Susan Conley's Blog, page 4
March 6, 2012
Susan Conley Reflects on The Foremost Good Fortune
There’s a line in The Foremost Good Fortune about a small room that I built inside my head to get some distance on my boys when they began to make me crazy in China. This is the line that so many good people have repeated back to me at book readings around the country this year.
I’m talking about the amazing mothers and fathers and grandmothers and grandfathers and world travelers and old China hands and cancer patients who found their way to me at bookstores and libraries and living rooms and said I want a room in my mind like the one you built in the book.
Sometimes these kind people have gotten excited and taken me by the arm, or even hugged me and said, Where is that room? And how fast can I get there? Then they often thank me for not being a perfect mother and for being able to admit it.
The other great thing that happens at all my book readings is that some big-hearted person calls out to me up at the podium and says, “Are you cancer free now?” In fact, I got asked this question so many times that I now say something preemptive at the start of readings that goes like this: “My story is one with a happy ending. I’m now two years cancer free.” And when I say that sentence, I can actually feel the room let out a sigh of relief.
“Should we be afraid of China?” This is another big question. Or maybe it’s more of a group worry. And then lastly, “What about the air pollution? Can you tell us more about the pollution in China?”
I want to say for the record that the air pollution is often as bad as you may think. It’s pretty terrible, so I say imagine the worst and then you won’t be surprised if you go there. But you should still go there. Because the country is that wondrous and vexing and magnificent and since I’ve moved home from Beijing, I’ve become something of a proselytizer. Go. I say to anyone who asks. Go to China tomorrow if you can. There’s too much going on there to not see it up close.
My two boys are the other leading characters in this book, and I wrote the story for them and to them. In a way the book is about my fascination with how their minds work and about my fierce love for them. We’re two years out from China now and four years out from cancer. Time rushes by.
Tony and Aidan and Thorne and I were driving home to Portland from northern Maine a few months ago—a long enough drive for us all to sit quietly and stare out the windows. Then out of nowhere Thorne asked me one of his incisive, fifth grade questions. “Mom," he said. “What’s the moral of your story anyway? I mean really Mom, what’s the moral of your book?”
I laughed and then I froze. What WAS the moral? Or at the least the moral I could tell him at age ten? What I said was, “The moral of my story is that it’s a great thing to move to China with your family because you learn so much.”
“About China?” Thorne said.
“And about yourselves.” I added. He was quiet then. I’d momentarily satisfied his unending need for answers. I sat back in the passenger seat and realized we’d been to China and then to cancer and then back again, and that somewhere in that journey lies the real moral of the story.
—Susan Conley
This blog was first published on the Vintage Anchor website on March 6, 2012, to celebrate the launch of the paperback. Click here to read more
Susan Conley Reflects on The Foremost Good Fortune
There's a line in The Foremost Good Fortune about a small room that I built inside my head to get some distance on my boys when they began to make me crazy in China. This is the line that so many good people have repeated back to me at book readings around the country this year.
I'm talking about the amazing mothers and fathers and grandmothers and grandfathers and world travelers and old China hands and cancer patients who found their way to me at bookstores and libraries and living rooms and said I want a room in my mind like the one you built in the book.
Sometimes these kind people have gotten excited and taken me by the arm, or even hugged me and said, Where is that room? And how fast can I get there? Then they often thank me for not being a perfect mother and for being able to admit it.
The other great thing that happens at all my book readings is that some big-hearted person calls out to me up at the podium and says, "Are you cancer free now?" In fact, I got asked this question so many times that I now say something preemptive at the start of readings that goes like this: "My story is one with a happy ending. I'm now two years cancer free." And when I say that sentence, I can actually feel the room let out a sigh of relief.
"Should we be afraid of China?" This is another big question. Or maybe it's more of a group worry. And then lastly, "What about the air pollution? Can you tell us more about the pollution in China?"
I want to say for the record that the air pollution is often as bad as you may think. It's pretty terrible, so I say imagine the worst and then you won't be surprised if you go there. But you should still go there. Because the country is that wondrous and vexing and magnificent and since I've moved home from Beijing, I've become something of a proselytizer. Go. I say to anyone who asks. Go to China tomorrow if you can. There's too much going on there to not see it up close.
My two boys are the other leading characters in this book, and I wrote the story for them and to them. In a way the book is about my fascination with how their minds work and about my fierce love for them. We're two years out from China now and four years out from cancer. Time rushes by.
Tony and Aidan and Thorne and I were driving home to Portland from northern Maine a few months ago—a long enough drive for us all to sit quietly and stare out the windows. Then out of nowhere Thorne asked me one of his incisive, fifth grade questions. "Mom," he said. "What's the moral of your story anyway? I mean really Mom, what's the moral of your book?"
I laughed and then I froze. What WAS the moral? Or at the least the moral I could tell him at age ten? What I said was, "The moral of my story is that it's a great thing to move to China with your family because you learn so much."
"About China?" Thorne said.
"And about yourselves." I added. He was quiet then. I'd momentarily satisfied his unending need for answers. I sat back in the passenger seat and realized we'd been to China and then to cancer and then back again, and that somewhere in that journey lies the real moral of the story.
This blog was first published on the Vintage Anchor website on March 6, 2012, to celebrate the launch of the paperback. Click here to read more.
March 5, 2012
Power of the Book
But there we sat by the highway in our little car that wouldn’t start, and I kept trying the ignition button, and when the Prius finally started up again, Aidan said quietly, “It’s the Mechanical God, Mom. I knew he would look out for us.” I nodded and smiled, and then I drove the car home slowly, protected by some larger force that I hadn’t known existed until then.
March 4, 2012
Power of the Book
We hit a deer on a dark, empty road near Gorham a few weeks ago. All of us, including the giant stag, seemed to make it through okay, except our Prius, which has been doing a great deal of rattling ever since. Then last week the car temporarily died by the side of I-295, north of Portland. Aidan was in the back seat—never too far removed from the greatest hits of books that he plays in his head. The Percy Jackson Series opened up the world of Greek mythology to him last fall. Aidan read those books day and night and became sort of obsessed with the hierarchy of the Gods and their different powers and what a God could and couldn't do to save humans. It was terrific to see Aidan so keen on reading and also slightly disconcerting when his light went on every morning before the sun came up.
But there we sat by the highway in our little car that wouldn't start, and I kept trying the ignition button, and when the Prius finally started up again, Aidan said quietly, "It's the Mechanical God, Mom. I knew he would look out for us." I nodded and smiled, and then I drove the car home slowly, protected by some larger force that I hadn't known existed until then.
Photo credit: Tony Kieffer
November 29, 2011
This Just In!
The part that makes me cringe is that Goodreads has now opened a final round of voting that ends THIS Wednesday. As in Tomorrow! So I’m asking for a favor. If you could vote before Wednesday night, then the voting is done. Finito. Over. All you need to do is go to this link and click on the cover of The Foremost Good Fortune, I will win a new Pontiac.
No. Not exactly. But I would be really, truly grateful if you could vote AGAIN or for the first time in this funny contest.
And I am also so grateful if you are able to post this on your preferred flavor of social media or otherwise get the word out.
Thanks so very much! Susan
November 28, 2011
This Just In!
I'm writing with thrilling news that The Foremost Good Fortune made it to the Goodreads Final Round of Ten Best Travel Books for 2011.
The part that makes me cringe is that Goodreads has now opened a final round of voting that ends THIS Wednesday. As in Tomorrow! So I'm asking for a favor. If you could vote before Wednesday night, then the voting is done. Finito. Over. All you need to do is go to this link and click on the cover of The Foremost Good Fortune, I will win a new Pontiac.
No. Not exactly. But I would be really, truly grateful if you could vote AGAIN or for the first time in this funny contest
And I am also so grateful if you are able to post this on your preferred flavor of social media or otherwise get the word out.
Thanks so very much!
Susan
November 16, 2011
So What is Travel Writing Anyway?
On Saturday I had the treat of driving two hours up the Maine coast to teach a memoir writing class at the Rockland Public Library. It is a beautiful, historic library—with high, white plaster ceilings and Oak floors and gorgeous, meticulous moldings. I opened the class by saying that memoir writing often unveils its subterranean meaning to us while we are in the very act of writing it. We may be sitting at our desks, typing away about our trip to China, and then the true meaning of what our essay is about will separate itself from the rest of the text and float above us like a small, white cloud. I call these the sparks. The stories within the stories that we only arrive at by staying the course.
And I urged all the amazing people who turned out for Saturday’s workshop to write through their scenes until they arrived at least one small thing in their writing that was unexpected. In a way this is what all good writing does and what travel writing can do especially well—take you somewhere far away, like the sprawling animal market in Kashgar in Western China, and then show you a much smaller story you weren’t expecting to see there about an ancient grandmother who has a food stand near the gates and makes the very best dumplings in the world.
I wrote my memoir The Foremost Good Fortune about moving to China with my husband and my two boys. It is a travel memoir in large part because it takes the reader on a trip to China and shows them the sights. But the book also leaves the tar road and goes to other far-off places—it takes a ride to a place I call cancerland and has a look around and then leaves. It detours into the parallel universe of early motherhood and tries to be honest about what it sees there.
After I got home from the writing workshop on Saturday, a fifty-two-year-old man named Wang Guanghe arrived at our house to stay for the week. Mr. Wang is a senior teacher and Vice Principal of the Yunxi No.1 Senior School in Anhui Province, an uber-performing high school deep in an interior region of China.
It was Mr. Wang’s first time out of his country and here is what I learned about him while he and Tony and the boys and I ate a dinner of fish soup that my neighbor Patty had made for us: he is unfailingly polite. He has a ready smile and a quick laugh and wants to teach my boys, Thorne and Aidan, new vocabulary words every other minute. He has a twenty-seven-year-old son who lives nearby him in their hometown of Huangshan. He has been a teacher all his life. He speaks very, very little English.
What this lack of English means is that Mr. Wang has already gotten Thorne and Aidan to speak more Chinese in the four days that he’s stayed with us, than my boys did in the last year and a half since we moved home from China. Mr. Wang’s visit is also making me unpack some of my Mandarin and this is not quite as rosy a picture. My Mandarin is rustier than my boys’. But on Saturday night I began turning the language machinery on again. I had no choice if I was going to be able to talk to Mr. Wang, and there is only so long you can sit in silence over cups of green tea in your kitchen with someone who has just flown all the way across the world to learn about your education system.
On Sunday afternoon, we took Mr. Wang to the Bubble Tea Shop on Pleasant Street, where we knew we could get him some decent Chinese food. Rice is what he said he needed. He explained he was from the south and that if he had some rice then he would be okay. We ordered him pork and green onions and veggie dumplings and also the rice, and he smiled and ate with gusto for what seemed to me like the first time since he’d arrived with us.
The small story that sits inside my larger Mr. Wang story is that his visit to my house has made me miss China in a way that I hadn’t expected. Mr. Wang’s visit has made me miss China and the intricate constellation of a dislocated family that my husband and the boys and I comprised when we lived in Beijing. There was an intimacy that the four of us have partly lost now. An easiness with our family unit—because we did everything as a unit.
That solidarity has been replaced by all sorts of other good things like more friends and great guitar lessons and dodge ball tag. But I miss that closeness just as much as I miss China, and I hadn’t expected this small essay to reveal that missing to me. Now it’s time to go make Mr. Wang some rice for dinner.
November 15, 2011
So What is Travel Writing Anyway?
The Goodreads Choice Awards have nominated my book, The Foremost Good Fortune, for its semi-final round in the Travel Writing Section. And you could be so very kind as to vote for my book here.
On Saturday I had the treat of driving two hours up the Maine coast to teach a memoir writing class at the Rockland Public Library. It is a beautiful, historic library—with high, white plaster ceilings and Oak floors and gorgeous, meticulous moldings. I opened the class by saying that memoir writing often unveils its subterranean meaning to us while we are in the very act of writing it. We may be sitting at our desks, typing away about our trip to China, and then the true meaning of what our essay is about will separate itself from the rest of the text and float above us like a small, white cloud. I call these the sparks. The stories within the stories that we only arrive at by staying the course.
And I urged all the amazing people who turned out for Saturday's workshop to write through their scenes until they arrived at one small thing in their writing that was unexpected. In a way this is what all good writing does and what travel writing can do especially well—take you somewhere far away, like the sprawling animal market in Kashgar in Western China, and then show you a much smaller story you weren't expecting to see there about an ancient grandmother who has a food stand near the gates and makes the very best dumplings in the world.
I wrote my memoir The Foremost Good Fortune about moving to China with my husband and my two boys. It is a travel memoir in large part because it takes the reader on a trip to China and shows them the sights. But the book also leaves the tar road and goes to other far-off places—it takes a ride to a place I call cancerland and has a look around and then leaves. It detours into the parallel universe of early motherhood and tries to be honest about what it sees there.
After I got home from the writing workshop on Saturday, a fifty-two-year-old man named Wang Guanghe arrived at our house to stay for the week. Mr. Wang is a senior teacher and Vice Principal of the Yunxi No.1 Senior School in Anhui Province, an uber-performing high school deep in an interior region of China.
It was Mr. Wang's first time out of his country and here is what I learned about him while he and Tony and the boys and I ate a dinner of fish soup that my neighbor Patty had made for us: he is unfailingly polite. He has a ready smile and a quick laugh and wants to teach my boys, Thorne and Aidan, new vocabulary words every other minute. He has a twenty-seven-year-old son who lives nearby him in their hometown of Huangshan. He has been a teacher all his life. He speaks very, very little English.
What this lack of English means is that Mr. Wang has already gotten Thorne and Aidan to speak more Chinese in the four days that he's stayed with us, than my boys did in the last year and a half since we moved home from China. Mr. Wang's visit is also making me unpack some of my Mandarin and this is not quite as rosy a picture. My Mandarin is rustier than my boys'. But on Saturday night I began turning the language machinery on again. I had no choice if I was going to be able to talk to Mr. Wang, and there is only so long you can sit in silence over cups of green tea in your kitchen with someone who has just flown all the way across the world to learn about your education system.
On Sunday afternoon, we took Mr. Wang to the Bubble Tea Shop on Pleasant Street, where we knew we could get him some decent Chinese food. Rice is what he said he needed. He explained he was from the south and that if he had some rice then he would be okay. We ordered him pork and green onions and veggie dumplings and also the rice, and he smiled and ate with gusto for what seemed to me like the first time since he'd arrived with us.
The small story that sits inside my larger Mr. Wang story is that his visit to my house has made me miss China in a way that I hadn't expected. Mr. Wang's visit has made me miss China and the intricate constellation of a dislocated family that my husband and the boys and I comprised when we lived in Beijing. There was an intimacy that the four of us have partly lost now. An easiness with our family unit—because we did everything as a unit.
That solidarity has been replaced by all sorts of other good things like more friends and great guitar lessons and dodge ball tag. But I miss that closeness just as much as I miss China, and I hadn't expected this small essay to reveal that missing to me. Now it's time to go make Mr. Wang some rice for dinner.
(Photo credit: Tony Kieffer)
November 4, 2011
The Foremost Good Fortune is Nominated for The Goodreads Choice Awards and I Have a Favor to Ask
The thing is, Goodreads asks me to ask YOU to vote for my book. You may now be running away from your computer as fast as you can. I understand. Or you may click on this little link here at the end and then hit the "Vote" icon on my book cover and be done with it and I will be very grateful.
Please click here!
November 3, 2011
The Foremost Good Fortune is Nominated for The Goodreads Choice Awards and I Have a Favor to Ask
This is the part of the blog that gets kind of awkward for me where I ask you to do me a favor. There is a great online rest stop for book lovers called Goodreads, and every year Goodreads nominates its favorite 15 books in a whole lot of categories, called The Goodreads Choice Awards. The Foremost Good Fortune is so happy to have been nominated in the Travel and Outdoors Section.
The thing is, Goodreads asks me to ask YOU to vote for my book. You may now be running away from your computer as fast as you can. I understand. Or you may click on this little link here at the end and then hit the "Vote" icon on my book cover and be done with it and I will be very grateful.
http://www.goodreads.com/award/choice/2011#56071-Best-Travel-&-Outdoors
