memoir – Clara Hsu

Before Night Falls

During my college days my roommate Mayra Suarez, whose family immigrated from Cuba, would bring back her grandmother’s delicious black bean and rice, fried plantain bananas and fried pork to share with me. That was the extent of my knowledge about Cuba, until the Mariel Boatlift in 1980, when Fidel Castro let go of anyone who wished to leave the country. More than 125 thousand people left by boat. Mayra’s other grandmother was among the exodus, cramped in an overcrowded boat that sailed through stormy weather and ended up in a refugee camp in Florida.

Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas’s memoir, Before Night Falls, gave me a further glimpse into the persecution of artists during this era. It also opened my eyes to the plight of the homosexuals and their biological makeup. In a dictatorship everything is absolute. What they don’t understand, they fear. What they fear they destroy. But art thrives in the crevices of concrete, even though the flowers are always blood red.

An Ordinary Life

Friends and family puzzled over the announcement that I have written a memoir. “I thought memoirs are written by people who have already lived a life.”—was the general sentiment, and, “What have you done in your life to fill three-hundred pages?” Do my friends and family who are not writers live a life without drama? I think not. Mostly, I think, they don’t consider their experiences important beyond themselves.

Alcohol, drugs, sex, obsessions of the fatal kind and high profile people make it into the bookstores for readers to devour their rise and fall. But each one of us in our little world are struggling every day with all kinds of emotional and physical challenges. What is perceived as ordinary takes great patience and endurance to accomplish—The bakery that provides fresh bread every morning, a 9-5 job, or the old woman who carries her grandchild on her back.

My cousin, who was a judge, once chuckled at the jury process. When asked who were the people who made it to the jury box, she said they were the ones you saw standing in line in the DMV. An off-hand remark separating us and them for a good laugh, until my aunt said, “I was picked three times.” We are as ordinary and extraordinary as we want to be.

Someone Who Doesn’t Want My Money

My stepmother was very generous in her old age, giving money to charities that came in the mail. After she passed away, I was given the task to terminate all her contributions. Those who received my calls expressed regret, but also appreciation for all that she had given.

I give sparingly, and definitely not to charities. I have a different view about organizations. My money is spent on knowledge. I pay dearly, with my savings, to Alan Rinzler, who edited The Painted Skin. From his editing I learn how to bring a theme forward and keep it focused. Unlike poetry, which is concise, a book-length work is far more intricate and demanding in form.

Alan Kaufman, my teacher in prose writing, said every writer should have a book-length work. A book of something is easier to sell than poetry. He may be right, but I’m still looking for that illusive agent, someone who doesn’t want my money.

Waiting

It’s like throwing a bottle with a message into the ocean. In this case, a query letter dropped into the sea of literary agents. The initial excitement cooled down as time passed and when I received the very nice form letter in the mail after six weeks of idling I had no drama left but a sigh of relief. Thank you. I may go on with my life. Submission has to become mechanical without emotion like brushing teeth, cleaning the toilet or putting on my shoes; stoic as someone who leans on the pier fishing . The bait is out there, as long as the line is connected.