Illness Memoirs…

My MFA graduation is 4 months away and there is much work to be done! I am trying to pull my craft seminar together and thinking about illness memoirs…

Here is an interesting quote from the product description of the book,

The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness and and Ethics by Arthur W. Frank.

“Frank identifies three basic narratives of illness in restitution, chaos, and quest. Restitution narratives anticipate getting well again and give prominence to the technology of cure. In chaos narratives, illness seems to stretch on forever, with no respite or redeeming insights. Quest narratives are about finding that insight as illness is transformed into a means for the ill person to become someone new.”

I like the idea of Quest Narratives. Finding insight and becoming someone new. I feel kind of strange saying this, but I think after 25 years of living with diabetes, I am finally, through my writing, gaining insight and maybe even becoming someone new, someone who isn’t afraid to let the darkness (diabetes) show.

I cringe when I hear stories of illness, or “progressive illness narratives” that are too cheerful, too happy ever after, like, look at what a better person I’ve become, look at what I’ve learned from getting sick…because to me, there is no happy ending with diabetes-it’s more like a chaos narrative that goes on and on and on….but I do think it’s possible to have insight into the dark side of disease, to embrace our ‘Bitter Hearts.’

In the Desert by Stephen Crane

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter – bitter”, he answered,
“But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart.”

Kaethe Weingarten also writes about the illness memoir, I like her water metaphor: “The progressive illness narrative orients people to cure.  Yet, if there is one thing I feel I have learned from an adult life lived inside an unreliable body, it is that care not cure will keep us floating in the ocean.  It is my hope that understanding the different kinds of constraints facing people with illness, with regard to the stories they can tell, will make it more likely that care will circulate among us.  I hope that this will create, metaphorically, a variety of rafts and docks and buoys and life preservers for us to cling to – together – in the illness-waters that we will all face at some time in our lives.”

Mary Karr’s Lit

As a memoir writer I am a big fan of Mary Karr. I’m almost through reading her latest, Lit and as always, she’s given me a lot to think about. In this memoir she writes about her alcoholism, being a mother, recovery and spirituality.

It’s fitting that in this very non-spiritual place in my life, I am being inspired to think about spirituality from a great writer (instead of a church or a minister etc.) I haven’t been to church in a year? longer? and people (in-laws) keep asking me when we are going to get Reid baptized. His brothers have been baptized in the church where my husband and I were married. The church has sent me information about baptism dates and yet I can’t seem to make myself fill out the form…..it feels hypocritical somehow.

But reading Lit, I’m starting to think differently. I’m starting to think that maybe being spiritual doesn’t mean you have to go to church (and dress up and dress the kids up and sing songs and say prayers that I don’t understand and always made me feel like a poser anyway). That maybe all I need to do is kneel down on my own floor and say a prayer, any kind of prayer. And I feel so corny saying that but so did Karr which makes me feel so much better!

I’ll still need to dress up and go to church to get Reid baptized…but maybe that will just be the beginning of something. I still have to finish the book but I’m surprised that its taken me down this path and maybe I’m grateful too.

My latest Chronic Mama column

“Asking for Help.” see Literary Mama…

I started running the year I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. I was 14 years old and living away from home at a private school. My field hockey coach had been surprised when she saw me running on a Sunday afternoon, our day off. I’d always complained when she made us go for a run around campus, and had been caught taking the shortcut more than once. That year she gave me a “Most Unlikely Runner” gag award at the end of our season, but I could tell that she was proud. I was proud. Running was teaching me to see my body as healthy rather than sick. With my running shoes on I was strong and steady, not the girl with the chronic disease. Running began as a way to tame my blood sugars, but over the years it has become a necessary rhythm in my life. As the mother of three boys under ten, running every morning keeps me calm and steady in the middle of the motherhood storm.

Dan Brown in TJMaxx

I was shopping at TJMaxx this week, and while standing in line was shocked to see Dan Brown’s Lost Symbol for sale at a majorly discounted price. I am not a big fan of Brown’s and had no plans of buying the book but as a long time book buyer/lover, I was startled to see the hardback being sold next to discounted cookbooks and Disney books.I have to admit to buying my copy of Her Fearful Symmetry (thumbs down) from Costco but for some reason TJMaxx struck me as a different scenario.

In her story, Nation’s Retailers Engage In Online Book Pricing Wars, Lynn Neary writes:

Al Greco, a Fordham University professor who studies the publishing business, says this price war could have a serious ripple effect on all booksellers: “This cuts into book buying at retail stores, supermarkets [and] convenience stores. The book store chains especially hit hard will be the independents who are unable to discount to that level.”

I guess what scares me the most is the idea that wandering down the narrow aisles of shelves crowded with books in a family owned bookstore will be a thing of the past. The positive side of discounted books is that maybe it will encourage more people to read, but I still don’t know how I feel about buying books at TJMaxx.

I think it’s time for the whole publishing business to make changes so the Dan Brown’s and Audrey Niffenegger’s won’t be hogging all the press and money, but what direction will it take? What does all this mean for people like me, working toward my MFA, hoping to get my book published and make a little money? Where will this leave people like me?