 Okay, so I'm really I'm so touched that people came because you know people said to me you scared of reading I said I'm not scared of reading. I'm scared. No one's gonna turn up So really, thank you. Thank you for that and I'll read a little excerpt and then I Would love to have a little discussion with people if you have any questions about the process of writing about memoir about The story itself about anything. I think it would be great because one of the ideas, too Is to have an interactive relationship with readers and writers So some of you I know I've already read the book and you've sent me absolutely beautiful feedback that has been really meaningful to me So I'll just very briefly say I'm going to read There were seven children in my family and I'm the typical middle child the one with the big mouth and We from the age of seven we started moving and I didn't know why my father was in trouble And we just kept moving my parents would either say we were going on vacation or they would say nothing And then we would arrive in one place and we would be living there and there would never be any discussion so by the time this excerpt starts we We traveled from I was born in New York So we traveled from New York to Mexico then to Nassau in the Bahamas then to two different cities in Florida then we were finally back in New York where I really felt I belonged and Then a year later my parents said we were going on vacation to Scotland So this is the excerpt I'm going to read and the name of this chapter is called. Oh hi the new If any of you have been to Scotland you might know what that means On our way from the airport to air in Scotland where we were to spend our vacation The taxi driver stopped the car at the top of a hill and told us to look below Oh, isn't it Bonnie? He said and even though I didn't understand what he'd said I knew he meant for us to admire his country. I Looked down at the gray dampness and thought how ugly it was The sky was so low. It seemed indistinguishable from the stark hills of the Scottish lowlands At my feet lay rows of stone houses and rain streaked roads Bright purple sprigs of heather provided the only relief from the unremitting deer duriness That's our national flowers at the driver Are we there yet? I asked shuddering with cold the driver laughed. I read lassie. You'll maybe laying him What? He chuckled you'll know soon enough on The airplane my mother had browsed a brochure on which were illustrated yellow haired men and women dressed in blue coats Smiling against the background of Sun and Sea This is where we're going. She said it's called doogles holiday camp What's a holiday camp Vic had yawned It's a place where families stay on vacation My mother's voice was quick high cheerful like a balloon let off in the air They have a swimming pool a dance hall. Oh all kinds of things. It's organized. So you know what you're doing Why do we need people to organize us? I asked Don't start that again. She answered crossley. Is there a roller coaster s rock? Puckering her lips my mother opened her compact stop being so spoiled Doogles turned out to be the exact opposite of what the brochure had promised Built like a small town streets divided chalets and neat lines much like a prison camp Loud speakers were placed strategically throughout the area and every morning a bugle would go off followed by a gleeful Good morning camp butters our signal that sleep was now verboten Struggling out of bed in the cold damp of the small one-room cottages I stuffed my body into jeans and headed with the crowds toward the huge mess hall We stood in lines clutching tin trays with hundreds of others and were doled out rubbery scrambled eggs and little sausages Corn flakes and a cup of tea Glancing secretly at my mother before moving to the sugar bowl. I scoop large tablespoon fulls onto everything One half hour was allowed for breakfast enough time to get into a fight or watch my parents blank faces with puzzlement Then we were off to group activities Swimming calisthenics bingo or singalongs The activities were the camps attempt to make people forget their troubles at least that's what the brochure had said Spelling trouble with a capital T It reminded me of a joke my father used to tell there were two brothers trouble and shut up One day they were playing hide-and-seek and shut up couldn't find trouble anywhere He saw a policeman and asked hey, have you seen my brother? Why what's your name little boy shut up? He answered the policeman took his fist. Are you looking for trouble? Yeah, how did you know said shut up? But there hadn't been any jokes for a while or having to laugh when it wasn't funny Natalie and I snuck away as often as we could to steal chocolate and smoke cigarettes getting into trouble of our own I couldn't understand what anyone said, but it didn't matter We found some cans of beer at the back of the mess hall and got so drunk We didn't care if we could understand anyone or not Then we got hold of a tube of glue and tried to get high in the bathroom Which was a row of stone stalls cold and gloomy Maybe we didn't hold the paper bag correctly But after rolling around for a few minutes pretending to be stoned We gave up and went back to roaming between the chalets The people at the camp had cheeks rubbed raw by the wind watery red rimmed eyes Sandy hair that was singularly straight and often stringy and short stubby noses Everyone spoke English however unintelligible giving the impression. We had something in common But it was an illusion and I must have seemed as foreign to them as they seemed to me To me it was as if none of us knew where to place one another The air was laced with an iciness blown in fresh from the Atlantic But everyone wore bathing suits because it was summer No doubt on June 21st the loudspeakers had blared in order for everyone to take off their clothes A beefy orange-haired man also there on vacation offered to take Natalie and me into town in a taxi He sat in the back between us and put his arm around me so his hand cut my breast I squeezed my arm tightly against my side to make him move it, but he only gripped harder When we got back to our cottage. I sat on the windowsill and cried He made me feel dirty and ugly and I wanted to go back home A man carrying a briefcase came to visit us one day while we were in one of the chalets fighting over scrabble Hello, my name is mr. McKenzie. He boomed cheerfully is your father here I'll get him said Kirk officially What do you want to see him about I asked Mr. McKenzie laughed showing uneven tea stain teeth beneath his mustache He's going to be working with me. Didn't he tell you he's going to help me market scotch I sponsored him so he could work here He pulled out a pipe and stuffed it with small smell. Excuse me strong smelling tobacco He's a smart man your father. I'm lucky. He wanted to come all this way Lucky echoed Natalie looking out the window at the fog blowing in from the sea How long have you known him? I asked trying to keep the curiosity from my voice Mr. McKenzie smiled broadly I must have met him when some of you were just a twinkling in your mother's eye He stroked his jaw thoughtfully. It's the funniest thing I was sure his name was ring, but all these years I had the spelling wrong Why what is it asked for quick ask fig quickly? Natalie looked at him warning him to be quiet Why you look old enough to know your own last name laddie. It's rung master rung. What's your first name? But then my father came and smiling hand out stretched The slant of his tie showed he addressed quickly as always a handkerchief sat upright in the breast pocket of his jacket Hello, I see you've met my children come this way. I know a place where we can talk When they had gone Kirk pulled his eyebrows in vexation I thought he said we were here on vacation Ava inhaled sharply. We'd better be here on vacation Natalie clutched her hands a look of fear sweeping across her face Of course we are they would have told us by now if we had to stay Ava frowned you'd better be right As my parents had promised we did stay at doodles for three weeks and I counted off the days on my fingers When it was time to leave my father took us for a drive to nearby Glasgow a city 25 miles from the coast Bulbas black clouds refusing to either pour rain or go away Hung desmally in the sky as we turned into a street lined with houses After pulling into a gray pebble driveway my father said Welcome to your new home kids I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach But why do we have to move again? I asked feebly as my mother walked to the front door with a key in hand I knew it Ava burst into tears and jumped out of the car Paralyzed Natalie stared blankly at the house My father said calmly it's for your own welfare You know as well as I do how bad things have been getting in the states the schools He gestured toward Ava the vietnam war he nodded at my brothers My arms felt lifeless as I unpacked my case Numbly I sat on the floor of my new bedroom and paged through my autograph album squeezed into the bottom Unfolding the triangles of colored paper to read what my friends had left for me Thank you Thank you Thank you You know what in my nervousness. I forgot I was going to start with the book trailer. Can I show it to you now? My family traveled the world It was the 1960s the jet age We moved from new york to mexico nasa florida scotland london My father's business took us places. We'd never but our reality was anything but glaveries We left without warning without explanation My father had secrets My mother kept them and we suffered the consequences Cocktails gangsters betrayal rebellion It sounds like a movie script But this is the story of my life It was the opposite of hollywood. I'd actually like to introduce the producer is where's audrey. Audrey is an incredible video maker and photographer chat with her after Okay, so does anyone have any questions? during this period 11 and a half Oh, yeah, has anyone been to buttlin's holiday camp? Don't go It is the most depressing place If you're a foreigner, I have to say because I think for p for working class families in britain I don't even know if they exist anymore, but this was a very affordable way for working class families to have a vacation Oh, you know it elaine They still exist, okay, and they're really They're they're everything's organized So it's there's this feeling of if you want everything to be organized for you. That's great And probably anybody who's gone to summer camp as kids you'll get the idea Except you're in a place where it rains most of the time So it's and we had just moved new york It was uh, it was in august and it was 103 degrees And for kids, that's really nice. You're outside all the time playing and in new york They had those sprinklers in the playground and it was all very, you know, homey And then we went there and it was you know, the rain was Was falling sideways because it was so windy and it was probably about 40 or 50 degrees So it was it was really difficult. So Yeah, it was it was like a prison camp Oh, yeah, yeah, the question was um, how hard how hard How how much did it help to have a lot of? Already made family I think it was uh, I wouldn't be here As I am today without having a lot of people as a buffer zone Unfortunately, my parents did this thing of divide and conquer So they really pitted us against each other and they would try to get us to tell on each other You know, so that on that side of it's not good But in terms of not just being the only child of my parents it saved me Yeah Hey, Anita Let me just say the silence is deafening Although I finally I talked with Audrey about this putting it on Facebook I was so nervous because one brother and one sister They're on facebook And I was just really scared um, and I was shaking when I decided to do it You know several weeks after it was finished and one brother did right back right away and he said brilliant trailer I love it And then I said, oh, I know it was great So I wrote back. I said, oh great. Let's let's FaceTime soon He goes, okay. So, you know, we we finally got to FaceTime This was just about a week or two ago And then he and his wife had just sat down to watch a movie and they kept looking at the tv And I'm like, okay, I should not have said let's follow up on this But I was really pleased with the reaction. Yeah Thank you Did you hear the question? Yeah, okay good. Um, you know, I was so confused when I grew up That I didn't know what was happening. I was just in a place of reaction to what was happening And I didn't understand why my memories were so Strong so clear because I have a sister who doesn't remember anything And then I read this book called the body keeps the score that I know Karen I said which is an amazing book about PTSD And then he said the memory can work a couple of different ways when you've been traumatized One is that you forget everything you just blank it out and the other is that your memories become frozen And for people who have not been through trauma or you're not remembering things that have a traumatic Flare shall I say to them or you know where you suffer trauma? We are constantly re We were What's the we're reshaping memories, but when you've been traumatized they're they can just be frozen and I see pearl shaking Yeah, I'm nodding her head there. Yeah, so what I did in order to The reason I wrote the book is because I wanted to know what happened So I wrote down everything I could remember And then I shaped it and I left a lot of stuff out Yeah, thank you Any time My family's so afraid Yeah, they're really afraid because we grew up with such fear and secrecy That occasionally we don't really get together But occasionally the times that we have gotten together as adults Somebody might say something and somebody else will say something and kind of make a joke of it But if you try to continue that conversation, it doesn't go anywhere You know Don't use their real names Yeah Yeah, how There are several siblings in my family who are very talented artists. There are two Very very, I mean, I think they're brilliant composer music musical composers and musicians And then one sister is an incredible artist Another brother writes poetry Another sister taught herself the flute but she and she's a great photographer, but she doesn't really pursuit it So many of us in the family Are artists so the question was How did that happen Was that the question Yeah Yeah, I mean for me definitely because I wanted to find out what the truth was I think my brother I I can't really explain it. It's like a 64 000 question I think that people who are really abused can find Their solace through art I guess that's all I would say. Yeah But your parents did give you music lessons? Yeah, when we were in New York, we we had piano lessons when we were the normal middle class family Yeah, and then again when we moved to London, we had piano lessons Yeah No, my mother died in 2002 And my father we found out he Basically stopped he disappeared to all of us one by one And we found out in 2007 that he had died in 2004 He kept traveling and doing whatever he did and He was caught by Interpol And he was taken back to New York from Britain And he was supposed to go to prison for 20 years and he came back a month later And then later on a visit to New York. He had all the bones in his face broken And another time he came back with black thumbs So I don't know what he did But something happened for him to not go to prison I know he was in jail several times, but he didn't have to serve that sentence Yeah Well, I got his fbi file and most of it was blacked out But what they did keep in there were his mafia connections and another thing I saw which I never knew In Scotland the whiskey business that he was at first when we moved to london He had an office and there were lots of doors in the office And they said president vice president CEO, you know, and there was nothing they were just doors You know and then in the fbi file. I saw that the warehouse he got people to invest in scotch whiskey that didn't exist That's what he did in britain. That's what I found out from the fbi file and the warehouse had no whiskey in it Yeah As one of my students told me from the juvenile jail Your father was he did the long con And the long con is where you are kind of the front person You get the people suckered in and then you have the people behind you You know, yeah Uh, well, rebecca and then gelada right now You know, it's funny. Yeah, I mean I thought I would feel really Uh, I knew I needed it in my hand to externalize the story And I wanted to share it with other people because When I was young I would have loved a book like that to help me But what happened after publishing it? I've actually been very spaced out And I don't quite know why but I think I got kind of almost retraumatized in a way Because you know when I was young I felt like I was floating in space all the time And trauma for being in jail as a Explain what You know, what would be really great if that was the end of the story, you know Yeah, yeah, I'm very proud of the fact that I did it. I really am proud of that Thank you Thank you But unfortunately, you know, probably everybody in this room has had really rough times And the problem is is that You know, they affect you for the rest of your life And you try to find ways to to deal with that, you know Hi Thank you I Well the story itself is the same but the way I shaped it the way I I think I became a much better writer in that time And I also decided because I first wrote it as a novel Then I changed it into a memoir and that's when it almost got published And then when I went back to it, I decided to write it as an autobiographical novel Because um, I realized now it gave me the I changed my name. My name is Tosca in it and I It gave me the distance I needed So I had I had processed a lot more of what happened to me by then Yeah Thank you Suddenly something from the past made sense to you that hadn't made sense Yeah, yeah, in fact last week something happened. I'm trying to remember what that was Yeah, well for those of you who haven't read the book forget you heard this I don't spoil it but Um, I started playing the guitar when I was a teenager and I loved that guitar more than anything and then um my sister Painted a mural on it and it meant so much to me and then uh, we left Glasgow this is in Glasgow for london and my two sisters stayed behind because they were old enough to leave and then um Shortly after that we were literally we actually were on vacation. We went to the to jersey, which is the jersey islands and I woke up the morning every morning I'd go to you know, I'd play it It was really my friend and then I'd wake up in the morning and I'd see it the first thing And then when I went to bed tonight last thing I looked at and then the last morning we were there in the hotel I woke up and the guitar was gone and um I You know ran to where my parents were sleeping and it's like, you know that my guitar's been stolen to and my father's You know, you know, they were very annoyed and then I said you have to tell the police Tell the police So my father sort of made this pretence that he was telling the police And then two years later it was never found And two years later my brother told me my father had seen him that morning and said mark was going to get a big shock when she wakes up So I was actually thinking that this week or last week. It's like what What what kind of person can do that to somebody? Because you know as if you've been through trauma, there are so many layers of it And it took me so long and writing this book had a lot to do with me being able to see what happened to me and process it But there are so many layers You know, so i'm probably going to you know be realizing things. I mean, I think we all kind of go through that You know Well, I took my partner back to scotland and we both got really depressed Um I Didn't when I moved here in 1986 from london And then I went back a year and a half later and then I didn't go back for 11 years Because it was just too painful to kind of try to make a new life And have that old life Then I started going back every couple of years or so But the last time I went I don't know. I just felt that I didn't really It's really difficult. Actually, I want to mention karen apana. Who's an incredible incredible person artist and body worker and healer And when we were talking about this Karen said, you know when you're when you live in a place you're part of a web of relationships when you leave That web Is configured differently and when you come back you're not part of that web anymore And it was really painful for me to see that so I haven't been for about three years now And the other places i've been to mexico several times and that was really meaningful I actually didn't believe I had lived in mexico until I went back to cornavaca And I saw the school where I went And then I know wow, this is because my parents never talked about it, you know I've never been back to florida. I want I would like to go New york. Yeah, I've been back several times And then yeah Yeah, I woke up every night at three scaredy was going to kill me You know Yeah, thank god he's dead You know, I once heard of the the man who directed I think his name was jim marison He directed the magdalen sisters And he was um interviewed by terry gross on fresh air And he said the day his mother or his father died was the best day of his life And I thought wow, that's not that kind of person But terry gross could not go near it You know, but unfortunately, you know, not all of us have good parents Did you have any activity about why People why they have seven kids if they were going to have their kids and they drag you all around like they just said you Relatives Well, did you hear the question? Why did they have so many kids? Um, first of all, we weren't allowed to know our relatives Okay, um, the other thing is that irresponsible people have children, right? And I think it might have been a cover to make them look like normal people Also, my mother said my father liked her most when she was pregnant They didn't obviously didn't like birth control That's the only answers I can come up with Because it's kind of a mystery to me because people like us we wouldn't do that Unless we could take care of them, right So is there any love in the family between the parents or Um, there was a lot of love I think between the siblings We weren't always good at expressing it, but I think it was there I don't think that my parents loved us I don't know if they loved each other They were very loyal to each other, but my father was a criminal and my mother was his accomplice So there might have been some other dynamic going there When I told my mother I was a lesbian, she said if I was your age I would be doing the same thing sex with men is an act of violence And I thought oh well I guess this is one time I don't want to ask any questions Yeah, um, well as they lied about everything I found out after they died my mother was um 23 And my father was 26 Yeah New york new york city their parents were I didn't know this either until they died but The myth was that we were french and russian on my father's side Wasps like I got like Protestant french whatever russian whatever and then on my mom Oh, no one time my father said he thought his mother was catholic The other side my mother said her father was um an english parson And her mother was an italian opera singer And it turned out that my mother's parents were hungarian jews Who were not allowed into this country? In the beginning they had to go to argentina for two years then try again through ellis island And they came here three years before she was born So very recent immigrants and my father's parents were russian immigrants and one of his brothers was actually born in russia Yeah Yeah, that's a really good question. Honestly on a bad day in a bad situation with one of my siblings I think you're just like my father. You're just like my mother, so Um, I think that my partner actually got my mother out of me Because you know when your kids you sort of mimic your parents behavior And I was I did have this habit of being very cold sometimes You know, so I think that when you're around good people they you get socialized out of that kind of behavior But I tried really really hard to find my mother's sisters. My mother was an orphan I found out And she and her sisters were suddenly taken away from school. It's a whole other story and it's actually in My anthology how I learned to cook. I wrote a story about my mother but um Uh Sorry, I'm just trying to get my train of thought here Oh, yeah So I tried really hard to find my mother's family and I couldn't find them because she gave a fake maiden name So out of the blue in 2009 I think it was No, it was 2011 out of the blue the phone. I got an email Are you margot parent the daughter of lily and parent? So I she goes if you are call me. I called her right away. It was my mother's sister And I thought wow, you know, wow, I finally found you know, she found me and she was living in Las Vegas. She was a big gambler But I went to visit her like within two weeks I was there to visit her and she looked actually a lot like me Which was interesting and she she had sort of the same body type as my mother And she was very nice. She and her husband were so nice to me But by my third visit she said don't come anymore So she was a bit like my mother and I met her kids and when they visited her when I was there She was very cold to them. I think they just had such a horrible childhood. They never got over it my father's family When my sister moved back to new york in 1981 She wrote a letter to the new york times about some article that they published and they published her letter and My aunt so my father's sister-in-law saw the letter with her name and contacted her through the paper And that's how we met my father's side of the family Yeah, and they were not like my father They were not One of my uncles said that your father wanted to be your father could have been rich in 10 years He wanted to be rich in one Yeah, what time is it now? Okay any other Oh, yeah Yeah, yeah, my father was a he was in the navy when he was young and he um joined the communist party and he was a very very avid communist very idealistic and um in 1950 When my oldest sister was three months old He and my mother sold everything and tried to move to russia And they tried to get in through Finland and they weren't they weren't allowed in they were accused of being american spies because it was right in the middle of the cold war So they tried again from Czechoslovakia and they were refused again Then they were kept in a hotel for a month under house arrest And then they were deported to england and then from england my father's brother Sent money for them to get back to new york And then I think he was just so disillusioned you know That was it that was it is I mean it was really interesting because I sort of grew up with left-wing politics But at the same time my father was this very capitalistic Do anything for money type of person. It was pretty confusing You have you heard opm other people's money So it was up or down up or down up or down. Yeah Yeah No, no No, we would just leave town I mean seriously because my father didn't want anyone any of the authorities to know About where his it was where about my brother was hit by a car when we lived in florida And my father didn't have enough money to pay for his treatment But somebody helped him out Yeah I'm actually working on a book that's um, it's part narrative poetry and part prose and what I do is I weave my Childhood story not the story but the sort of the themes of the story with how the experience Played out through my body. I've had a lot of physical illness And also interweaving it with my experiences teaching people who incarcerated because there was a lot of crossover Yeah How many years were you nomadic? Uh started when I was four And ended when I left home when I was 16 Oh, oh, how long were we nomadic? Yeah Yeah First thank you for the inspiration amazing and secondly, um I think the comment was a question but that when you It seems that you've made a very personal story But the way you crafted it it's so universal and when when your mom says don't start that again Like who hasn't heard that you know Are we there yet? You know, I was like you really You really I can't wait to read it and it feels like you really connected Your yourself and your soul Thank you I mean I feel like as a writer what I've learned and also as a writing teacher what I try to teach is The the the deeper you write the more universal your story Like for example, I mean, I think you heard me say this another time But if you just write a story about from the point of view of a victim You know all these horrible things happen to me and I'm really suffering you're not really telling the whole story You're not going deep enough because there's always the other side So you want to write deeply and broadly and then you'll get to those universals You know and I noticed when I published a book of of By of writing by people who are incarcerated and when they got out of jail We used to do readings all over the city and Joan actually lovely Joan hosted one of them at the caret auditorium right over there and It was really amazing because people would come from very different social socioeconomic class Class and they would say to the writers afterwards. I had no idea. I had anything in common with you Because the way they were writing was deep enough Telling the story Okay, thank you