Posts Tagged ‘memoir’

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Paying back the tragedy of mistaken identification, a memoir of injustice and redemption

Friday, June 26th, 2009

by Jerry Waxler

The memoir “Picking Cotton” begins with the home invasion and rape of Jennifer Thompson a college student in a small southern town. Society cried out for justice, and in response, Ronald Cotton was convicted to a life sentence. Eleven years later, he was fully exonerated, having been imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. This memoir tells both their stories, about their journey through that dark night, and the years that followed, explaining what went wrong, and how they picked up the pieces.

When the search began for the monster who had assaulted Jennifer Thompson, Ronald Cotton seemed to fit the part. This young black man had already been in trouble with the law and he had been dating a white girl, two facts that attracted police. He told them there had been a mistake, because he was out with friends that night. Unfortunately, he realized too late that the outing had been on a different night. At the time of the rape, he was actually home asleep on the sofa, a fact sworn to by members of his family. The all-white jury weighed their testimony against Jennifer Thompson’s positive identification. “That’s him,” she said under oath, and so Cotton went to jail.

After the trial, no longer worried about her attacker being on the loose, Jennifer had to face the disruption of her safety and normalcy. Eventually she reclaimed her life, married and started a family. Cotton meanwhile was trying to avoid despair. Early in his incarceration, he learned that another black man had privately bragged about committing the rape. Yet, a botched appeal dismissed this jailhouse confession.

Finally, a sympathetic defense team took up the case. Despite disturbing discrepancies in his trial, the new lawyers could not make a dent in Cotton’s life sentence. It was only after DNA testing that police interrogated the real rapist who officially confessed, including details he could only have known if he had been present at the crime. After 11 years in prison, Cotton was released.

In typical stories of crime and punishment, a diligent detective gradually pries the mask off the villain, and exposes hidden evil. In “Picking Cotton” investigators pried off the demon’s mask to reveal an innocent man.

Memoir as a tool for Redemption

Having seen Ronald Cotton as her attacker for so long, it was difficult for Jennifer Thompson-Cannino to revise her mental image of him. And yet, she needed to do something. Haunted by the awful fact that her identification had ruined years of his life, she finally reached out to apologize. When she discovered he had forgiven her, she wanted to do more. Jennifer became actively involved in trying to raise awareness that a victim’s identification should not be considered infallible.

Out of the rubble of that destructive night, a friendship developed that could hopefully save lives. The two appear together on talk shows, trying to put a human face on the tragedy of wrongful imprisonment, especially when based solely on a single person’s memory. Their work has contributed to revising guidelines for witness identification, hopefully reducing the psychological influence that can be exerted by police to steer the victim towards their preferred perpetrator.

Stylistic and Emotional Strengths of Picking Cotton

The book alternates between two points of view. For example, in one section we watch the police lineup from Jennifer’s eyes, and later we see that lineup through Ronald’s eyes. Their journey starts out in this treacherous, bleak territory – the rape, the trial, life inside a prison. Then, as they try to make the most of their situations, their paths lead them back towards a lighter place. Their first encounter was based on fear, terror, and error, while their second was based on love and forgiveness, and the effort to transform a wrong into a right.

Thinking at the moral edges

The story of “Picking Cotton” raises many issues. It engages the reader in race relations, justice, and injustice. It involves gender politics, violence, and the power of men over women. It reveals problems with identification, one of the foundations of our legal system. And it digs deep into the challenge of “redemption,” that effort to turn back the clock and make up for what happened in the past.

When I was younger I thought I could discover the underlying truth that governs the world. But truth seems unable to describe the entire human condition. Take the case Alice Sebold wrote about in her memoir “Lucky.” Her emotional survival would have been desperately compromised if her attacker’s word had been accepted over her own. For more about that memoir, see my essay here

In every memoir, I find an author’s perspective that extends and stretches my understanding farther and farther. From their point of view, my own logic does not necessarily apply. Out there, in the world of real people, I no longer discover answers. Instead, I find only stories.

Writing Prompt: Thinking and Writing About Your own Redemption

After a wrong has been committed, how much time and energy do we put into trying to make amends? While we can’t turn the clock back, can we restore some of the decency and dignity of our lives? The Twelve Step Programs suggest that it is worthwhile in many cases to not only face mistakes but try to make them right. The Ninth Step says, “We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.” If there are areas in your memoir that you feel might have caused pain to others, consider the Twelve Step suggestions. Are there ways you could help? Have you used the situation to grow? What have you learned? Could your story help someone else avoid a similar situation?

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Amazon page: “Picking Cotton Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption,” by Jennifer Thompson-Cannino, Ronald Cotton, and Erin Torneo”

For the Picking Cotton’s home page, including appearances by the authors click here.

For the site that campaigns against wrongful imprisonment, see the Innocence Project.

 
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Celebrity Lessons for Writers

Thursday, June 11th, 2009

by Jerry Waxler

I picture Steve Martin in dozens of situations. I’ve seen him tell jokes on talk shows, woo a woman in the movie “Roxanne,” and anxiously fuss over his daughter in “Father of the Bride.” The more I think about Steve Martin, the more I remember him. It feels like we have been hanging out together for years. So when I heard about his memoir, “Born Standing Up,” I should have jumped for joy. But instead, my impulse was to run away. One reason for this aversion is that I prefer the lives of “ordinary” people. Another reason is that I’ve been burned.

Years ago I purchased a memoir by Ruth Gordon, an actress whose performances enchanted me in movies like “Harold and Maude.” I looked forward to reading more about her, but the prose was so boring, the situations so leaden, I actually returned the book for a refund. From that experience I formed the prejudice that celebrity memoirs are on the shelf because the author is famous, not because the book is good.

My conclusion was based on a sample size of one, hardly an impressive scientific test. Furthermore, famous people exert enormous power in our culture, and unless I break down and read their memoirs, I’m going to remain ignorant about them. So when an online friend suggested that Steve Martin’s “Born Standing Up” was authentic and introspective I decided to give it a try. It turned out to be an excellent book about a boy’s climb from ordinary childhood to international fame.

Desire, Effort, Sacrifice

When Martin was a child, he looked at the stage and knew he wanted to be on it. At first he thought he could achieve success by performing magic acts. Later he incorporated comedy into his routine and then banjo playing. Basically, he didn’t care what he did, as long as he performed. Of course, reaching the stage was only the beginning. To be invited back, he had to learn how to please audiences. It was a long journey.

Writing Prompt

Consider your own life achievements. What sacrifices and hardships did you make in order to achieve some greatly desired goals?

Writers want to reach the public, too

Most writers think they will be finished when they type the last word. They seldom anticipate the public leg of their journey. And yet, to succeed we must reach out to readers. Many memoir writers are interviewed on radio, speak at meetings, and greet people at book signings. People want to learn more about us. So we writers need to face audiences gladly, learn to please them, and damp down our sensitivity to the weird mix of scrutiny, criticism, and indifference.

Hardly any of us will become famous in the way Steve Martin is, and yet his memoir provides insight into our situation. Like so many successful artists and performers, Steve Martin claims his fame had more to do with persistence than talent. He relentlessly pursued public attention, and refused to accept defeat. Week after week, he found an open microphone or a low paying gig, stood in front of the crowd, failed miserably, tried to learn from his experience, and did it again.

Famous writers often tell similar stories. Stephen King persisted despite many rejections, and I’m beginning to believe that willingness to reach for the public is indeed the entry fee. Martin sought fame as if his life depended on it. It makes a good story. His desire established the momentum. We accompany him through those years as he tried to fulfill that desire despite seemingly impossible odds.

As writers, we need to develop this dramatic tension in the stories we write. And to succeed, we also need to follow the dramatic tension in real life. By following our desire, we make choices and take chances that lead us further towards our dream of communicating with readers.

Writing prompt

What tenacious drive did you follow? Making babies.. your career.. your art or sport? Write a scene of rejection or failure, and show how you picked up and kept going.

Even spectacular success becomes just another chapter in a long life

His fame grew so large he was performing in large halls where he was barely visible from the back. And yet, surprisingly, even during this period of exploding fame, he continued to experience terrible anxiety attacks, private hells he can’t really describe. He was intensely lonely and scared much of the time.

Then Martin walked away from comedy and shifted to movie making. He says he never looked back. He even claims he forgot about those years when he was trying so hard to earn a living by making people laugh. Considering how much psychological pain he suffered during this period, it makes sense that he would forget it when he moved on to the next chapter in his life. Later, when he tried to write about it, this period came into focus and took its rightful place in the whole journey of being Steve Martin.

This is an excellent example of the way life really works. When we move on to a new challenge, a new city or relationship or career, we often have trouble remembering the old one. We don’t even know we’ve forgotten. The years are simply gone. By writing we can re-integrate those lost parts, making ourselves more whole.

Did it for you dad

Martin’s story includes a tragic portrayal of his relationship to his father. He could never please his dad, and so he kept wondering what he could do to impress the old man. When his dad was close to death, Martin reached out to him and said, “I did it for you, dad.” Then turning to the reader he says, “I should have said, ‘I did it because of you.’” In other words, he became a successful comedian in order to break past his dad’s relentless disapproval.

By sharing this intimate moment, Martin proves the point that celebrities are people. The work of a memoir is to offer that humanity to readers. And so, I’m glad I read this book about a celebrity, who was also a real human being, who wanted the same things I want, and who was later willing to take the time to go back, organize those experiences and share them with me in his memoir.

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Please comment about your best or worst celebrity memoir, or your experience with tenacity.

Note
Another memoir I’m reading called “Enter Talking” by Joan Rivers also highlights the shocking tenacity needed to go from obscurity to fame. She also endured years of hardship and rejection.

 
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Turn economic hardships into stories of strength

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

by Jerry Waxler

Jutting out of the landscape of our lives are those times when we struggled to provide for ourselves and our family. Whether we were transitioning to a new career or scrambling to recover from a layoff or other setback, we stumbled through uneven and unfamiliar territory. Years later, we take pride in our effective decisions and the cunning with which we applied old skills and learned new ones. We overcame discouragement and other obstacles and survived. Now as we tell the story of those triumphs, we develop our role as the hero at the center of our own life.

But what about today’s challenges? In the last few years, millions of us lost savings and jobs, forcing us into economic changes we didn’t anticipate. In some distant future, when we write the memoir of these times, we will again discover the resilience, strengths, and the excitement of the story. But for now, it’s hard to feel like a hero, constrained as we are by the narrower scope of just getting through the day.

One way to improve your perspective is to develop as quickly as possible the story of these hard times. Stories let you grasp the whole situation, letting strength dominate worry. Through stories you can find courage, poise, and make better sense of your choices. And stories have one more benefit. They let you share your experiences, providing an opportunity for mutual support. I have been following two organizations who have taken a keen interest in turning stories of economic survival into the shared experience of a community.

One group, called Civic Ventures, was founded by Marc Freedman, author of the book “Encore: Finding Work that Matters in the Second Half of Life by Marc Freedman.” Freedman’s organization, Civic Ventures now also publishes the Encore Careers website to provide a forum for people going through the transition to a new career. The site is loaded with stories of people who have reinvented themselves, turning loss and frustration into a catalyst for renewal.

The other organization that is encouraging people to tell their stories is First Person Arts, . Their programs help people share the artistry of life experience through paintings, video, and written works. First Person Arts even conducts “story slams” in Philadelphia, adding live performance to the teller’s repertoire.

Because of the historic changes in the economy in the last year, First Person Arts has launched a national story writing contest, to solicit stories of how individuals are coping and adapting and reacting to hardship. Inspired by the explosion of storytelling in the Great Depression, the First Person Arts contest encourages people to find their stories and share them. For more about the contest, click here.

To organize your story, consider the universal framework that converts life experience into a narrative form that other people will relate to. In the beginning there is a protagonist who wants something – in this case economic survival, with a dash of dignity and satisfaction. On the road towards that goal, you push through or outsmart the obstacles. You gather allies and skills, and overcame discouragement. By the end, you achieve some goal. To help you get the ball rolling, I’ve listed a few questions. Try answering them as if you are giving an interview. (If you’d like, post them here, or on other storytelling sites.)

“What was your goal?”

Look for a mix of motivations that drove you forward. Be specific (”I want my old job back”) or general, (”I want to find satisfaction”). In fact, this may be the most important part of the exercise. By trying to explain what creates the dramatic tension in your story, you will begin to see it more clearly yourself.

“What were the main obstacles that blocked you from achieving that goal?”

The external ones will be relatively obvious, like money, education, or age. But like any good story, there is also an inner dimension. What did you fear? What options were you reluctant to face? Did you impulsively lunge forward, meaning your biggest obstacle was lack of clear thinking? Turn storytelling into a mirror. As you explain your story to others, you’ll understand more about yourself.

“What tools, allies, and choices helped you overcome these obstacles?”

In any good story, the thrill is seeing the protagonist overcome the enemies, and reach the end of the maze. How did you do it? What mentors gave you  advice? What learning did you acquire? Cleverness is a fun story element. What choice felt especially cunning?

“What milestones did you pass?”

Describe the important milestones to let the reader see how things moved from beginning to end.

“When did you know you ‘arrived’?”

The satisfaction of reading the story comes from achieving or releasing the dramatic tension you established at the beginning.

“What would tell others who want to make this journey?”

A good story often has a second payoff. After the external goal is achieved (you got the job), you can offer the reader the additional reward of offering what you learned or how you grew.

It will take additional effort and skill to polish your interview and turn it into something fun to read. But it’s worth it. While you challenge yourself to achieve the goal, you’ll also be gaining some lovely benefits, not the least of which is to increase your ability to tell a story. Learning this knack of telling your story could be the best investment you can make, because once you own the skill, it will pay dividends for the rest of your life.

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Posted in Associations, Boomers, Lifelong Learning, Retire, Storytelling | No Comments »

One man’s battle with sexuality changed the world

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

by Jerry Waxler

As a teenager, Frank Schaeffer was filled with lust for the young women who travelled from all parts of the world to visit the Christian center run by his parents. At the beginning of his memoir “Crazy for God,” I was beginning to wonder why there was so much sexual tension in a book that was supposed to be about religion and politics. Then, a few pages later I realized why this background was important. When he was just 18 years-old, his new girl friend became pregnant. They married and had the baby.

Like many people before him, Schaeffer discovered the shocking fact that sex has consequences, a lesson which faced him every time he changed his daughter’s diaper. As an intense young man, surrounded by preachers, he couldn’t simply leave his personal discovery alone. He had to turn it into a sermon, not against his own sexual exploits but against abortion. In a few years he was working tirelessly, a human dynamo trying to rouse Christians everywhere to stand up for the rights of the unborn.

According to Schaeffer, the evil of abortion should be as self-evident to a Christian as the law of gravity was to a physicist. And so, he thought he was doing the Lord’s work. Unfortunately, down this path rode the hounds of hell.

While the most fanatical believers of his point of view were bombing abortion clinics, a much more widespread result was burrowing into the fabric of society. The pressure of these absolute positions skewed the politics of the United States, turning churches into battlegrounds for the control of government, turning every election into a referendum on abortion.

Of course, abortion opponents make an obvious point. Murder is bad, and murdering babies is enough to wake anyone in the middle of the night, screaming for justice. But when exactly do multiplying cells become a baby? The answer differs depending on who you ask. To know the moment when abortion becomes murder, you must choose the right religious doctrine over the wrong one, a battle that has created war and terror since the beginning of history.

As Frank Schaeffer grew older, he realized how politicians were manipulating his religious ideas for their own ends. He started to notice that his rigid position frightened people. His position softened, and his respect for people with diverse beliefs grew. Most interesting for me, he came to see that the abortion debate sidles up alongside sexuality. With his help, I see that sex injects a complication into what was supposed to be a simple question of stopping murder.

Sex is the act that turns an egg into a baby, and religions have long felt the need to take control. For example, in the Bible there was a woman who took sex too lightly and the punishment was public stoning. His observation raises a fascinating issue. How many of them are fighting to contain sex? And on the other side of the debate, how many who favor abortion rights are trying to take away the consequences of sex? Finally he turned his back on the evangelical movement altogether.

If you tried to understand Frank Schaeffer at any particular era of his life, you would see only one aspect of the man. At one period, he looked like a randy teenager. Then, a confused teenaged father. After that, a zealous preacher. Later still, a hypocrite who continued to speak for large fees about things he no longer believed. Then, he looked like a starving artist, refusing those easy fees while he struggled to earn money as a novelist. Finally, you would see the Frank Schaeffer of today.

When the most recent Frank Schaeffer looks at the mob mentality around abortion, he sees a situation similar to the righteous people in the Bible who wanted to stone the prostitute. In his younger days, he was leading the charge, urging greater passion. The more mature man says, “Let’s think about it more clearly.” He certainly knew the line in the Bible “Let he who is without sin throw the first stone” but he didn’t actually hear it until he grew older.

Writing about the evolution of ideas in his memoir, Schaeffer offers a profound lesson for aspiring memoir writers. When we look back on our own history, we can see ourselves in each period, and discover the set of beliefs we held then. We couldn’t know what those ideas would look like a decade later. It’s only now, as we look back through the years, that we can understand how the ideas changed. It turns out the accumulated wisdom that we earned through the course of these years is not contained in any one snapshot of our life, but in our unfolding story.
Writing Prompt
Looking back across the span of your life, when did you believe in something strongly, even zealously, and then later come to understand that your rigid ideas had consequences? For example, did you drink, assuming it would cause no harm, only to find out later that it was ruining your liver or your family? Did you believe strongly that some group was “bad” only to later discover their depth? How did your religious or spiritual beliefs change?

Write an overview of the beliefs as they moved through time. Describe the key ah-ha moments, events, readings, and discussions that spurred you along. Write about the doubts and certainties. Show how the beliefs influenced your attitudes and choices. Explore the possibility that this evolution can support some or all of the power of your memoir.

Links
Frank Schaeffer’s official website
“Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back” by Frank Schaeffer

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Posted in Book Review, Coming of age, beliefs | 4 Comments »

Is a Travel Memoir Really a Memoir?

Friday, May 15th, 2009

by Jerry Waxler

When I started studying memoirs, my original focus were the conventional ones like Frank McCourt’s “Angela’s Ashes” or Jeanette Walls’ “Glass Castle.” At first, I didn’t understand why some travel books were sold as memoirs. Travel books weren’t about the author’s childhood, and they included a lot of journalistic descriptions of the places they were traveling through. And yet I realized they were first person accounts that let me get inside the author’s point of view and see the world.

To understand more about what goes into a travel memoir. I read a few like Doreen Orion’s travel memoir, “Queen of the Road,” and Mark Richardson’s “Zen and Now.” I’ve also dabbled in others like Tom Coyne’s walk around Ireland recounted in “A Course Called Ireland” and Rosemary Mahoney’s solo trip in Egypt, “Down the Nile Alone in a Fisherman’s Skiff.”

Based on my research, I decided travel books indeed could be considered as a sort of memoir. In fact, in my perfect world, the book store would have a whole bank of memoirs and autobiographies, including sub-sections for Coming of Age, Overcoming Hardship, and Travel memoirs, to name a few. Here are a few of the features of travel memoirs you might consider when reading your next one, or planning your own.

On the road alone means inside your mind

Travel provides the fascinating unfolding, as places appear in the distance, come closer, and then whiz by, fading into the past. From this perpetual flow of locations, comes a variety of outer experience.

And while the miles disappear under the tire, hull, or shoe, the protagonist’s main activity is… nothing. With nothing to do but move your body from A to B, traveling is a sort of meditation in its own right, providing the protagonist ample time to reflect. That’s what Bob Pirsig did in his classic “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” and when Mark Richardson road his motorcycle along the same path, he too reflected about life in “Zen and Now.”

Since Doreen Orion is traveling with her husband in an RV she has other options. She can read, or banter with her husband. Considering she is a psychiatrist, I wonder if her absence of introspection is a sort of subterranean irony, a feature I have noticed throughout Orion’s entertaining approach to her material.

Wrestling with your Stuff

Traveling raises all sorts of issues about stuff. First you have make a list of what to take, buy what you need, and then pack your luggage. You have to store it somewhere and lug it along. Sometimes you can’t fit much. On his motorcycle ride, Mark Richardson could only bring a couple of pairs of underwear. When he stopped in a motel, he methodically unpacked his saddlebags, including motorcycle repair tools. Then the next morning, he packed them up again. At the other extreme, Doreen Orion packed her luxury RV with all sorts of amenities, such dozens of pairs of shoes. But even she had limits. One day she jumped in the tagalong SUV and went shopping, and when she tried to put the purchases away, she realized she had run out of room for her stuff.

Describe the people you meet

During travel, you meet people, and these meetings add character to the journey. Richardson tells about the small town girl working in the motel, and the Russian couple who own it. He describes other bikers he meets at stops, and he looks up some of the same people who had met with Pirsig during the original ride. He even stops in a town and speculates about which tree Pirsig and his son might have sat under, and asks some of the locals to help him figure it out, while Orion chats up the other campers at the RV parks – neighbors for a night.

Focus on your vehicle (boat, feet, RV, motorcycle)

In “Zen and Now” Mark Richardson focuses in detail on his motorcycle. This is a neat trick that emulates Robert Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” Both motorcyclists do an excellent job of showing how their world has collapsed down to their vehicle and the stretch of road they are on right now. By describing the motorcycle they let you feel intimately connected with their contracted world. Doreen Orion also showed us her small world by bringing inside the cab of her luxury RV in “Queen of the Road.”

Journalistic accounts of the world

In the musical “Sound of Music,” Julie Andrews walks along a country road with the kids, and suddenly they all burst into song. It’s entertaining, albeit a little out of place. Something similar takes place in a travel memoir, when the author decides to insert a little background description about something they are seeing. My quirkiest example is in Doreen Orion’s “Queen of the Road.” In a night club she visited with her husband, a girl performed a clog dance. Orion included a brief history of clog dancing. Not your typical memoir material, but it worked as a lovely way to pass the time in her company. Of course, the scenery, the towns, and the people are all fodder for the writer’s research, should they choose to add a few details about the world they are moving through.

Getting there and back is a perfect container for a story

The whole purpose of a good story is to portray a sort of journey, that takes the protagonist as well as the reader from the beginning of the book to the end. Travel memoirs turn this into a literal journey from one geographical location to another. When you insert your experience into travel, you allow your reader to go along with you as you prepare, pack, and go forth from your home. Leaving your familiar world behind, you enter a new world with different rules and make progress through obstacles. This allows for the curiosity and adventure of discovery, as well as the contrast with the familiar. At the end, you complete the journey, providing the appropriate metaphorical as well as circumstantial ending.

By breaking the protagonist out of the daily grind, travel memoirs still provide plenty of room for an inner journey, too. Under the stress of confusing situations, or the tedium of the passing miles, or the curiosity of new observations, travelers discover new things about themselves. As the outer miles go by, the inner journey is also underway, making the travel memoir an excellent framework for writing about life.

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Notes

For discussion about some of the classic memoirs, see my essay, “Why so many memoirs about dysfunctional childhood?“

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Posted in Book Review, How-to, travel | 8 Comments »

Sharing the Wisdom of the Ages

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

by Jerry Waxler

In the ’60s, I ran wild in the streets, figuring that if I protested loudly enough, the world would stop this nonsense about me needing to grow up. My resistance made no difference. Soon, I became an adult like everyone else and settled down to the long middle years, trying to make the most of the world as it actually was.

Four decades later, these middle years are drawing to a close. I’ve reached the daunting age of 60 and I feel no more eager to grow old than I was to grow up. Perhaps I could participate in a new round of protests. There must be millions of people my age who would sign a petition to stop the aging process. Despite my reluctance, each year I grow a year older. I need to figure out this aging thing.

To learn more, I read books like Gene Cohen’s “Creative Age” about how to use senior years as a time for creativity, and Marc Freedman’s book “Encore: Finding Work that Matters in the Second Half of Life” which attempts to redefine retirement.  I attend “Boomer Conferences” in Philadelphia with speakers like Kenneth and Mary Gergen, editors of the Positive Aging newsletter. I explore the “Coming of Age” website, looking for meetings where someone can help me prepare. It’s all interesting, but I want more and am not sure where to turn.

There’s no point in asking older people. Like most people in our youth oriented society, I have always imagined that when people get older, they grow duller and more out of touch. But that attitude has problems. If all older people are dull, and I’m an older person, does that mean I’m dull too? I decide to take this line of inquiry to the old people themselves, and I know where to find them. Many of the students in my memoir workshops are older than me by 10, 20, even 30 years. As we work on memoir writing, I pay close attention to their stories.

One describes the ration coupons that controlled how much sugar and gas the family could buy during World War II. When he reads this, several others nod in agreement. Another remembers growing up with an unheated, hole-in-the-ground outhouse. Another won a beauty contest 65 years ago. A woman in her 90s remembers her pride of accomplishment, entering medical school when women were seldom able to do so. Then she had to drop out of when her family ran out of money. Her voice chokes back the pain. Together we consider those years, visualizing each other’s moments from long ago, and sharing how it feels to live a long life.

It lifts me to hear about their lives, and clearly it makes them feel good too. Everyone grows brighter and more alive. As we arrange the anecdotes into a sensible whole, it feels like we are creating a vital strength in the room, waking us up to some sort of continuity or meaning.

As I listen, I look for the wisdom to help me cheer up and face my own aging. At first I don’t see it. All these details sound just like life. Then I step back and take a broader look at what we are doing. And there it is. The wisdom is not some grand lesson hidden within the events. The wisdom is in the storytelling itself, transforming the raw events of our lives into something worthwhile.

The students in these memoir classes become my teachers. One lesson they teach is that time will not stop. I should have known this already but their presence helps me remain calm and brave about it. And the other lesson is that stories of the human saga are everywhere. With a little collective action, we band together to develop those stories, basking in their richness, passion, and variety, and feel the subtle unfolding of whatever Mystery we are here to discover.

So, working with these people at the senior center, I form a plan for the next stage of my life. Instead of raging against some common enemy, I turn towards my peers, and together we discover what it has been like to be us. In the sharing, we grow stronger, bolder, and enjoy ourselves far more than if we marched alone.

As I remember my own younger days, I am amazed by my intensity. I didn’t like the world, and thought that if I was going to enter it, I ought to scream and protest in order to bend it into a better shape. What a crazy, gutsy, desperate thing to do. I don’t know if there is a lesson in my youthful enthusiasm. But I do know there is a story.

Links to resources mentioned in this post
Coming of Age, http://www.comingofage.org
Encore, Civic Ventures, http://www.encore.org/
Creative Aging, http://www.creativeaging.org
An excellent book on creativity and aging: Creative Age by Gene Cohen

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Posted in 60's, Aging | 2 Comments »

Life with a famous parrot, Alex and Me by Irene Pepperberg

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

by Jerry Waxler

I first learned about Alex while I was on a spiritual retreat in the mountains of eastern Pennsylvania. Our host played a video of a talking African Gray parrot named Alex. Alex’s trainer, Dr. Irene Pepperberg held a tray of objects and asked questions. For example, she asked “which square?” and the parrot answered, “green,” because the square object was colored green. She asked “which same?” and Alex correctly said “key” because the keys were all made of cork. He even concocted his own words, for example describing an almond as a “cork-nut,” a word he was never taught.

Tell me more about that parrot

Alex was cute, zany and unpredictable, and while Pepperberg watched him learn, he was teaching her about the mind of a bird. His bobbing head, hyper-alert eyes, and clever voice mesmerized me, making me an instant fan. I was not alone. Everyone who saw Alex fell in love with him. A few years later I heard that the parrot died, a loss that surprised and saddened me. Then I saw the memoir “Alex and Me” by Irene Pepperberg, and thought, “Hey, I know that bird!”

The book starts with Alex’s sudden, unexpected death in 2007, followed by the outpouring of sympathy from around the world. Pepperberg read a sampling of the letters and obituaries from Alex’s many admirers. As each one played upon my heart, I was amazed at how much compassion they stirred. Like a group hug, Alex’s well wishers were drawing me in to Pepperberg’s pain.

Outpouring of compassion creates secondary compassion

I looked for a similar effect in my own life and remembered my mother’s memorial service. Her old friends came up to me and said “You were lucky to have such a great mom” and “I admired her so much,” and “We miss her.” Later, I turned their comments over in my mind, and was awed at the complexity of emotions.

How much were they seeking to support me, and how much were they hoping that somehow my presence could help them relieve their own grief? These moments showed me how intertwined we all are. During our communal grieving, we were each trying to make sense of what just happened, while supporting each other as we moved forward.

Writing Prompt
When in your life did empathy flow towards you? Was it related to the death or illness of a loved one? Or did others reach out to comfort you when you were in the hospital yourself? Describe the scene, keeping in mind that it will give the reader an opening through which they too can feel connected.

Emotional Bonds to Our Companion Animals

Dr. Pepperberg and Alex were close companions and so the book turned out to be a buddy story between human and bird. Sharing genuine emotions with animals has become widely respected, as evidenced by the runaway success of “Marley and Me,” by John Grogan, a memoir about the author’s relationship with a dog.

To make the relationship even deeper, Dr. Pepperberg showed how it evolved over the years. At first, she tried to maintain distance in order to create an objective, scientific perspective. She worked with him closely for years. Then after Alex died, Irene cried and cried, making her and her readers realize how deeply emotionally involved she had become..

Writing prompt
List your pets, and other encounters with critters. When you remember a scene, stop listing and start writing. See if you can string a few scenes together to show how the relationship changed over time.

Structure of a story, beginning, middle, and end

Every memoir writer seeks excellent story structure. Pepperberg’s memoir offers a couple of insights. For one thing, she grabs our attention with a bang, shocking the reader into the midst of the action, a technique the Greeks called “in medias res.” Then the story returns to the beginning, and moves forward through the long middle, towards an ending that resolves the dramatic tension. I love this structure.

Writing Prompt
What powerful event can you start your book with, to grab readers and yank them into the action. Worry about the transition to the flashback later. For now, just consider what event would get readers into the thick of your story.

Alex and Me ends with a Personal Witness to the Evolution of Knowledge

At the end of Alex and Me, Alex dies, as we already knew he would. So how does an author finish a book about loss? Pepperberg has chosen to review what Alex contributed to her and to the world. It turns into a poignant eulogy that contemplates a life well-lived, during which, Alex contributed not only to his trainer but to the world’s understanding of humans and other animals.

Considering his brain was the “size of a shelled walnut,” the vast majority of scientists were confident that Alex could not possibly be learning as much as Pepperberg claimed. But she doesn’t need to debate her findings with me. Even though I don’t have an advanced degree in bird brains, he seemed pretty smart. In fact, I believed that the other scientists were wrong and Pepperberg was right. It turns out that most people believe they know more about their own companion animals than scientists do.

Irene Pepperberg’s experiments herald a sea change in our attitude towards animal intelligence. With incredible persistence and love these two creatures demonstrated a thinking capacity that science had not yet imagined. As Shakespeare said, “There are more things in heaven and earth than your philosophy dreams of.” After reading “Alex and Me” I can feel this little creature’s beautiful influence on Irene Pepperberg and everyone else he touched. And their relationship touched me. My respect for pets, for intelligence, and the evolution of knowledge has been expanded by this loving connection between a scientist and her little winged companion.

Writing prompt
Do you have a story about your pet that demonstrates intelligence, loyalty, curiosity, or other “human” characteristics? The writing exercise may come in handy in unexpected ways for comic relief or to help readers identify with particular situations in your life.

—

Note
Click to visit Amazon’s page for Alex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Discovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence–and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process by Irene M. Pepperberg

Note
According to Thomas Kuhn’s “Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” science regularly changes its idea about what is True. My favorite example is that in the 20th century, all neuroscientists claimed that brain cells can never grow, but only die. Around 1995, science changed its mind. After the shift in perspective, scientists have agreed that adults can use their brains and grow. In fact, if you don’t use your brain it will die. This sort of shift in Truth from one decade to another is an ordinary occurrence in the history of science. And so, to study science is to study the constant evolution of ideas.

Note
For another book that shows how the brain has a capacity for wholeness, read Jill Bolte Taylor’s My Stroke of Insight – in which she was forced outside the box by direct perception. Click here for my essay.

Note
For another example of starting in the middle of the action, see Bill Ayers’ Fugitive Days. Click here for my essay about Fugitive Days.

Note
For another famous buddy memoir read “Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog by John Grogan”

 
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Reading error teaches a writing lesson – or – A good character is hard to define

Thursday, April 9th, 2009

By Jerry Waxler

Part of relating to a good story is to feel a personal connection with its characters. Now I need to develop the knack of portraying the people in my life onto the pages in my memoir. I have attended workshops, and read how-to books about this skill, but it has been eluding me until recently when I stumbled upon a valuable insight. By incorrectly reading a series of short stories, I had an aha-moment about how reader and writer work together to form characters. This discovery will help me bring my characters to life.

I first noticed my reading problem last year when I read a lovely collection of short stories, “Apologies Forthcoming” by Xujun Eberlein about life in China during the Cultural Revolution. [ To read that essay, click here.] In one story, a student was relocated to join peasants in the countryside. In another story, a young factory worker struggled to make friends. I imagined the second story was about the same person as the first. My interpretation was wrong. The link was created by my imagination, not the author’s.

Recently, I read another book of short stories, “Inheritance of Exile” by Susan Muaddi Darraj. [To read that essay, click here.] I am attracted to short stories, both as a reader and a writer. So I jumped into the collection, enjoying each story individually. But again I noticed my mind making incorrect or unsubstantiated assumptions, unconsciously bridging a character from one part of a book to another. The fact that I repeated my mistake made me curious to learn more about this mental habit.

In many collections of stories, this effect is used intentionally. Readers expect the detective Adam Dalgleish in P.D. James’ mysteries to maintain his quirky personality from one novel to another. His ability to completely override compassion in the service of his job became his trademark, and so the reader of these novels forms an expectation that he will continue to behave in this way. As a result of this agreed continuity, the author of a series can portray deeper characters over a longer period of time than they could in just one story.

All kinds of series are built on exactly this principle. Star Trek allows us to get to know their recurring characters across a range of stories. Sitcoms, comic books, and book series take advantage of the reader’s accumulating familiarity with characters.

By digging deeper into the way my mind insisted on linking characters together across pages, I now see more about the way authors create characters. Books don’t tell us everything about a character all at once. They drop in a fact here and a scene there, and the reader’s mind accumulates a deeper understanding of that character in bits and pieces across many pages. In any longer book, this effect of continuity is a crucial tool for authors, but I never noticed it quite so clearly as when I saw it happen accidentally across multiple stories.

Now that I see the bridging, I can use it to help me offer my reader a better, more satisfying connection with the supporting characters in my memoir. Take my older brother, for example. He’s an important enough person in my life that I would want my reader to know more about him. So how do I bring him to life?

Ed towered over me in my youth, at first because he was seven years older than me and later because he was really tall. Six feet five inches and too thin he should have easily made it onto the basketball team. But like me and my dad, he was not particularly athletic, and he walked with a slight tilt because of his scoliosis. When he was cut from the team, he responded with an intensity of disappointment I wouldn’t have expected. Perhaps he had hoped a team sport would help further his ambition to be a doctor, or maybe he really wanted to play basketball. I was too young to ask, and now it’s too late.

Armed with this collection of observations, I begin to look for places in my memoir to expand his character. Hopefully the reader will do what I do when I read, and accumulate an image of Ed as an authentic, multi-faceted person. I hope they will see my relationship to him, and how he affected my life. As I gather information about him, I notice a peculiar thing. By writing about him years later, I am bridging across the years, and revisiting our relationship. I too am feeling this authentic connection grow, as I accumulate wisdom across the span of time.

Writing Prompt

Start a file that contains anecdotes, vignettes, and personal characteristics of important characters. Add to this file over time, through brainstorming, free-writing, explore your photo albums, or conduct interviews. This file will provide source material to help you build authentic characters in your memoir.

 
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Read banned memoirs: Criminal or Social Activist?

Thursday, March 19th, 2009

by Jerry Waxler

In the 60’s, I vigorously protested the Vietnam War, but like most Americans I thought the organization called the Weather Underground had gone too far. Without knowing many details, I associated them with violent, irrational extremism.

So I was surprised to hear that one of the founders of that organization was not only a free man. He was an acclaimed educator. I first heard about Bill Ayers during the 2008 presidential campaign when television ads implied that Ayers’ criticism of U.S. policy in Vietnam somehow tainted Barack Obama. The publicity intrigued me. I wanted to know more. After hearing an excellent radio interview with Bill Ayers, I decided to read his memoir “Fugitive Days.” Reading the book prodded me to review rusty old parts of my own beliefs.

When Ayers was a young man, his outrage against the war drove him to the brink of anarchy. In his memoir, “Fugitive Days,” he chronicles his violent thoughts and actions in almost poetic detail. Even after reading the memoir, it’s hard for me to decide if he was a hero who risked his life to save the world from the insanity of war, or a mad child, a criminal, bent on imposing his will on society. And therein lays the power of the memoir. It shows his world as it was, not as it ought to have been, allowing me to see for myself and ask my own questions. The description of life through his eyes provided a deeper understanding of the world than I could gain from sound bites and stereotypes.

Are young people idealistic or simple minded?

When I was young, adults taught me that people are supposed to be kind, generous, and empathetic. I desperately wanted to live in a world driven by these ideals. Too often, the difference between the world they preached and the one they actually offered made me angry. So I protested, trying to badger them into following their own principles. However, demanding change turned out to be far more complex than I first had hoped. After I participated in my first riot, I realized I was contributing to the very chaos that I wanted to stop.

The protest movement became increasingly strident at my alma mater, University of Wisconsin in Madison, until a climax in the1970 bombing of the Army Math Research Center. At 3 AM, when the bombers expected the building to be empty, a young physics researcher unrelated to the Army or the war was killed by the blast, exposing the dark side of extreme protest. More disturbing still, moral outrage against government policies can be used to justify all sorts of violent protest. For example, the Oklahoma City bombers claimed they were obeying higher principles, a justification that comes all too close to the reasoning of the Weather Underground.

According to Ayers, his group never took part in an action that resulted in a death, so the book does not justify murder. In fact, the book does very little justifying at all. Rather than analyzing his actions, or even looking back at them with the hindsight of an older man, Ayers offers an immersion experience in that period. Just as you wouldn’t expect to see cell phones in a movie about the Vietnam War, Ayers also tries to keep his thoughts appropriate for a young man during the height of the Vietnam war protests.

Feminism was still in the future

In Bill Ayers’ time the feminist movement had not yet been born, so during his story, men were freely using women and justifying it with all sorts of theoretical excuses. Women were starting to complain, and in a rare nod to the future development of the feminist movement, Ayers hints at the tensions coming to the surface.

Structure is interesting: In Medias Res
The organizational structure of the book is interesting. The opening scene pulls me in with a bang. Ayers and his cronies are on the run, and they hear about the death of a comrade, letting me know they are all in mortal danger. This technique of “in medias res,” or starting in the midst of the action, is as old as storytelling itself. Once the initial scene pulls us in, he backs up and starts from the beginning. Then gradually the story moves closer to the tragedy, and then keeps going, to his fugitive life, and on to completion.

Is shame supposed to be hidden?

In the memoir, “This Boy’s Life” Tobias Wolff writes about some really bad decisions from his youth, like throwing eggs at the driver of a convertible car and stealing stuff from his step-dad. He does not apologize or justify. He simply describes. When I first read “This Boy’s Life,” I was shocked that he would be willing to talk about these obnoxious behaviors. How does that work? I hated remembering when I did shameful things like shoplifting. Uck. It feels horrible to admit that I ever did such a thing. Similarly Ayers reports many behaviors that one would hope one’s teenage son or daughter is not doing. However, now that I have been reading memoirs for a while, I am no longer so shocked.

My more tolerant and expansive understanding of how to remember bad choices came during a lecture by John Bradshaw, the brilliant author of a number of books about healing. In the lecture, Bradshaw explained that there are two kinds of shame. Of course I knew about “bad shame.” The new information came from his description of “good shame,” a beautiful and redeeming concept I had never considered.  Good shame serves a positive purpose. When you’re ashamed of something you’ve done, it’s your mind attempting to restore you to obey your own rules. So shame is a good thing, enforcing people to do their best. When people are “shameless” they can be rude or deceive each other without remorse. The absence of shame is the real anti-social condition.

Actually, not only is Ayers not ashamed of his actions. He even flips it upside down, and points a sense of shame back at the rest of society. He doesn’t feel shame for having protested the war. He feels shame for having participated in a country that was waging the war, and for example, dropping Napalm on babies. Wow! That fascinating twist makes me think long and hard about my own role as a citizen in a country that does a variety of things I wish they would do differently.

On every page, Ayers awakened memories of my own angst in the sixties. His experience stretched me to review my attitude towards social responsibility, and then, as I followed his trajectory, watched the terrifying consequences of his extreme position. It was an amazingly thought provoking and successful book.

 
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