Here, too, is the link to the Indiegogo site (that includes video and longer description of the project): The Amazing True Imaginary Autobiography of Dick & Jani If you can donate (for which you can receive perks like the book itself, help shaping a story of your own about your grandmothers, etc.) and/or spread the word, I'd be wildly grateful. As anyone who has been reading this blog knows, I have indeed been working on this project for three years. If I reach my goal, that would give me the time I need this summer to finish the final phases of research and write the first major draft. However, even if you can't donate, I cannot emphasize enough how helpful it would be if you could spread the word.
Here's the video (because one friend loved it so much, I've decided to post it here, too):
And here's the brief project summary:
I have been researching and writing The Amazing True
Imaginary Autobiography of Dick and Jani, for the past three years.
This book traces the lives of my grandmothers, both born in 1916 (before
women had the right to vote), but who cut two very different paths through their
lives. Dick was on the surface a
one-dimensional, frustrated housewife (who was anything but), whereas Jani
rebelled loudly against the conventions of marriage and motherhood, yet never
stopped trying to find love, even after she crashed out of her third marriage
on her way to becoming a feminist teacher in the 1970s.
Dick and Jani's voices and experience offer a fresh perspective
on the 20th Century. Their lives as women who were neither famous nor
infamous were restricted, but their witness is no less valuable for that.
Their choices - as women born into modest circumstances but who had
outsized dreams - could not have been more different. Their story is a
study in contrasts, between the soul-crushing cost of conformity paid by Dick
and the price of Jani's very flamboyant rebellion against the role she was told
she should play.
In other words, their perspectives offer a micro-history* of the
time in which they lived and their experience is valuable as a mirror into our
own time. I have come to realize that
without hearing and understanding our grandmothers' stories, we are impoverished
for lack of deep knowledge of our own history.
This book is a humble attempt to begin to redress that balance.
*[note for geeks like me
who like this kind of thing:] I first heard the term micro-history thanks
to the historian Jill Lepore, who wrote about it in an article Historians Who Love Too Much, in which
this term is used as distinct from biography in that it signifies writing about
people who are usually not so famous or exceptional, but whose lives therefore
are more indicative of the social and political landscape of the time in which
they lived. Jill Lepore herself wrote an
astonishing micro-history recently about Jane Franklin, Benjamin Franklin's
less well-known, but nevertheless extraordinary sister. From Jane's perspective, as Lepore writes it,
we see and experience the American Revolution in a way more interesting and
ground-level than any history book I've ever read. My book is an attempt to pull this off for
the 20th Century from the point of view of my grandmothers.
***
I'm rarely self-promotional on this blog, but this kind of funding thing forces such awkward behavior on me. This is frankly some seriously scary shit asking for money and support, but I am committed to seeing it through. I am surprised by how good I ended up feeling about the project by the time I'd gotten the campaign pitch done, and because donations are already coming in, I know this much: this project will get done. Because I promised. That's really all it takes for me.
Thanks go now to my mother's friend Fran who gave me money spontaneously to help with the writing of this book, before this campaign, and whose generosity made me think it was a good idea to try. Fran wanted to feel a part of the project and of course she is now. I hope any of you who donate and/or support it any way feel that way, too.
No writer writes alone.
Thanking you all in advance for helping me make this book happen. I so dearly want to finish it and get it out into the world. Our grandmothers' voices do deserve to be heard.
***
And a most exciting update: my beloved Canadian has Finally gotten his date at the Embassy at the end of May, so his visa should be finalized then, and we can finally live together - 11 months - count them: 11 months - after we were married. Amazing. He's Canadian! We're in our 50s! Oy. But still and all grateful beyond words that it's finally moving forward and to our fabulous immigration attorney, David Katona. Seriously, he's great. If you're in NYC and need an immigration attorney, hire him.
***
And a most exciting update: my beloved Canadian has Finally gotten his date at the Embassy at the end of May, so his visa should be finalized then, and we can finally live together - 11 months - count them: 11 months - after we were married. Amazing. He's Canadian! We're in our 50s! Oy. But still and all grateful beyond words that it's finally moving forward and to our fabulous immigration attorney, David Katona. Seriously, he's great. If you're in NYC and need an immigration attorney, hire him.