“As a writer, I have always been attracted to what is hidden. I write to understand what is not understandable, what is not even acceptable, and to find a deeper truth in what has not been spoken.
“I write war, trauma, history.
“I also write family, without planning to do so. And motherhood. This is the natural consequence of writing who I am. In our culture and our stories, gender is everything. I have learned – not always in the nicest ways – that even when I am sure that my own preoccupations have nothing to do with gender, my readers will still bring their own, gender-based expectations to my work.”
This morning, I discovered – surprise, surprise! – that there is very little traffic on the roads at 2:30 in the morning. That’s when I was picked up for a live interview on the Lorraine show, on ITV in the UK. More traffic than expected at 4:00 am, when I was finished. In between, a conversation with a smiley face on a yellow post it (that’s where I was supposed to look at the camera – I could hear Lorraine’s Scottish brogue in my ear, but her image was too time-lagged to look at). If you have an international video viewer, you can see it here. If not, you can wait along with me for the DVD to arrive in the mail.
“The heart has reasons that reason does not understand.”
I have ordered my copy of Transforming Terror: Remembering the Soul of the World, edited by Karin Lofthus Carrington and Susan Griffin, University of California Press.
In their own words:
“Over the last decade, whether in Palestine or Israel, Mumbai or Pakistan, Baghdad or Kabul, Rwanda or the Sudan, the United States, Spain, or Great Britain, we have witnessed a vicious cycle in which terrorism causes terror and the experience of terror seeds acts of terrorism. And yet, though the human emotions we all share— fear, grief, and loss— are so clearly part of this murderous equation, in delineating and defining this violence rarely does society consider the experience of terror that lies at the heart of terrorism.”
Heart and humanity are at the center of my writing. I am looking forward to reading this book, and to using it as an inspiration for an upcoming presentation I will be giving at the University of Connecticut at Storrs on September 15 on the multivalent meanings contained in the still-evocative term, “ground zero.”
Buy the book. Read it with me. Tell me what you think.
A not terribly groundbreaking debate on noncustodial motherhood begins at about 16:20 minutes into the episode, but it ends with the acknowledgment that different models of family and childcare can work!
My Mother’s Day interview with Sherry Bracken has been posted on The Big Island News Center. You can listen to the half hour discussion here. We talk about everything from astrophysics, to my mother, to the inspiration for my first novel to Hiroshima in the Morning. She is a thoughtful, warm and very smart interviewer. Thanks Sherry!
I am reading from Hiroshima in the Morning on The Drum Literary Magazine, “a literary magazine for your ears,” featured this week and archived forever with a lot of other great readings and interviews. Check out the magazine. It’s definitely worth your time!
