8.5.07 WR’s Virtual Book Club Debuts with Meredith Hall!
Meredith Hall’s moving but unsentimental memoir begins in 1965, when she becomes pregnant at sixteen. Shunned by her insular New Hampshire community, she is then kicked out of the house by her mother. Her father and stepmother reluctantly take her in, hiding her before they finally banish her altogether. After giving her baby up for adoption, Hall wanders recklessly through the Middle East, where she survives by selling her possessions and finally her blood. She returns to New England and stitches together a life that encircles her silenced and invisible grief. When he is twenty-one, her lost son finds her. Hall learns that he grew up in gritty poverty with an abusive father—in her own father’s hometown. Their reunion is tender, turbulent, and ultimately redemptive. Hall’s parents never ask for her forgiveness, yet as they age, she offers them her love. What sets Without a Map apart is the way in which loss and betrayal evolve into compassion, and compassion into wisdom.
About the Author: At the age of forty-four, Meredith Hall graduated from Bowdoin College. She wrote her first essay, “Killing Chickens,” in 2002. Two years later, she won the $50,000 Gift of Freedom Award from A Room of Her Own Foundation, which gave her the financial freedom to devote time to Without a Map, her first book. Her other honors include a Pushcart Prize and notable essay recognition in Best American Essays; she was also a finalist for the Rona Jaffe Award. Hall’s work has appeared in the New York Times, Creative Nonfiction, The Southern Review, Five Points, Prairie Schooner, and several anthologies. She teaches writing at the University of New Hampshire and lives in Maine.
Read an excerpt from Without a Map
Reading Group Guide
Boston Globe Review
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Meredith Hall will stop by the website after her live to chat to field questions in the comments field. Leave your question here and you will be eiligible to win a *free* copy of Without a Map
Hi, here are my questions:
1. Meredith, did you ever think you would see your son, ever?
2. I have some personal experience with shunning (and in fact am living it right now) - do you feel any bitterness about that now?
3. A friend of mine lost her son to death and after that measured time in terms of his death, ie. “he’s been gone for as long as I carried him in my body” (9 months). I noticed that you would bring it up randomly in the book, that he would now be “this age”, etc. (which I found really difficult to read about) Did you also measure the time by things he might be doing, such as his milestones, and did this alleviate any grief for you?
Ok, here are mine:
1) Are you still in close contact with your son?
2) Are you content with the path your life has taken despite the many obsticles and decisions that were made for you?
3) Would you have tried to find and contact your son if he had not done so first?
I’m still working on my questions, but this is what I have so far:
1) I was intrigued by both the title of the book and the chapter of the same name. I was wondering if you ever thought of the book itself as a map, especially as you were coming up with the structure for it?
2) I’ve gone back through the book and have read every passage that describes the actions of your mother and father numerous times. I still can’t process the forgiveness that you display toward them in the book…. of getting to there from here. What has helped you to reach the point where you could make that decision to forgive them?
I am looking forward to the discussion on Sunday’s show! Thank you, Felicia, for the opportunity–and to Ms. Hall for speaking with all of us. I plan to ask:
1. The structure of this book shifts back and forth in personal history–leaping into new characters, settings, and times without framework or “warning” for the reader. For me, the narrative breaks felt appropriate for the disjointed nature of your experiences. Did you consciously look to break from a “traditional” chronological memoir form, or did it arise organically through your creative process?
2. Before the shunning, you are fairly rooted in your role of who you are–young, white, American girl, attending church, going to school, and member of a “good” family. By the time you reach Asia in your wandering, you say, “I am not me anymore,” but, you are still afraid to enter this region which you claim, “hides behind a curtain, masculine and remote and secretive, having absolutely nothing to do with me.” Ironically, it is this remote territory where you show a “momentary jolt of connection, of steadying order”, and where people offer you food, kindness, a bed, and even the nourishment of breastmilk from one mother’s generous body. Can you speak a little bit about how your wandering on foot over these lands helped to heal you from the complete severing of home and self you endured?
3. I read in an interview with you that your writing process for the book was all-encompassing requiring “entering “the tunnel”…with absolute solitude, disconnection from all people, all requirements of (your) heart and mind.” Now that you are back to the regular demands of teaching and life, how are you organizing your daily routines to allow for new work to emerge? Any advice for women who are seeking to balance–as I am, and so many others are–mothering, teaching, and writing careers?
Looking forward to tomorrow.
1. A turning point for you when traveled through the Middle East was the young mother sharing her baby’s breastmilk with you. What was it about this event that “woke” you up and sent you home?
2. Your mother was a very strong woman but held her private life very close. Why do you think she didn’t want to share these things with you (i.e. her piano lessons and why she ended up quitting after you discovered her)?
I am very much looking forward to this discussion. Here are my questions:
1) I am interested in your use of present tense throughout the book (with the exception of the prologue chapter, “Shunned”). For me, this had the effect of stacking time and memory, which made a lot of sense to me because you constantly lived with these memories and the knowledge of what you had lost. As you say late in the book, “I carry the past each day,” and “I am memory.” Was this your intention in using present tense? Also, what kind of challenges did you face in writing the book in present tense?
2) Because so many of these chapters were previously published essays, I’m hoping you’ll discuss the process of putting them together and creating the book’s narrative line. In what ways was this challenging?
3) The loneliness is palpable in so many parts of this book. I’m wondering if you kept journals during your late teens and twenties and referenced these or whether much of this is recreated from memory.
Thanks!
Here are my questions, for tomorrow. I’m looking forward to it!
#1- It seems that the process of writing Without a Map, the living in your head, the reliving of the disconnection and trauma, may have felt psychologically similar to the banishing you experienced once your teen pregnancy was revealed… while writing, were you able to counterpoint this to find balance and peace in your life this time around, and if so, how?
#2- It’s a controversial aspect of writing to tell your own truth when it reveals the unflattering actions of others… how did you approach this dilemma in writing Without a Map?
#3- The line about the young soldiers that spend the night sitting with you, “I don’t know if these boys spent this long night threatening me or protecting me,” calls to mind all the other people (parents, community members, peers) in the story whose actions can be interpreted as both threats and protection (from different perspectives, of course). Was reconciling this dichotomy part of your journey to forgiveness?
This was a real heartbreaker for me as I just had my son (my second child) on 2 July. Blame it on hormones, or great writing ;-P but I think I should have bought stock in Kleenex before I attempted to read this. It was totally gut-wrenching!
Here are my questions:
1) Do you feel that the process of publishing the essays and book was cathartic in and of itself, or was it a process that combined with time overall to ease things a bit? Would you say that this step of sharing your story through a published memoir was closing a door and making it come to an end, or more of a way to move through things and keep living?
2) Any new projects in the works we should be watching for?
Hi ladies,
Just wanted to thank you all for this opportunity - I had to disappear suddenly because my son needed food RIGHT AWAY.
Meredith, thanks so much for allowing us the opportunity to chat with you and ask questions. It was interesting and exciting to have more behind the scenes info from you. It’s not often readers get to ask the writer the questions that form as they read a work.
Felicia, thanks for this chance to be in the VBC. I’m excited about future opportunities, and hope that this first session was all you hoped for, not only with Meredith but also for working out a system that works for you, the authors, and the folks calling in.
Best wishes to all!
Melonie
What a wonderful group of smart ladies! Thanks so much for the opportunity, Felicia. Thanks to Meredith for the thoughful responses.
Meredith, thank you for sharing with us. Your writing is very intimate and you have such a warm voice. No wonder people open and share their stories with you.
thanks to all of you! it was a terrific, terrific chat!!! your questions were insightful and thoughtful, and meredith was the ideal guest.
cheers, felicia
What smart questions. You all have really read the book carefully. Thank you!
I’ll try to answer a few more questions here.
Heather’s 3rd question: I very much marked my son’s milestones during those twenty-one years we were separated, but it made raw each time our separation and my longing for him. His birthdays were very tough. As I raised my two younger sons, I understood just how much I had missed–the “first” everything, all the significant moves in his development. His graduation year from high school was very hard, although I missed it by a year–he graduated at 17, not 18. Even finding out that i missed the year was difficult.
Erinn’s 1st question: This has a happy answer, one I am willing to share. We celebrate our 20th anniversary of meeting each other this fall. He is very much a daily part of the family. Hard, hard, hard work for both of us to move beyond the damage and the pain of those years being lost forever. But it worked.
Kate’s 3rd question about loneliness and keeping journals: No, I sometimes wrote but never kept journals. I destoyed them periodically as a way to deny memory, I think, and to make sure no one ever was able to enter my thoughts. I regret that need very much now. The loneliness: I remember it perfectly. It defined me.
Melonie’s 2nd question: I am finally moving back into the writing after a whirlwind spring and summer of travel and public events. I have been writing short stories, and will finally return to the novel I started in San Francisco last summer. I love the essay form, but I will give memoir a break for a while!
Thank you all so much. You can imagine how much I understand, at 58, of what we just did. A blog? A radio stream from that blog? A virtual book club? I am not certain of what we all just created, but I think it was terrific! Yes, smart, smart people. Thank you very much. Let me know if there is any other way I can help this conversation continue. Thank you!
Thank you Felicia for the opportunity and to the other participants, whose insightful questions were ones I was very glad to hear answered. To Meredith, especially, your bravery on the page and in our discussion inspires me! Thank you…