Enjoying cultural festivals, especially of your own heritage

Posted on September 1, 2025 by moonbridgebooks

I enjoy the annual Japanese Festival at our botanical garden, always over Labor Day weekend. I join in the Obon dancing and light a lantern for my mom and family members to float on the lake at night – toro nagashii is so peaceful and poignant (once you move away from the chatting crowd and can hear the gentle music). In this way I honor my mother and my cultural heritage, although I also belong to Japan-related groups here and keep a connection year-round that way.

I hope you have opportunities to enjoy your cultural heritage(s). In my area we are lucky to have many different cultural festivals. They welcome all. At the Japanese Festival, it’s fun to see so many people not of-Japanese heritage dressed in their own yukata or kimono. I think everyone becomes Japanese at the festival, like everyone becomes Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. It’s fun to learn about and to enjoy other cultures’ traditions, widening our world experience and people connections a little without the expense of traveling afar, and these days we sure need to widen our worlds and connections.

This beautifully polished ikebana container was made in one of the internment “camps” for Japanese Americans in the US during WWII. It is made from a thick branch (firewood) with a US Army ration can inside to hold water.

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The Salty Path of Adding Fiction to Memoir

Posted on July 13, 2025 by moonbridgebooks

Memoirs are based on reality—your reality as you remember it. Don’t make up (lie) about important things, partly because somebody will know or find out and then people wonder if they can trust anything else you wrote. Not to mention, as in the case of The Salt Path by Raynor Winn (pen name), you could be toying with people’s empathy and emotions, and we generally don’t like being fooled.

If for some reason you want to completely or partially hide a truth that’s important to the story—because it is a very bad reflection on you or too embarrassing/traumatizing or you don’t want to get in trouble with—write something general to explain, don’t flat out lie or make up something. By the way, including what you think is a negative look on you can just make you seem human like everyone else, and more relatable. We all make mistakes and sometimes behave badly. Unless you seriously hurt someone or committed crimes, but even then, people are curious about these stories and they can be about redemption and healing.

The Salt Path memoir has a great storyline of running off to escape life stresses and indulge in nature to find physical and spiritual healing, so for the most part it is probably true and inspiring, so much so that a movie has been made of the book. Sadly, the surrounding “facts” taint the story, and for some it taints the author and the whole book. Beware. Know that you can always fictionalize your story and say it is “based on a true story,” which works for commercially available books which are then labeled as fiction. Don’t try to sell this to your family as “truth,” though.

AP article about The Salt Path book controversy

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Writing memoir and life stories: Not just what happened

Posted on May 25, 2025 by moonbridgebooks

When writing your stories, don’t make them a laundry list of what happened and when. That’s important, but there’s more to the stories than that, especially if you want to make them more interesting. You are the main character of your stories and your family and other readers are interested in a bigger picture—what you thought, how you felt, how did something affect you. A May 21, 2025, article in the Transylvania Times is an important read highlighting that the “heart of memoir” is your emotional journey.

When I put together my mother’s Cherry Blossoms in Twilight, about her life in Japan around WWII times, my Korean War medic veteran friend’s Battlefield Doc, and my very elder neighbors’ early lives in our town, I tried to get their thoughts and feelings about what they were experiencing. Mostly I failed. I suspect those of that older generation were accustomed to NOT thinking or feeling too much, or at least to keeping things to themselves. Many people nowadays feel little to no qualms about telling personal details and expressing thoughts, which if included in their written stories, makes them into more nuanced 3D characters, their personalities shining through.

Doc said he had to put any emotions aside else he would not have been able to be a good medic. He had to focus on trying to save lives under pressure and not get attached to anyone as they could be here one day and carted away the next. There was no room for emotions, just survival and duties. My mother mostly said she couldn’t remember what she thought, except for a few moments she was scared or when she thought it silly that kids with pointed sticks could be a match for enemy soldiers with guns.

We of our more open generations can feel more free to say how we felt or how something affected us. Readers of our memoirs or life stories can have a richer experience of history, culture, and who we are. On this Memorial Day weekend, we honor veterans who gave their lives during wars but also our ancestors. I hope you have some good stories of these family members, whether they expressed their thoughts and emotions or not.

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