Writing a Life
Three Duke faculty members turn to the memoir
Monday, October 30, 2006
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Karla F.C. Holloway will read from BookMarks Nov. 9 at noon at the Perkins Library Rare Book Room and Nov. 30 at 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books and Music, 3522 Wade Ave., Raleigh
Cathy N. Davidson will read from 36 Views of Mount Fuji Nov. 9 at 7 p.m. at the Regulator Bookshop, 720 9th St., Durham and Nov. 12 at 2 p.m. at McIntyre's Fine Books & Bookends, 2000 Fearrington Village Center, Pittsboro
The Gothic Bookshop features books by Duke authors on its website.
Durham, NC -- Duke professor Karla F.C. Holloway started out to write a book about African-American writers who include, in their own writing, lists of the books they have read.
And she did. But the resulting book, BookMarks: Reading in Black and White, also became a book about Holloway herself.
"I did not think this would be a book about my mother's singing or my father's disappointment at our reading comic books," Holloway says. But it is. In it, she recalls the library she frequented in her hometown of Buffalo, her daughter reading fairy tales, her high-school job shelving books.
"I hope it helps us all recover and remember our readerly selves," she said. "It's a story of families and readers with me and mine in the midst of it."
Holloway is one of three Duke professors who have recently published or reissued memoirs. A new edition of Cathy N. Davidson's 1993 memoir, 36 Views of Mount Fuji: On Finding Myself in Japan, has been published by Duke University Press. And Laura Florand, a senior lecturing fellow in the Romance studies department, has written a book about meeting her French husband called Blame it on Paris. Holloway and Davidson both have local readings in November.
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Memoir writers: Karla Holloway, Cathy Davidson and Laura Florand |
"Memoir begins as a personal touchstone, but I think that if it works at all it becomes a gathering place for a whole congregation of recollections. It brings people together at the point of memory," Holloway says. "Memoirs keep us in touch with ourselves."
Holloway's book begins with a recollection of her seventh-grade English teacher, who asked the class to list the magazines they read at home. Holloway knew instinctively that what she wrote on that 3x5 card would tell her white, male teacher something important about herself and her family.
"I looked at the card and knew my fate lay in that rectangle," Holloway writes.
From 36 Views of Mount Fuji
I was in Japan to see, to experience, to learn to understand. I wanted to be a good tourist, receptive to new experiences, to new sights and sounds. It never occurred to me...that I would become one of the sights -- examined, not just the examiner....Walking back to the apartment in Nigawa, past the last thatch buildings, under cherry trees arching to bloom, I realized that I was seeing Japan but I was also seeing myself again, inside out, viewed as well as viewing. This, I thought, is what it means to be a foreigner. Conspicuous, ardent, cowed, I began my year in Japan.From Bookmarks
One day, when my sister and I came home from school, and John came over with yet another comic book stuffed under his jacket, we hurriedly ran upstairs to place it under our beds. But the box where they had been layered to near overflowing was empty. No sign whatsoever remained of our collection, nor was there any indication of where it had gone, or who removed it. We knew then our comic book days had come to an end. No one ever spoke of them. The next Saturday, when I walked toward the Anchor Bar and then boarded the bus to the library, I chose my books quite carefully, fully aware that there would be no 'drivel' to read between library books -- but unaware that the moment marked the closing of the distance and a mooring place found bewteen my father's desires and my own. |
She carefully constructed her list. Time? Of course. National Geographic, with its naked women? No way. Scientific American? Yes, it was smart. Then the choice came between Reader's Digest and Ebony. There was a chance that this teacher might associate her with the glamorous black folk living in palatial splendor, so Ebony it was. At the end she added Life, "in case he thought I didn't like white people."
Holloway, the William Rand Kenan Jr. Professor of English, Law and Women's Studies, opens her new book with this anecdote because it encapsulates how African-American men and women have made public statements about who they are by listing the books they have read. Sandwiched between her own stories, she writes about the booklists of W.E.B. DuBois, Angela Davis, Henry Louis Gates -- even Oprah Winfrey.
"It's a way of saying, 'This is who I am, people. These are my favorite books,'" she says.
Figuring out who you are also is a theme of Davidson's and Florand's books, both of which deal with the struggle to understand another culture.
Davidson's book begins in 1980, when she spent a year as a professor at a Japanese university. The new edition ends with an afterward written in 2005, when Davidson returned to visit for the first time since the devastating 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake.
Twenty-five years later, Davidson says she has found the earlier experiences she had as a gaijin (foreigner) still resonate with readers.
"I still get about one e-mail a week from people who read it," says Davidson, who is interim director of the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute and Ruth F. DeVarney Professor of English. "You're in another culture and suddenly there's this spotlight on you. And no matter how enthusiastic you are, you are going to make a lot of mistakes."
As she experienced the embarrassments of being a foreigner, dealt with family tragedy far from home, and made lasting friendships despite language and culture barriers, she came to understand herself in a new way.
"I am not an authority on Japanese culture. I am an observer from the perspective of a student," says Davidson, who will give the royalties from the new edition to a Duke Press fund for scholars writing first books. "It's a book about living between cultures and having relationships in a culture that isn't your own."
For Laura Florand, the most important intercultural relationship of her life began when a cute French waiter named Sebastien caught her eye. At the time, she was living in -- and hating -- Paris as a Duke graduate student. But as her romance blossomed, she decided to forego the Ph.D. for love, and ended up marrying the handsome waiter (who, as it turned out, was a sweet graphic designer who was crazy about her.)
In her funny, lighthearted memoir, Florand, who is back at Duke, tells the story of their courtship and wedding, and makes the most of the contrast between her small-town Georgia family and her husband's extended Parisian family. At one point, for example, her brothers insist on having a tasting of Alabama wines for the visiting Say-bas-tee-YON. His response: "Is it meant to be wine?" And at her wedding in France, she was horrified when her French in-laws insisted on keeping the chocolate in the fridge and the mayonnaise out at room temperature.
"It's a romance that begins with two different people from two different cultures, but everybody gets involved," Florand says. "It's a really beautiful story, but at the same time it's very funny."
For all three writers, sharing their stories was revealing and sometimes painful, but, they hope, illuminating for readers. "Once it gets so intimate, it's hard to tell the story," Florand says. But she hopes to inspire others. "So many people think things like this aren't possible. A beautiful love story, or living in another world, or taking on another culture -- you can do it. People will give a lot more of themselves than you realize."
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