Writing Lessons: How To Write From Memory, With Nancy Henderson-James
OUR NEXT WRITER will take on the slippery topic of bridging the gap from the here to the then – that distance of writing from memory. Nancy Henderson-James is another author from Plain View Press, a much-admired, indie press that has been in business for more than thirty years. I love their work, and think you should know about them. Luckily for us, they make fine books with good writers. We previously featured Plain View Press when reading the Writing Lessons post and excerpt of Ariel Balter, author of The Maternity Labyrinth. Let’s see what Nancy has to teach us.
How To Write From Memory
by Nancy Henderson-James
Many readers have asked, “How do you remember events that happened so long ago?”
A good question, since my childhood memoir was written fifty years after the fact. How do you flesh out your story with details, infuse it with feelings, and remain true to the experience? I was lucky to have some ancient diaries and my mother had saved letters I had written home as a nine-year-old when I was away at school. But if you are like me, what I wrote as a child cannot qualify as insightful or of literary quality. The best technique I stumbled upon, while my fingers hovered over the keyboard searching for inspiration, was fixing an image, a smell, a sound in my mind and becoming conscious of whatever bubbled up. Often a complex constellation of events or images would present itself.
What was happening in my fourteen-year-old gut when I handed the orphan baby out the train window to her next caregiver? Looking back, could I connect her hand-off with my parents turning me over to relative strangers when I was in fourth grade? What did the fragrance of olive oil wafting from the kitchen bring to mind? What was my relationship to our Angolan cook who bought fish from the passing boat on the beach by our house? What feelings were evoked from the lapping of water on the shore, the riffling of palm leaves, the zoom of a motorbike, or the chatter of a Portuguese child up the block?
The memories that spontaneously arose gave me an entrée into a scene or an insight into a character or a specific detail I had forgotten. The images could trigger a cascade of related memories. My memories did not always match those of my siblings, but in the end I felt sure that they were faithful to my particular experiences and the way I sorted out my life.
At Home Abroad: An American Girl in Africa, an excerpt
Prologue—Tez
Maria Teresa. Her birth name too long for her tiny body. At seven months, she was a wizened eight pounds, unable to hold up her head, roll over, or smile, and so she became simply Tez. I gazed at her soft brown skin, her dark eyes, and her springy curls. She grasped my finger and held on. I cradled her. I suckled her with bottles of rich milk, and watched her blossom into a sturdy grinning one-year old, on the verge of her first step. Her legs had transformed from fragile twigs into strong saplings, planted solidly on her Angolan land. I prepared to give her, healthy, back to her family just a year before the colonial revolution against Portugal. We boarded the train, I to continue on to Rhodesia for high school, she to go home to a family she didn’t know. What became of her?
I’ll never completely come to terms with the audacity of handing Tez out the train window at the Bela Vista whistle stop. Wrenched from me, a 14-year-old who didn’t know about repercussions, didn’t understand how the body never forgets. I went on with life, moved to school 1500 miles away, learned to maneuver another culture, and left Africa abruptly when war started. But what happened to that little Angolan girl forty-eight years later, if she survived war, land mines, hunger, and flight to a neighboring country? Did she die or did she grow up a refugee—one of 300,000 who fled? After forty years, the war sputtered to a close in 2002. Has Tez returned to Angola, hoping to make her life in a devastated land, in an unfamiliar country? Whether and how she survived continues to haunt me.
Author bio
I was a late bloomer in writing, beginning toward the end of a career as a librarian. I am forever grateful to writing for giving me a way to understand my dislocated life. Though I have lived in the United States my entire adult life, I still wonder if I belong here. Writing supplies constant food for inquiry and expression. I wrote At Home Abroad: An American Girl in Africa and have contributed essays to Unrooted Childhoods: Memoirs of Growing up Global and Writing Out of Limbo: International Childhoods, Global Nomads, and Third Culture Kids. I am working on another memoir about my many mothers and fathers. My website for my memoir can be viewed here. The book is available through Plain View Press.
AND THE WINNER IS…
I hope you enjoy Writing Lessons. Featuring well-published writers of our favorite genre, each installment of the series will take on one short topic that addresses how to write memoir, and will include a great big book giveaway.
It’s my way of saying thanks for coming by.
The contest for this book is now closed. Please see the next installment of Writing Lessons.
The winner of Nancy Henderson-James’ fine book is Joely. Congratulations, Joely! I’ll be in touch to send your book.
I sometimes find it easy to remember things from long ago; but then other times, trying to remember is so difficult! I’ve noticed that some memories (usually the smallest ones) are associated with tiny details that crop up from day to day–a smell, a turn of phrase, or even a color or cloud-shape.
Thanks for your comments. I believe those small sensory details make my method work for me. They seem to prompt the brain in a very specific way whereas asking myself a more global question (What was life like in Angola?) is less effective.
I like that the author mentions very tangible sensory details linking memory to story: the scent of olive oil, lapping water, hearing Portuguese children speak. I think this prevents a memoir from becoming an “internalogue” of sorts, which is always boring to read, because we can’t connect to it. Thanks for sharing this with us!
The details of a person’s life as they weave into how they live their life make almost anyone’s life relevant, famous or not. Thanks!
Your post and your book are very interesting to me. I lost track of a dear Kenyan friend and her family after I returned to the States and the government burned down their “village” (slum). All I could do was pray for them. Then one day, some six years later, I accidentally spotted her picture on Facebook! A wonderful organization, Amani ya Juu, had taken her in; their purpose is to provide displaced and traumatized women with skills, employment and a safe place to heal and get back on their feet, an organization I was well acquainted with and trusted. Since then I’ve reconnected with her and her grown daughters, all through Facebook! What a delight! I look forward to reading your book.
I have always hoped that Tez and her family survived the almost 40 years of wars that Angola suffered. I returned to Angola in 2010 and revisited my old haunts, but had no way to track her down. Facebook and the vast reach of the Internet, though, has been a real boon to reconnecting with others I knew or who knew my parents.
I too have been trying to figure out how to deal with childhood memories, or sometimes lack of them. Do I remember something only because I have been told many times by others that I believe it is a real memory? And often what I remember is an image but don’t feel I have enough detail for writing. And maybe some details are not necessary. For example, I have always thought that I was in kindergarten when I was told that President Kennedy was killed. That is my memory, but the math says I was probably in first grade. I like the technique of fixing on an image, sdound, or smell.
I hope it works for you! It can’t bring back everything, but it seems to work for me as sort of a stoker of memory.
I can’t wait to put this concept to use – I’m working on a memoir about my mother who died when I was in my early 30’s, but who had been ill for ten years prior. The mom I know Before Sickness is somewhat of a stranger to me, as a child I was simply not paying attention. I pore over photo albums, looking at the face of my mom in her 20s and 30s trying to remember details of how she spoke, smelled, reacted, dressed. Great tip of hitching my words to one memory and allowing it to carry me on to others buried deeper.
I wish you the best in recreating your mother on the page. The important point, I think, is to reach for what is authentic to your experience, even if perhaps you can’t know the exact “truth” of her.
I whole heartedly agree with the importance and benefit of smells and sounds to help us piece together the puzzle of memories as we write. I was struck by the endearing photograph on your book cover, and wonder if you also referred to photographs while you wrote? I look forward to reading your memoir–Congratulations!
My family were big picture takers, so yes, I did peruse photos to help remind me of people and details. I love images for what they convey. My memoir has many photos of Angola and the family that Plain View Press was graciously willing to include.
Reminds me of Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past” where sensory details mean so much….
Thank you for this clue to getting in touch with memories for mining!
Well, I can’t quite be compared with Proust! But he is a wonderful instructor in how the senses can evoke memories. Thank you for your comment.