Blest be the ties that bind: a life writing vacation in the country

Posted on July 8, 2013 by moonbridgebooks

We just returned from a weekend visit to our relatives in the Tennessee countryside. While our family visits are always pleasant, they usually aren’t exciting and don’t offer new sights like a real vacation would, and I haven’t had one of those in about five years so I’ve been antsy. This visit, however, I was excited to see our expectant niece about to have her first child and to see all the innovative baby equipment invented since my kids were born. Have you seen these travel cribs-playpens lately?  I think some come with a kitchen sink to wash up after changing diapers. Oh, the other excitement was that 10-lb catfish my nephew caught in the cow pond and gruesomely slaughtered on the back porch. I’d like to forget about that.

I do love visiting my husband’s country relatives. Open spaces, inky nights full of stars, quiet broken by bird calls or the buzz of hummingbirds, so relaxing sitting on the porch when there’s not a monster catfish flopping around on it. Going to a little church of friendly people who hug me even though I can’t remember their names. My in-laws have big vegetable gardens so on our summer visits I help pick beans or okra or whatever is ripe and get to take a bounty of fresh veggies home. Last year I helped prep tomatoes for canning. My girls even enjoy helping pick, and I like that they see how food grows.

My mom-in-law, well known for her fine Southern cooking, fixes mass quantities of food and everyone gathers for dinner.  I am working on a book of recipes she is particularly famous for, mixed in with her life stories. During this visit we had a lot of fun going over the draft version. We talked about life in the old days, which was a lot of work if you were from a farming family. Little kids chopping cotton (hoeing weeds from between cotton rows) was not unusual. I took a lot of “ordinary” photos of food, the house, the old chicken houses, hay rolls, the garden.

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Fried Squash Recipe

Peel and slice yellow squash. Add flour and cornmeal in a half-and-half mix. Sprinkle salt and pepper. Add one chopped up onion. Pour into a pan of a quarter-inch of hot grease and fry at medium high heat, flipping the mix often to keep from burning. Squash is done when soft and the mix is browned.

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I had been thinking of tackling my father-in-law’s life story next, but thought he would balk and say he just had the usual farm life. I think of him as the quiet type. But, this visit he opened up with a bunch of eye-popping stories of his boyhood all because I asked him a question about his wife’s father. Dad, how in the world could you have plowed a field with a mule when you were only four years old?! Apparently kids were pretty tough then and expected to work like little adults. School shut down during planting and harvesting so the kids could work the fields with their parents. Next time Dad’s brother is in town the same time I am, I’m going to sit those two down and get some more stories!

I’ve got the green beans and corn blanched and frozen, and a big pot of creamed corn cooling. Tomatoes are set on the back porch table. Tomorrow I make zucchini bread and cucumber salad. In my world, there’s not much that’s more soul-satisfying and filling as a visit with my in-laws in the rolling hills of west Tennessee. I might have some country-life stories of my own.

 

Posted in capturing memories, family gathering, recipe | Tagged | 6 Comments

On Gold Mountain: making family history come alive

Posted on June 30, 2013 by moonbridgebooks

Author Lisa See may not look Chinese, but she certainly is. She is known for “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan,” “Peony in Love,” and “Shanghai Girls,” but I know her for “On Gold Mountain,” the detailed history of her family and the 100-year history of west coast Chinese-American culture. Lisa, who is one-eighth Chinese and very much assimilated with her Chinese-American family, interviewed over 100 family members and friends, researched for historical information, and traveled to China to her ancestral villages. She added photos and included the family tree. Instead of a dry, factual book of names and nonfiction, she created a story—lived the story, and with dialog!—that captured mostly her Chinese side, but also the sparse Caucasian side of her heritage. Her white great-grandmother grew up unhappily with an older brother’s family after her mother died, but left as soon as she could and became estranged from her family.

I found it curious how Lisa used real stories of her ancestors and real history to create imagined scenes so that the book reads like a historical novel, yet is still considered a biography/memoir. She weaves in the finer points of working on the transcontinental railroad, of the imported antiques business and the restaurant business, of carpentry and of the immigration system. She seamlessly mixes past tense omniscent (all-knowing) narrator storytelling with present tense dialog—very impressive to do this well and keep tenses straight.  Despite all the facts, the book focuses on story and relationships. Lisa brings her family members and even their friends and acquaintances to life with thoughts and feelings, definite personalities. She’s got a wealth of relationships to look at, too—the drama between family members, between cultures, between old world and new. Her family history, like everyone’s, is against a backdrop of sociological changes and how everyone adapts.

Most of us won’t be creating a dramatic novel-like history of our families, but reading “On Gold Mountain” can inspire us to dig for our roots, ask for the stories, learn about the history our ancestors lived through, and imagine how it was for them. Lisa was lucky that when she thought about writing the family history many of her numerous elder relatives were still alive and forthcoming in their stories. And they remembered stories passed down to them. Those of us who do not have the old stories can still find records and information and meld the sociology and history of what our ancestors lived through to re-create some of what their lives were like. We can still make our family histories breathe a little and be fun to read.

If you do read “On Gold Mountain,” be sure not to skip the beautiful epilogue.

Gold Mountain

 

Posted in book talk, history, lifewriting, multicultural | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Writing about your roots: family history and life writing

Posted on June 23, 2013 by moonbridgebooks

Writing and publishing my mother’s memoir, Cherry Blossoms in Twilight, was perhaps the most brilliant idea I’ve ever had. Especially now that she’s gone, my sister and I really appreciate having a written record of her life story and knowing something about the grandparents, aunts, and uncle we’ve never met. All our elders have fascinating stories of their families and of living in near-history. I hope you are writing them down. I need to work with my dad to get the pieces of his family history and stories together – I think he’s stalled out. While it’s nice to audio- or videotape our parents, grandparents, or even ourselves telling the stories, stories are more easily preserved if written into a word-processing document file. Then when technology changes, and it will, the file can easily be converted to the next generation tech, and at no cost. Of course you’ll keep backup files.

Many people are interested in discovering the genealogy of their family. It’s surprising what might be out there in public records online or in obituaries or old news articles. Ancestry.com (free use at many libraries), familysearch.org, findagrave.com and usgenweb.org are a few sites to check. Many libraries have resources and helpful librarians or volunteers. There may be stories to glean to add life to the names.

Hopefully you or your elder relatives know a few (or many!) generations of ancestors and their stories. Don’t stop with parents and grandparents, ask the uncles and aunts, too. No need to make a fancy book, gather all you know and type it up, arrange lists and stories in some kind of order, insert photos, and make copies of the document at the local copyshop. Ask about the binding options. It’s even easy to make simple covers using an old family photo. If you want to create an actual paperback or hardcover book, read my post about using LuLu.com to make family-only books. If you want to fix up the document text to look more professional, see my Resources page about book design and layout in MS Word.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this month’s roots-themed posts. I’m stopping now and going back to posting once a week instead of daily. I need to concentrate on a Korean War memoir I’m putting together for a new friend, and he’s not getting any younger. Next Sunday I’ll post about a book that is an impressive re-creation of someone’s family history through the ages.

Cherry Blossoms Twilight

Posted in heritage, history | Tagged , , | 3 Comments