Tag Archives: my writing

The Distance Between Me and Me

23 Apr

 

I recently workshopped a new memoir chapter I had been working on, and it wasn’t until after I left the workshop that it occurred to me that perhaps the distinction between the author and the narrator had gotten jumbled in the evaluation of the piece.

I don’t enjoy self-deprecating memoirs, but I had written a rather self-deprecating line to make a point about my past.

“We don’t see you this way,” someone said.

I didn’t get the sense that she was suggesting I needed to show evidence in the work to prove I was that way in the past.  I think she was surprised to see my negative statement and was concerned that I had low self-esteem that wasn’t based on fact.

I rambled off some explanation that only made me sound more pathetic and weird, and then I left feeling exposed and awkward.  But I was trying to explain the person I was—not the person I am today.

I believe good writing takes readers into the feelings of a particular moment in time.  When I write about myself, I think back to how I felt when I was going through a particular period.  I try not to censor myself.  I try to be true to who I was at that time.

Maybe I need to write in double perspective.  Perhaps I need to explain right up front that who I was then is now who I am now.  But I feel like writing and reading is a journey, and I think sometimes you have to wallow in the past a bit before explaining away and fixing things, and saying, “I’m alright! I’m alright!  Don’t worry about me.  My story gets better.”

I’m okay with who I was in the past.  I love that shy little middle-schooler and I love that twenty-something who was naïve and nervous and emotional, and I don’t want to change her.  She is the foundation for who I am today.  But she is not who I am today.

The person I am today is not someone who you can get to know in one chapter or one blog post.  I am not someone who you get to know over one semester.  And I am not the same person in the office as I am when I’m at home.  I’m not someone easily identified by the types of books I read, and I hope no one would ever judge me on my indulgent music playlist.  (I think I almost lost a few friends the day I posted on Facebook that I don’t like Radiohead.)

And I hope tomorrow I’m not the same person I am today.  Maybe that’s self-deprecating.  Or maybe it’s just honest.

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Quotes about Place

20 Apr

Some places are so iconic. I think this may be one of them.

 

Every story involves place, whether real, imagined, or seemingly absent.  Place isn’t just a physical location, it’s a feeling, a memory, a metaphor, a symbol.

My writing has always centered around place.  My memoir is a complicated look at what home means.  It’s about how even for people who live in the same house together home can mean different things — can even be different places.  And sometimes, oftentimes, the place you call home changes.  It’s about the physicality of a house, the emotions of a home, the culture of a country.

Meanwhile, the book I’m coauthoring on Jack Kerouac is also about place in its own way.  It’s about exploring, about living, about identity.  It shows that place itself can become a character and plot device.

I’m teaching on place this weekend at the Festival of Faith and Writing, and I think one of the most valuable ways to learn is to read how other writers have talked about place.  Here are some literary quotes about place.  Feel free to share your favorite quotes about place in the comments section.

 

How hard it is to escape from places.  However carefully one goes they hold you – you leave little bits of yourself fluttering on the fences – like rags and shreds of your very life.

~Katherine Mansfield

But I do like churches.  The way it feels inside.  It feels good when you just sit there, like you’re in a forest and everything’s really quiet, expect there’s still this sound you can’t hear.

~Tim O’Brien

A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image.

~Joan Didion

Every perfect traveler always creates the country where he travels.

~Nikos Kazantzakis

Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil.  My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth.

~Nathaniel Hawthorne

This is the most beautiful place on Earth.  There are many such places.  Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary.

~Edward Abbey

The landscape affects the human psyche – the soul, the body and the innermost contemplations – like music. Every time you feel nature deeper you resonate better with her, finding new elements of balance and freedom…

~Nikos Kazantzakis

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Bravo for Writing a Greek-American Memoir

9 Apr

On my lunch break one afternoon I met a man from Greece at a coffee shop.  He had been born in Greece, but currently resides in New York.  He didn’t have the thick Greek accent that would’ve indicated a recent move, and yet like so many Greek people I’ve met, he was still very much hung up on Greece.

After some rather dull conversation he perked up when I told him the memoir I’m writing is about growing up Greek American.  It made me kind of hate him.  I know that’s a terrible, overdramatic reaction, but his reaction gave me the distinct sense that in his eyes my ethnic heritage played a role in my worth.

The Greek American community is incredibly proud of its Greek heritage.  As we should be.  We have a beautiful culture with a rich and fascinating history.  I often feel I don’t live up to Greek ideals.  I know the reason I inwardly cringed when the man expressed interest in my heritage above all else is because I feel like I fall short of the standards of Greek American identity.  I don’t speak the Greek language, I don’t look particularly Greek, and I’m not 100% Greek.  Culturally, I’m not very Greek.

In fact, those who know me well are surprised when I say I’m writing a memoir about growing up Greek American.  Spoiler alert!  The memoir isn’t really about being Greek.  It’s about being American.  It’s about growing up American but going through an experience as an adult that ties me back to Greece.

Life is too complex for anyone to be categorized or valued based on just one aspect of their identity.

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A Chat with My Editor Brings Exciting News

1 Apr

Had a great chat with my former editor last week.  He told me about some great events at Cornelia Street Café;  I told him about a reading by a political prisoner I attended at The New School.

He also let me in on some exciting news::: the ebook edition of A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains—letters by Isabella Bird, introduction by yours truly—is currently one of his bestsellers!

 

 

Obviously, I’m happy on a personal and professional level, but I’m also happy because Isabella Bird’s story is so beautiful and inspiring and it deserves a wider audience.  The short of it is that Bird left the comforts of home in Victorian England to travel by herself through the rough terrain of America’s Rocky Mountains.  As I wrote in my introduction to the book, “Whether you’re interested in nature, the history of the Rocky Mountain region, travel writing, Christianity, or women’s studies, Bird’s simple yet provocative letters will entertain your imagination.”

I’d say that’s worth the $1.99 for the nook book!

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