MasticadoresUSA, thanks to Editor Barbara Harris Leonhard, has published a new nonfiction flash that can be read tangentially to Scrap: Salvaging a Family. There are four end notes so as you read and find the little roman numerals they relate to the notes at the end, thus the title, “End Notes with Photograph.”
Sharing a few more photos I found scanning.
There are two micro stories in Scrap: Salvaging a Family about the May 13, 1980 tornado in Kalamazoo, Michigan (pp 90-92 in paperback). It’s sort of a transition period in the book where I am now an adult, albeit young, whereas what had come before in the book was focused on coming-of-age. It’s also foreshadowed by an earlier scene of being a kid in the basement during a tornado warning. Scrap is comprised of three parts, and the tornado is the end of part I.
I mention how my father bought up storefronts that nobody else seemed to want and tried to fix them up just enough to rent them as he had little money to invest in remodelling. I describe a wooden “canvas” hanging on the wall of my father’s store:
What I think is that he makes something usable that wasn’t. He doesn’t have the money to make them beautiful. But every once in a while, he recognizes something that is. Inside the luggage store, he’s hung a board that a painter used to clean his brushes. He calls it his Jackson Pollack (sic).
Weirdly, even though I remember looking up the correct spelling of the artist’s name, I still misspelled it in the book. For some reason, I want it to be spelled Pollack instead of Pollock. Maybe it’s because for all its interesting details it’s still a fake. (If you read Scrap you might realize why the theme of “fake” resonates with me).
Dad’s “Jackson Pollock” on the wall
Here are a couple of photos of the tornado that day.
Gilmore Brothers department store–the entire back wall of the 5 story building was blown off
ISB Bank building–all the windows were blown out
Beetley Pete has let me take a space on his blog today to share a story a bit related to Scrap: Salvaging a Family. It’s a story my father and uncle told me (together) when they were 85. My uncle and my parents were visiting me at the same time, and they were getting into unearthing memories. This one is about the 1920s, 30s, 40s, and there are photos from the early days.
In my old photo scanning I have found a photo I didn’t know existed. But I had heard about the subject of the picture. In fact, I wrote about it on this blog in 2012 and then re-blogged it in 2013. It’s in a story I wrote about spending time with my maternal grandmother. I’ll repost the story here. At the end I’ll post the photo I found because by the end of the story you will know why I thought it was such a great find.
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When I was little I stayed with my grandmother during the day while my parents were at work. It was just Grandma and me at the house. Grandpa worked down the block, at his Sunoco filling station. Every day at noon, Grandma and I brought his lunch to him. He’d climb up out of the pit where he worked under cars and smile when he saw us with his gray lunch box.
Sometimes I played with the girl up the street and other days I’d pick through the toys and books left behind in their bedrooms upstairs by my mother, Aunt Alice, and Uncle Don. I found a giant printing set, a potholder loom and loops, and a collection of miniature furniture and animals. In my aunt’s room, I read my first chapter book, The Bobbsey Twins. Grandma and I fried donuts and sugared strawberries. We sang Ethel Merman songs like “Anything You Can Do.” I could always manage to sing louder and higher than Grandma.
Any note you can reach
I can go higher.
I can sing anything
Higher than you.
No, you can’t. (High)
Yes, I can. (Higher) No, you can’t. (Higher)
Yes, I CAN! (Highest)
Occasionally, we walked “uptown” to the bank, passing the thrift store, which fascinated me. I thought it was a combination antique store and fine dress shop. Also en route was the home of the Purple People Eaters. My overweight, matronly grandmother sang the song and danced right there on the sidewalk for me. It was years before I realized the building was actually a dry cleaning establishment, painted purple.
Grandma carried the filling station’s bank deposit bag in her big pocketbook, which also held mints and pennies for me. We stopped at the florist to say hi to some relatives and at the bakery for sugar cookies.
With all the fun Grandma orchestrated, I still got bored one time. I was in “that mood,” the one where it seems that all is wrong with the world. Grandma knew how to handle the situation. She put me in an old work shirt of Grandpa’s and handed me a paint brush.
“Come outside,” she said. On the back stoop, she’d placed an old wooden child’s chair on a spread-out newspaper. “Go to town, Luanne,” she said. I worked hard for a long time, painting that chair, which seemed so big
When my mother picked me up after work that day, she laughed. “Mom, you had her do the same thing you made Don do to keep him busy!” Even today when I feel “at odds,” this example keeps me working, moving forward through the doldrums.
Grandma did her chores while I was at her house. She cooked and baked and ran errands, which were all on foot or by bus, as she didn’t drive. I helped her and learned at her elbow. She ironed my parents’ clothes, too, while I played at the kitchen table and sang with her. She didn’t waste our time cleaning too much, but everything else got done—and done well.
She devoted a half hour to herself every day, watching As the World Turns while I “napped” beside her on the couch.
Mostly, though, Grandma doted on me and made sure I could learn and use my imagination. She sat me on her lap and told me stories “from her head.” Her attention wasn’t fragmented by a cell phone or computer. She limited her telephone and TV usage. She was completely there in the moment with me each day.
Can we say the same today for our children and grandchildren and the children we babysit?
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Here is the addendum to the story. A photo showing Uncle Don painting the same chair! This would have been about 1941.
Filed under Family, Family history, Grandparenting, Memoir, Nonfiction, Writing
The Women Before Us is the fourth family history novel by Amy Bess Cohen. Like the three previous books, this one is very loosely based upon Cohen’s ancestors. As a genealogist and family history blogger, Cohen has completed the mountains of research necessary to delve into the lives of these people. But Cohen doesn’t leave it at the usual pedigrees and timelines. Her research leads her to explorations of personality and motivation. She does this in her books and on her blog.
This time, Cohen focuses on the lives of the women of three generations of Jewish women and how their lives are determined by who they marry. This can lead to happiness or it can lead to misery. The book is shaped by the experience of 18-year-old Edna Schwartz who travels from her home in Santa Fe to Philadelphia to visit her aunt in 1922. Against her mother’s hopes, Edna meets her future husband so far from home.
Within Edna’s story we learn the stories of her mother Harriet, Harriet’s German mother Hava, both who left their mothers behind to move with their husbands. We also learn the story of Edna’s (future) mother-in-law Mae who experienced the same displacement. As readers, we witness what these women learn from leaving behind their support systems.
Throughout the book, as suspense builds, there is subtle but consistent foreshadowing that perhaps Edna’s marriage will not be as successful as those of the women who came before her. There is a Jewish tradition to bestow the name of a deceased ancestor on a new baby. Edna and her husband break that tradition, and it seems another clue that things will go wrong. Is it the new age? The mores of a brash young country versus their religion training? That Edna and James are too reckless? That James is spoiled? Ultimately, the true damage to Edna’s marriage is something out of anyone’s control.
The brains of this book is the way it demonstrates how dependent women were on their marriages. These women were not Orthodox Jews, but like all women of their time, they had little chance of a life outside of marriage. And who they married dictated whether their lives would be hard or less so, happy, or even unsafe. The heart of this book is Edna’s mother-in-law Mae. I finished the book, hoping that in the fictional future of the story, one of Edna’s children will name their child after Mae, a strong, kind, maternal, industrious, intelligent woman who does what she must do for her family.
I finished the last page at night and fell asleep soon after. All night I dreamed about the book, the characters inhabiting every dream I had. Edna, Mae, James, Harriet, and the others. It’s hard to believe that these are not Cohen’s actual relatives, but these fictional people were touched with the magic of Cohen’s sympathetic understanding of her own grandmothers and great-grandmothers.
Amy Bess Cohen’s other books:
Filed under #amreading, Book Review, Family, Family history, History, Novel
Sorry for shouting! I’m just excited. Here’s the link:
If you haven’t read Scrap: Salvaging a Family I hope you will. And if you have, I hope you like it and will share with others who might like it or find it helpful, especially with generational trauma, family dysfunction and abuse, or writing outside the boundaries of genre.
If you’ve written a review for Scrap and are on BookBub, the book will show up there soon–it’s pending approval. I’d appreciate it if you could copy your review over there!
Years ago I was writing posts inspired by the Dawn Raffel book The Secret Life of Objects. My magical music box, one of the objects, has shown up in Scrap. I still own it, too! Actually I wrote about it twice on this blog. The first time was to introduce the music box. At that time I didn’t know what music it plays. The second time was after I discovered the song it plays: La Paloma.
You know what I just realized? I’ve never let Hudson hear or even see the music box. He spent the night last weekend and then was here all day yesterday because school was closed. He’s almost 2.5. Can you believe it?!
I’ll have to share the music box with him. He loves music, and I want him to experience it as I did.
Yesterday we went to storytime at the library (lots of exercise for Grandma as story is more like “story” called movement), got lunch with chocolate milk, swam (with Grandpa), played with Mickey Mouse playdough (his favorite character is not the usual for kids today–it’s Minnie Mouse!), played the piano, and painted. Of course painted. He insisted and kept bringing it up. He paints with acrylics on canvas so it’s quite a mess. But another beautiful painting was added to his portfolio.
Like so many, I feel a real affinity for the poetry of Sylvia Plath. She’s my favorite poet as Shirley Jackson is my favorite prose writer and Remedios Varo is my favorite artist.
For my MFA explication I wrote about the Plath poem “Fever 103.” I still love that poem which so well captures that feeling of having a high fever without really talking about fever or being ill.
For my PhD dissertation, each chapter was focused on one female poet and one type of identity. For my Plath chapter I wrote about performing gender.
Later, when I began to write more poetry, I could feel the influence of Plath’s poetry on me.
Most inspirational for me was how candid and direct her poetry sounds. And under the surface, I suppose, was her search for who her father was and how he connected to her. These features really guided me in writing Scrap: Salvaging a Family. But they also helped in creating this collage for Raw Lit, Issue 9. The Making of a Daddy which relies upon the imagery from two poems Plath wrote about her father: “Daddy” and “The Colossus.”
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“Spare, precise, and quietly devastating, this is the kind of memoir that stays in the body long after the reading is done.”
That’s what the editorial review at The Book Review calls my memoir.
The Book Revue – 5 Star Review
Here’s another favorite paragraph:
“Her prose has the economy of a poet who knows exactly which word is doing the work and which ones can be cut. She has a remarkable ability to locate enormous emotion inside small, specific objects and moments, a trait that is genuinely rare and that gives the book its distinctive texture.”
Anthony Avina has published a guest post on his blog. I wrote about the time period of my memoir Scrap: Salvaging a Family and included anecdotes and photographs (antique or nearly so) not found in the book. Fedora stand explanation is found in the guest post!
I hope you enjoy reading about some of what didn’t make it into the book itself.
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Perry’s ashes were hand delivered to us by the cremation company. I cleared off a shelf to store them, his photo, and the picture book I used to read him every day when he was in the shelter.
Lily now lives alone on the kitchen side of the house with Sloopy Anne on the bedroom side. I wonder if Lily now regrets being so mean to Sloops because she’s suffering from loneliness and grief. I had to take her to the vet yesterday (yes, she has an urgent care open on Sundays) and get her fluids and Gabapentin because she wasn’t eating or pooping. She’s doing a little better with much TLC from the Gardener and me.
It’s my turn to sleep on the couch with her tonight because last night was the Gardener’s turn.
A big thank you to Merril D. Smith for her heartfelt review of my memoir Scrap:Salvaging a Family.
I am excited to share my review of Joy Neal Kidney’s new book, The Immigrant and the Outlaw: A Collection of Stories from America’s Heartland.
For years, Joy Neal Kidney carried a story she felt called to tell—a World War II family history marked by love, courage, and devastating loss. In the process of writing that story, she discovered something more: a gift for telling true American stories.
Beginning her freelance career in her forties, Joy went on to publish dozens of narratives in newspapers, magazines, and through the popular podcast Our American Stories. What started as a single story became a calling—to preserve the voices, memories, and moments that might otherwise be lost to time.
The Immigrant and the Outlaw gathers some of her most compelling work—stories rooted in Iowa soil yet echoing far beyond it. These are tales of grit and heritage, of war and family, of sacrifice and resilience. Stories of ordinary people whose lives reveal the quiet heroism woven through everyday American life.
Both deeply personal and richly historical, this collection offers a window into the heartland—and into the life of a writer who learned, story by story, how to tell what matters most.
These are stories worth remembering.
Available from Amazon.com in paperback, hardback, and ebook. If you’d like an autographed paperback copy of any of these book, Beaverdale Books (515-279-5400) will ship them.
I just finished reading Joy Neal Kidney’s new book The Immigrant and the Outlaw: A Collection of Stories from America’s Heartland and can’t wait to tell you about it. What a delightful compilation of nonfiction stories Joy has written over time for newspaper and radio readers and audiences.
These stories evoke all the nostalgia of growing up in the heart of America in the 20th century, researching and appreciating one’s roots and investing in new generations of family and newcomers alike, such as the Bosnian immigrants Joy befriended with all her love and much of that limited resource, her time. Her story about the Bosnian child who insisted on creating the family’s first Thanksgiving dinner in fifth grade brought tears to my eyes.
Joy’s style is personal, direct, and often very lyrical. The reader really gets a feel for the amazing woman telling her stories. She is so observant and in tune with the natural world but always remembers her obligations to the humans around her.
I have so many favorite stories that it’s hard to narrow down what to highlight. “Thunderstorms and Quiet, Spring Rains” is a beautiful meditation on rain, which Joy loves. Even if you prefer sunny days, you will fall in love with rain by reading Joy’s piece. By reading her story about lilacs, I could smell them near me although I live far from any lilac bushes. This made me so nostalgic for the lilacs at my old house in Michigan and, even farther back, for the ancient shrubs behind my great-grandfather’s farmhouse
Joy wrote about discovering her great-grandmother’s unfinished wonky quilt. She dismantled it and reassembled the quilt in homage to her ancestor. This is a metaphor for Joy’s stories. She takes all the bits and pieces of family stories, witnessed events, and research and shapes them into attractive literature that warms the reader. After you read The Immigrant and the Outlaw: A Collection of Stories from America’s Heartland, you will want to gift copies to friends and family. Just wait and see.
Filed under #amreading, Book Review, Creative Nonfiction, Essay, Family, Family history, History
