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Spotlight: The Tell by Linda I. Meyers (interview, giveaway)
The Tell
written by Linda I. Meyers
published by She Writes Press, 2018
find it here: (affiliate links) Barnes & Noble, Amazon, iBooks, Kobo, Target, Walmart, Book Depository, Goodreads
About the book – from Goodreads: Linda I. Meyers was twenty-eight and the mother of three little boys when her mother, after a lifetime of threats, killed herself. Staggered by conflicting feelings of relief and remorse, Linda believed that the best way to give meaning to her mother’s death was to make changes to her own life. Bolstered by the women’s movement of the seventies, she left her marriage, went to college, started a successful family acting business, and established a fulfilling career.
Written with irony and humor and sprinkled with Yiddish, The Tell is one woman’s inspirational story of before and after, and ultimately of emancipation and purpose.
Why did you decide to write your memoir, “The Tell,” as a collection of personal essays? An essay was manageable. It allowed me to tell each story as a separate event. I think had I begun intending to write a book I would have been overwhelmed. I was encouraged to keep writing when two of the essays were accepted for publication. When I read Jo Ann Beard’s “Boys of my Youth,” I saw that there was precedence to use essays as the format and I kept on writing until the book was done.
How would you describe your writing style? I’m a psychoanalyst, and I believe I write like I work. I began with the trauma of my mother’s suicide. I then moved back in time to try and understand the “why” of it and then forward to understand its effect. But as is often the case in therapy, the writing revealed a deeper story—the story of my coming into my own. Hopefully when the therapy is done and the memoir is finished, the author and the reader come away with a narrative that helps them better understand themselves.
How did your mother’s suicide affect your life? I was terrified that if I didn’t change my life I might come to the same tragic end. I was also searching for a way of giving meaning to her death. I convinced my husband to leave Brooklyn. Soon after we bought a house in the suburbs we got a divorce. I started undergraduate college and a successful family acting business. When I got my doctorate, I hung out a shingle and began to practice my profession. I’m not sure had she lived I would have had the courage to start a new life.
What was it like starting college at the age of 30 and caring for three children at the same time? I went to school at night so there were many adults in my classes. I was very motivated to do well. Each day after the kids left for school I would take out my books and study until they came home. When I was exhausted I would think of my grandmother and how she took care of five kids and worked two jobs. I would also think about my kids and how I wanted them to have the opportunity to go to the college of their choice. They were the carrot on the stick that kept me going.
What was it like to have your children be actors? It was exciting but also frightening. It was a big unknown, but there were two things I was sure of—I did not want to become a stage mother and I did not want them to lose their childhood. It was a balancing act between auditions and callbacks, soccer games and birthday parties. I also wanted to minimize the competition between them so I set it up as a family business. Their earnings were pooled together and when they came of age they each got one third.
What was the Jewish culture like in the Catskill Bungalow Colonies in 1940s and 1950s? People, mostly Jewish immigrants living in the ghettos of Brooklyn and the Bronx, left the hot city and went to the mountains for the summer. Women and children would stay all week and their husbands would come up on weekends. I remember the women playing mahjong and the men playing pinochle. The more upscale colonies had casinos and Saturday night comedians, polishing their acts in the Borscht Belt would come and entertain. There were no grocery stores on the grounds—the husbands had the cars, so the women were dependent on the fishman, dairy man, butcher and the vegetable vendor. A different vendor came each day—a bell would herald their arrival—you had to stop what you were doing and run to get supplies. It wasn’t very restful but it was far better than their hot apartments in the city. My grandmother ran the concession at our bungalow colony. My summers with Grandma were the best.
What led you to write this memoir now? I wrote it for my grandchildren. I often wished my grandparents had written their memoirs. It would have been marvelous to have understood my history through their experience.
What’s next for you? I have another book in mind. It, too, will be a memoir and if I’m able to write it well, a psychological thriller.
About the Author: Linda I. Meyers is a psychologist and psychoanalyst in New York City and Princeton, N.J., who has been published in professional and academic journals. Two chapters from her debut memoir were published in 2016 — “The Flowers,” a top-five finalist in Alligator Juniper’s annual contest in creative nonfiction, and “The Spring Line” in Post Road.
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** This post first appeared on Every Free Chance Books (everyfreechance.com) on September 13, 2018.
