Memoirous

Another Brooklyn , Jacqueline Woods A couple of weeks ago I went to hear Jacqueline Woods read from Brown Girl Dreaming and Another Brooklyn at Women & ChildrenFirst Bookstore . What a refreshing evening—saw some old friends from AROHO. Brown Girl Dreaming is straight up memoir. It won National Book Award for Young People's Literature in non-fiction. Another Brooklyn is another story. A lot of good fiction reads like autobiography. And, certainly, there is little division between the two. Our lives inform our stories, and visa versa. Yet, any reader of Brown Girl Dreaming will see resounding strains in Another Brooklyn . Certainly Woodson’s love for her adopted hometown. Also something else—nostalgia. Many of us look back with different glasses on our past, but in NYC and Brooklyn the neighborhoods are dramatically changing. Readers of this blog will know from my posts that I’m no fan of gentrification. Yet there is no stopping these population shifts. ...

  We have been hosting a refugee family from Syria. With 7 kids. I can’t begin to name them all. Three of the bunch are triplets. The majority were all born during the civil war. One was actually born in a refugee camp. Her name is Haneen meaning nostalgia. A yearning for yesteryear, for what they once had, for their homeland. They named her that so they would not forget. Looking back, yet moving forward. Remembering the good times, prayers for what lies ahead. Don’t lose heart.

Remember back in the day when certain detergents included benefits for the housewife—like a glass. Really you might be thinking— glass? Somehow they didn’t break and cut off the tips of fingers. There used to be all kinds of incentives or bonuses to purchases, that had nothing to do with each other. Wash your clothes and drink a glass of wine!? It wasn’t always Cracker Jacks that came with a prize inside, but also boxes of cereal. Not sure how big these boxes were but there would be books, airplanes to build, fannypacks, towels!!?? You used to be able to “collect” a whole set of tableware just by filling up at the gas station. My parents were too chintzy to buy any of the stuff for us kids. There were four of us. And of course you couldn’t get for one without getting something for all. So it was out of the question. That’s why when Aunt Mart and Uncle Mike took me for a week or two in the summer it was so GREATTTT. I would be the only kid. After picking me up in Dayton ...

Nostalgia always seems to have an overlay, a gloss, of sentimentality. nostalgia confers a longing, a wistfulness for time past. There are two tensions that come with nostalgia--perhaps, more--and often we occupy both of these tensions at once --too bad we didn't know then what we know now OR --I'm so glad I didn't know then what I know now. Like the difference between stained glass and white washed walls, both hold a certain aesthetic. For now, what was (nostalgia) and what could be (hope) feels absolutely unknowable. AND FOR AN UPLIFTING LOVE STORY=click below https://soundcloud.com/wbez/storycorps-after-grief-an