Memory Writers Network

by Jerry Waxler

(This blog is also available as an audio file. See the Podcast player control at the end of this post.)

When two countries go to war, their “us” versus “them” mentality make their differences seem irreconcilable. So when I saw Firoozeh Dumas’ memoir, “Funny in Farsi, Growing up Iranian in America” it appealed to me instantly. I wanted to laugh at the differences instead of fight over them. But how can you laugh about something so serious as the differences between Americans and Iranians?

I heard a talk about humor at a meeting of the National Speakers Association in Philadelphia. After an introduction that repeatedly cracked up the audience, Ron Culberson explained that humor happens when your mind sets you up to expect one thing, and then the punch line suddenly shifts the ground you thought you were standing on. Immigrant humor is based on the misunderstandings between people of different cultures.

Firoozeh came to the United States from Iran when she was seven, with a father who believed America was the promised land, a land of infinite wisdom, compassion, and possibilities. That’s a familiar theme for me. Three of my four grandparents moved across the globe from Russia to the melting pot of America. In the early days of their immigration, there was enormous suspicion against them. People heard their Jewish names, their foreign accents, and tried to keep them apart. But the melting pot started to blur the differences especially among the children, and by the second or third generation, the accents were gone, the suspicion eased, and people started to relate to each other as people. The self-effacing humor of Jewish immigrants was an important tool as they struggled to become part of their new home, and helped create a sense of bonding and strength.

So I was prepared to appreciate Firoozeh’s humor. For example, when Firoozeh was a little girl, visiting Disneyland with her family, she became preoccupied by a bright red telephone and when she looked up, her family had moved on. At the lost-and-found for children there was another child who didn’t speak English. The caretaker begged Firoozeh to speak to the little boy. When Firoozeh spoke to him in Farsi, which the boy didn’t understand, he cried even harder. It was comical to think that the American woman assumed that two foreign children would understand each other’s language.

On Firoozeh’s first day in second grade, her mother went along. The teacher invited them both to the front of the class and then gestured for Firoozeh’s mother to point out their country of origin on the world map. Firoozeh’s mom stood there smiling politely but not moving. The teacher assumed any woman would naturally know where her own country was on the map. She was wrong. What she expected did not match reality.

When I watch a movie or read a book, situations of identity confusion embarrass me so badly, I want to jump up and pace. I was feeling this jumpiness when I read Firoozeh’s memoir, and I wanted to understand how this dramatic tension works. So I pondered other dramatic situations in which identity confusion makes me crazy, and I realized that identity confusion plays a central role throughout Shakespeare’s plays. So I took a closer look at Shakespeare’s comedy “As you like it,” in which Rosalind, was forced into exile, and dressed up as a boy. In this disguise she meets Orlando who was madly in love with her. Taken in by her disguise, he enters into a second relationship with her, now as a friend and confidante. The resulting confusion has been driving audiences crazy for centuries.

Confusion about identity is especially relevant in the great melting pot of modernity, when people cross boundaries, exiled from their own culture and try to enter another. We wonder about each other, “How am I supposed to speak or act towards this person? What parts are the same? What parts are different?” The concern about a person’s identity creates tension, and then when the identity is exposed, we breathe a sigh of relief. “Ah, now I understand.”

While Firoozeh’s neighbors in the United States weren’t sure how to relate to her, I had no such confusion. She took me into her confidence and I saw for myself who she was, thanks to her superb command of the English language, and her clever, ironic insights. “She’s one of us.” I thought. And even better, as a recent entrant into the melting pot, she could share her observations about contrasts between two cultures more clearly than someone limited to seeing things only from within one.

At the end of the play “As You Like It,” just as at the end of all of his comedies, Shakespeare resolves the confusion by marrying the characters. I suppose he figured once they were living and sleeping together, all the masks would be removed. Firoozeh married too, but in her case, the wedding was yet another opportunity for misunderstanding. Her parents wanted the celebration to be the same as in Iran, where animal sacrifice is considered essential. The caterers, who were not experts in the nuances of this ritual, decided to carve the animal first. The carcass they wheeled out, stripped of its meat, was appropriate neither for an Iranian or an American celebration. It switched from being a symbol of joy, to a symbol of foreigners trying to hang on to their old identity in a new land.

The ending of Firoozeh’s memoir differs from a Shakespearean comedy in another way. Her husband is French, so even after they married they can never return together to a single homeland. Instead, they must continue to seek the universal qualities of love and laughter in each other, and in their adopted neighbors or else forever remain foreigners. And that is precisely what provides the lift at the end of Firoozeh’s drama of confusion and mixing. Amidst the differences of people, she offers us this opportunity too, to understand the things we share.

Writing Prompt: List the decades of your life. For each period, list examples of cultural mixing. For example, what neighbor, lover, teacher, or co-worker entered your life from another culture? How did you behave towards that person? Curious? Suspicious? Confused?

Writing Prompt: List vacations or journeys to other countries, regions or neighborhoods where others might have looked at you as a foreigner. What is it about you that people might have thought was different from them? (Color, features, accent, religion.) How did you reach out? What were some of the confusions? What humor or love relieved the tension? What did you learn? What surprised you? What still makes you wonder?

Visit Firoozeh Dumas’ home page.

Funny in Farsi, Growing up Iranian in America

Note: For more information about Ron Culberson, the speaker who got me thinking about humor, see his website. www.funsulting.com

Note: I listened to the audio version of the book, read by Firoozeh herself, so I was treated by her lovely voice and slight accent, along with the authentic pronunciation of the few names and words she mentions in Farsi. This book is available from www.audible.com.

Note:
Here are a few other memoirs in which the mixing of cultures plays a central role. Click the links to read my essay.

The Invisible Wall by Harry Bernstein
Pursuit of Happyness (the movie) by Chris Gardner
Dreams of my father by Barack Obama

Podcast version click the player control below:

 

 Iranian in America Makes Love and Laughter: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (232)

Naomi Gal’s novel, Daphne’s Seasons, is about an Israeli woman who loses her husband in a suicide bomb attack. She moves to rural Pennsylvania where grief plays out against the protagonist’s first experience of four seasons. Daphne’s Seasons is Gal’s 16th book, and the 5th novel. This is the first one available in English. Gal is a Creative Writing professor at Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA.

JW: Could you tell me about how your life experience as an Israeli informed your novel, Daphne’s Seasons?

NG: The first part of the book is immersed in pain. Having lived most of my life in Israel, I know about pain. I have seen time and again parents bury their children who paid with their lives for the ongoing war. Since Israel is a small country, there is one - sometimes zero - degrees of separation. So pain was always close and I could express it in my novel.

JW: Give me an example of a scene in the book that reflected your own life.

NG: My favorite chapter in the book really happened to me. Very much like Daphne, I was sipping my morning espresso at my window seat gazing at the green lush meadow, counting my blessings. Then, at leisure I went up to my computer and the news was screaming at me from the screen: there was a suicide bombing in Jerusalem and all the beauty around me disappeared, I was back on the traumatic scene of death, carnage, destruction, agony and pain. In the novel, Daphne lost her husband in a pretty much similar kind of blast, and she, like me, realizes that no matter how far away you run, and how glorious nature is, you cannot escape the horror of terror.

JW: How did it feel to write about that pain?

NG: When I started writing Daphne’s Seasons (my own title for it was Changing Seasons) my life was better than Daphne’s. But when she was recuperating, my life was falling apart so I went back to review the parts of my manuscript that described pain, and added, and added. It was so strange that it was almost funny, the way life was imitating fiction.

JW: Did this writing about Daphne help you deal with the pain of your memories?

NG: I did feel catharsis. Writing is an amazing way to let go of pent up feelings and turn suffering into a story. Weaving my threads of agony freed me in a way only art can.

JW: How does your real-life move to Pennsylvania enter into the experience of your fictional character?

NG: She moves to rural PA and slowly starts a process of healing with the generous help of lush mother nature. Daphne, very much like me, is a daughter of the desert. Israel is an arid country and except summer there aren’t really other seasons. So I could easily write about the solace Mother Nature bestows on Daphne.

JW: That’s funny. I grew up in Pennsylvania and I know a lot of people who want to move away get away from the seasons. Your perspective might help them come to peace with being here.

NG: Yes, seasons were an amazing revelation for me. Their healing power was good to me as it is to Daphne. I am still awed by the lush flowers of spring, by the unpredictability of summer, by the changing colors of fall leaves and by the serenity of snow in winter. Nature allows you to feel deeply the change of seasons in your own life cycle, it gives one hope since there is a constant renewal and change.

JW: What else can you share about how you have used your life experience in your fiction writing?
NG: All my fiction is based on memory one way or another. I am thinking back to all my novels, even the unpublished ones I wrote in my teens and twenties. It is always about me, even when it looks different. Daphne, as Nora, the protagonist of Soap Opera, my first novel, written in Hebrew. These were “un-liberated” women who go through transformation thanks to dramatic events in their lives. I guess my life was always a quest for freedom mainly as a woman. Fiction allowed me more dramatic changes, my life was more of an evolution than a revolution. Daphne’s husband has to die tragically so that she can grow out of the shadow he cast over her, and the same goes for Nora, in Soap Opera, who is confined to a hospital bed after a car accident and can at long last look at her life from the outside. I guess fiction is a condensed form of memoir, a more dramatic one. You can skip lots of mundane details.

JW: So if someone was wondering if it’s okay to weave their life experience in their fiction writing, what would you tell them?

NG: When Gustav Flaubert, who was very different from his protagonist Madam Bovary was asked how could he write with so much credibility and accuracy about a woman so different from him in every respect he allegedly said: “Madam Bovary is me.” So yes, I believe we always write about ourselves, even when our characters seem different. We can only rely on our experiences and system of beliefs no matter how and what we write. Everything we write is a memoir to some extent. At times a wishful one. All my protagonists have daughters. I have sons but always wanted a daughter. Daphne, as well as Dea, the heroine of my novel Lovend are accomplished pianists. I love music but I can’t play.

Virginia Woolf in “Room of one’s Own” cites a passage from the novel “Jane Eyre.” Woolf complains that Charlotte Bronte is talking for herself and not for her character, but I really can’t see the difference.

JW: Have you thought about writing a memoir?

NG: I prefer fiction to memoir because fiction allows me to better hide. Many years ago I had a personal column (this was before internet and blogs) and every week I would write about personal matters, and then all of a sudden I couldn’t do it any more. I needed privacy, so I started hiding behind characters in novels. That way I could improve, change and give free rein to my imagination. I love inventing. I can embellish and ameliorate reality.

JW: As a writer and a writing teacher, what other advice would you like to pass along to people who are thinking about writing their memoir?

NG: Everyone has a story is what I say when I teach creative writing and every story is worth writing and reading. I wish my parents, my grandparents and my great great grandparents would have written their memoir, but they didn’t and they are all dead and there is no one to ask the many questions I would love to ask. So write, write, write. Don’t discriminate. Just write as much as you can, editing will come later. Go back into your past and start with memories that are vivid, you will find out that as you write less vivid memories will surface and find their way to the paper (or computer). There are techniques to overcome your fear of writing or what I call your ISJ (Interior Supreme Judge) who sits there criticizing and prevents you from writing. Learn to tame her (or him) and one of the ways to trick your ISJ is with automated writing, early in the morning, before ISJ wakes up or late at night when she is tired. Write even if you don’t like what you are writing. Later you will be able to discern the good from the bad. For now, just write. You can record your voice if you are computer shy, but writing your memoir is a great opportunity to befriend this practical contraption.

I am reading the Invisible Wall by Harry Bernstein. The reason I heard about this book and decided to read it was because of the buzz that it generated when Bernstein, now 96 years old, wrote this, his first published book when he was 93. That’s a story in itself, and inspiring to anyone who thinks it’s too late. That gives me 36 more years of productive writing ahead of me!! If I get started now, I still have the full span of a career ahead of me. And by the way, Bernstein has recently sold his second book.

So what can I share about memoirs by reading this book? First of all, I ask what makes this memoir tick? It combines two types of memoir: a coming of age story –Harry is just starting school, around 6 years old, and he shares his observations from that tiny perspective as he tries to make sense of the world. And it’s an immigration story. Both of his parents came from the old country, Poland, and moved to England. They are living on a block, an enclave, a sort of ghetto with other Polish Jews on one side of the street. And on the other side of the street are non-Jews. The Invisible Wall of the title is the wall of animosity and suspicion that runs down the center of the street and separates Jew from non-Jew.

When I read the synopsis, about growing up in England in the beginning of the century, and in particular growing up in the cultural tension of this street, I wanted to read more. For some reason which I find fascinating, even though my own grandparents came from Russia, I emotionally feel connected to England as the mother country. I guess it’s all that English literature, King Arthur, Shakespeare, and Charles Dickens. (Did those stories help me define my roots, more even than my own grandparents?) So I’m drawn to read this story to learn more about another generation of Jews being indoctrinated in the culture of the mother country.

Within the book, I find an interesting surprise. The author shows me both sides of the wall. Of course I see the fear of the children, as they walk to school terrified that they will be beat up by anti-semitic bullies. That’s the side of the wall one expects in a book that contains anti-semitism. But inside the home, I get to see the other side. Like Maria in West Side Story, when a girl from the Jewish side is drawn to a boy on the non-Jewish side, Bernstein shows us his mother’s graphic gut-wrenching fear.

I feel the emotions of the girls, reaching out to boys in the dominant culture with love. And the loathing from the parents, trying to maintain their old culture. It’s a beautiful melting pot story. Like the parents in West Side Story who beg their daughter to “stick with your own kind” Bernstein’s people desperately try to keep the children on the “right” side of the invisible wall. And there are other powerful emotions I identify with in this story. I am terrified and disgusted when I hear Harry’s father come into the house, abusive and drunk. I am anxious and hopeful when his mother figures out a way to make some money on her own.

So here is the magic of how the memoir draws in a reader. I see the world from the protagonist’s eyes. I want him to survive. I want his pain to be resolved. And he lets me get inside these emotions by showing them openly. It’s hard to write so boldly about one’s own raw emotions. I know it how hard it is for me. I suspect that Bernstein’s many decades gave him enough distance from the intensity, so he was able to see the emotions more clearly. So there’s another lesson I can take away from reading this book. Not only do I still have time. But as I grow older, my perspective of my life grows more interesting and deeper.

I was wrong. You can wait before writing your memoir. Author Harry Bernstein started his first memoir when he was 93, and it’s just coming out now that he’s 96. This is great news for anyone who thinks it’s too late, or they are too lonely or tired. There’s plenty of time.

In fact, there are several benefits of writing your memoir later in life:

• The world is changing so fast that your memories from a few decades ago seem like you’re telling about a foreign land. This adds a flavor of distinction to your memories, without you needing to do anything fantastic.

• Long term memory is the most persistent. As we age, our short term memory becomes more difficult but longer term memory persists. You can find all sorts of memories lurking in there once you start looking, at any age.

• Because you’ve been alive lots of years, you can see the way events unfold across decades. This ability to see the long view adds a sense of wisdom and continuity to your perspective that younger people can only get from books - such as the one you write.

• You have time.

Bernstein already has a contract for his second book. And that’s the reason his story popped into my mind. I was sitting at my desk thinking how odd it feels not to be working towards a book deadline. I just sent my book “Learn to write your memoir in four weeks” and am thinking about which one of my next projects to focus on. I thought, “Writing books is addictive” and then I remembered this quote from the article about Harry Bernstein.

“Now that he’s got the hang of book writing, Bernstein says he could probably write a few more and is considering writing about his marriage. His second book, “The Dream,” is almost finished and centers on the family’s move to the United States; Ballantine has already signed on as the American publisher.”

I’m also finding, once you get the hang of it, immersing yourself in writing a book is as addictive as immersing yourself in reading one.

The title is “Invisible Wall” about growing up in England a long time ago. I can’t say too much about it yet, because I just ordered it. But when I read it, I’ll share my observations and teaching points in this blog, and on my website, www.jerrywaxler.com.