Fern Schumer Chapman's Blog, page 24
June 26, 2018
New and Topical: THREE STARS IN THE NIGHT SKY
At the age of 12, Gerda Katz fled Nazi Germany and came to America all by herself. Decades before the label gained recognition, she became what’s now know as an “unaccompanied minor.” Gerda’s story of family separation reflects the dislocating trauma, culture shock, and excruciating loneliness many unaccompanied minor immigrants experience. As Gerda becomes an American, she never stops longing to be reunited with her family. Three Stars in the Night Sky illuminates the personal damage racism in three countries — Nazi Germany, the Dominican Republic, and the United States during the 1930s and 1940s — and the emotional devastation of a child coming to a new country alone.
June 25, 2018
New WGN-Radio studios
Here’s what you don’t see when you listen to the radio — the view from the new WGN-radio studios on Wacker Drive in Chicago. I was on Rick Kogan’s “After Hours” show last night. I’ll post the link to the podcast soon.
June 18, 2018
Thank you, Laura Bush!
We, the children of Holocaust survivors and refugees, know all too well the lifelong, psychological devastation of a child’s early separation from his or her parents.
Message in a Box
On one of our visits to Germany, a woman my mother hardly remembered asked that we visit her in a nursing home. My mother wasn’t interested, but the woman insisted, saying she had something for us. Finally, we stopped by her home, and she presented Mom with this box.
“Before your mother was forced to leave her home in the 1930s,” the woman said, “she gave me this box, handmade by one of your ancestors. I kept it for you all these years.”
Mom had only a vague recollection of the box.
Last week, she gave it to me. I carefully examined it, with its inlay of different woods and a fading image on the top.
“Mom,” I asked, “Did you ever notice the image on the top of the box?”
“No,” she said, “not really.”
“It’s a peacock!” I told her.
That image felt like a message in a bottle. When she was a child, she and her family would spend happy Sundays in the nearby nature preserve where Mom would chase the wild peacocks.
May 20, 2018
May 1, 2018
Kankakee’s Daily Journal covers Peotone High School event
April 27, 2018 – Daily Journal, Kankakee, IL
April 21, 2018
THREE STARS is the Junior Library Guild’s August 2018 book in the Middle School Non-fiction category
THREE STARS IN THE NIGHT SKY is the sixth book on the second line.
April 13, 2018
If you are estranged from a sibling…
Please participate in the survey for my next book. Your privacy is protected.
My interest in this topic is rooted in my personal story; my older brother and I didn’t talk to each other for most of my adult life. Over time, we did reconcile, and that journey has prompted many questions. Often, I’ve wondered about the nature of these relationships and, in particular, when and how they break down, cut off, or enter the territory of estrangement. Do those who experience a break with a sibling feel relieved that they no longer have a troubling presence in their lives or do they suffer from displacement and loss, or a combination? How does the estrangement affect the larger family? Do siblings often reconcile, and under what circumstances? How do siblings bridge their relationship after years of resentment and hurts?
As an author, I often bring my own experiences to my writing. My memoir, Motherland, explores the difficult relationship I had with my mother, a Holocaust refugee. Recently, I decided to write about the break I experienced with my own brother, and sibling estrangements in general — a condition so common that some researchers say it is an “epidemic.” As I’ve come to understand, it also remains largely unexplored, and often goes undiscussed. Returning By the Road We Came will tell the story of my brother’s and my relationship in the context of others, hoping to shine a light on these intimate, often difficult ties. Like me, you may find it helpful to think through these issues; filling out this survey may provide a useful structure to begin to do so.
Returning By the Road We Came: On Sibling Relationships, Lost and Found Again — Survey
March 7, 2018
Viking/Penguin buys FSC’s next project!
From Publisher’s Marketplace:
March 6, 2018
Non-fiction:
Advice/Relationships
Fern Schumer Chapman’s RETURNING BY THE ROAD WE CAME: On Sibling Relationships, Lost and Found Again, an exploration of estrangement and reconciliation between sisters and brothers, and how these relationships can be transformed, to Carole Desanti at Viking, by Marian Young (world).
If you are estranged from a sibling and you would like to take a survey and participate in my research, please email me at fernschumer@gmail.com. I will protect your privacy: I will not use your name in my book.
February 24, 2018
News from Jane Addams Junior High School
Jane Addams JHS eighth-graders were riveted during an assembly this morning as they listened to award-winning author Fern Schumer Chapman share the story of her mother, 92-year-old Holocaust refugee Edith Westerfeld – and then heard from Westerfeld herself.
The presentation tied in with the students’ studies of the Holocaust in Language Arts and World War II in social studies.
Westerfeld was 12 when her parents sent her to the United States from their small village in Germany in 1938 to escape the Nazis. She traveled alone to live with an aunt and uncle, whom she had never met, on the south side of Chicago.
Chapman noted that her mother was seen as an “other” in Germany as a Jew, and then as a German in the United States. Westerfeld said she still remembers the one boy in her class who smiled at her.
“If you meet somebody new, smile at them – make them feel welcome,” Westerfeld encouraged the Addams students.
The students heard the story of Westerfeld’s emotional reunion in 2011 – after 73 years – with a friend she had met on the 10-day journey by ship to the United States. After hearing Westerfeld’s story, a group of junior high students from Naperville made it their mission to track down her friend, and Chapman showed a video clip of the reunion and of the two friends surprising the Naperville students with a visit to their school.
“It’s so cool that the kids were able to do that for her,” said Addams eighth-grader Julia.
Addams students asked Westerfeld many questions, including what it felt like when she found out what was happening in Germany, whether it was difficult to adapt to living in America, how she was treated when she arrived, and whether the discrimination she experienced in the United States felt the same as what she had experienced in Germany.
Several students stopped by to meet Westerfeld after the assembly, and Chapman stayed at Addams for the rest of the day presenting to the eighth-grade classes in smaller groups.
Other stories about the Jane Addams event: http://www.dailyherald.com/news/20180223/schaumburg-students-hear-story-of-holocaust-escape-reunion
