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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: Julia Gimbel 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 Julia Gimbel, who writes about the desire to write and, more importantly, the need.

*Image of sepia photo and army effects by jesse orrico on Unsplash

For me, it has rarely been about wanting to write, it’s been about having to write. Let me explain.
 
Over thirty years ago, I left college a freshly minted journalist with spiral bound notebook in hand, ready to take on the questions of who, what, where, when, and why. Through most of my professional career, the writing assigned to me was institutional, a “stick to the facts, ma’am” kind of affair. I wrote fashion copy for a local magazine, employee manuals and customer newsletters for a retailer, and merchandising instructions for a manufacturer. While these writing experiences were not always the most creative, they were satisfying because in their simplicity, these missives fulfilled people’s needs.
 
Fast forward to five years ago when I discovered a 60-page handwritten WWII journal my late father tucked away in the back of a family scrapbook. As I transcribed the journal for my siblings, I found myself immersed in his memories and curious to learn more about that era in American history. The more I learned, the more I felt I had to write – it was almost as if Dad was compelling me to flesh out the skeleton of his journal by researching and then sharing what I unearthed with others.

This time there was an emotional connection that motivated me to continue writing, until over the course of several years I ended up with enough chapters for a book. In early March, Orange Hat Publishing released my book, Student, Sailor, Skipper, Survivor – How WWII Transformed the Lives of Ordinary Americans. 

It turns out that I am not the only person of a certain age who is interested in WWII history. While writing the book, I constantly discovered interesting stories that didn’t tie into my manuscript but that I felt I still had to write about. They found a home on my author facebook page, @JuliaWritesWWII, which almost 13,000 people follow to see the tidbits of history I share.

I have to write to fuel my curiosity about the past and to share with others. The funniest part of it all? I’ve come full circle, recently enrolling in a Masters of World War II program where I now have to write term papers!

JULIA GIMBEL lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with her husband, Josh, and their two pugs, who snore peacefully at her feet as she writes. She is proud of her two adult children, Elijah and Lena, who are establishing themselves respectively at work and school. She has been published in Family Stories from the Attic (Hidden Timber Books, 2017), Creative Wisconsin Literary Journal (2017 & 2019), and Wisconsin People & Ideas (2019). Julia shares little-known WWII stories with thousands of followers on her facebook page, @JuliaWritesWWII. She is currently pursuing her Masters degree in World War II Studies.

GIVEAWAY: Enter HERE by Saturday, March 28th, for a chance to win
a copy of Student, Sailor, Skipper, Survivor, courtesy of Julia Gimbel!

You can purchase a copy through Orange Hat Publishing, Amazon,
Barnes and Noble, or BOOKSHOP.org.