On Settling Into What This Book Is
Why a collection of personal essays may disappoint some folks who hoped this would be a different sort of book
There is a genre of literary nonfiction about tracing family history that has some pretty set conventions: a linear narrative, a fair amount of discussion about research methodologies, and a growing understanding that leads to a personal epiphany. These are good and admirable books, many of which I have read and enjoyed. But this isn’t that sort of book, and I know that’s going to disappoint some of you, so I wanted to take a moment to talk about the sort of book that it is.
As a writer, I’m particularly interested in the lyric essay, which is to say that essay that borrows heavily from the craft of poets. I’m partial to fragmentation, and to giving the reader a collection of moments and thoughts that they then put together for themselves, rather than telling the reader what they should believe about what I’ve found. For instance, this morning I’m working on a draft of an essay that’s built around the fragments of what we know about my family’s emigration to the US. It’s full of switchbacks and “maybe”s. Here are the first three segments: ( ,אָ מאָל איז געווען א מעשה is Yiddish for “once upon a time there was a story…”)
,אָ מאָל איז געווען א מעשה that almost a century before I was born, a man named Losel married a woman named Sheva Beila in a small Lithuanian village. Maybe their marriage was arranged by a shadkhen; maybe they fell in love. Maybe there was a dowry. Maybe they had a big wedding and stood under the chupa surrounded by their community; maybe it was a small affair. Maybe there was a photograph but if so its lost to time. They set up housekeeping in Linkvuva, near the Latvian border, and had eight children—Abraham Isaac, Ovsey Notel, Rocha, Movsha, Leib, Ester Gena, Hersche, Frank, and Lilly—all of whom survived into adulthood. Maybe there were children who didn’t, but if so their names are not recorded.
אָ מאָל איז געווען א מעשה young Jewish men, sometimes boys, were conscripted into the Czarist army. This served two purposes: first, to use them as cannon fodder. Second, to assimilate them into the Orthodox church. Czar Nicholas I considered this a progressive policy and an equal rights issue—after all, gentiles were also conscripted. Though only Jews were conscripted as children and forced to attend schools meant to make them forget their language and heritage.
אָ מאָל איז געווען א מעשה Losel was a teacher and Talmudic scholar, Sheva Beila ran the dairy on a nearby estate owned by a baron whose name, as remembered through family stories, doesn’t appear on any of the records of the several nearby estates. Such details don’t often survive time and shifts in language. The baron’s children had an English tutor, and Sheva Beila’s children—maybe only the sons, but that too is lost to time—were allowed to sit in on the lessons. Lithuania was not Lithuania then, but a part of the Czarist empire. Maybe the children grew up speaking Yiddish, or Lithuanian, or Russian, or maybe some or all of these. But none of those were languages that would serve them in flight, and perhaps canny Sheva Beila was already planning their escape. Or perhaps Losel, with his love of knowledge, simply wanted them to take advantage of every educational opportunity. Or maybe it was just something for them to do to keep them out from under her feet while she tended the cows. Or maybe it never happened at all. But somehow, the boys learned enough English that the oldest of them could be sent to the US at fifteen and expected to get by.
I worry that the form this book is taking is going to be a great disappointment to some, particularly family members who might have been hoping for a coherent narrative so that we had more knowledge of our family history than we did before I began. But the truth is much of this work is about finding the borders around the lives of our forebears, rather than the lives they actually lived. I found Linkuva, where Losel and Sheva Beila lived, but had no way to find their house or the estate where Sheva worked. I found the shul in that town, but the inscription on the dormer showed that it was built right after the last of the family left the town. It’s not possible to reclaim with any certainty the lives they lived, then, in that village. It’s only possible to see where they lived them, and how those around them lived, and piece together an imperfect and partial understanding. Which is also what I want the reader to take away from my essays, because any certainty here would be a false one. One way to do this is to always remind the reader, in language, that the suppositions are only guesses. And I do some of that. But another way—a way I think is more reflective of the actual knowledge we do have—is to put both the knowledge and the gaps in it into the work through fragmentation.
Fellow writers, how do you signal readers that something may or may not be true, or demonstrate where the gaps in knowledge are, when writing nonfiction?
And family, I’m sorry if this book ends up being different from the book you’d hoped for… but because you are family, I feel certain you’ll forgive me.
I think it will be a glorious book, and I will be very proud.
Hi, Sarah,
I love the use of "amol iz geven." It adds distinctive Yiddishkeit. There's only one person this collection needs to satisfy--you.