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Life Story Links: September 29, 2020
This week's roundup, heavy on video content, features stories on the nature of memoir, moving tributes for deceased, and an array of family history finds.
“Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.”
—Oscar Wilde
Vintage postcard of “A Northern Autumn, Birch Drive” (originally issued by Detroit Publishing Company, 1898 - 1931), courtesy The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library Digital Collections.
On Memoir
A MEMOIR ROOTED IN PLACE
“Life moves in strange and marvelous patterns,” Rebecca McClanahan says in this interview for Brevity magazine. “The memoir runs panting behind the life but can never catch up.” Her new book, In the Key of New York City: A Memoir in Essays, was released this month.
A LIFE BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
“Twenty-one years later I am close to finishing the memoir,” George Clever tells personal historian Patricia Pihl. “I owed my children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren information about my Lenape life, information I could not receive from my parents, grandparents, or great parents.”
Stories Untold, Discovered Anew
SACRED STORIES
“All anyone really wants is to be seen and heard, and yet we avoid seeing and hearing others every day. Even among families, there are limits to what we can expect to receive from others. Sometimes we’re left carrying our own stories, like oceans inside of us.” Sarah Kasbeer on sacred stories.
ARTIFACTS OF A LIFE
William Lamb’s mother, who died in 1992, still finds ways to speak to him through the objects she left behind. Read how a lamp unraveled the story of a life Lamb never knew his mother had.
Family History Finds
FEAST OF MEMORIES
For anyone who’s ready to begin capturing the stories that make up your food heritage, I created a list of food-themed questions that you can use for either family history interviews or writing prompts.
LOOKING TO THE PAST
This pandemic year will be remembered for sure, but it’s also important to keep in mind that, “like our ancestors, we can come together and overcome the difficulties ahead. These U.S. census records offer signs of hope of what is to come.”
LIVING THROUGH THIS HISTORIC TIME
Lock down these days with a family memoir, suggests Joss Carpreau of Elephant Memoirs in Manchester, England: “You may not want to write about it yet [if] it’s all too raw, and maybe you think the worst is yet to come. These, however, are the thoughts and feelings that will most be interesting in years to come.”
SUMMONING COMPASSION
“After writing this piece, I received my great-grandfather's death certificate and discovered he…died in the State Hospital for the Insane from Dementia Paralytica, which may well have been a factor in the sad choice of allowing his son to perish.” California–based personal historian Lisa O'Reilly on an ancestor’s heartbreaking decision.
Personal Notes from Personal Historians
CLASSICS FOR THE SEASON
The partners behind NYC–based Remarkable Life Memoirs share a few of their favorite fall recipes, including a sweet kugel “best [eaten] when you’re standing in front of the fridge with your coat still on.”
(COUGH, COUGH)
“N95 masks are de rigeur, not the pretty cloth masks that are my everyday pandemic wear. (I can’t believe I miss them!).” Personal historian Trena Cleland provides a fire update from the West Coast.
“THE STRANGEST START TO COLLEGE”
Nancy West, a memoir coach in Western Massachusetts, says she was well-prepared to help her daughter through the challenge of going off to college—but she wasn’t prepared for what happened next.
Bearing Witness to the Holocaust
LESSONS OF THE PAST
“The results are both shocking and saddening, and they underscore why we must act now while Holocaust survivors are still with us to voice their stories,” an expert says in this piece revealing the dreadful results of a survey about Holocaust awareness among U.S. adults.
THE LAST GENERATION
Witness Theater: The Film takes viewers behind the scenes of an intergenerational program which brings together Holocaust survivors and high school students to elicit and memorialize stories of the Holocaust. “These [survivor] communities are dwindling,” film director Oren Rudavsky told The Times of Israel. “It’s an action to create another generation of people who can tell their stories.” Watch a trailer below, and check local PBS listings for an upcoming air date.
Notable Losses
REMEMBERING HIS FATHER
“People used to ask my dad if he was the real Bill Gates. The truth is, he was everything I try to be,” Microsoft founder Bill Gates writes in this tribute to his father, William Gates, Sr., who died on September 14. He honors him as well in this brief video posted on his blog:
JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG REMEMBERED
“Born in Depression-era Brooklyn, Justice Ginsburg excelled academically and went to the top of her law school class at a time when women were still called upon to justify taking a man’s place. She earned a reputation as the legal embodiment of the women’s liberation movement and as a widely admired role model for generations of female lawyers,” reads the obituary in The Washington Post. The New York Times also ran a lengthy tribute that details her early family life in New York City as well as her history-making career; watch a video remembrance below.
MORE PERSONAL TRIBUTES FOR RBG
Nina Totenberg, friends with Ruth Bader Ginsburg for 50 years, shares stories of “her extraordinary character, decency and commitment to friends, colleagues, law clerks—just about everyone whose lives she touched. I was lucky enough to be one of those people.” And her fellow Supreme Court Justices also wrote moving tributes honoring their “dear friend.”
...and a Few More Links
The latest issue of Brevity magazine, with a focus on experiences of disability
A look at the history of personal food writing
New books in October include biographies of Sylvia Plath and Malcolm X plus Lenny Kravitz’s ghostwritten memoir.
Podcast episode: “Lisa Lisson on How Knowing Your Family’s History will Benefit Your Family”
This Modern Love column by Heather von Rohr is a fine example of writing about your relationship origin story.
Reminder: If you missed any of the short video classes from Save Your Photos Month, they will be available to watch through November 1.
The World Mother Storytelling Project, to be livestreamed on October 25, teaches us to listen to and tell our mothers’ stories.
Short Takes
38 questions to prompt food memories
Use these food-themed family history questions as conversation starters or writing prompts to capture your cherished food memories for the next generation.
In a previous post we outlined the four basic steps to begin preserving your food memories. After you have gathered recipes and photographs, the real fun begins: the remembering. The story sharing. And the cooking.
If you’re ready to begin capturing the stories that make up your food heritage, hurray! I recommend you start by hosting a family get-together (in person or virtually during these socially distanced times). Set a simple menu—one that includes some of your family’s favorite comfort foods and, most definitely, dessert—and an agenda: to talk about the foods and the holiday feasts and the kitchen antics that make you laugh, smile, and drool.
Memories flow when you’re all reminiscing together (“Remember that time…?”), and the communal feeling around a family dinner table adds to the story sharing appeal.
Print out the questions below (you can download a printable guide here) and pass it around the table. Or select your 10 favorite questions and write them on index cards before the get-together; then people can pick from your deck of cards to get the conversation going.
If your family is not as into the project as you are, or if you prefer to work alone, consider the questions writing prompts instead of conversation starters—it doesn’t matter how you gather your food stories, simply that you do.
Food-themed family history questions
THE KITCHEN OF YOUR CHILDHOOD
How was cooking in your home (either growing up or when you were raising your family) similar to or different from other families in your neighborhood?
What do you remember about holidays and special events?
Describe the kitchen of your childhood: what color were the walls? was it small or big? was there a window, and what was the view? what were the smells? the sounds? were the pots and pans hung on hooks or hidden in a cabinet? was there a pantry filled with…? did you do anything other than cook there—gather with friends, do your homework, talk on the telephone?
What are some of your earliest food memories?
What are some of your favorite food memories?
What are some of your funniest food memories?
Were there any foods you hated but were forced to eat as a kid? (Did you eat them or sneak scraps to the dog?)
What did you talk about around the dinner table when you were growing up? What about now?
What did your mother (or the primary cook in your family) wear when cooking? An apron? A house coat over her work clothes? A sauce-stained sweatshirt?
Were there any comfort foods from your childhood that hold a special place in your heart—in other words, what was your family’s “chicken soup” for the soul?
Did you have a regular day of the week for take-out food (such as pizza Fridays or, a more recent example, taco Tuesdays)? If so, what was your to-go restaurant of choice?
What did you snack on when you were little?
Were you ever a picky eater? Describe when, and if/how you got over it.
Free Guide: Preserving Your Food Memories
Download this free printable guide that include all the family history questions in this post as well as bonus tips for preserving your family food heritage.
ALL GROWN UP
How did you learn to cook?
Who taught you some of your most important kitchen lessons? Tell me about them.
What were your experiences making some of your first dishes?
What cooking triumphs (or disasters) stand out in your memory?
How has cooking changed for you over the years?
What foods always cheer you up?
What meal do you most often cook for those you love?
What junk food is your guilty pleasure?
The way we cook at different stages of our life can be revealing. Do you remember the dishes you relied on when you first went out on your own? Did you cook at all during college? If not, do any celebratory meals or meals cooked by a visiting parent stand out in your memory? How did cooking change after you had children? When they got to be teenagers? When you went back to work?
If you moved away from your home, are there any foods that you would miss that are indigenous to the area or especially well-made in the region?
Do you eat for comfort, for health, for enjoyment? Talk a little bit about your relationship with food over the years.
Do you remember the first time you tasted the cuisine of a seemingly exotic culture? What was it, and did you like it? What were the circumstances?
Do you have one or more cookbooks you return to again and again? Have the chefs you admire changed over the years?
HERITAGE RECIPES
What are your oldest recipes and where did they come from?
What are some of your family’s unique food traditions?
Are there recipes that particularly represent your family’s culture, religion, or regional background? Do you know how to cook them?
Are there any recipes in your family that seem unusual or unique?
Is there a recipe you wish you had gotten from an ancestor but that was never written down? What memories does it hold for you? Have you tried (successfully or not) to recreate it?
Do you have handwritten recipes from your parents and grandparents, and if so, where do you keep them?
FAMILY & FOOD
Who are/were the best cooks in the family? Tell me about them.
What family dishes would you miss the most if you never tasted them again?
Who sat/sits at the head of your table, and is it a position of honor?
Do you say grace before eating, and if so, is there a particular prayer or approach to what is said (e.g., something you’re each grateful for, something nice you did that day, etc.)?
How were birthdays celebrated in your family? Did you have the same cake every year, or something new? Was it homemade or store bought? Did you put an extra candle on the cake for good luck?
What other food traditions do you uphold (or have you abandoned from your childhood)?
Do you enjoy entertaining large groups of people around food? What types of celebrations? What kind of host are you?
Read more about preserving your food memories
Life Story Links: September 15, 2020
From memoir to mini stories, from family photos to family history, this roundup is chock-full of new reads & learning opportunities for memory keepers everywhere.
“If you don’t grow and change in the telling of your life, the reader will not receive your hard-earned wisdom. It’s what editors call ‘the payoff.’ We call it good storytelling.”
—Brenda Peterson and Sarah Jane Freyman, Your Life Is a Book
On this day 57 years ago, September 15, 1963, four young Black girls were murdered as they prepared for their Sunday School lesson at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, in a bombing by the Ku Klux Klan. This photograph shows Emma Bell, Dorie Ladner, Dona Richards, Sam Shirah and Doris Derby—workers from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee—outside the funeral of the girls, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Addie Collins, and Cynthia Wesley. Photograph by Danny Lyons, courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
Book Craft
DON’T CALL IT A MEMOIR
Sometimes the idea of telling our “life story“ is overwhelming. If we think of memoir as a series of smaller life narratives, though, the way in becomes clear.
MEET THE EDITORS
“There’s no such thing as the ‘best editor’—there’s only the best editor for you,” writes Samantha Shubert of NYC–based Remarkable Life Memoirs in this piece busting three myths about editors (and no, they’re not judgy grammar police).
ONE STORY AT A TIME
Ten seniors met with Nancy West for one hour each to share a story from their lives, and the results were fruitful and lively (and absolutely in line with the mission to help alleviate seniors’ loneliness and isolation). Now Nancy is offering mini-memoirs as part of her services at her Massachusetts–based personal history business.
Memoir & Memories
ON GROWING OLDER
“This memoir is alive with the urgency of a man in his seventies still yearning to achieve a realized life,” Vivian Gornick says of Lee Gutkind's My Last Eight Thousand Days, due out on October 1. Listen in on a virtual conversation between these two legends of the genre on the book’s release date.
WARTIME MEMORIES
“History is most authentic when you have participants telling you what happened to them, their own personal experiences…. Our core focus is preserving stories that are otherwise going to be gone and forgotten.” As the 75th anniversary of World War II’s end approaches, local interviews preserve war stories for future generations.
OF FOOD AND LIFE
Whether it’s being cooped up during this pandemic and cooking more often or just the warmth our food memories bring, folks have been asking me for tips on preserving their food heritage more than ever. While a few posts are planned, up first is this one with an overview of how to begin.
Photo Inspiration
PICTURES AND WORDS
“Writing from Photographs” is the title of a four-week self-guided online course being offered by Creative Nonfiction, which will include writing prompts and inspiration exploring “the rich possibilities of the space between photograph and experience.”
30-MINUTE DOSE OF INSPIRATION
While the above course caters to those intent on writing their memoir, the free mini-course I created for Save Your Photos Month this year is designed for everyone, non-writers included: It’s called “Save the Story of Just One Photo,” but I can’t fathom you stopping at just one.
A NEW YORK ORIGINAL
“He pulled out old photographs and told of his tales. He read passages from the memoir he wrote nearly twenty years earlier—a memoir to his grandkids. And, in typical Joe fashion, he made us martinis to clink to what was truly a meaningful day.” Meet Joe.
Remembering 9/11
TEACH THE CHILDREN
With the 19th anniversary of the horrific 9/11 attacks just passed and many families home-schooling their children during the pandemic, I thought I would share these interactive lesson plans for students in grades 3–12 from the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, including one that teaches how first-person accounts and multiple perspectives deepen historical study.
TINY TRIBUTES
Can a remembrance really mean anything when it’s just a little over two minutes? Watch this moving video from the StoryCorp September 11 Initiative, and you tell me…
…then listen to this one-minute-and-24-second audio clip of Ester DiNardo recalling how her daughter Marisa brought her to Windows on the World atop the World Trade Center the day before she perished in the attack:
You may also read the full transcript of Ester’s testimony, or listen in to other recorded oral history accounts from the 9/11 Memorial Museum’s oral history collection.
...and a Few More Links
New research into how the brain manages to safeguard our memories
She “accidentally accumulated the world’s largest achive of ’80s Esprit merch”
Old-fashioned scrapbooking as an artistic form of memory-keeping
Compelling short first-person read: “How to Eat Crabs with Your Mother-in-Law”
Short Takes
4 steps to begin preserving your food memories
Knowing your family’s recipes are preserved for the next generation is reassuring. Adding stories and photos, too, brings your food heritage to life. Start here.
This past year I have gotten a lot of feedback asking for more content to help you preserve your food memories.
I wonder if it’s a sign of the times—we’ve all been homebound for much longer stretches during this pandemic (many of us even made our own sourdough starter and baked bread from scratch!)—or if it’s just that, as I say often, the memories that take place in our childhood kitchens are powerful and persistent. All it takes, after all, is one whiff of sauce simmering on the stove, or a tiny taste of cookie dough, to transport us right back in time.
Either way, I’ve planned a series of posts to get you started with saving your own food memories. First up: Four overarching steps to put you on the right path:
1 - Consider: How do you want to preserve your food memories?
It’s wonderful to have a stash of grease-stained, handwritten recipes in a drawer in your home. But it’s even better to know that those recipes are preserved no matter what.
By digitizing your recipes (they can be scans of the handwritten cards or typewritten transcripts) you not only ensure they last for generations, but you can more easily share them with loved ones far and wide.
Our two favorite ways to preserve your recipes and food memories are:
In a book (of course!). Include both recipes and, at least for some of the foods, the stories and memories associated with them. You can go a DIY route or hire us to create a professional heritage cookbook for your family.
In a recipe box. Consider attaching photos and stories to your recipes and storing them together in a vintage recipe box.
A cookbook personalized just for your family could include a mix of recipes, stories, and images.
While some of your recipes may be handwritten on recipe cards, others may be scattered; look within the pages of cookbooks, in your siblings’ collections, and on your computer and phone apps.
2 - Gather recipes.
Even if you’re an incredibly organized person, chances are you’ve got some recipes in a drawer, some on the computer, and others in your head (perhaps those are the most important to write down!).
Make a list of everywhere you think your recipes reside, then tackle gathering them all in one place.
Two tips: Ask your loved ones which recipes you should include (you might be surprised what your kids ask for!), and then call your siblings and parents to solicit recipes from them, too. The more complete your collection, the better!
3 - Add pictures.
Do you have photos of Grandma in her kitchen, or Poppa pulling the turkey out of the oven on Thanksgiving?
Go on a treasure hunt to find as many food-related photos as you can. Then, digitize them with an app such as Google PhotoScan or hire a professional to scan them so you ensure you don’t lose them (and so you can use them in a printed book if you wish). Make sure to scour your phone scroll for recent images, too.
Also consider hiring a professional photographer to capture a cooking session in your home kitchen. I can recommend photographers across the country, so don’t hesitate to ask me for recommendations. You can include handed-down cast-iron pots, serving dishes, and other family heirlooms in the shoot to make it even more special.
Photos—especially those taken in your home kitchen—help bring stories in a family cookbook to life.
Gathering together around the dinner table (and your favorite family foods, of course!) is a great way to share memories to include in your heritage cookbook.
4 - Find the stories.
For your most-often-cooked foods, traditional fare, and family favorites, write about the memories associated with each of them.
Be specific: Mention the cast-iron pan with the always-loose handle that Bubbe cooked his eggs in. The apron Aunt Ida wore only on Passover. How cherry Jell-o brings you back to your childhood, and the aroma of anise transports you to Brooklyn at Easter. Details, details—the scents and colors and textures...the truth of the story lies in the details.
One fun way to capture these stories is to host a family get-together with the express purpose of reminiscing (over dinner, of course!). Designate someone to take notes, and set up a couple of voice recorders (your smart phone is fine) around the room to get the stories. Oh, and take some pictures while you’re at it.
In an upcoming blog post we will share a list of questions to prompt food memories, which you can use either as writing prompts or as conversation starters during your get-together. Sign up for our newsletter to be sure you don’t miss it!
Want to read food stories from others for a little tasty inspiration?
Check these out:
Billee’s “Famous” Foods
Gramma Billee kept a jar for bacon drippings on her stove; she used it liberally and kept it full. She knew everyone’s favorite foods and provided them—often. Click here to read Billee’s “Famous” Foods.
Mom’s Spaghetti & meatballs
Red sauce ran in her grandmother's blood, and every family member would one day memorize her beloved recipe. Peek into a family kitchen, and a mother's heart. Click here to read Mom’s Spaghetti & Meatballs.
POP’S PIE
Is a grandfather’s love the missing ingredient to the best key lime pie? A young mother delves into memories of the treats her beloved Pop made just for her. Click here to read Pop’s Pie.
Life Story Links: August 31, 2020
A wealth of reading on the value of family photos for prompting memories and stories, plus memoir writing tips and how to leave a meaningful legacy.
“One thing I have learned about remembering is that it is a social process: it happens in collaboration with other people. [My grandmother’s] memories with me may not be the same as her memories with others. The reality of remembering is always contextual.”
—Charles Fernyhough
Ah, if only the back-to-school season were as carefree as past years… Kids in an unidentified school circa 1913. Photograph by William Davis Hassler, printed from original glass plate negative, courtesy New-York Historical Society, New York Heritage Digital Collections.
Kitchen Confidential
THE STORIED RECIPE
Last week I interviewed Becky Hadeed, the story- and food-loving host of the inspiring podcast The Storied Recipe. Read about a few of my favorite episodes here (probably unsurprisingly, they’re with everyday folks about their most cherished food memories).
A LIFETIME’S WORTH OF FADED RECIPES
“My recipes tell stories. If they were pared down, edited and orderly, my memories would be, too.” Joyce Purnick makes a case for revisiting your old, grease-stained recipes every once in a while (even if you no longer cook from them).
The Power of Photographs
A PLACE FOR PICTURES
“There’s nothing wrong with storing your favorite snapshots on Instagram or in the cloud, but digitally browsing through your memories will never feel as special as taking a photo album off the shelf and physically flipping through the pages.” Amen. The Strategist showcases 10 great photo albums for every occasion.
SAVE YOUR PHOTOS MONTH
September is Save Your Photos Month, and among the 40 free virtual classes available are a few by personal historians including my own, Share the Story of Just One Photo, as well as Martie McNabb’s live Show & Tale: Where Were You On 9/11? Pre-registration is required, but you are free to watch the videos at your convenience through November 1, 2020.
SORTING YOUR FAMILY PHOTOS
“The difference between 3,000 unlabeled photos versus 300 photos organized by category can be the difference between your child learning their history or not,” Eric Niloff of photo organization company EverPresent says in this piece that provides a basic framework for getting your own mass of family photos in some semblance of order.
TREASURE HUNT
“Through experience, I have learned what does and doesn’t work when it comes to reaching out to long-lost cousins” in an effort to get family history photos that aren’t online, Melissa Knapp writes in this post with concrete tips for using descendancy research to find new (old) photos of your relatives.
“REBOOTING MEMORIES”
“People are forgetting wartime memories. We need to revitalize those old memories by using the latest method of expression and delivering it to the hearts of many people.” In this case, “melting frozen memories” via colorized photographs.
Personal Iconography
BELOVED STUFF, REBORN
“It’s so satisfying to give new life—and new purpose—to old stuff. You get to keep the memories while renewing your home.” Susan Hood of NYC–based Remarkable Life Memoirs shares some inspired ideas from her own life.
POSTER GIRL
“Even before I’d seen a single episode of Sex and the City, I was versed in the art of performative self-reflection. And then Carrie Bradshaw sashayed into my life. She didn’t just make auto-documentary look glamorous. She made it look like a job.” Brittany K. Allen uses touchstones of popular culture to walk us through her journey as a writer.
On Nonfiction Writing
ELEVATE YOUR MEMOIR
National Association of Memoir Writers is running a six-week virtual Memoir Boot Camp starting September 22 with a different teacher each session, including Jacqueline Woodson, Claire Bidwell Smith, and Larry Smith.
AN INVITATION FROM HISTORY
“The pandemic is only one of the seismic forces that converged on American life this year,” Oregon–based personal historian John Hawkins writes. “There is a certain advantage to being the one using the keyboard or the microphone instead of relying on others to record their thoughts.”
TRUTH OR DARE
“I’d done my best to get the facts correct as I wrote, but I had thousands of pages of archival documents, photos, trial transcripts, and newspaper clippings, as well as hours of interviews.” Emma Copley Eisenberg thoroughly and thoughtfully dives into the topic of fact-checking nonfiction writing.
STORY SHARING FOR NON-WRITERS
The experts at the Biographers Guild of Greater New York this week share three basic approaches you can take to ensuring your life stories are told and preserved for the next generation, even if you do not consider yourself a writer.
Legacy through Stories
A LETTER TO THE DEAD
I often tell people who are struggling to craft a meaningful tribute of their lost loved one to write a letter to them—tell the deceased directly what you loved and admired about them. This letter to John Lewis in the wake of his recent passing is a sublime example of this approach.
“MY FAMILY’S SHROUDED HISTORY”
“Inhibited by the silences in our families, we turn to books. But here was something rare: the answers to questions I hadn’t known how to ask, and a way to map my family’s stories into what I had learned of this history, each illuminating the other,” Alexander Chee writes.
THEIR PAPU
Ricardo Ovilla “lives on in his granddaughters’ stories. To them, he will always be the tender hearted, marimba-loving, menudo aficionado who stopped at nothing to see his children laugh. They knew him simply as ‘Papu.’ ” Listen in below:
DIASPORA, RECONSTRUCTED
“My Kashmiri grandmother is illiterate. I wonder what she’d say if she knew her progeny wrote her unsent letters, wrote so she wouldn’t be lost to history. My grandmother, all four feet and nine inches of her. Housewife. Teen bride. When she video calls, she stares at my father and she cries and she cries.” High school student Yasmeen Khan on her fractured provenance.
...and a Few More Links
Photographs of generations of Black suffragists crafted narratives and became “decidedly civic currency.”
A look at an array of services for creating a digital legacy for a lost loved one
Watch Thomas Allen Harris in dialogue with Marci Brennan, a professional photo organizer, followed by a Labor Day–themed community photo share.
Colorful murals help prompt memories for people with dementia.
Short Takes
Don’t call it a memoir. Just write your life.
Sometimes the idea of telling our "life story" is overwhelming. If we think of memoir as a series of smaller life narratives, though, the way in becomes clear.
Blogger and memoir writer Jerry Waxler says, “Vast numbers of people are aspiring to become storytellers, turning this into a boom time for the story arts.” Waxler teaches workshops where, he says, “people come with such longing to try to turn life into story.” That’s why people come to me, as well.
Telling stories
Why write your life?
Far from being narcissistic, “memoir is about handing over your life to someone and saying, This is what I went through, this is who I am, and maybe you can learn something from it,” says Jeanette Walls, author of The Glass Castle.
“It’s honestly sharing what you think, feel, and have gone through. If you can do that effectively, then somebody gets the wisdom and benefit of your experience without having to live it.”
This insight could as easily apply to a different type of writing about your life.
Writing a memoir not only sounds intimidating, but it also can seem lofty, maybe a little out of reach. Telling stories, though—that’s something accessible, more easily accomplished. And if done right, those disparate stories can have an equally profound effect on your family members and loved ones.
For that’s who I encourage you to share your story with: your children, and their children after them. Imagine the gift you’ll be giving when you share stories that make them laugh, cry, and know the reach of love.
Short stories, bound together by narrative thread
As a journalist, I am all too aware of the appeal of bite-size information (I have watched long-form journalism fall by the wayside as the media landscape has evolved over the years). We’ve become accustomed to sharing thoughts in 140 characters or less, and captioning our filtered Instagram photos for the greatest #impact.
But while I recommend sharing your stories in mini-narratives (and sometimes even list form), I don’t do so because of this trend toward brevity.
I suggest this form because
I think it engages people most readily and provides just the right amount of detail to both inform and tug at the heartstrings;
it falls within the range of most people’s writing ability; and
it is do-able (the worst-case scenario in creating a family narrative is to never do it, whether because the task is too daunting or it’s taking so long you never finish!).
And when you work with a qualified editor to help you find the narrative thread that binds your stories together—to add context, uncover meaning, and invite reader engagement—that once seemingly unreachable goal of writing a “memoir” is suddenly within reach!
Where to begin?
Consider…
writing in a daily journal,
setting aside two hours per week to devote to your life story writing,
or finding a likeminded partner with whom to exchange your writings (both to give you a reader and to provide a form of accountability).
If you would like to preserve your stories but you know you will never sit down to write them yourself, reach out to see how we can work together; often a personal historian is the answer for an aspiring memoirist who hasn’t yet taken the first step.
A while back I wrote about easy ways to find your way into life story writing, so if you’re ready to start, read this first!
How to plan a life story book in 3 simple steps
“Stories through the vessel of cherished food memories”
Meet the story- and food-loving host behind the inspiring podcast The Storied Recipe, then click on a few of my favorite episodes for a taste of her interviews.
On The Storied Recipe podcast host Becky Hadeed, pictured, invites guests to share their stories through the vessel of cherished food memories.
Podcast recommendation: The Storied Recipe
If you look at the Instagram feed for The Storied Recipe you’ll be excused for thinking that the founder is simply a food photographer. Becky Hadeed is, of course, a photographer who turns her lens (rather gloriously) to food, but she is so much more, and at the heart of all she does is a bone-deep respect for story.
On The Storied Recipe podcast, Becky begins each episode with a few words describing her mission: Giving a platform for her guests to “share their stories through the vessel of cherished food memories,” thereby inviting us all to “honor those that have loved us through their cooking.”
And there’s the attraction for me, as you can imagine! I have written often about the power of smells and tastes to conjure memories, to transport us back to our childhood kitchens. If someone is a reluctant storyteller, it’s often their food memories that get them going.
Becky’s conversations with her podcast guests are fairly wide-ranging, but they somehow always circle back to food stories and a cherished recipe (which Becky cooks herself and photographs in her garage studio).
It’s not surprising, either, that my favorite episodes highlight stories from “everyday people” who happen to light up with the telling of their food memories. Whereas we would expect a chef or a cookbook author to be inspired by the foods of their past, it’s the regular folks talking about their family members and the tastes of their childhood that are often most inspiring.
The person behind the podcast
Becky posits that her love of story came before food, but it’s a close call.
“I always say that reading was my first love, because when I used to go to the library or open a new book (and I opened hundreds every year, as a child), I got the same feeling of happy butterflies that I got when I saw a crush! Reading gave me comfort and insight and a way to occupy my mind.”
She says she’s always seen “individual stories as the best way to make sense of history and the world.” As with so many of us, that belief likely started with tales told by her grandparents, who resided next door to Becky when she was growing up, as well as her great-grandmother, who lived to 103. Becky loved hearing stories of their lives and asking them for more—and more!—detail. “So this idea that personal story is the best way to learn about culture and heritage and history was just...it was so obvious to me.”
Becky is a naturally curious soul who still seems surprised when someone expresses gratitude for her openness. People have often told her how “they found themselves sharing things with me that they never shared with anyone else,” she says.
Listen to a few of her podcast episodes and you’ll see why: Becky is what I call a generous listener. Her questions spring from a well of both genuine curiosity and openhearted respect. In today’s world (as I know all too well from my own experience as a personal historian), giving someone our full attention and asking questions that convey real, engaged interest—well, it’s all too rare.
And because Becky’s love for food runs parallel to her love for story—and because her photography began to shine a light on food—it was only natural that her podcast allow guests to tell their stories through the lens of food. She says she feels those same butterflies that she gets while reading when she is in the kitchen, “when I figure out how to put together all the random things I have in my fridge, when I see the light falling on the carrots I'm chopping, or when I see a new recipe I want to try.”
The gift of cherished food memories
“What I really want to do is to take meaningful photographs of food for people that celebrate the relationships in their lives,” Becky says.
That means more often than not the foods Becky cooks and photographs are humble fare that remind a guest of mom, grandpa, the homeland, or childhood. Sure, there’s a complex recipe here and a vaulted dish there, but there are also basic tea cakes and beloved street food.
Becky’s own go-to food memory is like that. It bestows comfort and a return to a simpler time—and, as Becky says, it “proves that it’s the story and the people that really matter.”
“My mom is an excellent cook—she’s really the best cook I know. But that special memory I go back to the very most came from my grandmother, who wasn't a cook at all. She always made me root beer floats. Just ice cream and root beer, that's it. I drank them through her silver (real silver) iced tea straws. They were delicious and made me happy.”
When Becky’s grandmother died, Becky inherited her silver (and uses it in her food photography still). “In fact, I'm drinking an iced coffee through one of those straws right this minute,” she tells me.
That straw holds stories for Becky, and continues to make her feel happy. And it’s the inherited cake pans, the passed-down recipes handwritten on index cards, and the familial food knowledge that Becky hopes to get her guests talking about—the little (often surprising) things that make them happy.
The silver spoons Becky inherited from her grandmother and a couple of root beer floats were the subject of some of Becky”s earliest food photography. “They were delicious and made me happy,” she says of the treats her grandmother made for her as a child.
Are you Becky’s dream guest?
If you’ve got a treasured food memory you’d like to share, consider applying to be a guest; you just might turn out to be on my next favorite episode.
“The beauty is in the mundane,” Becky says. “It’s the everyday people whose stories are not told over and over again that hold the real wisdom and beauty.”
“Time and time again, I've gotten on the phone with a regular person and we've talked for hours (!) about their grandmother or their father and I get off in tears, so in awe of this person's fortitude and love,” she says.
On the other end of the spectrum, if you know a chef or a high-profile foodie who tells captivating tales around the dinner table, why not turn them on to the podcast? Maybe they’ll want to share their untold food inspirations, too. (Rahul Mandel, wanna dish? Becky says she’d love to hear about Bangladesh and your mom and about so much more than your (fabulous) cakes!)
Favorite episodes, free download & related links
My favorite episodes of The Storied Recipe podcast:
“Food is very emotional.”
Selina Göldi on the soul of a place, how cooking in the French countryside helps her reconnect with the instinctual aspect of cooking, “the map of her childhood landscape” in Switzerland, and entertaining with her whole “heart and body and soul.” Oh, and a recipe for a German no-bake layered cake that her grandmother and mom prepared for celebrations.
“They would always forget to put something in.”
Becky speaks to her longtime friends Robert and Lisa amidst lots of laughter, musings on what exactly is pudding? (no real conclusions drawn), memories of stirring the Christmas pudding for good luck, and how much whiskey to pour in, give or take. (Sorry, this family recipe’s a secret.)
“I found my entire family in a Ukranian village.”
American-born Lydia on the power of calling herself “Piotr’s granddaughter,” discovering the foods of her childhood on a foreign table, and trading shots of homemade vodka with a dying woman. Oh, and a recipe for (a lot!) of varynyky (otherwise known as pierogis).
Seth Greenberg: Lessons from an Iconic NYC Bakery and Laura Clark: Thanksgiving in Italy are two more of my favorite episodes.
Freebie I know you’ll love:
The DIY Storied Recipe Book, which you can print at home, creates space for you to preserve your recipes and the stories behind them.
The Storied Recipe Instagram feed:
After a recent account hack, Becky lost thousands of followers, so the feed is still building; you’ll get a taste of her food photography as well as updates about new podcast episodes.
All food photographs by Becky Hadeed, courtesy The Storied Recipe.
Related reading:
Check out more podcast recommendations for life storytellers, creative entrepreneurs, oral historians, and anyone who loves a captivating first person story.
Read more posts with first-person food memories and tips for preserving your own.
Our A Taste of the Past recipe card set pairs nicely with a bottle of burgundy—a most thoughtful hostess gift or a little homespun comfort for yourself anytime.
What about YOUR Food Memories?
Care to preserve your own food memories—or a whole bunch of your life stories with a few luscious food memories thrown in? I’d be honored to interview you for a book of your own. Reach out to see how we can work together!
Life Story Links: August 11, 2020
On the craft of life story writing, commemorating lives lost, enticing memoir excerpts, digital preservation tips & more recommended reads for memory keepers.
“We have become a generation of unstorytellers…. We need to return to the campfire. And we can. It’s as simple as saying to someone, Tell me the story of your life. And when they’re finished, say, I’d like to tell you mine.”
—Bruce Feiler, Life Is in the Transitions
Postman, 1896. Photograph courtesy The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library Digital Collections.
Saving Family Stories
A LITTLE MYSTERY
If you are unsure about an ancestor’s real life, don’t flesh out their story with conjecture and imagination, suggests Patricia Pihl, a personal historian based in Western New York. “Transparency will bring clarity to the picture of our lives, a true gift for future generations.”
(NON)TRADITIONS
Nashville–based family historian Taneya Y. Koonce wonders “I don’t have family traditions. Or do I?” Her take: “Recording facts and snippets about relationships and values for future generations can add as much to your family story as passing down the ways your family celebrates the holidays or other more conventionally considered traditions.”
Gone but Not Forgotten
LIFE CELEBRATIONS
As part of StoryCorps’ efforts to help people commemorate lives lost during the Covid-19 pandemic they have put together a two-page guide with genuinely helpful advice for setting up and recording a memorial conversation.
STORIES FROM POST-LOSS LIFE
“Before [my mom and grandmom] died I hadn’t even thought to attempt making a brisket or kugel or kasha and bowties, but afterward I felt this deep urgency to learn how to carry the tradition forward.” Rebecca Soffer talks to Allison Gilbert about keeping lost loved ones’ memories alive.
Inside the Issues: Recent Magazines & Books of Note
LIBRARY LOVE
The new issue of Broadside, the magazine of the Library of Virginia, includes an array of summery images from their digital collections, the intriguing ancestry of former football player Torrey Smith, a behind-the-scenes look at their Conservation Lab (with tips for preserving family papers), and a spotlight on a new book that finds the untold stories—“real-life human dramas”—within historical records.
IN A TIME OF WAR
Coby Blom-de Groot was 15 years old when her parents brought home a baby to shelter during the German occupation of Holland in 1943. She kept a diary about the child, including photographs and anecdotes, for her parents to read when they could be reunited. “That precious diary confirmed for me that Ria…was deeply loved,” her sister Sonja said. Read the whole issue of Yad Vashem Jerulsalem magazine, in which this story appears.
MEANING-MAKING THROUGH STORY
We’re in the midst of a collective “lifequake,” and author Bruce Feiler has help for how to navigate the uncertainties that come with all this change (hint: there might be some storytelling involved). Why you should read Life Is in the Transitions.
Recommended First-Person Reads
MARRIAGE STORY
“He was in New York, and I was in Seattle, but we had credit cards. We’d deal with the consequences later. The first time we kissed was in the kitchen of my apartment, against the closed door of the dishwasher in mid-cycle. Everything whirred.” Read an excerpt from The Fixed Stars: A Memoir by Molly Wizenberg
POETIC LICENSE
“Dad hadn’t been surprised when I’d told him I was interested in reading through his letters; he assumed everyone would be.” Read a brief yet enticing excerpt from Gretchen Cherington’s memoir of growing up with poet laureate Richard Eberhart as her father.
In Pictures
“WHO IS THAT?”
Bill Shapiro has shelf upon shelf of found photos sorted into archival boxes. “I love these pictures,” he writes. “I also hate them. They remind me of time going by. They remind me of what I had and what’s gone.” Read more about the strange lure of other people’s photos.
DIGITAL PRESERVATION
As an early supporter of Permanent.org I have uploaded photographs to their archive and am following their journey as a nonprofit dedicated to creating “a new paradigm for secure cloud storage.” I believe their mission is worthwhile—low-cost, long-term digital storage for anyone “leveraging the same funding models used by museums, libraries, and universities for centuries.” Read about how they reached their phase 1 fundraising goal; get started with a free gigbyte of storage; or add space as you need it ($10 per gig).
...and a Few More Links
In the latest issue of Creative Nonfiction: Lee Gutkind on memoir now
Why we reach for nostalgia in times of crisis.
A family historian’s process for making ancestor books
Milwaukee–based personal historian Mary Voell announces virtual guided autobiography classes beginning in September.
Milan Kundera will donate his archive to his hometown library, in Brno, Czech Republic.
Short Takes