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Life Story Links: June 28, 2022
Personal historian Dawn Roode curates a bi-weekly roundup of stories of interest to memory-keepers and memoirists. This week includes a rich array of pieces.
“To be courageous enough to look at the truth of our lives through our remembered experience is to be changed by it.”
—Padma Lakshmi
Vintage postcard, issued between 1898–1931, portraying a moonlit Palm Beach in Florida. Image courtesy of the The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints, and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library Digital Collections.
Honoring our fathers
“HE REMAINS UNSEEN”
“My father represents the salt of the earth, blue-collar brother…the kind of Black man whose life doesn’t make the headlines for either shooting hoops or shooting bullets, for breaking out or breaking in,” the Rev. Raphael Warnock writes in this essay adapted from his new memoir.
OH CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN
“This boat, where my dad had taught me some of life’s biggest lessons, was my responsibility now. Preserving his boat felt like preserving him.” A love letter from writer Elizabeth Bernstein to her dad, a year after his passing.
A FEW FATHER’S DAY CLASSICS
In honor of Father’s Day, The New Yorker editor David Remnick identified a few of his favorite Personal History columns about dads, and I assure you they’re worth a read: Check out these classics by Michael Chabon, Zadie Smith, and David Sedaris.
A FATHER, CLOAKED IN SECRETS
”My father worked for the ——. His legacy is invisible. He could never talk about his life.” In 16 graphic panels, Sophia Glock reveals a poignant story about writing a memoir and worrying what her father would think.
Black family history—success despite challenges
HEIRLOOMS CARRY FAMILY HISTORY
“For many Black families, kinship bonds have endured through an enlarged definition of the term heirloom that includes everyday items that have come to serve as carriers of tradition and vessels of inheritance.” Explore this photo gallery that weaves “stories of kinship and care across generations.”
LOST AND FOUND
Her family’s story, starting with an African girl on a slave ship, was almost lost—but an old photo with a handwritten annotation on the back led the writer to an elderly aunt who had history to share. Now, “as it is in every generation, it’s up to young people today to preserve what our ancestors and elders gathered.”
MORE THAN A PAPER TRAIL
Handwritten notes in an heirloom Bible became the centerpiece of a search for one Black family’s personal history. This video traces the family’s quest for history—and how the Bible ended up at the Smithsonian.
Miscellaneous storytelling and legacy
MOMENTS OF RECOGNITION
“It’s easy to take for granted the power of sharing a story, especially a personal one.” Readers of a columnist’s personal recollection react with stories of their own lost loved ones, a nod to the power of connection.
COMMUNICATING LOVE
“Knowing that we’re all going to die, what do we want our lives to be about? How do we want to be remembered? And how do we spend whatever time we have left?” A father defines his legacy, recording his stories before he died.
TASTY READS
Last week I wrote about three food memoirs I love that aren’t written by chefs—but that are inspiring examples of using food memories to weave a personal narrative that resonates.
COMPELLING CONVERSATION
San Francisco–based video biographer April Bell talks about vulnerability, the power of story to heal and to affect change, and creating the space to listen in this podcast episode:
...and a few more links
A new neural filter from Adobe Photoshop aims to make photo restoration easier.
Tips for how to preserve memorabilia from a professional organizer
How sculptor Anne Truitt made an art of documenting her life
Lexington, Kentucky, to digitize historical records of enslaved people of the 1700s
Short takes
3 awesome food memoirs not written by chefs
Favorite food memoirs that deliciously incorporate recipes and sense memories—fine examples of how you, too, can weave a personal narrative inspired by food.
What is a “food memoir”?
Browsing various online lists of the best food memoirs, one might think they must tell the tale of a chef’s life. Among almost every top-ten list: Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential; Jacque Pepin’s The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen; and, of course, Julia Child’s My Life in France.
And then there are the divine stories of the food critics and journalists—those who have immersed themselves in the sensuous world of gastronomy professionally—who write memoirs that center around their tables. Among my favorites: Ruth Reichl’s Tender at the Bone and, more recently, Save Me the Plums; Jeffrey Steingarten’s The Man Who Ate Everything; and Born Round by Frank Bruni.
All of the aforementioned memoirs are well worth getting lost in.
But what about the stories of those for whom food simply taps into deep-held memories? For whom the smell of a certain dish transports us back to our childhood kitchens? We needn’t be professional chefs or food writers to deliciously incorporate recipes and sense memories into our life story writing.
If you are looking for some inspiration for weaving food memories into your own memoir writing—or if you just want to read some incredible books that happen to include tasty morsels throughout—add these food-inspired memoirs to your reading list.
title no. 1
“Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love, and the Search for Home” by Kim Sunée
(Grand Central Publishing, 2008)
Hailed as “brave, emotional, and gorgeously written” by Frances Mayes, Kim Sunée’s memoir, Trail of Crumbs, struck me as simultaneously tender and bold as she detailed a decade-long period spent living and traveling through Europe. While the locations and foods are exotic (from Harry’s Bar in Venice to her lover’s various homes in Provence, France, and beyond), an undercurrent of sadness prevails as the young writer struggles to find her place in the world. After being abandoned in a marketplace by her Korean mother at the age of three, Sunée was adopted by an American couple and raised in New Orleans—and subsequently spends most of her twenties on a tremulous search for identity.
From Kirkus reviews: “From the crumbs in the fist of an abandoned three-year-old to bowls of richly sauced pasta, her text chronicles the entwining of food with security and love.”
Does the book include recipes?
Yes. Most chapters end with a handful of recipes that Sunée has cooked—and found some comfort in—including crab crawfish she learned to make from her grandfather; kimchi, the traditional fermented cabbage dish of her Korean heritage; and a variety of Provençal dishes including wild peaches poached in Lillet Blanc and lemon verbena, orange couscous, and gratin de salsify.
Author insight:
“…cooking, for me, became like language: another form of survival. It was probably the only thing that I thought I could do well. And, like with my grandfather, it was a gift. It was a way to give love to other people.” —Kim Sunée
Memorable quote:
“Somehow, I thought he’ll never realize that the everything he wants to give me will never take away the nothing that I’ve always had.” —Kim Sunée
title no. 2
“Finding Freedom: A Cook’s Story Remaking Life from Scratch” by Erin French
(Celadon Books, 2021)
Okay, so maybe you’re questioning why I would include a memoir by a successful restaurant owner on this list of food memoirs not by chefs. Maybe it’s a technicality, but while Erin French is now the owner and chef of The Lost Kitchen in Freedom, Maine (and a television personality, to boot), she says, “It makes me uncomfortable when people call me a chef. I’m like, nope! I’m just a girl who cooks.”
More than her lack of formal training, though, it’s that this book, Finding Freedom, recounts French’s life leading up to her role as celebrated restauranteur. She writes with exceeding vulnerability and openness about her strained relationship with her father; dropping out of college to give birth to her son; surviving an abusive marriage; and battling a pill addiction that eventually led to her losing custody of her son for a time. “Despite these hardships, French refreshingly avoids unnecessary self-pity or sentimentality, and the life-affirming details are just as strong,” reads a review from Kirkus.
Indeed, it is her return again and again to the comforts of food—and the joys of the community it can instill—that weave a thread of positivity through French’s story. “It was the power of good, simple food,” she writes. “It was the food I wanted to cook and the way I wanted to make people feel: nostalgic and loved…. It was food that, with one bite, swaddled you, reminding you of your childhood, of someone you loved, and of the one, the few, or the many sweet moments they gave you.”
I was rooting for her. I was wishing I could taste the foods that sustained her. And, to be honest, I was awed by her willingness to bare herself on the page in a way I would like to but have not yet felt brave enough to do.
Does the book include recipes?
While French mentions numerous favorite foods throughout the memoir (her father’s meatloaf, her grandfather’s garlic powder–rubbed steaks, Nanny’s molasses cookies, and her own beloved butter cake, for instance), there are no recipes included within its pages. But don’t fret: You can find an abundance of them in the cookbook she authored in 2017, The Lost Kitchen: Recipes and a Good Life Found in Freedom, Maine: A Cookbook (Penguin Random House). Find a few recipes here, as well.
Author insight:
“Scrubbing my arms in that sink reminds me of my dreams, once, to be a doctor, to chase a different life. But by the time I’ve dried my hands with a kitchen towel, I’ve already glanced around the open dining room, realized who I am, and the dream I did chase—the one I caught in my own backyard…. The road to this place was winding, but it led me home. I found a good life, my own slice of heaven, right here in Freedom, where they told me nothing was possible.” —Erin French
Memorable quote:
“By the meal’s end, the warmth of a home-cooked dinner had turned the cold silence into mild content. For dessert my mother made tapioca, and the soft and creamy vanilla pearls were a salve we all happily gobbled up, curing whatever was momentarily ailing us all.” —Erin French
title no. 3
“Kitchen Yarns: Notes on Life, Love, and Food” by Ann Hood
(W. W. Norton, 2019)
Renowned chef Jacques Pepin had this to say about Kitchen Yarns: “Ann Hood’s tender, witty, and funny voyage through a life of food reminds us that the visceral taste memories of our past are essential benchmarks of our life, and that the stories of a family are always best felt and expressed through those dishes.”
Hood tells us one captivating story after another, rendering slices of her life meaningful through stand-alone essays that overlap and jump back and forth in time and hone in on themes of resilience and love and comfort. Though not told chronologically, the stories grow from moments of transition in Hood’s life—moving to New York City as a single woman, getting divorced, becoming a parent, nurturing her father through cancer, and losing her five-year-old daughter. Through it all, food sustains her; cooking becomes her tether.
She sets aside a room in her new home for her grown son Sam, for when he visits. “He stands beside me in this new kitchen,” she writes, “all six feet, five inches of him, stirring polenta with a long wooden spoon. ‘It smells like home here,’” he tells her. And indeed it feels like home within the pages of this fierce book, one I initially borrowed from the library but decided halfway through to buy for myself—partly because there were so many specific food references that could serve as memory prompts for my own writing, and partly because its memoir-in-essays form and Hood’s writing are inspirational examples I know I’ll be sharing with my own memoir students.
Does the book include recipes?
Yes. Each of the 27 essays that compose this book is anchored by at least one recipe from the author’s experience. And they’re not fussy recipes, either—they’re hearty (“My Perfect Spaghetti Carbonara) and nostalgic (“Fancy-Lady Sandwiches”) and use ingredients such as store-bought pie crust and her dad’s secret flavoring, celery salt. (Of course, there’s also Matt Genus’s Cassoulet.) While Hood’s stories are her main course, the recipes are delicious and inviting accompaniments.
Author insight:
“…perhaps [my parents] would be satisfied that in their ordinary way, they taught me something extraordinary. That even in grief, we must take tentative steps back into the world. That even in grief, we must eat. And that when we share food with others, we are reclaiming those broken bits of our lives, holding them out as if to say, I am still here. Comfort me. As if with each bite, we remember how it is to live.” —Ann Hood
Memorable quote:
“My father’s pals and their wives loved my mother’s Italian cooking, the meatballs and eggplant Parmesan and veal scaloppine. But it was pie that my mother insisted on making. Looking back, I see now that those pies—so American, so contemporary—represented her own independence, her growing up and away from that big Italian family.” —Ann Hood
Life Story Links: June 14, 2022
This week's curated reading list for memory-keepers and family historians includes lots on saving and sharing a family legacy—and why it matters—plus, new memoir.
“He who digs into the past would know that barely a millionth of a second divides the past from the future..”
—Eugenio Montale
United Nations Heroes marching in the Flag Day parade during United Nations week in Oswego, New York, in June 1943. Photographed by Marjory Collins for the Office of War Information; courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Digital Collection.
What we capture
AVOIDABLE REGRETS
Nearly half of Americans in a recent poll regret not recording or documenting conversations with loved ones who have died; and many people (44 percent) wish others would record or document conversations they have to preserve memories.
SO, LET’S START RECORDING!
In light of the above-mentioned poll, I put together some resources to make it easier for anyone to record conversations and gather stories from loved ones—so we can begin to see an upward trend in legacy preservation…and avoid regrets.
Our families, our stories
YOUR STORY, OR THEIRS?
“How do I write about social workers who harmed a child I love? How do I write about her mother? What do I owe them on the page?” Sarah Sentilles wrestles with the notion of writing about others in memoir.
MEMORIES OF THE POGROMS
“Grandma eventually came to learn that the only way I would fall asleep was by listening to the soft sound of her voice as she described in detail her early childhood in Russia.” A childhood interest in stories becomes a lifelong search for legacy—then, a book.
LEARNING TO LIVE WITH GHOSTS
The Korean tradition of jesa, or memorializing ancestors, helped Joseph Han understand that “our loved ones’ memories and histories suffuse our world and continue to shape our lives long after they have departed.”
BEDTIME STORY
“I am speaking to an audience of one, who happens to be the book’s foremost subject, my 74-year-old father, Joe, or Daddy as Northern Irish naming conventions insist he must be addressed.” Séamas O'Reilly on reading his memoir to his father.
WHAT CONTRADICTION?
On the latest episode of Schmaltzy, a podcast that explores the intersection of Jewish identity and food, Hillary Reinsberg shares stories about the distinctly German-Jewish way of doing things at her grandparents’ New York home:
The power of narrative exploration
CONFESSIONAL WRITING, REFINED
“Melissa Febos’s recent essay collection shows us not only how to capture the difficult, intimate details of our lives in writing, but why we should.” Adam Dalva on the necessity of creative confession.
THE STORY WE WRITE FOR OURSELF
“Will you take some chapters from your family’s history and courageously edit and fit them into the vision for your life’s purpose? Will you dare to write completely new chapters based on your true passions and desires?”
NARRATIVE MEDICINE IN PRACTICE
Read an excerpt from The Healing Power of Storytelling: Using Personal Narrative to Navigate Illness, Trauma, and Loss by Annie Brewster with Rachel Zimmerman, and listen to an interview with the author and Here & Now host Robin Young:
SLAVERY’S LEGACY: ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
“This kind of oral history project has never been done before. Many will, for the first time, hear the voices and memories of people whose personal experiences are still inextricably tied to racial slavery, the transatlantic slave trade, and colonialism.”
...and a few more links
New memoir of Chris Blackwell, founder of Island Records, reflects on helping bring the music of Bob Marley, U2 and Grace Jones to the world.
A one-page “Empathy Interview Guide” from Stanford d.School
On the True Stories Well Told blog: “10 Minutes to Death” by Marg Sumner
Short takes
Americans regret not recording stories of their loved ones—don’t be one of them.
Recording loved ones' stories is important to most Americans, and yet not even half of us have done so. Here, resources to make memory-keeping easier.
A recent poll of more than 6,000 Americans showed that only one in three Americans has recorded or documented a conversation with a loved one in order to preserve their memory of them.
Nearly half of those polled say they regret not doing so with someone who has died.
These stats sadden me, a devoted storyteller whose mission is to help as many people as possible preserve their own memories—and those of loved ones—for the next generations. While it saddens me, though, it doesn’t surprise me.
Why am I not surprised?
Why am I not surprised that so few people have taken the initiative to record stories from their loved ones? Well, first of all, it’s easy (so easy!) to take for granted that those we love will always be there. We don’t want to think about a time when they won’t—and preserving their stories for the future seems to somehow bring that notion to the fore.
Moreover, for many people recording stories seems like a daunting task: Won’t it take too long? What questions would I ask? How would I record the conversations? What would I do with them afterwards?
For some, telling their own stories seems vain (it’s not). Still others think they have no stories to tell—or that no one would care to hear them (again, not likely; I haven’t met a person yet who didn’t have some amazing stories inside them—and everyone underestimates how their stories will be received by loved ones).
So, no, I am not surprised that 59 percent of Americans have not recorded conversations with a loved one. But I do see change on the horizon.
Rays of hope
“Maybe it’s the younger generation’s familiarity with technology...that makes this task more approachable—obvious, even.”
I see a glimmer of hope amidst these poll results, too: Younger respondents were by far the most likely to have said “yes, I have recorded a conversation of a loved one in order to preserve my memory of them.” While only about a quarter of folks aged 45-65 have recorded a loved one’s stories, 44 percent of those 18-to-29 have, and 42 percent of those 30-44. Not quite double the older participants, but almost!
Maybe it’s the younger generation’s familiarity with technology and their engrained habit of recording so many things in their daily lives, that makes this task more approachable—obvious, even.
Or perhaps it’s millennials’ well-documented love of nostalgia.
Whatever the reason, the trend is on the upswing: More younger members in American families are recording conversations with loved ones!
Resources for recording your own family stories
Are your ready to hop on the memory-keeping bandwagon and record a conversation with a loved one? Let’s work together to bring these numbers up—to make story preservation an everyday thing that, dare we day, a majority of Americans not only strive to do, but really DO!
A wonderful thing that will happen along the way if we indeed begin to record our personal histories? We’ll all have fewer regrets.
In order to help with your DIY story gathering, here are some time-tested resources that I offer to you for free—please don’t download them unless you plan to put them to use 😉
FREE E-BOOK DOWNLOADS
HELPFUL ARTICLES FOR RECORDING YOUR LOVED ONE’S STORIES
Life Story Links: May 31, 2022
This week's roundup by personal historian Dawn Roode includes inspiring first person reads, memoir news, and pieces on the intersection of life and story.
“We listen with different ears when we can feel and believe that a story is true.”
—Editors at The Moth
Vintage postcard depicting sea bathers in Avalon, Santa Catalina, California, circa 1903. Courtesy of the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library Digital Collection.
Our Lives, Our Stories
THIS IS YOUR LIFE
“Suddenly, ordinary lives are of note,” The Guardian reports in this look at the growing personal history industry; moreover, “the way we tell stories of our lives can shape our memories.”
A STORY, DISTILLED
“Memoir writers tell what happened, what we feel about it, and what we learned. We hope our lessons are universal. We must always look beyond events to the layers below.” Lessons from revising a 100-word mini-memoir for The New York Times.
WHERE’S MOM?
Too often these days moms aren’t represented in family photos, leaving a regrettable gap. Mali Bain, a personal historian in Canada, shares a recent life story book that put one grandmother “center stage, as many mothers and grandmothers are in our own childhood memories.”
TWO STORYTELLERS, IN CONVERSATION
“Our memories are anything but fixed—and when stories are passed down to a new generation, their malleability, their meaning, and their impact change, too”: One of my favorite interviews I’ve conducted to date, with memoirist and podcast host Rachael Cerrotti.
Asking the Questions
AN AUDITORY SNIPPET OF LIFE
“As a journalist, I have spent many hours in front of other people’s grandparents recording their stories for work. Usually the offspring are there with me and express a fascination at all the previously untold and hidden stories that come tumbling out of their elders when the right questions are asked. This was the first time I had recorded my own.”
INTERVIEWER EXTRAORDINAIRE
Terry Gross, host of NPR’s Fresh Air, “has perfected a singular kind of interview; she is part conversationalist, part therapist, and part oral historian…. Above all, she is a great listener—attentive, probing, without ever feeling intrusive”:
Memoir Morsels
TASTY READS
Cookbooks are becoming more memoir-like. These hybrid books bring readers “on an emotional journey. Then they get to leave with a recipe and actually eat the food; that’s a really intense, intimate connection between reader and writer.”
NEW MICHAEL CIMINO BIOGRAPHY
“Every biography could be two books rather than one—the work itself and the nonfiction making-of detailing the journalistic adventures that yield the biographical record.” A look at a new biography of the director of The Deer Hunter and Heaven’s Gate.
First Person Reads to Inspire
A FLASH ESSAY FOR MEMORIAL DAY
“The world was sleeping, we were deploying, ocean-crossing.” With staccato pacing and gut-punching language, Laura Joyce-Hubbard writes about serving her country: “We were always leaving.”
FINDING LOVE (BY ACCIDENT)
“My very first date with Produce Man landed on the second anniversary of my father’s death. I took this as a sign that my father had sent him from the heavens and it was bashert, the Jewish term for ‘destiny.’”
Stuff, Stories, History
“ACCUMULATION OF LIFE”
“If it was just junk, it would not be so hard. But possessions have meaning; they tell stories and reinforce our memories.” A look at the “emotional challenge to dealing with the treasure and trash that your parents leave behind.”
A HOUSE’S HISTORY, REDISCOVERED
Leslie Stahl turns the 60 Minutes lens on the story of how an Air Force veteran discovered his new house was the seat of a plantation where his ancestors were enslaved. Plus, the original article that inspired her piece: “An old Virginia plantation, a new owner and a family legacy unveiled.”
SAYING SORRY WITH DUMPLINGS
Salt Lake City–based personal historian Rhonda Lauritzen was close to her brother growing up. “Then we weren’t,“ she writes. “I made mistakes, caused some deep hurts, and I never really said the words I’m sorry. So I said the words.” And cooked Grandma’s dumplings.
...and a few more links
He co-founded Covid Stories Archive to combat what he saw as biases and limitations of Congress’s proposed COVID-19 American History Project Act.
Preserve your memories with these easy scrapbooking ideas.
In his latest email newsletter Tucson–based video biographer Steve Pender looks at using Zoom for legacy audio recordings.
Legacy: In Memory of Roger Angell, 1920-2022
Short Takes
On the ever-changing nature of our stories: In conversation with Rachael Cerrotti
Our memories are anything but fixed—and when stories are passed down to a new generation, their malleability, their meaning, and their impact change, too.
“It’s the best part of storytelling for me, that it’s never going to stay the same.”
—Rachael Cerrotti
Memoirist and host of the podcast “We Share the Same Sky,” Rachael Cerrotti
Rachael Cerrotti knew her grandmother Hana’s story when she was growing up. Hana, or Mutti, as she was called by her loved ones, was a Holocaust survivor. She visited schools to share her testimony with young students. She spoke with Rachael about her past.
But stories have chapters, and they are received differently by different people at different times in their lives. Stories can be told one way to a group of students, and another to a young, devoted granddaughter. Those same stories may take on an entirely new mien when handwritten in a private journal, captured in the moment with no distance for reflection.
What is Hana Dubová’s story, then?
Well, of course, there isn’t just one.
Rachael—a granddaughter, photojournalist, podcast host, and author—has explored her grandmother’s story faithfully. During her college years, cognizant of the fact that Hana was getting older, Rachael began getting together regularly with her grandmother, recording their conversations along the way. After Hana passed away in 2010, Rachael says she spent the first half of her twenties on her bedroom floor in Boston, going through Hana’s diaries and the rich archive she left behind. She would eventually retrace her grandmother’s footsteps, traveling through Europe and getting to know, intimately, those who knew Hana and her story. As Stephen D. Smith, executive director of the USC Shoah Foundation, writes in the foreword to Rachael’s book, We Share the Same Sky, “She made her grandmother’s homes and hiding places her homes, her places to hide.”
I have recommended We Share the Same Sky in a formal review and gifted the book to friends; I have extolled the podcast—a must-listen for anyone who values stories and family; and recently I was fortunate enough to chat with Rachael about the (inevitable, frustrating, and beautiful) flexibility of memory.
The same stories may hold different meaning for us at different times in our life.
“The story has grown up as I have grown up,” Rachael writes in the preface to We Share the Same Sky.
While Rachael gradually reveals Hana’s story to us, she also weaves in her own perspective and life changes, making for a poignant and powerful meditation on the meaning of inherited trauma and the elasticity of memory. She writes to her grandmother: “Your diaries and letters are the literature of your past, and each tells a slightly different story. I read and reread your stories as if they were fables, modern-day fairy tales that are constantly changing meaning. Every time I open to a familiar page, I read the words in a new way.” And isn’t that the nature of all family stories?
Often I talk about the enduring value of our stories: When we hear stories from family members about their experiences, we usually ruminate longest over the ones that feel the most familiar to us. Rachael echoes this during our conversation, admitting that if she is one day blessed with being a mother and a grandmother, she will most certainly see her grandmother’s stories in a new light again with each milestone.
When Rachael revisited her grandmother’s testimony after her husband’s death, she found new meaning, new depth there: “It was guidance and it was permission and it was warmth, and the words just carried everything within it,” she said.
“I think we're all drawn to stories that impact us in some ways and that feel relevant,” she said.
“We all kind of hold onto the stories that we need to hear, and I think a lot of us dig into our past trying to reckon with something or to try to understand ourselves better,” Rachael said. “Realizing that our memories are malleable gives us some ownership over them, different than just being resigned to them.”
Beyond fact-checking: Our narratives hold truths, even when they are contradictory.
While We Share the Same Sky is based on Rachel’s own experiences and research during her immersive travels as well as her grandmother’s personal writing, she did not turn to libraries or historical records to fact-check her grandmother’s stories (except for instances when an occasional age or date did not cohere).
“What I was always drawn to was the stories we tell ourselves and the stories we tell our kin, and those have nothing to do with the archives,” she told me.
In the book, she writes: “There are cracks in all our memories; sometimes they are exposed by our own inconsistencies, sometimes they are challenged by other people’s perspectives, and sometimes they change with time.”
Indeed, have you ever reread an old diary entry only to wonder, Did I really write that? Or even, Did I really feel that? Has the way you have told a single important story—say, coming out of the closet as a teen, or emigrating to a new country—changed over time? With time comes perspective, and with perspective comes a new way of regarding our experiences. Each telling of our stories reveals new truths.
“Stories do not have to be stuck in time,” Rachael said. “There are so many versions of stories that can all contradict each other and still all be truthful.”
Our ancestors’ stories become our stories.
One of the things that drew me to Rachael’s body of work, I told her, was how she deftly wove Hana’s story into the fabric of her own. Stephen Smith recognized this, too, writing: “What Rachael seemed to know is that her jumbled identity was not a godforsaken hand-me-down but a tapestry of individual stitches that needed to be understood to appreciate the whole. As you read this book, you will see each of those colorful stitches painfully embroidered into her life one by one.”
“Originally this was a story of people that had passed away,” Rachael told me. “This was a story of history. And then getting to meet all these people and having them meet my curiosity where it was at—that was this invitation to keep coming back.”
“These relationships don’t stop because you’ve stopped writing the story,” she said. “The story doesn’t end because you send it in to the publisher. That’s that chapter, and that’s okay.”
Hana’s life has informed and shaped her granddaughter’s. And Rachael has honored Hana’s legacy by revealing the nuances and truths in her diaries, and by encountering—and re-integrating—her stories again and again. In the epilogue, she writes directly to Mutti:
“I have completely lost myself in your story, creating for myself an experience out of each of your retellings. What started as a simple family history project has become this web of community. When I pull a thread in one part of the world, the story in another place changes. Your memories have become my landmarks, the symbols of my own past.”
Each of us is writing our own narrative, transitioning from one chapter to the next, weaving our ancestors’ stories into our own. I hope you will read We Share the Same Sky with this in mind, and—as Rachel hopes, as well—inspire conversation and story sharing between not just grandmothers and granddaughters, but among generations of your own family.
Discover Rachael Cerrotti’s work
Listen to her podcast of the same name.
Follow her on Instagram for updates on her life, upcoming appearances, and future endeavors.
And perhaps most exciting, Rachael is launching a new podcast this week, called The Memory Generation, subtitled “Conversations about our memories.”
Affiliate disclosure: As an Amazon Associate, we may earn commissions from qualifying purchases from Amazon.com.
Life Story Links: May 17, 2022
For memoirists: Writing tips and inspiring first-person reads. For family historians: heirloom books themes and photo stories. This week's curated reading list.
“…writing has become for me a primary means of digesting and integrating my experiences and thereby reducing the pains of living, or if not, at least making them useful to myself and to others. There is no pain in my life that has not been given value by the alchemy of creative attention.”
—Melissa Febos
This vintage photo of boys on a tricycle in New York City was taken by Morris Huberland circa 1950. Photograph courtesy of The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints, and Photographs, New York Public Library Digital Collection.
Preserving our stories
OUT IN NOVEMBER
Bono reads an excerpt from his memoir Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, due to be published in November. An animation from Bono’s own drawings accompanies his words from the chapter titled “Out of Control,” which tells the story of how Bono began writing U2's first single on his 18th birthday, May 10, 1978:
THE DANCE OF MOTHERHOOD
Stories don’t always have to be told with words. In this gallery, photographers capture their own experiences as mothers through pictures—self-reflective, narratively engaging, and vibrant.
WHICH STORIES TO TELL?
From life story books to a family history collection, from travel journals to heritage cookbooks, last week I offered up 10 favorite heirloom book themes to inspire those who want to preserve their stories but have no idea which stories to focus on.
PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORIES
Head to “storytelling school” with The Moth: This lesson offers tips and exercises for telling a good story from a photograph, as well as a storytelling video to inspire.
HISTORIAN TURNS FOCUS ON HIMSELF
“An American Childhood…succeeds as memoir by carefully narrating the protagonists’ experiences as they perceived them as children and as teenagers, not filtered through subsequent informed and reasoned understanding. It succeeds as history by gently noting the faultiness of those perceptions.”
TASTY MEMORIES
“I feel like our kids know Nana still, because…they know when we make the chocolate chip cookies from her cookbook, those are Nana’s cookies.” Minneapolis–based company preserves food memories with personalized cookbooks.
Shadow play
GENEALOGY PROBLEMS
“We know that ‘race’ is a social construct. We need to acknowledge the ways in which ‘ancestry’ is, too.” The New Yorker looks at the “twisted roots” of our obsession with ancestry.
HOLDING THE PAIN
“I like to think it is the solemn duty of a writer to record stories that need to be heard, but it has occurred to me over the course of this work that listening and bearing witness to trauma is the duty of all citizens in a community. It’s what connects us.”
First-person stories that captured me
“DEAR MOM…”
“I’ve missed my mom every day, but suddenly the pain of not having her felt acute, a pain that I turned against myself for being a lousy daughter.” Twenty-four years after her mother's death, Liza Deyrmenjian writes a letter to her mom.
“THIEVES”
“I sit, I lie, and memory rises, memory merges. My marooned mother. My marooned self.” Beth Kephart sets up two parallel situations—seeking answers, sleuthing patterns, writing her way to truth
LESSONS FROM HER FATHER
“Growing up, my father took me to libraries the way other fathers took their kids to the park or the movies. It wasn’t just that he loved or appreciated them—he believed in them like some believe in churches, religions, God.”
Pieces of the past
A RECKONING WITH CLUTTER, GRIEF, AND MEMORIES
The New York Times has curated a selection of letters from readers recounting stories of dealing with a lifetime of possessions—their own or a loved one’s—and the memories and emotions attached to them.
THE URGE TO COLLECT
Enjoy this conversation about the urge to collect, the stories embedded in certain objects, and how some items can unearth stories from the person who covets them:
LOOKING BACK
On this episode of Canadian podcast Now or Never, the hosts explore how reading love letters from the 1920s is helping one woman deal with heartache; talk to three siblings digging through the contents of their childhood home; and talk about how pieces of the past can help shape your future. Listen in.
Miscellaneous
INTERESTING THEATER REVIEW
The main character of this Chicago stage production “considers memory to be a kind of photography.” The action of At the Vanishing Point hinges on an old photo discovered at a garage sale, linking characters across time and place.
...and a few more links
How a debut graphic memoir became the most banned book in the country.
Read an excerpt from the new book Anna: The Biography, about Vogue editor (and my former boss) Anna Wintour.
Nostalgic remembrance: old photo brings back memories of Grandma’s pies.
How a Holocaust survivor finally learned her own birth name.
Pandemic sparks autobiography for Delaware State professor.
Ethics considerations for conducting research for your narrative nonfiction among friends
Consider a family history book series to preserve your family heritage.
A best seller in France, Camille Kouchner’s memoir The Familia Grande is an indictment of incest that started a national reckoning.
Personal stories of hardships endured in WWII Japanese internment camps told through augmented reality exhibit in Los Angeles.
Read the newly released Spring 2022 issue of Creative Nonfiction.
Get a free guide from Rachel LaCour Niesen, founder of Save Family Photos: “3 Simple Steps to Backing Up Your Family Photos.”
Short takes
10 Heirloom book ideas to preserve your family history
From life story books to a family history collection, from travel journals to heritage cookbooks, our founder lists 10 of her favorite heirloom book themes.
Maybe you’ve thought about preserving your own or your family’s stories in a book for the next generation. But where to begin? How to narrow down a topic?
Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered. Here are 10 of my favorite heirloom book themes, and I’m willing to bet one of them jumps out at you as just-right for your situation. And if not? No worries, all of our books are fully custom, so let’s chat.
A family cookbook—complete with the stories behind the recipes—is a great option for families whose love language is food.
1 - a heritage cookbook
Be transported to the kitchen of your childhood! Celebrate dishes that have been passed down through generations in a bespoke book that weaves your family’s cherished food memories with nostalgic photographs and handwritten recipes.
2 - LOVE STORY
Perhaps you were bequeathed a beribboned stash of your great-grandparents’ love letters. Or maybe it’s your own love story—how you met, how you choose one another every day, maybe how you almost didn’t meet—that you’d like to share. Let the love flow...
Record your journeys in a travel book so you can revisit your memories from the comfort of home (and inspire the next generation to travel in your footsteps).
3 - travel journal
Are you a voyager? Don’t just make a photo album; record memories. Wherever your journeys take you (an African safari? The Maldives? Alaskan glaciers?), our travel books help you not only remember the places, but relive the moments—and ‘travel’ back there from the comfort of your home.
Your stories matter—tell them in your own words, and they will resonate with loved ones for generations.
4 - your words, your stories
Whether you’ve written a full-on memoir (if you’re partway through, we can help you finish!) or want to capture episodes of your life through a series of personal interviews, tell your own story. It matters. To you, and to those you love. Now is always the right time!
Honor a loved one’s memory by preserving tributes in an heirloom book that you and your family can open any time to feel closer to them.
5 - in remembrance
Is there a family member who has passed that you would like to honor? Let’s gather written tributes remembering them with dignity, humor, and grace, then curate photos that capture their spirit. Bound with love, this tribute book will become your most cherished heirloom.
6 - FAMILY HISTORY BOOK
Have you caught the genealogy bug? Consider this: It is highly unlikely your ancestors will be thrilled to sort through 18 boxes of census records and ship manifests, no matter how meticulously catalogued they are. They will, however, read a story. So give them one.
7 - home is where the heart is
As Henry Louis Gates, Jr., says, we are all immigrants. Do you know where your ancestors were born? Have you taken a heritage trip? Perhaps your family lived on the same NYC block for generations. We can bring the stories of your homeland to life, so they are never lost.
8 - LESSONS LEARNED
With experience comes wisdom. By reflecting on the full journey of your life—including challenges overcome and opportunities missed—you leave a legacy that the next generation can both learn from and find inspiration in. Go deep, and be rewarded deeply.
9 - CONVERSATIONS WITH GRANDMA
We’ll conduct interviews with your grandmother or other family elder, gather memorabilia, and find the narrative thread that best captures her story, then weave it all together beautifully. Don’t wait until it’s too late to ask questions.
10 - places in the heart
This book makes your favorite place the central character and gives meaning to the phrase, “If these walls could talk…” Think a beloved family vacation home, a longtime sleep-away camp, or the college you’ve all (multiple generations!) attended.
