great-great-grandparents used to live on this beach and I try to show her every little thing because she’s the first kid born into her generation but she’s four so I don’t make much of an impression. She hangs on my grandma, oblivious to the fact that she’s gotten pretty unsteady (even with the cane) and then sings to herself for a half hour and makes Uncle Frank laugh. Randomly, I take a video of the water and the pier and then my family casually eating dinner like we always do out in the yard. It’s the last time we do that, though I don’t know it then of course. Uncle Frank is gone by the end of next summer. And then Uncle Oly. And then my grandma. These weren’t photos I took for any grand genealogical purpose. We aren’t fancy-looking here. Without my phone camera, I’m not sure I’d have photos at all, but now they’re my Last Dinner at Frank’s photos and I adore them. Moral of the story: take the photo of the thing you’ve done a million times. It’s always better to have the photos than not, even if nobody is posed and fancy. And for crying out loud, if people are telling family stories, grab a pencil and take notes! ✏️📓🧬🌳

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