Favorite Books: Shaping a Life with Agency

At the end of each year, I weigh which books stood out for me. I am often surprised by themes that connect them. 

A theme that occurred in much of what I’ve read is about women having agency over their own life, and the ability to live it without threat of sexual or physical violence. Several books explored this theme through a lens on the past when women had far less agency. Even then, some succeeded in exerting control over their own life either because they had a supportive spouse, or they functioned in a critical and respected role in the world of women. A community of women can be a powerful counterbalance to the lack of control that women often experienced in the wider world.

 

I am drawn to literature, which follows a woman throughout her life, revealing the evolution of the person. This has become a topic of interest to me as I am at that point in my life where I am able to look back and see my own evolution. I am interested in the shaping of a life through time.

 

Yet another theme which appears in many of the books that I read is the act of documenting one’s own life with words. As someone who has often done that, I am especially intrigued with that written record of one’s own history. It is not lost on me that I have sixteen years of blogs publicly documenting my own life path. On a more personal level, I found myself reviewing my own past letters and journals when I recently moved, valuing them for their view into my thoughts at a much earlier time, a bit of personal time travel.

I have written of how liminality, that place in between where transformation happens, and bringing what is hidden to the forefront, are subjects often reflected in my artwork. It occurs to me that these are also themes in the construction of a story.  Liminality is a core theme in many books as it captures the journey of a character through life challenges, often shaped by personal secrets. That is similarly true of many of the books that I recommend.

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon

 

The Frozen River, while fictionalized, is based on a true story of a midwife, Martha Ballard, who lived in the late 1700s in Maine along the Kennebec River. The river is a character within this story, presenting a theme of the river’s buried secrets revealed only upon its thawing.  The story presents a view of the community of that time and the rich interrelationships between its residents.

 

It was a time when women had little control of their life and lived in a world of physical and sexual threat. In this tale, our protagonist has a respected career as a midwife which afforded her a level of agency, even as she moved within a world where many women lacked that and were easy prey for unscrupulous men. 

 

She also was a keeper of secrets, aware of the often-hidden stories of the women in the community. We know her tale because she recorded it in a daily diary which became key evidence in a rape trial, a critical part of the story. That diary and its analysis can be found in yet another book, a non-fiction one, that served as source material for Lawhon. A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary 1785-1812 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, was a winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Excerpts of the diary are woven into The Frozen River.

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans 

 

The Correspondent has elements of each of the mentioned themes. I picked it up because the author Ann Patchett recommended it. It is a book written in letters directed to a variety of people. I wasn’t sure at first how that was going to work. Was it going to engage me? How does one fully develop a character through letters? I was surprised to realize that I had a through line to the essence of the letter writer; a view of her through the eyes of her many correspondents and her self reflections shared with those to whom she was close. Within the letters, I saw her personal evolution and honesty in coming to terms with the challenges she had struggled with in the course of her life.

 

Sybil Van Antwerp, our correspondent, was a woman who by all standards had agency over her life. She had a successful career as an attorney, married and divorced, had children and grandchildren. Most importantly she had a curiosity about the world and people. She preferred the handwritten word to the electronic and wrote each week to family and friends and especially authors of books she enjoyed, including of course Ann Patchett.  She also reached across generations, writing to a young boy, who ultimately came to live with her in his time of crisis. And she was feisty. She had an ongoing correspondence with a woman at the university who would no longer let her audit classes. She didn’t give up without a fight, ultimately winning what she sought and winning a friend in the bargain with her understanding of the person. But a life is more than an outline. Within it lies the painful disruptions of what we imagined our life to be, and our response to that reshaped future. It is within this story arc, that we begin to learn the fullness of a life as one responds and reshapes one’s understanding through time.

I've been told that an audio book for this story adds an additional dimension in capturing each character effectively through their voice.

 

Circes by Madelyn Miller

When I was a child I loved mythology. I think the idea of a god defined by a theme intrigued me and moments where they stepped into the world of humans were fraught with drama. The novel Circes is based on the story of a lesser goddess, some would say a witch, for she turned men into pigs when necessary. The story humanizes her, bringing us into her world where she doesn't quite fit in goddess circles. Exiled to an island where at first she is reliant on visitors to relieve her solitude, she soon discovers visitors can also pose a threat - hence the pigs. Witchcraft is her protection in a world where even goddesses are subject to threat. Along the way she offers her guidance to Odysseus and bears him a son, learns to weave with a loom gifted from Daedalus and chooses to be human rather than immortal. She hits my theme of agency and has a life path of many centuries through which to decide her course.

Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips

Night Watch, a Pulitzer Prize winning book, is a story of the aftermath of war, of both soldiers and the women and children they left behind, each trying to reshape their life after loss and disruption. It is a story of a mother and her child as a stranger  violently inserts himself into their lives as the head of their household. It is the mother's silence that ultimately frees her of his control as he tires of them, leaving them at a lunatic asylum which surprisingly proves to be a place of respite. Far ahead of its time, the asylum gives them an opportunity to regain control of their lives.

The Dictionary of Lost Words. By Pip Williams 

The Dictionary of Lost Words takes us to the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary as a team of scholars determines which words warrant inclusion. Through the eyes of a child playing under the table to the thoughtful woman she grows into, it explores the underlying idea that the language of women can be different from the language of men and easily dismissed if not recorded in writing. Hence Esme, the protagonist of this book, creates the Dictionary of Lost Words to preserve a world otherwise hidden from view.

Other recommendations: 

The River We Remember by William Kent Krueger - Another river theme! It too holds secrets. Prejudices and the threat to women underlie the story.

The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich - a coming of age story, but also a story where the river plays a significant role related to secrets.

Show, Don't Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld, a collection of short stories that have an authenticity that resonated with me.

Everything Builds on Everything Else

Recently I received a request from our granddaughter. She was given an assignment to interview someone who had written a book and to focus on what they had learned out of that experience. It was a thought-provoking list of questions framed as a focus on achievement and a personal journey. I had published the book, We Spoke Jewish, some years back and it has a bit of a backstory.

The book was based on an interview project with Jewish elders at Sholom Home, an elder facility. Its beginning was quite accidental. I had been talking to the staff at the facility about exhibiting artwork I had done on family history. As I spoke with them, it occurred to me this was a place filled with story. Impulsively I blurted out “Wouldn’t it be interesting if I could interview people here and do artwork on their stories?” 

They liked the idea. It got legs when they suggested that I could write grants through them to fund it.  At that juncture I went to our local Jewish historical society (JHSUM.org) for whom I had been doing talks on genealogy. I asked if they would partner with me and advise me on interviewing.  And then I asked, “Where do you get your grants?

I wrote a grant and got my first interviews with elders funded. Then I taught myself how to do video editing and provided them with a carefully created CD with excerpts of my interviews. And I got a second grant for interviews with elders and family members. A third grant funded publishing a book through JHSUM. I had decided to turn my material into a book when my interviewees began to pass away, and I felt it important to preserve their stories. The book was ultimately fueled by 17 interviews and accompanying paintings. It included stories of people who grew up in early 1900's immigrant communities, survivors who came over mid-century and immigrants from the former Soviet Union who came in the late 1900s. I marketed the book with talks and pop-up art exhibitions until Covid drove me online. There I gave genealogy talks on immigration, sharing audio clips of my interviews.

 

It was not a small undertaking, because I’m not very good at doing small –– projects have a way of expanding, and building.

 

My granddaughter asked how I came up with the idea, why it mattered to me. 

 

While I had indeed fallen into the interviews rather accidentally, I had begun interviewing family and even family of friends when I first began doing genealogy. Over the years I interviewed two great-grandmothers of our grandchildren. I’m the go to person on school projects on family history. I’ve interviewed the mothers of several old boyfriends, including my husband’s mother. It is a sure-fire way to establish a close relationship. 

 

I had learned the power of an interview, how it builds a sense of connection. Frequently, the other person needs to tell their story, to be heard. And as for my part, I learned history that I knew nothing about. I learned how a person was shaped by their time, the issues they struggled with and survived to tell. I came to appreciate the arc of a life.

 

My granddaughter asked about my writing process and how I collected the stories in the book. Because the book combined both artwork and story, she asked about how I decided what to paint. 

 

That was something I struggled with. I had thought the paintings would be easier than the interviews. I knew how to paint, but I didn’t know how to do this kind of painting. When you paint story, you need to edit. You can’t include everything. I used to reread the interview, then do yoga or go grocery shopping. I’d see what bubbled up and then develop it. Often I wrote prose poetry, stepping into the shoes of my interviewee. As I told the story in their voice, imagery emerged. That process of editing down to the essence for artwork carried over to my writing.

 

She closed with the question that is one I often ponder – What did I learn throughout the process?

 

I am at an age where I do look back, often with amazement at things that I’ve accomplished that look quite difficult in hindsight. Whatever possessed the younger me to tackle them? Maybe I didn’t know what I was getting into or perhaps it was easier to take a risk when I had less to lose if it failed. My mother used to ask, “What’s the worst that could happen?” That’s not a bad yardstick for risk taking. 

 

Sometimes looking back gives me courage to take on something new in my world today. I navigated the unknown successfully and it led to new directions, maybe I can do that again. If we live our life in bubble wrap, we miss out on a lot of opportunities. So, I learned to take risks, calculated ones. Taking a step forward is important. It sets things in motion.

 

I was most struck by how everything builds on everything else. When I left my salaried work I had volunteered for the Jewish historical society. When they learned of my interest in genealogy they asked if I would do a talk. It was my first genealogy talk and I was nervous, not too sure about being in front of people. I’ve done countless talks since then. I grew into it and found my voice. And it opened doors. After that first talk I peered into the gallery next door, my head filled with family history. In that moment I decided to do a series of paintings on my own family history. I returned to my studio and started painting. A year later I did my first solo show in that gallery on family history. That body of work led me to Sholom and into this project. I began this blog in 2009 when I was going to Lithuania to study Yiddish. I wrote about my travels in Lithuania and later wrote about my interviews and the artwork, long before I contemplated a book. I draw a looping line that begins with family history which in turn led to volunteering, public speaking, solo exhibitions, grant writing, interviewing, travel to ancestral towns, and blog writing. The book grew out of all of these elements. Each one was a step forward that led to the next. My interest in family history was the seed that fed each endeavor.  

Learn more about this project at We Spoke Jewish.

A Medley of Honks

I hurriedly strode down the street, clutching my sign as I rounded the corner to a cheerful medley of honks. I smiled, delighted at the enthusiastic greeting.  

Normally a honk startles me, signifying that I have been inattentive or inadvertently rude to a fellow driver. Minnesotans seldom honk, sitting far longer than others behind that inattentive driver who is studying his or her phone at a light that has turned green. After a while they might gently tap on their horn as if to whisper “Excuse me, the light is green.”

 

Honks have taken on a new meaning for me as part of my weekly vigil at a protest near our condo. Every Tuesday, people from our condo building gather with signs as we try to capture the eyes of passing cars, soliciting honks and waves from fellow citizens who share our concern about our shrinking democracy.

 

In the process I have experienced a camaraderie with my neighbors, and with the occupants of those passing cars, however fleeting. I stand there with my sign and lock eyes with a driver. 

 

“Yes, you, I’m looking at you!”

 

Then I have a silent dialogue with them as I coax a honk.

 

 “Come on, I know you want to! Come on, come on, give it a tap!”

 

 I follow their car with my eyes, moving my sign to follow their vehicle down the street. Often I’m rewarded with a belated tap as they absorb our purpose. The more timid amongst us may give a wave. I wave back with an encouraging nod. Next time perhaps they’ll honk. Then there are those that lean on the horn, honking loudly down the street or do a tap, tap, tap rhythm down the block, clearly sharing our message. Others lift their hands from the wheel in a gesture of support causing me to worry that they don’t have their vehicle under control. We’ve had cars go by with passengers hanging out the window with both thumbs up. 

 

I study the occupants of those passing cars to try to discern the patterns. Are they minorities, women, young men? Are they someone I would expect to honk based on race or gender? Sometimes I’m surprised. I examine the vehicles, assuming pick-up trucks are less likely to honk or vehicles with a business purpose where one might have more caution. I whoop with joy when a postman taps his horn.

 

I often wonder about those who don’t honk or those who speed by as if in a hurry to exit this zone. I’ve seen two cars with a thumbs down through weeks of protests and wondered who are these people? Are they rejecting the sign that says Honk for Democracy or is it the No Kings sign? Or is it just their team versus our team?

 

I often consider what this accomplishes. For me, it assures me that I am part of a larger community that shares my concern. Showing up is an action in itself, building community, yet another. Each person that honks or responds is reminded that they’re not alone. That first gesture is a step forward into the next action. And it’s easier to do that in community.

 

This week we went to our local No Kings protest. As we walked to the gathering point, we joined up with a woman walking with a sign. There was instant camaraderie, as we obviously were going to the same destination. She shared that this was her first protest, then added that she was 80 and her kids were a little worried about her. As we approached the area, we heard a cacophony of horns honking, creating shared melodies, encouraging each other to lay on their horn with joyful abandon. You would never have known it was Minnesota!

The Hidden and the In-between

I feel a bit like a negligent letter writer when I decide to write a blog post, as if I should apologize for my long absence. Ideas need downtime to percolate and as is oft the case, I have filled my life to excess with little time for contemplation.

So, what brings me back to the keyboard? It is a practical task that I soon discover has many layers. I have been trying to update my art/genealogy card, a card that has a self-portrait titled Piercing the Veil, from a series of artwork that I did on family history in 2008.  And yes, that was a few years ago and the image no longer is the me of today, although the concept of a genealogist uncovering the unknown is still quite apt.

I was surprised to discover that this seemingly simple task is a far more introspective act than I anticipated. I find myself contemplating imagery, the deeper meaning of a name, and the common threads between my artwork and genealogy.  

My artwork has changed over time. My early work was largely figurative, paintings of people dominated. I loved the process of discovering a person by painting them, studying them and finding the essence of what makes them who they are. Often just the right line would magically bring their image to life.

During the Covid years, I began walking around my neighborhood. My direct contact with people diminished and I started noticing trees, noticing them in a way I hadn’t previously. They too were figural, often with distinct personalities, and often bearing scars and injuries that drew me to them. I was in an Artists’ Lab and trees became a fluid metaphor for the wide variety of topics we explored. 

To my surprise, I also noticed themes in my work beyond that arboreal content. I found that many of my paintings dealt with liminal space, that space in between as we go through change. Liminal space is often a place of transformation. This theme is perhaps best illustrated by my painting Stepping Into the Chrysalis.I  recently wrote of the liminal space between sleeping and waking, life and death in my blog post I Thought I Dreamt You. It is often a scary place because we don’t know yet what awaits us or how we will navigate it. 

In addition to liminal space, I also seem to often take what is hidden and make it visible. In the case of trees, you can see that in Tree Time, a painting of a 4,700-year-old tree where I brought the tree rings into visibility. I did a similar thing with the Burly Tree as I reflected on burls as a metaphor for brokenness and wholeness.

I suppose I should not be surprised that the theme of liminality is also reflected in my genealogy work. Many of my genealogy talks relate to topics of names and immigration. An immigrant is the ultimate liminal being, occupying that space between old country and new, old names and new, as they try on new identities. And what is genealogy but taking the hidden and making it visible. That early self-portrait clearly illustrated that as it spoke to the unveiling of family names arrayed behind me.

I didn’t consciously realize how much of my interest focused on the hidden and the in-between until I studied the patterns in the paintings arrayed on my studio walls. Perhaps we all have themes that we explore in the course of our life. It is only when the patterns shout out to us that they move into our awareness.

In deciding what to change on my card, I realized that I needed to include a new email as my old email address had stopped forwarding correctly. I needed a new email name, and I knew that “liminal” would be part of it. I soon discovered that others had that same inspiration. After trying several versions of the word, only to find someone had beat me to it, I decided to combine two words, liminal and ruach, creating a new word “Liminachal.” I’ve had a couple people ask me about the origin. I don’t have an elevator speech on what it means so I usually stammer something about it relating to my approach to artwork and genealogy. So let me practice on you with a little more cogent definition.        

Ruach, the word that I partnered with Liminal, is first introduced in Genesis in the creation story. Its meaning is God’s breath. In fact, the line that follows it is “Let there be light.” It is the act of breathing life into something, an act of creation. Creating artwork, when it works, takes me to a liminal space, a transformational one. It requires me to learn to live with not knowing exactly where I am going, but to trust the process.  Hence the uncertainty that accompanies it. Surprisingly, when I enter a genealogy search, I have much the same experience. Amidst that uncertainty, I am hoping for that spark that breathes life into my exploration. I have had to learn in both spheres in my life to not force a conclusion, but rather to let things unfold. To go bravely into those liminal spaces with curiosity and openness to the surprises that await.So what did I arrive at for my card? I decided to keep an excerpt of my early self-portrait on one side, but introduce my painting of Tree Time on the other side. Since my two passions of art and genealogy are joined in this card, a tree felt appropriate, especially a tree that is 4700 years old and goes by the name of Methuselah.

I Thought I Dreamt You

For ten years I was part of the Jewish Artists’ Lab, using Jewish and secular text to explore themes through artwork. After a lapse, it has resumed in a slightly different form through the Jewish Arts Collective (JAC), a collaborative project sponsored by a number of Jewish organizations in the Twin Cities. We begin the year with a topic that we explore in discussion which becomes the creative engine for artwork in a group show. The theme this year is Dreams, a theme that I struggled with for I seldom remember my dreams anymore. In sorting through old files, I ran across dreams I had documented from the 1980s that were incredibly vivid. Now a dream is a rarity, save for an occasional vague image or feeling that remains. As I have a limited portfolio from which to choose, I began to consider powerful dreams of the past that stayed with me and arrived at one which I’ve begun to work with. Of course, it has a backstory that is important in understanding what I am trying to capture.

In my mother’s final years, I began to drive down to see her for a week at a time, tag teaming with my sister who lived an hour away and came in each week. For me it was 500 miles away, an eight-hour drive that I had begun to get accustomed to, even finding the solitude satisfying.

 

I had driven down the day before and now slept soundly in my childhood bed, a twin bed in a room that I had shared with my sister growing up. Above me was a picture of myself as a somber toddler, wearing a dress that my grandfather had made. Behind me was a headboard, white spattered with gold specks. 

 

My parents had lived in that house for sixty years, deeply rooted to their home and community. Now my mother lived alone. She was losing memory, no longer able to continue her voracious reading as she lost the thread of a story. I had taken her to Israel the year prior, something she had always wanted to do. I’m not sure that she remembered much, but in the moment she did. We lived in the moment now. She was someone who I admired, even in this more difficult state. Each morning, she created collages because it gave her life purpose. “Everyone does something,” she once told me, “This is what I do.”

 

I was still slumbering but gradually awakening when the bedroom door opened a crack. My mother peeked in, and her face filled with delight as she exclaimed. “You’re here! I thought I had dreamt you.” 

 

I think now of her as existing in that time within the liminal space between our world and whatever comes next. I am often drawn to liminal imagery, the space between, which is in fact very much what a dream is. I also believe there are times when we are especially sensitive to being in an in-between state as I believe my mother was for those months prior.

 

I called her each morning and on one call she had told me that she had fallen asleep in her chair and woken to a place she didn’t recognize. It was her home, but it wasn’t her home. It had distressed her, and I wasn’t sure what I could offer her. “Life is getting harder for you,” I said, acknowledging this reality.

 

“Yes, it is,” she replied. Then she added a plea, “Hold me.”

“I’ll always hold you close,” I said, tearing up as I reached across 500 miles, practice for the lengthier distance that loomed. 

 

My mother died two months later. After her death, I wondered if she would come to me in a dream. Months went by and nothing happened. Then one night I dreamt I was sleeping in my childhood bed. I could hear my mother’s flip flops as she walked down the hall. A sense of peace filled me. There was nothing more comforting than knowing that my mother was nearby. I awoke in my own bed in Minnesota, my mother clearly not present. I had in fact dreamt her.

 

In JAC we were told to analyze the components of our dreams. I dust off this treasured memory and think of our discussion on making a dream manifest, bringing it to life. I didn’t see her in this dream, I heard her, a familiar noise that instantly translated into a sense of peace. Sound and feeling, but no interaction or communication. It was a sparse dream, but a rich one all the same.

I Thought I Dreamt You

What I love about this story is the juxtaposition of the two stories. What she thought was a dream turned out to be reality, my seeming reality turned out to be a dream. Mirror images, a play on liminal space. But how to paint it? I’ve been doing more abstract or nature-based imagery, but I couldn’t figure out how to tell this story without figural drawings. So, I started with a painting of my mother looking into a room in which I slept. How do I paint the sound of footsteps? I set that aside and remembered the headboard of my childhood bed with its specks of gold. I decided to create a suggestion of that and began tearing small pieces of gold from a foil wrapper. I stuck each one into medium where the headboard would have stood. They reminded me of music, dancing overhead. It dawned on me that they could connect me to the sound of her steps. I painted footsteps and then placed specks of gold between those footsteps leading to my ear. I collaged papers into the bedsheets that wrapped around me, forming roots below in the home in which my roots grew. Veils obscure parts of the footsteps, creating that liminal space that separated us. A painting evolves in an iterative way. What I don’t know is if this is the beginning or an end. I am considering if I could take some of the imagery which emerged and work with it in a more abstract way, perhaps playing with mirrored images, the suggestion of sound and footsteps.

If there was a resolution or meaning from this dream, looking back ten years later, I feel my mother’s presence and continue to hold her close. Perhaps she does the same with me.