This is such a marvelous example of telling it slant, of trusting your readers to connect all the dots, of telling big, hard abstract truths through showing specific, physical, concrete details. I just ached for that girl and her sister, and even, somehow, her mother. That I could feel sympathy for her mother is the real testament to the strength of this piece. I don't want to, but I do--because even though she is doing terrible things to her child, she is not a one-dimensional monster. I see her pain, too. I'm going to have to go back to see how you did that.
That's -- that's about the best observation you could offer, about the mother. Rita, I really worked at that (and again in the piece I have coming out in The Rumpus next month). My mom seems to go out of her way to make herself unsympathetic, and I go out of my way to find some aspect of her own vulnerable humanity, which I do see, to zoom in on.
I guess in the end if we can find this possibility as writers then we redeem in some way not just those who've hurt us, but also, ourselves. The one person I cannot redeem and have so far not even chose to try to redeem is my former stepfather. Someone else can take that job if they want, but not me.
I hear over and over again that no one has the right to ask a survivor of abuse to interact with their abuser. Given your deft dissection of point of view, this seems like a similar boundary in terms of what each voice will and won’t do. I wonder craft-wise how that very healthy boundary looks in the telling of the story and if you made a craft decision based on that? You may have already addressed this in detail when writing about writing without re-traumatizing, but it feels like your distinction between the narrator of a piece and the writer and the knowledge they possess about a piece.
It's complicated. In Bastard, I feel like Dorothy Allison really humanizes the stepfather by giving us backstory and adjacent scenes of his own rejecting and emotionally abusive father/family. I chose not to do that, because ... I don't know. My stepfather is very alive and went on to abuse another stepdaughter and was convicted of felony sexual misconduct. He friended me on Facebook last year! My stepfather was -- and this is the simple truth -- never anything other than unkind to me at best. I have never heard from him since he left when I was ten. I ... was speechless and texted my sister (his biological daughter). It's a weird world, Emily. But I feel at peace with my perhaps less than ideal craft choice to leave him exactly as villainous as he was, and no better.
Thank you for that. When you chop one head off and six grow back and keep coming it is impossible to see the lines. Outraged on your behalf. Again. I feel the boundary there and I can read knowing you are ok right now, so whatever you have done, and do, it is working. Perhaps because of the redemption we feel in the others, the lack for him is the crater of a boundary in and of itself. Thanks for the generous response to a clumsy question.
It wasn't clumsy at all! I have thought about this a lot. It's almost like, I sacrificed doing something that I know both from study of craft and from personal experience might have/probably really would have! made the story "better," but it would have been less true, and it also would not have sat honestly in this body, the one I live in every day. So, I just let him be the way he showed up on the page and did not try to clean him up for public appearance or for the possibility of a "more effective" story. Everything I am putting in quotes is not to be snarky, I am quoting myself. These are all things I say (a lot!) when teaching. But this is why art is so elusive: there is no formula, no one right way. Every writer, every story, and every telling calls for its own set of considerations. All we have to rest on are some basic principles. Those, though, are worth the effort and the practice. That is my belief. It's good to know you here, Emily.
For whatever it's worth, I feel no sympathy for him, nor do I want to. I do not care about him or any possible redemption for him. I see this as a story about women, and the various ways in which we are abused by men (both directly and indirectly) and try to find ways to be OK within that abuse. I love a man and I raised a son and I understand all the ways in which patriarchy hurts men, too, but this story is not about that or them. It's about the damage they do (directly and indirectly) to women and the resiliency of women in the face of it.
So much of this story connects to those of too many women in my family--both the mothers who made terrible choices and their daughters who had to live the consequences of them. I ache for all of them. None of the stories are simple, which your portrait of your mother shows.
I’m familiar with this, with my own mother… but you can only be you. And you are a generous person, so of course you will go out of your way to see her with compassion.
The voice, the narration, is excellent. I really felt connected to the narrator’s age in the language. The framing of chaos and violence with “peace and quiet.” The way that dogs, like songs, shape a biography. Your memoir will be my next non-fiction read—I love that this piece became the start of that larger project. Thanks for writing and sharing and modeling. So many sentences that get in the marrow.
This is how to tell a story. I've read this before, but it still surprises and I stop breathing a little bit around the edges of the abuse, the terrible clothed in a story about dogs and disappointment and the confusion adults cause. And in that way that storytelling can, it mirrors my own growing up in Texas. My memoir, Comfort, Texas, will be published in October and it is your journey, in part, that gives me hope somebody will read it. Thank you Jeannine.
Reading, holding you in my heart—going to sit with this today. Thanks for showing how it is done— the controlled time travel, the child’s voice and eyes, the icons of dogs, highway, house, hairbrushes. The strength to put yourself back there even when safe and perhaps the wobbly journey back to now. Such a generous and completely in character answer to yesterday’s discourse around how — bringing the goods. More later, but selfishly needed this hug in the silence.
Thanks, Emily. This essay--about doubled in length--later became the first chapter of TPTB. But in this iteration, it was the work that I brought to Tin House with Dorothy Allison, which she read and said, "You know you are writing a book, right?" And I hadn't known at that point, but from there, I did.
I, too, was not planning on a long read this mid-day. Being a lover of dogs, I couldn't help but take a peak. Captured. And I realize I will have to inhale this on a bigger screen than my frustrating phone. Maybe print it out even. Maybe hide it under my pillow.
I don't have enough knowledge to critique or comment in a 'writerly way', but I have to share this - because you Have to know what you are doing to me. What the experience of WITD is doing to me. So, sorry for another journal snippet:
The control of B&W observation yields exposure of blinding light. My "view" shifts. And it is, in fact, more 'visceral" than reams of adjectives that may or may not be true.
Why would it be frightening to let go of runaway imagination? The frame of removed observation births a more terrible discovery. (Oh! were you in the shadows, always?) That is terror. But comforting. less hiding. less safety. But was I ever "safe"?
I am buying your book. I will keep reading everything I can here. I've/you've started something that is "bigger".
Thank you so much, Pamela Also, we don't have to be writerly.
And thank you for sharing what is happening in your journal--this opening of a door inside of yourself. It is okay to hide until we are ready not to hide. And, this is a safe place.
My heart is aching, my heart is full. And I can feel learning happening in ways I can't articulate, in the part of my mind that is always reading for craft. Thank you, Jeannine, for showing what an essay can be and do, and for all you do here on Substack.
Wow, this was just heartbreakingly beautiful, Jeannine. I have so much admiration and love for you. All that you have achieved… coming out of this crazy childhood sane, and with such gorgeous writing. I so want to give you a big hug right now. (Crying into my morning coffee). 🤗🤗🤗
This might be my favorite of your writing. Each time I encounter it, there’s more to experience and ponder. It’s devastating and beautiful at the same time. And the threads of discussion here are also a gift. 🩷
I want to say something coherent or smart, but the only thing that comes is wow. Thank you for sharing this. It moved me and I loved how the dogs braided the narration and made the story whole. I will be re-reading and studying this text closely!
Enjoy, I was riveted by the whole thing. So much intrigue and great storytelling. You got me I usually don’t have time to read in the morning but I told my daughter she had to wait.
Your book hasn’t arrived yet, but I can’t wait for more.
Your writing gives me courage. Thank you so much for writing in the dark.
Good god, Jeannine. I have the same feeling here that I had reading Ann Patchett’s Truth snd Beauty. I wanted to look away from this pain, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t because I cared too much about that child, about you. I have to still squeeze shut my eyes , it’s so hard to look at. But if you could survive this and rise, rooted, redeemed, and sharing your gifts, which were clearly always there, a shimmering star of a human being paying deep attention to all of life, there is hope for humanity.
Jeannine, I remember this from your book. I loved the voicing, the narration, the story, the showing. When I was younger, I had a piano teacher that was a retired concert pianist. On rare occasions, when she thought I needed the encouragement or motivation, she would play the piece I was studying, with all the virtuosity and artistry only a trained musician could master. I was always left dumbfounded and always had the sound of her playing in my mind whenever I practiced. Honestly, it's the same feeling, the same transformation my mind goes through to go from awe to creation whenever I read and reread your work. Thank you for inspiring and motivating me to create.
This is fire. Absolutely riveting. And heartbreaking. I wanted to hug everyone, all the children, not the dogs so much. Definitely not Mafia and his oily fingers. Thank you for sharing this, whatever it's going to be.
This is such a marvelous example of telling it slant, of trusting your readers to connect all the dots, of telling big, hard abstract truths through showing specific, physical, concrete details. I just ached for that girl and her sister, and even, somehow, her mother. That I could feel sympathy for her mother is the real testament to the strength of this piece. I don't want to, but I do--because even though she is doing terrible things to her child, she is not a one-dimensional monster. I see her pain, too. I'm going to have to go back to see how you did that.
That's -- that's about the best observation you could offer, about the mother. Rita, I really worked at that (and again in the piece I have coming out in The Rumpus next month). My mom seems to go out of her way to make herself unsympathetic, and I go out of my way to find some aspect of her own vulnerable humanity, which I do see, to zoom in on.
I guess in the end if we can find this possibility as writers then we redeem in some way not just those who've hurt us, but also, ourselves. The one person I cannot redeem and have so far not even chose to try to redeem is my former stepfather. Someone else can take that job if they want, but not me.
I hear over and over again that no one has the right to ask a survivor of abuse to interact with their abuser. Given your deft dissection of point of view, this seems like a similar boundary in terms of what each voice will and won’t do. I wonder craft-wise how that very healthy boundary looks in the telling of the story and if you made a craft decision based on that? You may have already addressed this in detail when writing about writing without re-traumatizing, but it feels like your distinction between the narrator of a piece and the writer and the knowledge they possess about a piece.
It's complicated. In Bastard, I feel like Dorothy Allison really humanizes the stepfather by giving us backstory and adjacent scenes of his own rejecting and emotionally abusive father/family. I chose not to do that, because ... I don't know. My stepfather is very alive and went on to abuse another stepdaughter and was convicted of felony sexual misconduct. He friended me on Facebook last year! My stepfather was -- and this is the simple truth -- never anything other than unkind to me at best. I have never heard from him since he left when I was ten. I ... was speechless and texted my sister (his biological daughter). It's a weird world, Emily. But I feel at peace with my perhaps less than ideal craft choice to leave him exactly as villainous as he was, and no better.
Thank you for that. When you chop one head off and six grow back and keep coming it is impossible to see the lines. Outraged on your behalf. Again. I feel the boundary there and I can read knowing you are ok right now, so whatever you have done, and do, it is working. Perhaps because of the redemption we feel in the others, the lack for him is the crater of a boundary in and of itself. Thanks for the generous response to a clumsy question.
It wasn't clumsy at all! I have thought about this a lot. It's almost like, I sacrificed doing something that I know both from study of craft and from personal experience might have/probably really would have! made the story "better," but it would have been less true, and it also would not have sat honestly in this body, the one I live in every day. So, I just let him be the way he showed up on the page and did not try to clean him up for public appearance or for the possibility of a "more effective" story. Everything I am putting in quotes is not to be snarky, I am quoting myself. These are all things I say (a lot!) when teaching. But this is why art is so elusive: there is no formula, no one right way. Every writer, every story, and every telling calls for its own set of considerations. All we have to rest on are some basic principles. Those, though, are worth the effort and the practice. That is my belief. It's good to know you here, Emily.
For whatever it's worth, I feel no sympathy for him, nor do I want to. I do not care about him or any possible redemption for him. I see this as a story about women, and the various ways in which we are abused by men (both directly and indirectly) and try to find ways to be OK within that abuse. I love a man and I raised a son and I understand all the ways in which patriarchy hurts men, too, but this story is not about that or them. It's about the damage they do (directly and indirectly) to women and the resiliency of women in the face of it.
So much of this story connects to those of too many women in my family--both the mothers who made terrible choices and their daughters who had to live the consequences of them. I ache for all of them. None of the stories are simple, which your portrait of your mother shows.
Yes, it really is a story about the women--that's true. Helpful to have that seen.
I’m familiar with this, with my own mother… but you can only be you. And you are a generous person, so of course you will go out of your way to see her with compassion.
The voice, the narration, is excellent. I really felt connected to the narrator’s age in the language. The framing of chaos and violence with “peace and quiet.” The way that dogs, like songs, shape a biography. Your memoir will be my next non-fiction read—I love that this piece became the start of that larger project. Thanks for writing and sharing and modeling. So many sentences that get in the marrow.
Thank you, Monica!
Ditto
This is how to tell a story. I've read this before, but it still surprises and I stop breathing a little bit around the edges of the abuse, the terrible clothed in a story about dogs and disappointment and the confusion adults cause. And in that way that storytelling can, it mirrors my own growing up in Texas. My memoir, Comfort, Texas, will be published in October and it is your journey, in part, that gives me hope somebody will read it. Thank you Jeannine.
I'll watch for your book, Randa. These are not easy stories to tell. Thank you for being on the journey together. xoxo
And you do it so well
Me too
Congrats on your upcoming publication! Look forward to adding it to my memoir-to-read pile of books.
Reading, holding you in my heart—going to sit with this today. Thanks for showing how it is done— the controlled time travel, the child’s voice and eyes, the icons of dogs, highway, house, hairbrushes. The strength to put yourself back there even when safe and perhaps the wobbly journey back to now. Such a generous and completely in character answer to yesterday’s discourse around how — bringing the goods. More later, but selfishly needed this hug in the silence.
Thanks, Emily. This essay--about doubled in length--later became the first chapter of TPTB. But in this iteration, it was the work that I brought to Tin House with Dorothy Allison, which she read and said, "You know you are writing a book, right?" And I hadn't known at that point, but from there, I did.
It is stunning.
Thank you so much, Emily. xoxo
What a beautiful story!
I suspect I will say this a lot: “what Emily said.”
Ha! ( I didn’t want to speak and break the spell, but hard to hug, gasp, or cry online.)
You captured them all—hug, gasp, cry—
with your words; a kind of holding.
I have the same feeling, crying into my morning coffee alone…
💜 you are not alone.
I, too, was not planning on a long read this mid-day. Being a lover of dogs, I couldn't help but take a peak. Captured. And I realize I will have to inhale this on a bigger screen than my frustrating phone. Maybe print it out even. Maybe hide it under my pillow.
I don't have enough knowledge to critique or comment in a 'writerly way', but I have to share this - because you Have to know what you are doing to me. What the experience of WITD is doing to me. So, sorry for another journal snippet:
The control of B&W observation yields exposure of blinding light. My "view" shifts. And it is, in fact, more 'visceral" than reams of adjectives that may or may not be true.
Why would it be frightening to let go of runaway imagination? The frame of removed observation births a more terrible discovery. (Oh! were you in the shadows, always?) That is terror. But comforting. less hiding. less safety. But was I ever "safe"?
I am buying your book. I will keep reading everything I can here. I've/you've started something that is "bigger".
Thank you so much, Pamela Also, we don't have to be writerly.
And thank you for sharing what is happening in your journal--this opening of a door inside of yourself. It is okay to hide until we are ready not to hide. And, this is a safe place.
With love, Jeannine
My heart is aching, my heart is full. And I can feel learning happening in ways I can't articulate, in the part of my mind that is always reading for craft. Thank you, Jeannine, for showing what an essay can be and do, and for all you do here on Substack.
Rachel!! This means a lot! Thank you!
Wow, this was just heartbreakingly beautiful, Jeannine. I have so much admiration and love for you. All that you have achieved… coming out of this crazy childhood sane, and with such gorgeous writing. I so want to give you a big hug right now. (Crying into my morning coffee). 🤗🤗🤗
🌟💜🙏🏼
Thanks, Sarah!
This might be my favorite of your writing. Each time I encounter it, there’s more to experience and ponder. It’s devastating and beautiful at the same time. And the threads of discussion here are also a gift. 🩷
Thanks, Peg. I appreciate that a lot.
I want to say something coherent or smart, but the only thing that comes is wow. Thank you for sharing this. It moved me and I loved how the dogs braided the narration and made the story whole. I will be re-reading and studying this text closely!
Thank you, Laure!
I was with you throughout. Thanks for the journey.
Thanks, Brenda xo
Enjoy, I was riveted by the whole thing. So much intrigue and great storytelling. You got me I usually don’t have time to read in the morning but I told my daughter she had to wait.
Your book hasn’t arrived yet, but I can’t wait for more.
Your writing gives me courage. Thank you so much for writing in the dark.
Thank you so much, Prajna, for writing in the dark with me! I am always always grateful.
Good god, Jeannine. I have the same feeling here that I had reading Ann Patchett’s Truth snd Beauty. I wanted to look away from this pain, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t because I cared too much about that child, about you. I have to still squeeze shut my eyes , it’s so hard to look at. But if you could survive this and rise, rooted, redeemed, and sharing your gifts, which were clearly always there, a shimmering star of a human being paying deep attention to all of life, there is hope for humanity.
Jeannine, I remember this from your book. I loved the voicing, the narration, the story, the showing. When I was younger, I had a piano teacher that was a retired concert pianist. On rare occasions, when she thought I needed the encouragement or motivation, she would play the piece I was studying, with all the virtuosity and artistry only a trained musician could master. I was always left dumbfounded and always had the sound of her playing in my mind whenever I practiced. Honestly, it's the same feeling, the same transformation my mind goes through to go from awe to creation whenever I read and reread your work. Thank you for inspiring and motivating me to create.
This is fire. Absolutely riveting. And heartbreaking. I wanted to hug everyone, all the children, not the dogs so much. Definitely not Mafia and his oily fingers. Thank you for sharing this, whatever it's going to be.
What a fierce and compelling read. Thank you.