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Sunday Series: Sharon Hart-Green on Why I Write

In this Sunday Series, you’ll meet writers new and seasoned as they share what inspires them to put #PenToPaper. This week, welcome Sharon Hart-Green, who shares her apprehensions about becoming a writer of Jewish Fiction and her realization that historical fiction provides greater understanding of actual events.

Photo by Majkl Velner on Unsplash

I must admit that before writing Come Back for Me, I felt a sense of trepidation about writing a Holocaust novel. Since neither my parents nor grandparents are Holocaust survivors, I did not feel that I had the “right” to do so. At the same time, I was caught between two opposing pulls: a sense of obligation to somehow give voice to those who were brutally murdered; and the knowledge that no book could ever do justice to what they suffered. How could I possibly resolve what seemed to be an impossible dilemma?

I believe that I was able to negotiate a solution to this impasse by taking what I would call an “indirect” approach: writing about the lingering effects of the Holocaust on two generations of Jewish families, rather than trying to write directly about the Holocaust itself.

Since I had grown up in a neighborhood full of Holocaust survivors and their children, I felt well equipped to undertake this task. This allowed me to explore the event through the experiences of those who survived as well as how it affected their offspring. History, after all, is composed of many layers of experience, and if I could approach it from this indirect angle, then perhaps I would be able to unearth some truths about it that could not be otherwise revealed.

Indeed, one of the most effective ways to teach about history is through fiction. Why? Because fiction beckons the reader to enter another person’s life—to “live” that life on an emotional level—even if only for a short while. That is not to underestimate the value of learning from history books as well; to be sure, reading about the rise and fall of great leaders and analyzing the causes and effects of historical change is vital. However, historians rarely tell stories about ordinary people. Fiction has the unique ability to draw a reader into the personal life of everyday individuals. In fact, this might be the best way for readers to learn most deeply about a historical period. When reading about characters from other eras, they not only acquire factual knowledge, but also emotional affinity.

Yet teaching about the Holocaust through the use of fiction is a particularly complex matter, partly because the enormity of the Holocaust itself makes it a difficult subject to convey in any form. How can any of us fathom that it was only seventy-five years ago that a regime arose which attempted to systematically murder every man, woman, and child of Jewish descent in all of Europe? The victim toll alone is so massive that most people who read statistics like “six million” can barely grasp what that means.

However, I think that if a work of Holocaust fiction is written with historical accuracy, then it can serve as an invaluable resource for teaching about this dark period, especially in schools.  By this I mean that a writer of fiction must be absolutely unwavering in representing the brutal facts of this event before taking on this task. I say this because some novelists in recent years have tried to commercialize the Holocaust, and in doing so, misrepresent it, sometimes in grossly distorted ways.  For example, there have been some novels that inject elements of romance into their storylines in order to make their plots more exciting. (The Tatooist of Auschwitz is only one such example.) What does this convey to the reader?  It gives the impression that the Holocaust “wasn’t all that bad,” which of course is not only a contemptible distortion of history but it also trivializes the suffering of the victims.

I hope that writers continue to write fiction about the Holocaust—about the factors leading up to it, the people who were destroyed by it, and the world that allowed it to happen. My main hope however is that they do so with caution and with a deep sense of duty to represent it with accuracy. It is the least we as writers can offer as a gesture of respect to those who perished.

SHARON HART-GREEN is a Canadian writer and academic whose debut novel Come Back for Me (University of Toronto Press) is a gripping story of trauma, loss, and the redemptive power of love.  Come Back for Me was chosen as an Editors’ Choice Book by the Historical Novel Society and was shortlisted for the Goethe Award for Historical Fiction. Dr. Green holds a Ph.D. in Judaic Studies from Brandeis University and has served as an Associate Professor of Hebrew and Yiddish literature at the University of Toronto for many years.

She is the author of two previous non-fiction works: a book on the fiction of Hebrew writer S.Y. Agnon; and a volume of original translations of the Hebrew poetry of Hava Pinhas-Cohen.  In addition, her short stories, poems, translations, and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, including The Jewish Review of Books and The Jewish Quarterly. She is a popular speaker who has delivered talks in Jerusalem, Boston, New York, Vancouver and Toronto. You can find Sharon on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

ABOUT THE BOOK: Come Back for Me tells the story of Artur Mandelkorn, a young Hungarian Holocaust survivor whose desperate quest to find his sister takes him to post-war Israel. Intersecting Artur’s tale is that of Suzy Kohn, a Toronto teenager whose seemingly tranquil life is shattered when her uncle’s sudden death tears her family apart. Their stories eventually come together in Israel following the Six-Day War, where love and understanding become the threads that bind the two narratives together, revealing the scars left by tragedy and the possibilities for healing. Purchase a copy of her book from Indigo.

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Sunday Series: Margo Orlando Littell on Why I Write

In this Sunday Series, you’ll meet writers new and seasoned as they share what inspires them to put #PenToPaper. This week, welcome Margo Orlando Littell as she shares how a very old memory resurfaces years later as a catalyst for her novel, giving “logic to the illogical. Purpose to the purposeless.”

Photo by Gemma Evans on Unsplash

On a hot August day in 1986, when I was ten years old, my grandmother’s across-the-street neighbor walked outside shirtless in the middle of the afternoon, pulled his belt from its loops, and slowly, casually, whipped the belt buckle at each of the windows in his wooden garage door. Shatter, pause. Shatter, pause. Shatter, pause. Shatter, pause. My entire family watched him from our porch. My grandmother, sitting next to me on the squeaky metal glider, tsked under her breath. When he was finished, he went back inside. No one called the police. Later, someone must have come out and swept up the broken glass, but by then we were on to other things—dinner or violin practicing or bedtime. That house was a badly maintained rental; domestic disturbances weren’t new. 

Thirty-three years later, the novel I just published, The Distance from Four Points, includes a scene directly drawn from this memory: a drunk, angry man old enough to know better shows up at his ex-girlfriend’s new apartment and shatters the windows with his belt. The event draws two old friends back together to clean up the mess—this mess, as well as the much larger, life-size messes in the story. Many abuses could have been rendered here; there are many ways to take revenge. But I instinctively summoned the truest, purest version of minor, petty, domestic strife I knew. I’d witnessed it, live and in color, when I was ten.

When I wrote this scene, this long-buried memory finally took on narrative heft. There was logic to the illogical. Purpose to the purposeless. Tension and investment where there had been only my distant, suburban disapproval. I took the memory out of cold storage and gave it life.

I can’t think of a better explanation for why I write. 

I often wonder why I do it. Writing is frustrating and rarely easy. It requires time that’s difficult to find, and attention that’s difficult to harness. It leads to self-doubt and self-criticism and imposter syndrome even when I’ve fulfilled the measures of success I’ve set for myself. I resent that feel-good adage—remember when you wanted what you currently have—and wish it were that easy to embrace contentment. 

But there are moments when I remember very well what draws me to the page, again and again. I write to set memories like the belt-smashing in stone, to bring them out of isolation in the deep subconscious and offer them around. Likewise the observations made in ordinary life: the melancholy glint of sun in late afternoon, the way the smiling neighbor’s eyes belie her deep unhappiness, the vase in the window full of silk flowers as faded as old photographs. The mind takes in more than it can note, but it all settles somewhere, and waits. As a writer, I see these things not as isolated images but as evidence of a larger story, and my response is to weave them together, find the whole from the parts. 

The translation isn’t exact, of course, and it’s definitely not synchronous. Months, years, decades can pass before an image or memory reemerges. When it does, it’s asking to be given purpose. As a writer, that’s what I do. I’m not suggesting that I can connect most or all of the images in my work to these stored-up memories. That kind of excavation isn’t the point, and probably isn’t even possible. Memories and memorable observations are slanted through the fictive window, and their shapes are bent and broken beyond recognition. Sometimes they shed familiar skin the moment they’re on the page. Sometimes they succumb to relentless, wholesale revision before they work as they need to. That’s the alchemy of writing fiction. The known becomes the unknown and then becomes known again in a different way. 

Borrowing a scene so directly—as I did with the belt-smashing memory from my childhood—isn’t generally what I do when I write, but when it happens, it makes me feel a satisfying continuity, year following year, experiences ending but simmering, waiting to feed the fictive fire. A moment that could have slipped away is now bound to the page, in service to a world I’ve built. I’ll have it forever.

This idea of saving memories and observations is in line with how I’ve always approached my life. Since childhood, I’ve kept a regular journal. For many years, I wrote daily entries, the habit as ingrained as brushing my teeth. Stacks of these journals fill boxes now. Along with these journals, in my bedroom I have a wooden chest filled with artifacts from my childhood—small toys, collectibles, and things I made. Evidence of my compulsion to preserve, protect, and venerate things that were—and are still—important to me. I don’t like to let things go.  

I write to give a home to my memories—accurate, slanted, shadowed, or otherwise. I write to give a home to lost moments. I write to capture the fleeting, the fleeing. The scrap of conversation overheard, the interaction heavy with unacknowledged meaning. I write to enliven old thoughts and worn ideas, like putting new paint in old rooms. All those buried bits—those are the stories. I write so they can have a chance to tell their tale.

MARGO ORLANDO LITTELL is the author of the novels The Distance from Four Points and Each Vagabond by Name, both published by the University of New Orleans Press. Each Vagabond by Name won the University of New Orleans Publishing Lab Prize and an IPPY Awards Gold Medal, was longlisted for the 2017 Tournament of Books, and was named one of fifteen great Appalachian novels by Bustle. She has an MFA from Columbia, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Originally from southwestern Pennsylvania, she now lives in New Jersey with her family. Find her online @margolittell.

Come hear Margo read from more of her beautiful work, her new novel
The Distance from Four Points (University of New Orleans Press),
this Friday, June 5, 2020, 6pm Central online with Hidden Timber Books.

This event is FREE but please REGISTER!

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Sunday Series: S.A. Snyder on Why I Write

In this Sunday Series, you’ll meet writers new and seasoned as they share what inspires them to put #PenToPaper. This week, welcome S.A. Snyder, memoirist and live storyteller who shares how writing is like breathing.

Photo by Pablo Orcaray on Unsplash

You may have heard the expression, “If you have to ask the question, you won’t understand the answer.” In my case, I don’t even understand the question sometimes. Why do I write? For me, it’s not a choice in the same way breathing is not a choice, which is why the question is difficult to answer. Because I have to lacks reason. So after deeper scrutiny, the following is what I came up with.

Ever since I can remember, I’ve written stories in my head. They arrived like boisterous friends, wanting to be seen and heard, unstoppable. I started keeping a journal in third grade, which really took off when Rumble, my pet mouse, died of old age in the palm of my hand. I was inconsolable. Through journaling about my grief, I discovered the remarkable power of transformation. I could now cope with and better understand troubling and perplexing experiences through writing about them.

I come from a long line of control freaks. Being the youngest in a five-pack of siblings, however, didn’t leave me much chance to control while growing up. Elder siblings were always bossing me around. Not only was transformation possible through writing, creating stories also gave me the power to govern the narrative; to make sure the underdog came out on top.

In college I studied forestry and wildlife biology, leading to work as a field biologist. Yet stories kept begging to be written, not just fiction but stories of place and people in it. I returned to school for a master’s in journalism. Marrying my two passions—writing and nature—I wrote about the environment, wildlife, and outdoor recreation. I also wrote a lot of tips-and-tricks material, called “service journalism” back then. Today we call it life hacking.

As I got older, my boisterous friends continued to visit with enthusiasm, turning their faces toward knowledge-sharing, showing up as lessons learned, wisdom gained. Now I blog about self-care and retreats. My memoir took twenty years to finish and publish, though, because I kept telling myself no one cared about wisdom I learned. Even an agent said, “You’re an outstanding writer, but no one wants to read a spiritual journeying memoir by an unknown. Call me when you have something I can sell.” A year after that harsh rejection, Eat, Pray, Love hit the shelves. Who had ever heard of Elizabeth Gilbert before? I gave up for a while, and then my soul, fueled somewhat by resentment, pushed me to write through multiple drafts of my memoir. Doing so gave me the courage to express deeply personal things, which I’ve always had difficulty talking about let alone putting on paper. Writing my story also taught me to ignore others’ judgments about whether I have an audience. I’m confident my stories will find the people who need them.

I used to compare myself a lot with others, but not so much now that I’m closer to sixty than fifty. Writing is one aspect I still play the comparison game with. Am I as good as her?Will my books ever sell as much as his? When I’m blocked or feeling low in self-confidence, or when it becomes hard—because writing is so damn hard sometimes—I wonder whether I should give it up and be satisfied with my day job. No. It would be useless to try quitting writing, because if you hold your breath long enough, you just pass out then you automatically start breathing again.

A couple of years ago I got hooked on live personal-experience storytelling. It helps me hone my writing craft and provides instant feedback. When I hear the audience gasp or laugh, see them tear up, I know I’m hitting my mark. Now others breathe my stories, too.

S.A. SNYDER has been a professional writer and editor since 1991, including newspaper columnist and reporter, technical writer, writing instructor, communications manager and consultant, blogger, and book author. She lives in Virginia, where she participates in oral storytelling and writes a blog (www.LunaRiverVoices.com) about retreating and self-care, among other random topics. She is the author of three nonfiction books and numerous newspaper and magazine articles. Her latest book, The Value of Your Soul: Rumi Verse for Life’s Annoying Moments, due in September 2020, is a spinoff of her memoir, Plant Trees, Carry Sheep: A Woman’s Spiritual Journey Among the Sufis of Scotland.

Her travel guide, Scenic Driving Montana, showcases her home state and was first published in 1995. The 4th edition will be published in 2021.