Beyond FACTS: EVEN TOUGH GIRLS WEAR TUTUS by Deborah Jiang Stein

Deborah Jiang Stein is a rock star. Just read her new memoir, EVEN TOUGH GIRLS WEAR TUTUS, and check out her non-profit, The unPrison Project, and you’ll understand what I mean. Born heroin-addicted to an incarcerated mother in the Alderson Federal Prison for Women in West Virginia, Deborah spent her first year of life behind bars. Literally. She shared her mother’s prison cell, even going to “the hole” when her mother was put in solitary confinement.

After a stint in foster care, Deborah was eventually adopted by a Jewish couple in one of the few mixed-race, cross-cultural adoptions that probably occurred in 1960s Seattle. And though Deborah’s adoptive mother was a pioneer in this respect, she was also ill-equipped to help her daughter face growing concerns about her identity, especially after Deborah, at age 12, discovered she’d been born in prison.

“I belong in the…magazines with photographs of people from tropical countries and other continents more than in my white family. The map at school gives me a place where I can imagine myself, even though I can’t say in what country or with what race I might belong, whether with Thai children with my same wide smile and lips or dark-complexion boys from Samoa whose skin color resembles mine. My nose is like those of people from the Philippines. Babies wrapped on their mothers’ backs in China wear my eyebrows. I see my own feet in the photos of South American girls, their bare feet brown like mine.

“Whenever I ask my mother about my caramel-colored skin and button nose, about the hint of almond shape to my eyes, all different from my family, she just says, ‘I love you, Pet,’ her solution to everything, always.

“In truth, there was no love big enough to cover the stigma and shame I felt about my prison roots.”

Deborah struggled with much more than identity issues growing up, and by the time she was a young adult drug use and smuggling had become not only addictions but very likely pathways to her own incarceration. Her story of survival will amaze you.

But also will her determination to do more than simply cope with her prison birth and drug addictions. Through her unique non-profit, The unPrison Project, Deborah travels to women’s prisons across the country to share her story and inspire the women she visits—many of whom are parents in prison because of drugs—to strive to overcome the past not only for their own sakes, but for their children.

I received my copy of EVEN TOUGH GIRLS WEAR TUTUS just as I finished Mary Karr’s third memoir, LIT. Another story of redemption despite one’s incredibly troubled past, LIT chronicles Mary Karr’s battle to overcome alcoholism while she also comes to term with her relationship with her extremely complex mother. Deborah’s struggle to reconcile her loyalty to her prison-born mother with her difficult relationship with her adoptive mother weaves throughout the greater story of her “white-knuckled” rides to overcome drug addiction. Both writers draw strength from their ties to their original parents but also struggle to free themselves to live their own lives clean of their mothers’ destructive tendencies. The ways Deborah and Mary both reach beyond merely overcoming obstacles that would destroy most people to reaching out to others, bettering their own futures in the process, show the strength inherent in the human spirit, offering hope to those who need it most.

Beyond FICTION: THE LITTLE BRIDE by Anna Solomon

Author Anna Solomon says she was surprised to learn her first work of historical fiction, THE LITTLE BRIDE, would be marketed to women readers and Jewish readers as well as to fans of historical fiction. I was surprised to realize her book’s focus on Jewish pioneer women who came to live and toil in the American West—many as mail-order brides—introduced me to yet another dimension of the discrimination and dogged determination to survive so many Americans have endured during our country’s relatively short history.

In a recent talk and book signing at the Boulder Jewish Community Center, Anna said one of the reasons she was drawn to the topic of Jewish pioneers was the connection she felt to what she imagined they must have endured. A native of Gloucester, MA, a fishing community comprised “mainly of Irish and Italian Catholics” with a very small Jewish community, Anna says she was one of only two Jewish students in her school and was very self-conscious about the holidays she was missing and her curly hair.

Though she felt “connected to the landscape” via her familiarity with fishing, hunting for mussels in her small motorboat, sailing, and skiing while growing up, she later realized she had a “second-generation complex” as she “wanted to feel something innately New England,” something she “would never achieve as a Jew.”

“Pioneer Jews were farmers where there were few other Jews,” she explains, adding that when she began to learn about them she understood “they’d experienced an exaggerated version of what I’ve gone through” living as a Jew in New England.

Stories Untold

Anna confesses she first learned about Jewish pioneers in the U.S. when she Googled her name (before Google Alerts made this unnecessary, she jokes) and discovered a website called Stories Untold. The site features Jewish pioneer women, one of whom was named, serendipitously enough, Anna Solomon. That discovery led Anna to learn about mail-order brides, especially one named Rachel Calof, also featured prominently on the Stories Untold website. Rachel not only was a mail-order bride, but she wrote a memoir about her time as one living in North Dakota in the 1890s.

Her memoir, discovered by her daughter in the 1980s and translated from Yiddish in the 1990s, was published as RACHEL CALOF’S STORY by Indiana University Press in 2009. This year, the same year in which THE LITTLE BRIDE was published, a one-woman play called RACHEL CALOF: A MEMOIR WITH MUSIC was produced in New York.

History + Fiction = Historical Fiction

Anna notes a wide range of opinions exist on how historical fiction ought to be written, on how much of a historical novel should be made up versus how much its author should stick with historical details. Anna’s own concerns about misrepresenting historical details led her to consult not only online and printed resources but professionals on everything from antique farm equipment to the type of grass settlers in South Dakota might have struggled to keep from taking over their land. “I am concerned with getting details right,” she says.

Another special challenge inherent in writing about Jewish pioneers from the late nineteenth century involved translations from Yiddish. “Many words in Yiddish have multiple definitions or spellings,” Anna explains, adding that ultimately it’s impossible to make everyone happy on that front. Finding documented evidence about mail-order brides was also challenging as so many of the transactions were not publicized. Citing the resemblance of the practice to the Jewish matchmaking tradition, Anna says the process was not as scandalous back then as current readers might think. Still, much of it was conducted via word of mouth and scams that cost many men their money—and led many women into slavery as prostitutes—were widespread.

Any such lack of documented details didn’t deter Anna, who says a historical fiction author “fills in the gap between what is known and what is lived.” The first scene of THE LITTLE BRIDE deals with “The Look,” a humiliating examination Rachel Calof mentioned almost as an aside since it was a common aspect of becoming a mail-order bride. Anna placed her main character, Minna, in a scene that involved such an exam, adding the emotion she imagined countless women like Rachel must have experienced at such low points in their lives.

From there, Anna continued to weave the story of her main character, Minna, an Eastern European teen in the 1880s when she was orphaned and sent to Odessa to work. Minna eventually applies to be a mail-order bride in order to escape escalating violence against Jews in the region. She’s grown up with dueling myths about her mother’s absence, myths that have greatly impacted her childhood. These myths continue to impact her development as a woman and eventual wife and mother when she lands in South Dakota, far from the coastal city she’d imagined she’d live in when she was sent to the U.S. Her husband, a much older Orthodox Jew who’s still learning how to farm with his two sons, is not exactly what she’d expected, either.

The Eternal People

Am Olam, Yiddish for Eternal People, was a name assigned to a theory of sorts among some late nineteenth-century Jewish leaders that asserted discrimination of Jews would lessen if more Jews pursued “productive” lines of work such as farming. Such an effort would result in Jews who were more robust and self-sufficient flourishing on farms far from overcrowded settlements. Am Olam advocates considered The New World a sort of Eden with its promise of free land due to the Homestead Act, and were anxious to try out their experiment there.

Wealthy established Jews in the U.S., many of whom hailed from Germany, had practical reasons to support such efforts. They did much to help newly immigrated Jews from Eastern Europe, whom they considered a blight of sorts on the upscale public image they’d labored for years to establish. A very likeable character, Jacob, states in THE LITTLE BRIDE that the “rich old Jews” who’d helped immigrant families like his at first were very kind, until thousands of immigrants arrived in need of help…and education. Of special concern was how to teach the immigrants to “dress properly, clip their beards to a hygienic length, and walk without their feet flopping and their heads in the sky, and talk without their hands flailing, and tell their women to stop looking, every one, like a widow.”

Some were sent to colonies in places as far-fetched as the Dakotas, the Pacific Northwest, or the wilds of Louisiana, though most did not have the skills they needed to select ideal farm land, or to farm it. So Am Olam proved to be a relatively short-lived experiment, but it did have a widespread impact on the cities that eventually grew in these regions. As Anna puts it, the Jews who’d been sent to these areas and whose descendants stayed brought to these eventual cities a new perspective due to their direct ties to the land. Ultimately, they “challenged beliefs about what Jewish Americans can be.”

Questions of Faith and Identity

THE LITTLE BRIDE also explores the challenges faced by Jewish pioneers whose livelihood might have contradicted the demands of their Orthodox faith, or whose obligations to that faith was challenged by a spouse who held different beliefs. The question of whether Jews in the United States consider themselves Jewish Americans or American Jews continues to be a factor in “how we identify ourselves and live out this identity in a culture that isn’t largely Jewish,” Anna states.

For a young mail-order bride, such issues were jumbled into a heap of questions about identity as she struggled to overcome often brutal conditions, to be a pioneer and wife and mother despite significant language and cultural barriers, to come to terms with the fact she would never see her home again. To become a whole new person and not only survive, but prosper while she was at it.

These are just some of the challenges faced by Minna in THE LITTLE BRIDE. Anna Solomon’s storytelling skills and obvious love for her subject matter bring these challenges—and Minna—to life among a backdrop of fascinating, and widely unknown, details from American history. Mazel Tov on a beautiful book, Anna!

Beyond FLY-BY: Decoding Mary Karr

Poet and best-selling memoirist (THE LIARS’ CLUB, CHERRY, LIT) Mary Karr was recently in Denver for a Lighthouse Writers Workshop Writer’s Studio weekend that included an interview and Q&A, an after-dinner pep talk and fundraising push (“Pony up and ride, y’all”) for Lighthouse, then a Sunday morning seminar. Each event was packed with local writers and Mary Karr fans, some of whom were already familiar with her biting wit, acidic dark humor, self-effacing tendencies, and ferociously blunt Texan take on life.

I wasn’t, but I sure am now:

On family: “We’re all hell-damned via those we love or even with whom we share our DNA.”

The reverse of this hits home when I consider the main character of my novel-in-progress, who’s not only struggling to parent despite her own parents’ shaky examples but fears hurting those she loves through her own mistakes.

On her son: “I was protective of my son when LIT came out but CHERRY was harder because he was in junior high.”

Her son is now a film-maker at Blind Spot Studios.

On writing: “Every great work of art is about trying to love somebody.”

I’m plowing through THE LIARS’ CLUB; this quote brings to mind the portrait Mary Karr’s mother painted of her own mother.

Quoted Lorrie Moore as saying “Life is a field of corn and literature is all that corn distilled into a shot glass.”

“Those things you avoid writing about lead to ‘of course’ moments. And when you discover that, you go back to the beginning and readjust.”

“Create an emotional experience, create characters that readers will want to follow whether they like them or not.”

“Refuse to write a boring book with your name on it.”

Against decorative writing: “Decorative writing leads to absence of emotion in the reader and a lack of clarity.”

“I like poems that reward further study.”

“I love John Ashbery but despise his work.”

“What matters, as the French Symbolist poets of the nineteenth century said, is the aroma of the poem.”

On listening, and not, to the advice of those smarter than you: “In the middle of writing the fifteenth version of LIT I was heartbroken. Don DeLillo sent me a postcard that said ‘Write or Die.’ I sent him a postcard that said ‘Write and Die.’”

“I was told by [poet] Etheridge [Knight]: ‘You’re not a preacher, you’re a singer. Your dad keeps knocking but you won’t let him in.’ I had to stop trying to make a representation of myself to others.”

On great non-fiction: Mary’s list of top 100 non-fiction titles, written in 2009 for Modern Library.

On lousy non-fiction: Said some memoirists use “gimmicks to impress” and “get confidence and comfort by not dealing with who they are.”

“You can’t run away from who you are.”

“You can’t run fast and loose with the truth.”

On INFINITE JEST: “It’s a big book guys in short black jackets in New York carry around.”

“David Foster Wallace was a great plot master and sense-by-sense master, but I don’t want to reread INFINITE JEST ever.”

On writing a memoir: “You remember through the lens of who you are now.”

“Protect your pages. It’s not about their view of what happened. You probably had strapped onto your head their view your whole damn life.”

“Be suspect of your interpretations. Lies of interpretation happen. I don’t label, I don’t speculate how others felt. I speculate on interpretations.”

“Analyze your opinions of others. Provide details. Ask why. Write what you know, identify speculation. Don’t feel obliged to represent [another’s opinion of what happened] but if it’s directly opposite to yours, feel obliged to note it.”

“Poke at your assumptions to break through. All writers fail when they lie. Give three-dimensional evidence. Put the vision on the page.”

“People read memoirs based on voice. If they like the narrator or are fascinated by the voice they’ll keep reading. [Each of my books] has suspense due to a narrative through-line that was discovered during writing.”

“You have to change within the book.”

“It’s not about how you feel, redeeming yourself, or getting even.”

She suggested if you want to get even you should carry a shotgun. And then she told the story of how Mississippi novelist Richard Ford once used his shotgun to get even when sent a book to review. The book was by an author who’d given one of his books a bad review, so he put it on his front porch, shot a hole in it, and sent it back.

“Just be honest. Tell the reader what you’re doing because you will be busted.”

On discipline: “When writing LIT I did nothing but write Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, no phone, email…I didn’t even answer the door. No social events. My fiancé would go to the opening of an envelope. I had to cut myself off, give myself nowhere to go.”

“Stay inside. You will write something. Some days two sentences. Good days six pages, lucky days seven pages. I had a weekly aggregate and when I reached my goal I could take a hot bath—I love hot baths, baptism every time. Massages. I treat myself well. I treat myself like a mental patient. Good food in the house. Yoga Thursday and Friday or daily mass Thursday and Friday, or I’d go see my shrink.”

On church: “What brings you back is the simple faith of the people. Awe in others, moving reminders that we’re like other people.” Then she added she really thinks of everyone else as “traffic,” usually just in her way.

“The American religion is doubt. Whoever believes the least, wins.”

On inspiration: “I am never interested and inspired. I’m interested and inspired by a seven-figure check. I’m in this for the money.” She then added she wouldn’t be in Denver if she hadn’t been paid to be there, adding she’d rather be home “shopping for a new Thanksgiving table.”

On why she writes: “I told my friend Lorrie Moore: ‘I don’t like writing, reading, touring, speaking, so why am I a writer?’ And she said ‘Because you like having written.’”

On what motivates her: When “I forget to feel my butt in the chair. That thoughtlessness.”

“As an adult, spiritual healing helps me see myself. [Writing is] cathartic but not revelationary. I enjoy that power of resurrection.”

On Lighthouse: “I see writing as necessary, life-saving, essential for a city’s circulation system. Lighthouse—its openness, its support—it’s an amazing thing that’s made out of air. Essentially an affordable university and it’s very impressive. You’re essentially creating a...university that’s branching out to hospitals, the elderly, young people, the disenfranchised, and you’re saving lives.”

“‘Fail better’ as Samuel Beckett said. [Writers need] the presence of a community to support us in that enterprise.”

On poetry: Mentioned Poetry Fix, short talks on specific poems that can be viewed on her YouTube channel.

Quoted “The First Step” by Constantine Cavafy and the haunting “There Was Earth Inside Them” by Paul Celan.

“I write poetry to have that connection to great poets. It’s sustenance for me.”

And I attend Lighthouse Writer’s Studio and Fly-By Writer’s Project weekends to have that connection to great writers like Mary Karr, Alexi Zentner, Robin Black, Colson Whitehead, Tobias Wolff, Lorrie Moore. It’s sustenance for me.

Beyond FORM: Elegies 1995

It’s been a while. A while since I’ve written a blog post, a while since I’ve thought back to the darkest day of December 1988. With the death of Gadhafi, I’m back in Hartford CT, hearing over the phone from a close friend that a boy from Hartford, a Syracuse student we’d known at school who’d gone to London to study for a semester, has been killed in the bombing of Pan Am 103.

Today’s news also brings me back to the mid-1990s in Nashville, when I was a young mom trying to return to my creative writing roots by teaching myself to write poetry in forms. Sonnets, sestinas, villanelles were all new to me, offering the structure I needed as I sought to find my footing as a creative—rather than just a corporate—writer. In 1995, I wrote this triptych of elegies. When I submitted them to a literary journal that specialized in forms a few years later, an editor suggested I stick to lighter, more “domestic” issues for my lyric poetry.

More than 20 years since the bombing of Pan Am 103 and 16 years since I wrote these poems while my son napped, my son is in college, has a friend serving in Afghanistan, and has a relative—his cousin’s husband—who became an Army Ranger shortly after he got married last year and has already served his first tour in the Middle East. An eloquent October 19 Facebook post by Colorado Springs author Barbara Samuel reminds us that, even if we don’t know anyone in the military, our soldiers continue to march off to wars “fought piecemeal all around / No longer reserved for the battleground.” Will it ever end?

Elegy I
For Harold Hart Crane (1899-1932)
Poised on the edge of an empowered age,
Despite youth, wise as a solemn sage,
Hart Crane agonized as this century
Succumbed to the rule of industry.

Trapped yet enraptured, he watched a bridge rise
From scraps to a vision brushing the sky,
Drew from this Brooklyn sight inspiration
To face his fears through their liberation:

Intense, in tune with his world’s path forward,
Into forms of phrasings his word he poured,
Lifting from yesterday’s fields of sorrow
Treasures for the day, hopes for the morrow.

His quest, while quelled as his name became known,
Haunted despite the promise he’d shown,
Or liberated him, and set him free
To leap to his death in the swirling sea.

A native son immortalized through lore,
He remains homeward bound forevermore,
Yet another wonder that somehow passed,
Too soon and too quickly, from our grasp.

Elegy II
For Turhan Michael Ergin (1966-1988)
Poised on a shadowed stage before his peers,
Contained, controlled despite his fears,
Turhan Ergin, a young student actor,
Breathed life into a brooding character.

For a brief, charged time he held spellbound
His silent audience in that tiny round,
With a performance that made evident
His passion for the art and his talent.

A lover of life, a bright dark-eyed star,
So sure his plans would take him far:
London studies, then home to celebrate
And greet the year in which he’d graduate.

But his return flight, Pan Am 103,
Over the Scottish town of Lockerbie,
Exploded in a fiery, mid-air shower,
A hellish testament to a madman’s power.

A beloved son lost on a distant shore,
He remains homeward bound forevermore,
Yet another wonder that somehow passed,
Too soon and too quickly, from our grasp.

Elegy III
Afterword - 1995
Poised in the century’s final decade,
I grieve for the towers Crane might have made,
And wonder where Turhan would be giving
His next performance, were he still living.

Could the poet possibly have foreseen
The painful potential of industry
In wars fought piecemeal all around,
No longer reserved for the battleground?

In just sixty years since Hart Crane’s death,
In conflicts of inconceivable breadth,
We’ve created a chilling legacy
Of bitter quests fueled by power and greed.

And each new bombing in New York, England,
Oklahoma, and the skies of Scotland,
Adds to the magnitude of our loss,
The final tally of human cost:

The number of beloved sons and daughters
Killed in our era of endless slaughters,
The countless wonders that have passed,
So soon and so quickly, from our grasp.

Beyond FACTS: INCOGNITO: AN AMERICAN ODYSSEY OF RACE AND SELF-DISCOVERY by Michael Fosberg

One of my recent stories for MixedAndHappy.com focused on the story of Michael Fosberg, whose memoir, Incognito: An American Odyssey of Race and Self-Discovery, was recently published. The basics of Michael’s story—as told in his book and in the one-man play, also called Incognito, he’s been performing for 10 years—are pretty powerful: His mother, a daughter of Armenian immigrants, married a black man in the late 1950s and gave birth to a mixed-race son, Michael, only to discover her parents’ serious misgivings about her new family—and her own concerns about her ability to raise a child of mixed-race heritage when no mixed-race community existed to support her. When Michael was two, his mother left his father and moved with Michael back to live with her family in a small town outside Chicago. Eventually she remarried and had two more children. Michael always stood out as someone who looked “different” from the rest of his family, but it wasn’t until many years later that he discovered exactly why.

More details of how Michael finally searched for and discovered his missing father and brilliant extended family can be read on MixedAndHappy.com or on the Incognito: The Play website. I became so intrigued by Michael’s story that I’m now reading a signed copy (ordered directly from the Incognito site) of his memoir, which features some beautiful photos of all the people who proudly claim him.

What most impresses me about Michael are the post-production talks he leads on racial issues after each performance of his play, Incognito. In a recent interview, Michael talks about a young man of mixed-race descent who came to see him after one of these discussions. The young man tried to speak, but couldn’t because he was so overwhelmed. Michael simply hugged him and told him that was okay, he completely understood.

Beyond FUN: She Writers Blogger Ball Redux

Back in the days before Facebook, I found blogging to be the best on-line way to get to know others who love to write and to learn from (and about) them on an on-going basis. Bloggers are writers, regardless of their topics of choice, and when writing is combined with a passion and a little bit of polish, it can’t help but shine. Author Meg Waite Clayton in her role as host of the SheWrites Novelist—Struggling or Not group helps connect women writers in a variety of ways. One is through occasional She Writers Blogger Ball on-line events through which bloggers post links to their blogs and take the time to visit others’. So I’m posting here to welcome other She Writers to my hopeful corner of the blogosphere. BEYOND Understanding highlights resources that promote tolerance and celebrate diversity. It’s been around a while and though often neglected, remains my favorite pet project. I hope you enjoy looking around to see if there’s anything you, too, find so intriguing you can’t help but want to learn a little more about it.

Beyond FINESSE: Sister MixedAndHappy.com Contributors

I’m happy to announce I’m now a weekly columnist at MixedAndHappy.com, a site I profiled last spring. My M&H columns will highlight resources of special interest to M&H readers, many of whom have young mixed-race families.
Founded by supermom Suzy Richardson, MixedAndHappy.com is growing into a dynamic community of readers from all over the world and now writers located across the country and in the U.K. I’m honored to join its regular contributors!

Donna Sparrow
I just discovered Donna Sparrow’s blog and love the way she celebrates her beautiful family on ThisNest.com. Mom of five mixed-race kiddos ranging in age from teen to toddler, Donna has also helped raise many of her husband’s eight much-younger siblings, some of whom continue to struggle with challenges ranging from depression to schizophrenia. In her current M&H post, “My Children’s Truth,” Donna writes: “Our children are not black, nor are they white; they are both. They are not half of anything, but rather a whole — times two.” Love it.

Louise Cannon
Based in South London, Louise Cannon has two mixed-race little boys. She writes about her concerns regarding white privilege and her role as a white mom to children of color as well as the impact of racism on life in the U.K. Her recent M&H post on a frightening election result in her small town ends with the call to “never become too complacent” and the timely warning: “Hatred can sometimes be only one vote away.”

Mama C
A teacher and single mom of two gorgeous boys, Mama C writes from the heart about the concerns, heartaches, and everyday triumphs she and her unique family experience on a regular basis in posts published on MixedandHappy and on her blog, Mama C and the Boys. I love her current MixedandHappy post, “Mixed History Month?” in which she summons the spirit of Langston Hughes, muses over the emphasis she places on black history, and wonders if maybe it’s time for mixed history to be more widely celebrated. The photo that accompanies this post is priceless.

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Ph.D.
I first learned about Marcia’s work while researching mixed-race issues for my novel, One Sister’s Song, years ago. Her resumé inside and out of academia is incredibly impressive, and her writings appear not only on MixedandHappy.com but on sites such as The Huffington Post, The Root, and Truthdig. She’s also been featured in TIME magazine and on Mixed Chicks Chat. Her book, Things Said in Passing: Understanding Racial Passing from a Rhetorical Perspective, is due out later this year. As Marcia puts it, Things Said in Passing “explores the old limits and new possibilities of passing for the twenty-first century.”

Marcia considers the racial implications of all sorts of issues and topics, including pop music, movies, sports, books, and politics, and doesn’t hesitate to call out public figures on questionable motives behind their actions or statements. Among her many posts, I’m especially fond of “Crayons and Cupcakes,” a column “co-written” by her sweet daughter.

I also greatly appreciate Marcia’s closing line in a recent HuffPost article on Halle Berry: “When we realize that racial reconciliation is everybody’s job, not just a job for multiracials, then we might all be a little more mixed and happy.”

Beyond FUNDRAISING: The UnPrison Project

Activist, author, and public speaker Deborah Jiang Stein has launched The UnPrison Project so she may continue to reach out to female prisoners across the country. Deborah speaks to women about her birth and first year of life in the Aldersen Federal Prison for women in West Virginia as a heroin-addicted infant, multiple overdoses later in life, and eventual drug rehab.

When Deborah visits women in prisons, she does much more than present herself as an example of resilience: “I share my story as proof that the past does not always define the future,” she states, adding that her workshops and presentations to female prisoners have helped her turn her personal “shame and secrets inside out.” And while her efforts impact countless women and help them turn their own shame and secrets inside out in order to finally triumph over them, Deborah’s also determined to help inmates’ children. As The UnPrison Project video notes:

· In the last ten years, the population of women incarcerated in U.S. prisons has risen by at least 800%
· 80% of female prisoners are mothers
· Most of these women are jailed for non-violent, drug-related crimes
· Most of them are victims of abuse
· Thousands of their babies are born in prisons every year
· Many thousands of American children, most under the age of 10, have a mother in prison

When we help these women, we help their children, and we help strengthen the foundation of our country’s future. Through The UnPrison Project, Deborah promotes education, drug rehab, and mental health services as well the hope for personal transformation that can make success in each of these areas possible.

But to do all this, Deborah needs your help. She’s been invited to speak to thousands of women in facilities in New York, California, South Dakota, Wyoming, Washington, and Illinois. Aldersen in West Virginia would also like her to return. Let’s send Deborah to prison. Please follow this link and donate to help fund her life-changing—and potentially life-saving—efforts.

Photo © sansgluten via flickr

Beyond FINESEE: Corey Heller, Founder of Multilingual Living

In Call Me Okaasan, Corey Heller writes in her personal essay “I Am Mutti” about her choice to speak German with her children in her home though she hails from California and is raising her children in the U.S. with her German-born husband. Having experienced a year of immersion in the German culture and language, she found upon her return home that she was driven to retain those ties, and the arrival of her first child only served to convince her of the critical need to make this desire a reality. She writes that the German culture and language “are a part of me, intertwined together with my native English and my American language and culture. I don’t want to have to decide, to choose, to have to sever ties with either of them. I want to belong to both and I want to pass on this duality to my children because, if anything, it is who I am and will always be.”

In their quest to successfully nurture a multilingual family, Corey and her husband looked for resources to help them along the way. When they found little help, they launched the Bilingual/Bicultural Family Network in 2003, following that up with the Multilingual Living website and magazine a year later. Though the magazine is no longer in print, access to its back copies is offered on the comprehensive Multilingual Living site, which also features a very active discussion forum, expert columns, and book excerpts and reviews. As Corey puts it, Multilingual Living is designed to provide “a centralized location for discussion, conversation and connection for multilingual and multicultural families around the world” as well as “a place where parents raising children in more than one language and culture can find inspiration, tools, advice, wisdom and support.”

The Language of Identity
In her post “The Language of Identity,” Corey describes the impact living outside the U.S. made on her and her determination to continue experiencing more than one culture even after she’d returned home:

“A year in Ireland followed by a year in Germany had left their imprints on me. I had tasted the richness of belonging to different cultures, of speaking a new language and I couldn’t go back to being who I had been before. There were words and sentence structures, ways of being and socializing and foods that had come to define me. I knew then that I would never, ever, ever be fully content with any one language and limited by only one culture.”

She also explains her belief that children raised in a multilingual household learn more than just another language:

“Children who grow up in a monolingual society with more than one language are offered something extremely valuable. Experts agree that a child who has at his or her disposal words and concepts in two different languages will be more accustomed to understanding and accepting the innate complexities that exist in this world. They will more easily grasp the concept that just as there is more than one word for items and concepts, there is also more than one way to solve a problem, more than one way to view an issue, and more than one way to define themselves and others. But beyond the abilities these children will gain, they will have been given something so much more valuable: They will have been given the opportunity to live in two cultures and to make them both their own.

“For our bilingual children, bridging the gap between their two different worlds will come naturally and comfortably. ... Their perception of the world, their concept of diversity, their understanding of identities will, by default, far exceed my own.”

What a gift, indeed.