April 2023
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The Arrival (An Experiment in Writing about Family)
On the day Mother arrived, I went to the post office. Michigan was in the midst of its winter deep freeze, temperatures below zero day after day. Ice patched the roads. Until now, Mother had always refused to visit. Two years ago, I moved here to the outskirts of Ann Arbor. I came to pursue Continue reading
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Make Yourself a Metaphor
Metaphor is a mystery nestled somewhere near the heart of language. Why do we so often think this way, uniting unlike things with our words—the abstract with the concrete—and feeling satisfaction rather than dissonance as a result? Metaphor allows us to describe what would be otherwise indescribable—the minutiae of our emotions, the pinpricks of our Continue reading
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Lawrence Welk Is Dead: Confession of a Bad Daughter
My thanks to Texas A&M’s Front Porch Journal, where this essay was published. I have to break the news to my mother. She has been chatting her way through her usual Saturday evening phone conversation topics: her friend Shelby’s forty-five-year-old son who has lost his job and moved back home with his mother; the new Continue reading
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What If Your Mother Tells You Not To?
I first read Maxine Hong Kingston’s memoir The Woman Warrior when I was a graduate student. At that time, something important struck me about Kingston’s message. The first chapter opens with the words of the author’s mother: “You must not tell anyone what I am about to tell you.” Immediately following these words, Kingston reveals Continue reading
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A Brief Rant about Writer’s Block
I am tired of the term writer’s block. Please don’t misunderstand. I empathize with writers who are stuck, who can’t move forward with their writing, who struggle to get even a few words on the page. I feel for writers who are lost or discouraged. The problem I see with the term is that it Continue reading
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How to Use Family Photos to Fuel Your Writing (Part 2)
In this post, I continue my exploration of using childhood photos as a catalyst to writing memoir by experimenting with analyzing some of my own childhood photos. The first task when faced with stacks of family photos that are largely alike in their presentation of a single person or people, most often facing the camera Continue reading
Do you write about yourself and your experiences? Do you write about traumatic events in your life? Or, do you struggle to find time and motivation to write?
If so, this blog is for you.
Person on the Page 