Let Us Now Praise Independent Bookstores, Public Libraries, and Local Newspapers

If it weren’t for independent bookstores and my local newspaper I would not be writing this blog. So this post is all about thanks and praise. There’s a role for you to play too, so keep reading!

I got the idea to praise these outstanding local institutions by reading this delightful Ann Patchett essay in the New York Times just before Stuart and I set off this summer for Petoskey, MI.

Following the places named in the Times article, we visited McLean & Eakin Booksellers shop, and there met the new co-owner Jessilyn Norcross, and her wonderful staff. Not only did we buy books about by and about Hemingway and the Michigan North Country, we also got “insider” tips on what to see, eat, and do in the area. Our journey was made twice as delightful by a visit to a thriving independent bookstore. The store gives back to its own community in very creative ways, benefiting local schools and libraries, as the YouTube below illustrates.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oORqypcVLxw&fs=1&hl=en_US]

But back to my own community, where there are other newspapers, bookstores, and public libraries to celebrate. Even though I get much of my news from online sources and NPR, I still subscribe to The Kalamazoo Gazette. Why? Because I believe that local communities need local newspapers. They provide a forum for democratic conversation and commonly-shared information. And they can do much good by focusing the spotlight on community needs, local politics, and local perspectives on the national scene.

They also can foster writers and workshops and a host of other issues I care about. I became a memoir writer because of this Kalamazoo Gazette community literary awards competition, where I won prizes in the adult memoir category in 2007 for “The Fresh Air Girl,” 2008 for “Daddy’s Girl,” and 2009 for “My Mother’s Pulpit.” I enjoyed going to the Portage District Library to accept the awards because the room was full of people who love to read and write, and I especially enjoyed seeing children and teenagers and MFA program students reading their work. Fantastic community relations, Kalamazoo Gazette! I also enjoy the Kalamazoo Public Library where I can browse, use a study room, and listen to local writers (so many wonderful ones) read from their work.

The Community Literary Awards brings all three of these institutions together. The newspaper partners with the local libraries and four independent bookstores (Bookbug a bookstore just for kids, Kazoo Books, Lowry’s Books, and the Michigan News Agency) in giving out these awards. All of these stores contribute so much to the literacy and economy of western Michigan. If you live anywhere close by, get thee to one or more of them! And buy!

Now, please comment below to add other local newspapers, public libraries, and independent bookstores you love and endorse. Let’s show our appreciation here and help to make our communities stronger.  Better yet, tell a story about how one of these three institutions changed your life.

Memoir as Potential Social Movement

Last Friday, The Kalamazoo Gazette published an op-ed I wrote. Its conclusion contains the revolutionary idea that if all of us finished the tasks (see below or click link above) we need to accomplish before a “good” death is possible, we would have years to live free of the fear of death and thus could focus on how to fan the fires of love.

What do you think of this idea? How would we begin the movement?  Has it already begun?

Writing our own memoirs is a way to reflect and answer the big questions

by Shirley H. Showalter

Friday May 22, 2009, 9:07 AM

“This is the age of memoir,” declared writing expert William Zinsser in 1989.

Evidence all around us suggests Zinsser is right. Recently Rick Bragg held a full house at Kalamazoo Central High School enrapt as he told stories from the three memoirs selected by the Kalamazoo Public Library (“All Over but the Shoutin’,” “Ava’s Man,” and “The Prince of Frogtown”) in the excellent Reading Together series. A few days later, Susan Boyle’s appearance on “Britain’s Got Talent” was the talk of America, and more than 33 million people have viewed the YouTube video of her instantly transformed life.

Personal stories completely infiltrate our lives. Technology and entertainment outlets sizzle with them: reality TV shows, blogs, vlogs, Twitter, Flickr, MySpace, YouTube, self-published books, podcasts, six-word memoirs, “This I Believe,” Story Corps, “This American Life,” the scrapbooking craze, birthing, christening, graduation, wedding videos on the Internet and “Life Story” funeral homes.

A new journal called Memoir (and) includes poetry, photography, graphic essays and short stories. Samsung just brought out a new camera/phone combo called the Memoir! Businesses have sprung up to help elderly people digitize photos, video, journals and memorabilia from their lives. A “viral” feature on Facebook, “25 Things About Me,” involved more than 5 million people within a four-week span.

The field of philanthropy is being transformed by social entrepreneurs who have discovered the power of personal stories. Kiva.org raised more than $36 million online last year by helping more than 93,000 people, who needed small amounts of capital, tell their stories.

President Barack Obama penned his first memoir at the age of 34. We have yet to comprehend how much “Dreams from My Father” (and, to a lesser extent, “The Audacity of Hope”) contributed to the making of our first African-American president. Had he not taken more than a year of his young life to wrestle meaning from the givens (his “Kenyan father” and “Kansan mother”) and the choices (community organizer rather than Wall Street lawyer, Christian rather than humanist or Muslim), he would not have become the leader he is today.

Some people decry and deride all this self-revelation. Too much information, they may say. Narcissism! The preening of celebrities and the role of media in making and breaking shallow identities make easy targets for critics, and rightly so.

But there is another side to the popularity of memoir, a side Rick Bragg showed us during his Kalamazoo visit. Good memoir teaches both the reader and the writer humility. St. Augustine, after all, is credited with the first autobiography that he titled, appropriately, “Confessions.”

We might all consider memoir writing, not necessarily for publication, but for the same reason the best spiritual memoirists examine their lives: to see the shape of our souls, locate our central tensions and conflicts, ask for God’s grace, forgive our debtors, discover our voices, and find the courage to continue the journey home.

In the decades ahead, 78 million baby boomers will reach the ends of their lives. We know from hospice workers that those who are dying face four main tasks, encapsulated in these words:

• “I love you.”

• “Thank you.”

• “I forgive you.”

• “Please forgive me.”

If a whole generation could find the courage to go through this process before they lay dying, we just might unleash the love energy this poor planet needs right now. That would be a new vision worth working for — a more humble, spiritual age brought to birth, and commemorated, in memoir.

Shirley H. Showalter is vice president for programs at the Fetzer Institute, www.fetzer.org and maintains a blog at www.100memoirs.com.

Contests and Memoir

I have always enjoyed biography, autobiography, and the personal essay, but my study of memoir as a subject is only two years old.  It started when I saw a 2007 literary contest announcement in the local newspaper, The Kalamazoo Gazette.  The three categories were poetry, short story and memoir. That choice was easy, since my favorite genre, the personal essay, is a form of memoir.

Entering contests was not at a new phenomenon for me either.  I identified with both the mother and her writer-daughter in the memoir, The Prizewinner of Defiance, Ohio. My own mother loved contests and showed me how to send off for free things in the backs of magazines when I was growing up in the 1950′s.  Going to the mailbox was fun because a fat envelope might be lurking there.  I entered lots of contests and won more than my share of prizes–all with my mother’s encouragement, and sometimes, with her help.  A number of my most vivid memories focus on contests; my young imagination was fired by them.

My mother herself was a housewife “prizewinner”–someone who found scant opportunity to exercise her gifts of speaking, writing, acting, and making music as she laundered on Monday, ironed on Tuesday, cleaned on Wednesday, etc.  She loved reading stories and telling stories to her five children.  She even published a few feature articles and spoke in many churches.  She praised the stories and pictures we brought home from school.  In addition, she encouraged us to enter newspaper and magazine contests.  This eagerness to compete and to create has never left me.  The legacy it left in my life is a mixed one.  I have “won” many contests–4-H, the Bobst Award, admission to graduate school, grants, scholarships, various jobs, a presidential leadership award, etc.  However, it is hard to listen to the still, small voice of the spirit with the roar of the crowd in one’s head.  And it is easy to get attached to winning.  Like Sylvia Plath, I went into depression at one juncture of my life when I failed to win a fellowship I wanted badly.

At age 60, I am able to turn away from some contests, like nominations for prestigious jobs, even if I might win them.  This seems like spiritual progress to me.  To make such decisions well, I have to pause, meditate, seek counsel, and interrogate the greatest sources of wisdom I know.  If I don’t, I can still be addicted to my own adrenaline.

In the last two years I won memoir writing prizes in the Kalamazoo Gazette contest and also two other honorable mentions, the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference and the Soul-Making Literary Competition in San Francisco.  These contests got me started.

I also entered a handful of other contests and did not win!

External recognition can be one of the signposts we look for when asking how to use our precious time and exercise our gifts in the world.  But it is not enough.  I desire to follow my heart and soul to deeper levels of reflection through reading and writing memoir–even if I never win another contest in my life.