Welcome to Literary Ashland

Debra Gordon Zaslow is the author of Bringing Bubbe Home, a Memoir of Letting go Through Love and Death, the story of her 103 year-old grandmother’s final months.

Debra Zaslow is a professional storyteller, writer and teacher whose stories have been published in anthologies that include the Cup of Comfort series, Chosen Tales, Stories told by Jewish Storytellers, and Mitzvah Stories. Her story, “Diving for Love” was a finalist in the Redbook Magazine “Your Love Story” contest. She teaches storytelling at Southern Oregon University, and her CD, “Return Again: Stories of Healing and Renewal,” combines personal narrative with Jewish folktales. You can visit her website at: http://debrazaslow.com/

We sat down to talk about Bringing Bubbe Home.

EB: I really enjoyed Bringing Bubbe Home. Before reading it, I was worried that the story would be depressing but you managed to make it quite uplifting. As a writer, how did you make that happen?

DZ: My goal was to make the story as real and accessible as possible. That meant turning notes (from a journal I kept during Bubbe’s visit) into scenes. I used sensory imagery and dialogue whenever possible. Some of the images were not pleasant, since this death was a visceral decline, along with bodily fluids and odors, but I didn’t want to “whitewash” the true experience. However, keeping it real meant including my feelings and observations, which were often humorous, and therefore lightened the mood. Plus, several scenes where Bubbe and I sat in quiet moments and talked were simply moving and uplifting in themselves. Death has a way of stripping away whatever is not important, so you can focus on what’s really there between people.

EB: Any tips for aspiring memoirists?

DZ: I think it’s important NOT to try to be deep and meaningful. Starting out with an agenda to impart wisdom can really kill a narrative. You simply tell the story. The deeper you go into the scenes with specific details, realistic dialogue, and characterization, the more the metaphors and meaning will emerge and take a shape of their own.

EB: I wanted to ask you a bit more about craft. In addition to being a writer you are also a storyteller. How does your expertise in the art of oral performance inform your work as a writer?

DZ: Unfortunately, not as much as I’d hoped. People assume there is a natural crossover between oral storytelling and written work, but they’re actually quite distinct. In writing you can’t employ the tools of facial expression and body language that a storyteller uses, so you have to develop the craft of revealing emotion, gesture, and expression with words alone. After my first draft of Bringing Bubbe Home, I realized I wasn’t as good a writer as I wanted to be, so I went to an MFA in writing program (Vermont College of Fine Arts) to improve my writing enough to do justice to this important story.

One thing that does crossover, however, is a “sense of story.” Years of feeling audiences’ reactions have given me a sense of what is a tellable story—how to dramatize conflict, move the plot along, and create satisfactory resolution. But, what works orally still has to be converted to a more descriptive language when it’s written down.

EB: You talk about your grandmother as “outliving her personality.” I thought that was a nice way of expressing things. Can you talk a little about that?

DZ: My grandmother had always been a difficult, negative person. She was born in the 1800’s in Russia, and her mother beat her constantly. She grew up to be a tough survivor, who was not pleasant to be with. By the time she came to my house at 103 years old, her mental faculties were declining along with the rest of her body, and her crusty covering of negativity began to slip off, revealing a more luminous core. The caregivers had a hard time believing she was once a negative person.

I realize this does not happen with all people who live that long. In fact, sometimes at the end of life, whatever fears and anxieties are present, can solidify and worsen. I think for my grandma, it was a combination of being in the right place at the right time. She had lived alone till she was 101, then after being put in a nursing home against her will, she had been declining with poor care. When we brought her to our home, she was surrounded by love and comfort, and was old enough to have forgotten what she was angry about.

EB: The memoir developed from journals you kept. When did you decide to write the book?

DZ: I knew immediately after my grandma died that I wanted to write a book. People had always said to me “You should write a book,” but I never had anything I wanted to write about. Now I knew I had something to say, and six months of journals to go from. The journaling was a way to keep sane under all the stress, and to keep track of what I knew was a “big “ experience. Eventually the scenes in Bringing Bubbe Home evolved from the notes I’d scribbled down during her visit.

EB: You intersperse the story of your grandmother’s last days with stories of the past, your childhood and hers. How did writing the book help you?

DZ: I wanted to put the experience of being with Bubbe for the last months of her life into context to who she had been, and who she was to me. I began writing stories from her past and my past, which is of course, our shared history. It was emotionally very difficult to write the stories of her abuse, and how that abuse trickled through the generations in my family. It took me sixteen years to complete the book! Ultimately, though, it not only deepened the memoir, but it allowed me to see my own life in a clearer context.

EB: You talk a lot about your family in the book, which is set in the late 1990s. Were they involved in the writing process? Did you share the drafts with them as you wrote? How did they like the book?

DZ: My family endured not only the months with Bubbe, but also my immersion in the writing process for many years! I didn’t share much with them during the process because I was committed to writing what I felt was the truth, without their input. I write very honestly about the difficulties inherent in dealing with death in the middle of family life, including how our teenagers were somewhat resistant to the whole process. In the beginning I was angry with my husband because I felt abandoned by him when I was overwhelmed with caring for Bubbe. Part of the arc of the story was my realization (after spending months facing the family history) that my abandonment issues stemmed from my mother, not David.

I let David read a draft a few years before it was published just to make sure he was ok with my honesty about our relationship. Fortunately, he was a really good sport about it. Now that he’s reading the final product, he sees himself as a “wisdom character,” who acts as a foil to me as the stressed-out narrator. My daughter, who is a better writer than I am, gave the book a thumbs-up. My son is reading it now, and he says it’s very emotional to revisit those early teen years.

EB: This is very much a Jewish story, with religious details and filled with Yiddish and the immigrant voice of your grandmother, but the themes are more universal. As you were writing it, how did you imagine your audience?

DZ: I pretty much imagined my audience was me—female, Jewish, Baby boomer. But, now that the book is out, I’m surprised how universal the appeal is. People who are not Jewish relate to an immigrant grandparent, no matter where they came from. And men are loving the book, too. Everyone seems to be moved by the honesty with which family life and the dying process are portrayed.

EB: Despite the serious topic, there were some very funny scenes in the book also, especially the reminiscence when your mother and her friend Ruth are psychoanalyzing the neighborhood. Have you considered writing humor?

DZ: I can’t help writing humor, because I see the ridiculous side of everything. I think good memoir looks at all facets of the story. My mother happened to be a suburban, white-collar alcoholic, but she had a singular style. I’ve learned from storytelling that audiences love to laugh, and most experiences have funny moments, even if only in retrospect. The audience is more willing to go deep with you into pain and poignancy, once you’ve gained their trust with laughter.

EB: You include book group discussion questions. Do you have any thoughts about the different experience of reading the book alone versus discussing it in a group?

DZ: There are three book groups reading “Bubbe” right now (one in Ashland, one in Corvallis, and one in Baltimore) that I will meet with soon. When I give talks or readings, the discussions afterward are always lively and compelling. The book brings up many questions, particularly for readers who are facing decisions about an elder in the family. Often people are eager to share their experiences and thoughts about the recent death of their parent or grandparent. As Baby Boomers age, death is becoming a more accepted topic. This book is perfect for a book group discussion, since it brings up these very topical issues in an unflinching way.

EB: Thanks for talking with us.

Dz: THANK YOU!

Kit and Cat Seaton are sibling storytellers collaborating on the graphic novel The Black Bull of Norroway. Based on a classic fairy tale, The Black Bull of Norroway is the story of Sibylla, a nine-year- old whose life is forever changed by a forest witch who tells her that she will become the bride the Black Bull of Norroway. As things unfold, Sibylla comes to terms with a fate she’s not sure that she wants.

Kit Seaton, the older sister, is an artist living in Savanah, Georgia, where she teaches as Savanah College of Art and Design. She has an M.F.A. from the University of Hartford and has maintained her own webcomic, Eve of All Saints, since 2011. Cat Seaton is a playwright and storyteller living in Portland. She has a B.A. in English & writing from southern Oregon University. Cat writes the script, and Kit transforms them into sequential art.

We talked about Kit & Cat Comics and The Black Bull of Norroway.

EB: First off, are your names really Kit and Cat?

Kit & Cat: We actually get this question a lot. No, Kit and Cat are not our real names, but we’ve both been going by our respective nicknames for over ten years now. Kit was starting college and I was starting sixth grade, and both of us encountered several other students sharing our given names. So we nicked them, completely independently of one another, and found out after the fact.

EB: Is this your first creative collaboration?

Kit & Cat: It’s the first collaboration we are presenting to the public, but we’ve been meaning to work together for years.

EB: What is Kit & Cat Comics?

Kit & Cat: Kit & Cat Comics is the name of our studio. We just thought the consonants in Kit, and Cat, and comics made for a much nicer flow than a sussurous “Studio” at the end would have. Plus, we really do intend to make primarily comics. It’s run by my sister and myself, with Kit doing all of the art, and me doing the writing.

EB: The first comic is called The Black Bull of Norroway, which is an adaptation of a Scottish fairy tale. How did you come to choose that?

Kit & Cat: When Kit was in her graduate program at Hartford, she began a project using East of the Sun and West of the Moon. At that time, she approached me with the idea of creating an adaptation. We’ve both always shared a love of fairy tales, fables, and storytelling. I agreed, of course, but when I looked into it I discovered the tale had already been adapted a number of times.

It just so happened that I was taking a storytelling class around the same time, and so I had been reading a lot of fairy tales. The Black Bull of Norroway was one of those, and I realized it was a very similar tale. It had all the aspects that made East of the Sun and West of the Moon so palatable to us: strong female lead, magic and adventure, enchantment, themes of truth and illusion…and of course…gigantic animals. I approached her with the idea of using Black Bull instead, and it clicked with her immediately.

EB: Tell us about the main character Sibylla?

Kit & Cat:When we begin the second chapter, Sibylla is a moody seventeen year old girl. She’s living all by herself in her family’s house, her sisters have gone off and married other people, and she’s been left behind. And part of her is fine with that, but part of her is really discontent.

What we tried to do was, we worked really hard to turn the classic fairy tale into a Bildungsroman. So, we start with Sibylla as a young child, and really try to introduce her strongest character traits right off the bat. She puts on a brave face, she refuses to back down, she has this need to be first and to be right… but we also see her age, see her grow up, see her loneliness. We see her run from a lot of things, instead of facing them. She’s very non-confrontational in spite of her bravado, so we come to understand that Sibylla really only puts a brave face on things. She doesn’t know the true definition of courage.

As the story progresses, we get to see her grow up.

EB: Do you have a target audience in mind?

Kit & Cat: Really firmly in young adult, I think. We do deal with some darker themes, but what young adult novel nowadays hasn’t dealt with that?

EB: Have you always been interested in the graphic format?

Kit & Cat: Yes. Even when we were younger and still living at home, every story we’ve ever told or planned out has been meant for a graphic format.

EB: And how do you collaborate? What’s your process?

Kit & Cat: Because we, unfortunately, live the entire width of the country apart, we spend a lot of time on the phone. We’ll call each other up and talk about things. I’ll have an idea and I’ll ask Kit about it, and she’ll give me her feedback. Or I’ll send her a thousand emails in a day, “Kit I was thinking for this moment make sure…,” or “Kit, what if we did this?”

We are constantly sending each other works-in-progress and asking for feedback. It’s this strange combination of doing the work apart, since I script and she draws, but constantly inviting critique from the other.

I have to admit, most of the reworking happens in the writing stage, since it’s easier for me to change the direction of the story there than it is to force her to draw something over, but we’re both really open to changes and suggestions from the other person. I guess that’s the main thing. Our process demands us to be open and honest with each other at all times.

EB: Any thoughts on why the fairy tale is such an enduring and popular form?

Kit & Cat: Because people love stories, and these are stories that have been told around the fire and passed down, and have been honed and sharpened for generations. They’ve been distilled into their purest forms and characters; they take larger themes and cut them into parts, make them palatable, give us hope that we too can deal with those issues. To use a quote I’m sure we’ve all seen a thousand times: stories don’t tell us monsters exist, they tell us monsters can be beaten.

There are exceptions, of course. Some fairy tales end badly for everyone involved. But for the most part, I feel that fairy tales offer us a light to shine inside of ourselves. They help us illuminate the darkness within us, so that we can parse it out, and understand what makes us human.

EB: What’s next for Kit & Cat comics?

Kit & Cat: Well, Black Bull of Norroway is going to span a few years time. While we have the story plotted, there’s still a lot of writing and a lot of drawing left to do. We have some really great things far, far on the horizon, but Black Bull of Norroway sort of represents our past and future right now. It’s no small project. It will span three books, in all likelihood. It’s quite a commitment.

EB: How can readers subscribe?

Kit & Cat: Readers can find us on Patreon (http://www.patreon.com/kitcat) if they’re interested in supporting the project! Patreon users receive advance pages, as well as exclusive content, and subscriptions start as low as $1.

The webcomic is also available for free at http://blackbullcomic.tumblr.com and http://blackbullcomic.smackjeeves.com , with weekly updates that happen on Fridays. The entire first chapter is already available to read, so people will definitely be able to whet their appetites on it.

EB: Thanks for talking with us.

Alice Hardesty is a poet and social activist living in Portland.

She is also (as Alice H. Suter, Ph.D.) an audiologist specializing in the effects of noise on hearing. She has worked with the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, helping to develop criteria and set standards for noise exposure.

She has a BA in religion from American University, a master’s degree in deaf education from Gallaudet University, and a Ph.D. in audiology from the University of Maryland. She makes her home in Portland.

Alice and her late husband Jack Hardesty lived in Ashland for many years, where they both served on the city council. We talked about her recent book, An Uncommon Cancer Journey: The Cosmic Kick That Healed Our Lives, the story of Jack Hardesty’s amazing cancer recovery.

EB: What motivated you to write the book? Had you been thinking about doing this for a long time?

AH: I thought about writing a book like this back in the early 1990s, not long after Jack was completely well. Actually, my first thoughts were to write something to help spouses and other caregivers of cancer patients. But my busy consulting practice and natural tendencies toward procrastination got in the way. Then, after taking a couple of writing classes from Oregon poet and memoirist Judith Barrington, it became clear that the memoir was the way to go. It’s really an adventure story, with cancer, healing, travel, marriage, art, food, and psychic experiences all thrown in.

EB: You talk about cancer as “the cosmic kick that healed our lives”? What do you mean by that? You are not talking about a cure for cancer.

AH: Certainly not a cure for cancer, but I think a better word is healing. The cosmic kick is how Jack expressed his gratitude for the cancer. He called it his “Cosmic kick in the ass.” I know it sounds outrageous that anyone would talk about cancer with gratitude, but Jack knew that it enabled him to wake up, face his demons, and change his life. Nowadays people talk about “post-traumatic growth,” in which the trauma can be very positive if people are willing to learn from it.

This “cosmic kick” was beneficial for me as well since I learned a lot from the many healing experiences we shared, especially from the intensive psychotherapy. I doubt if our marriage would have survived if we hadn’t had that kind of help, and I doubt if we would have undergone that kind of rigorous therapy together if the cancer hadn’t pushed us into it.

EB: It seems that there are four main characters in the book: you and Jack, your marriage and his cancer. Which was the hardest character to write and which was the easiest?

AH: Good question — I had to ponder it. I think the hardest character was the marriage and the easiest one was the cancer. The cancer was in the form of a stubborn tumor, which grew and shrank in response to treatment, then grew and shrank again, and finally disappeared. Each time it came back, it was another “cosmic kick,” as if it was telling Jack, “You didn’t get it the first time, dude? Well, then we’re going to have to kick you again!”

The marriage was a character that insisted on my attention. In fact, the marriage was often in my face when I wanted to write about something else, but I felt that ignoring it would be less than authentic. This is perhaps why I procrastinated for such a long time.

EB: During this journey, you and Jack experienced American and European medical treatments, counseling, and alternative therapies as well. What conclusions come to mind about the various approaches?

AH: Until fairly recently, the only approach to cancer treatment in the U.S. has been chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation —i.e. poison it, dig it out, and zap it completely or the damned thing will grow back. The European treatment Jack received a the Janker Klink in Bonn was basically the same approach, but with different chemicals and the addition of ultra-sound therapy, which was experimental at the time. Neither of these treatments worked, although Jack felt very strongly that they bought him time, after which he could try the many gentler approaches we found out about. Although both of us were turned off to conventional medicine for quite a while, we eventually returned once we found holistic doctors. But in the 1980s it was either one or the other — conventional or alternative.

I am very pleased that most big cancer centers now offer complementary approaches as well as the traditional ones and encourage their patients to try healing methods like acupuncture, meditation, nutrition, exercise, and, most importantly, counseling. Although some doctors refer to the “spiritual” aspect, they usually stop there. They would still be amazed and most likely skeptical about the extraordinary encounters that Jack and I had, although these experiences may have been critical to Jack’s healing. The fact that Jack labeled the cancer’s kick “Cosmic” attests to his belief that both the cancer and his healing were somehow related to a transcendent grace. I share that belief.

EB: I always enjoyed working with Jack and was impressed with the way you captured his voice. Did that come easily or did it require several tries to get right? In other words, was Jack an easy character to write?

AH: Jack’s voice was pretty easy to capture since I know it so well and it stays with me. I didn’t use as much dialogue in the early drafts, but once I started adding dialogue, his voice appeared naturally. I would say he was an easy character to write, and I enjoyed having him with me during the process of writing and editing. The exception was certain parts of the story involving alcohol, which were difficult to write.

EB: You have also written technical materials and poetry. How is memoir writing different?

AH: Memoir writing is very different and my editors helped me in that regard. My technical writing is dryer, more careful, with longer sentences, no setting of scenes, and no dialogue. The memoir is also careful, but in a different way. I was careful to provide historical and factual accuracy, but the thread of the story and the development of the characters was my main interest. Poetry is a different animal altogether because of the use of metaphor and flights of imagination. However, I can see certain similarities between all three. My style has always been rather spare. I don’t indulge in techno-speak, and I don’t write long, obscure poems. I’ve always liked clarity and that goes for the memoir as well. I don’t get wordy.

EB: Tell us a bit about Bacho Press?

AH: Once I finally had a draft of the memoir I decided to self-publish rather than go through the hassle of finding an agent and a commercial publisher. Since this was my first book (other than technical monographs and reports) I didn’t have a reputation as a writer. Also, my editor told me that self-publishing was easier and more satisfactory than it used to be. Currently, more books are published by individual authors than by commercial houses.

So I used CreateSpace, which does a nice job and is easy to work with. Then I found out that I could name my own publishing company whatever I wanted to, and who could be more deserving than my dog, Bacho! (His name is pronounced like the composer with an “o” on the end.) Bacho has had a cancer challenge of his own, is now completely healed (although minus one eye), and is a living, breathing example of the lust for life. It also happened that no one had claimed bachopress.com as a domain name, so we grabbed it.
The next publication from Bacho Press will probably be a chap-book of haiku called “Walking with Bacho,” in the tradition of the old haiku master Matsuo Bashō. In the mean time, I hope people will subscribe to my newsletter through Bacho Press to follow my blogs on various aspects of healing.

EB: Thanks for talking with us.

AH: My pleasure.