Word of the Day August 28

To my delight, today’s word-of-the-day from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is “veridical.”

veridical\vuh-RID-ih-kul\

What pleased me most is the sentence the dictionary used to showcase the word:

“All psychotherapies are based on the fact that memory is not veridical, that unconscious desires and fantasies exert their force on us all…” (Henry Kaminer, Weekly Standard, July 31, 2000)

Same goes for memoir writing, which is entirely dependent upon memory and perception — two unreliable powers. A writer’s voice and memory is filtered by emotion. We insert facts and omit others, corrupting the form. Memoir writing is how we make ourselves up — shaping raw experience, identifying cause and effect in events, connecting the dots to conquer experience.

Not only do individuals create their own stories: whole communities, whole countries revise and rewrite their histories so that citizens can live with the country’s identity and historical legacy. “History is what people write down afterward,” one author said recently, “what really happened is something else.”

If perception and memory are so faulty, why write memoir? Because the telling can illuminate something in one’s own truths, it can transform experience into meaning — because how we remember determines who we are. What’s remembered becomes reality and identity.

We do not simply have an experience, William Maxwell wrote in So Long, See You Tomorrow, we are entrusted with it. “We must do something – make something with it. A story, we sense, is the only possible habitation for the burden of our witnessing.”

Memoir comforts us by bearing witness and creating meaning…even though memory is not veridical.

To listen to the interview, go to http://www.theauthorsshow.com/

Crumstadt, Germany

My mother’s cousin, Elisa Levi, recently sent this email after reading, Is It Night or Day?. When Elisa was a child, she and her family fled Crumstadt, Germany for Uruguay. My mother and Elisa have corresponded and visited each other since 1938, the year my mother left Germany.

Dear Edith:

I finished reading Fern’s book. It made me relive all the sorrows and fears I experienced in Germany in school and on the streets of Crumstadt the year before my departure. I also remember the first months in Montevideo when my mother read us the letters from your mother, which talked about your trip to the US and your relationship with Aunt Mildred. Even though I was unable to say it then, I felt for you and I suffered with you.

I think the book is profound and touching. I sense there is a deep feeling between you and Fern. I can imagine it. You certainly must have suffered a lot again.

Love,

Elisa

French President Jacques Chirac

Fifteen years ago, in July, 1995, French President Jacques Chirac gave a speech finally acknowledging the French role in the July 16, 1942 “Velodrome d’Hiver roundup.” Here are his words:

July 16 and 17, 1942, Paris, France

“These black hours will stain our history forever and are an injury to our past and our traditions. Yes, the criminal madness of the occupant was supported by the French, by the French state. Fifty-three years ago, on 16 July 1942, 450 policemen and gendarmes, French, under the authority of their leaders, obeyed the demands of the Nazis. That day, in the capital and the Paris region, nearly 10,000 Jewish men, women, and children were arrested at home, in the early hours of the morning, and assembled at police stations…France, home of the Enlightenment and the Rights of Man, land of welcome and asylum, France committed that day the irreparable. Breaking its word, it delivered those it protected to their executioners.”

WGTD's Greg Berg

Greg Berg interviews author Fern Schumer Chapman on Monday, July 12th, ‘The Morning Show,” 91.5 WGTD.

Here is the link:

http://media.gtc.edu/morningshow/871210.mp3

Author school visits

I am beginning to schedule school visits for 2010-2011. Here are my offerings:

A Child’s Immigration Story (Grades 4-12) What if your parents told you they are sending you all by yourself to live in a foreign country? I take students on her mother’s frightening immigration journey from Nazi Germany to America. (powerpoint)

The Legacy of the Holocaust (Grades 4-12) I explain how trauma is transmitted in families, fulfilling state requirements to teach the Holocaust.

Writers Workshop: (Grades 3-12) I teach the craft of writing, inspiring students to develop their own sense of identity through story.

Please email me at fernschumer@aim.com to make arrangements for presentations.

1990 - Edith (wearing corsage) reunites with elementary school classmates,
52 years after she last saw them.

One of my mother's German classmates from elementary school
just finished reading Is It Night or Day?. He sent my mother
his reaction to the book in this email. My good friend Frank Nordt
translated the letter from German to English below. 

Liebe Edith,

Fern`s Buch habe ich nun zweimal gelesen und es stets bedrückt,
traurig und betroffen aus der Hand gelegt.
Immer wieder ist mir Sigmund Freuds (??) Wort in den Sinn gekommen:
"Der Mensch ist des Menschen Wolf."
Goethe hat es behutsamer gesagt:

   Alles geben die Götter, die unendlichen,
   Ihren Lieblingen ganz:
   Alle Freuden, die unendlichen,
   Alle Schmerzen, die unendlichen, ganz.

Die Zeit, Schweres zu ertragen und zu vergessen, ist zuweilen
dereinzige Trost und Helfer.

Dear Edith,

I’ve now read Fern’s new book twice and I always put it down feeling sad, depressed, and dejected. Freud’s words ??? (actually, Thomas Hobbes’ words) always come to my thoughts: “Man is Man’s Wolf.” (The meaning of the phrase is “Man is a wolf to his fellow man.”) Goethe said it in a more gentle fashion:

The gods give everything, the infinite ones,
To their beloved, completely,
Every pleasure, the infinite ones,
Every suffering, the infinite ones, completely.

The pain of that time is heavy to bear. To forget is sometimes the only relief.

Lost childhood

From reader Karin Gordon:

“The one scene in the book, Is It Night or Day?, that stays with me is the young boy who lay curled up on the deck crying he wanted to go to the zoo. I was without my parents for several years during the war.

“The Germans walked into Denmark in 1940 when I was two years old. When I was four, the Germans took our house, the Resistance movement bombed the milk factory where my father worked. (The Resistance bombed anything that could be of help to the Germans, in this case, milk and butter.) No one could take in a family of four so we were scattered like unwanted puppies.

“For three years, I stayed with different aunts and uncles and once with a friend of my mother’s. Some treated me well, one undressed and beat me for no reason – I was so sick at that place I couldn’t eat but threw up constantly (while they taunted me). My father came one evening on his bicycle, saw my condition, put me on the crossbar of his bike, but had nowhere to take me, so he dropped me at a cousin’s house on the way to the town where he had a room. I had no idea where the rest of the family were. I saw one of my parents on occasion. No one wanted to talk about it afterwards.

“We were united in a flea-infested flophouse near the end of the war in 1945. The other lodgers were pimps, whores, black market racketeers. the owner was a witch. My mother broke down and continued breaking down resulting in long stays at a sanatorium. This led to me being farmed out again, to a lovely aunt, but I was desperate for my mother.

“I remember how terrifying it was not to know when I’d see my parents again. My aunt once told me I’d get to see my mother in ‘two weeks,’ but I didn’t know how long that was.

“We were not united with our family in our own apartment until I was 11, but my mother remained threadbare, unavailable.”