The Parent-Child Problem: Writing
Truthfully about Family
“We spend most of our adulthoods
trying to grasp the meaning of our parents’ lives,” says the essayist Phillip
Lopate. But writing truthfully about our parents, not to mention our children,
may be the most challenging writing there is. Still, many of us feel the need
to document the knowledge earned in the cauldron of family life. This workshop
will explore ways to approach nonfiction writing about family so that it is
accurate, sensitive, and meaningful to a larger audience. No experience, or
work completed in advance, is necessary.
Here are links to some of the recommended readings for this week's workshop.
“Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden
“This Be the Verse” by Philip Larkin
“The Essay: An Exercise in Doubt” by Philip Lopate
“How Memoirists Mold the Truth” by Andre Aciman
“The Body Under the Rug” by Alexander Stille ( http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/09/the-body-under-the-rug/
“The
Darkness of an Irish Morning” by John Patrick Shanley
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/09/opinion/the-darkness-of-an-irish-morning.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130309&_r=1&&pagewanted=print"Invisible Men" by Helen Elaine Lee
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/books/review/creative-writing-in-a-massachusetts-prison.html?pagewanted=all
Perhaps it was obvious that I was the odd person out in the class. After all, I don't have a desire/need to write about my family. But I do have to write a weekly blog posting for my job as full-time Music Director at an Episcopal church and I want to write in a better, richer, more meaningful way. By now I have hundreds of these postings and people have been urging me to "do" something with them. Taking the class last week was my first feeble attempt at "doing" something. My hope is that my children will someday find these mini essays to be a good summary of the things their mother thought and cared about. Below are two pieces I would have read in class and a link to the blog, should anyone be interested. Thank you all for sharing your provocative stories and best wishes as you begin to write those stories and find ways for their truths to speak to many people.
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http://stalbansparish.wordpress.com/category/sonya-subbayya-sutton/
Thanks, Sonya. I really appreciated your contributions to the class. I'd love to read the pieces you wrote for it, but I'm having trouble opening those files, though the blog link works just fine. Any other way you can link or include them here?--Kristin
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