Hoshi Kashiwagi and American Autobiography

Today, memoirist Hoshi Kashiwagi spoke to my Genre: Nonfiction class about autobiography, family, secrets, and what it means to own your own story. But we can't really own our own stories can we? As I "write down my own bones" I find that every single one of them has touched or is attached deeply to someone else. While Dr. Kashiwagi talked about Japanese internment during the second World War, the useless feeling to which he succumbed while imprisoned, "no-no boys," half-owned half memories, and theatre art in a veritable jail, I thought about my mother, half siblings, our fathers, Alabama, and the Golden Gate Bridge. Can I morally tell my story when more than half of it belongs to someone else? Memoirists debate over the need to be true to their familial allegiances and there indescribable need to tell a true story, their story. Some have insurance to deal with the discrepancies, some take their chances, others have severed ties. There is no easy answer, no way to compromise desire with sometimes flimsy obligations. So I will try to write the truth. I will try not to hurt your feelings. I will try not to hurt my own feelings.  But tell the truth, tell the truth.

In the spirit of autobiography, which I've been working with a lot of lately, I picked a neat prompt to motivate some writing. In a week or so I'll post my own response to the prompt. Please feel free to post your own response in a comment which I can put up if you like, or just share your experience in a comment if you decide to write something. (I found this prompt in the article "Writing the Memoir: A Practical Guide to the Craft, the Personal Challenges, the Ethical Dilemmas of Writing Your True Stories," by Judith Barrington.)

Pick a day or part of a day from your memory and assign it a color. Describe that time, returning to, and developing, the theme of color and showing the reader why you think of it as a "yellow day" or a "purple afternoon."

Remember to pick a strong memory...

Swimming in the American: A Memoir and Selected Writings

By Hoshi Kashiwagi

Legally Own Your Work: How to Copyright Your Stuff

I've put some poetry on here but stories are my thing. I'd like to put some up but the main concern holding me back is that this is a public venue and there is no legal protection of my work. I asked a professor of mine, Hans Ostrom, who regularly puts his poetry in his blog, about the copyrighting process and his peace of mind. I thought I should put what I learned regarding the copyright process up here for the benefit of other creative writers.

There are two ways to go about copyrighting your work: Go through the U.S. Government. There is always a fee if you do it this way. You can go to this site and check it out: http://www.copyright.gov/. Here you can find everything from long winded descriptions of legalities to hokey anime animations that break down the whole process for you. Doing it this way is expensive, especially if you have a lot of pieces that are not part of a larger collection. 

There is a much simpler and cheaper way to go about this that will cost only as much as your work's weight in postage stamps. Mail the thing to yourself. Just make sure that it has a clear date stamped on the envelope. When you receive your present in the mail, don't open it. Keep it as proof that you have in fact copyrighted your work. You can mail novels, stories and poetry to yourself individually or together as a large collection. It's really up to you and what your own ideas are about how your work should be published. For instance, if you send a collection of short stories to yourself but a year later add two more stories to that collection to make a new edition, the new stories are not copyrighted. To be considered a part of the whole collection you would have to re-mail the collection to yourself with the new stories included. The new date stamp is the new copyright date. Of course, this information is heavily informal and should be researched again before you consider copyrighting. Here is an interesting site that debates the issue (because it is an issue): http://www.copyrightauthority.com/poor-mans-copyright. Copyrighting your work protects your work and makes sure that you lawfully receive credit whenever someone other than yourself publishes it. Which ever method you use, make sure you understand all of the laws associated with that method and above all, make sure you are comfortable with using that method for something you worked hard to create. 

Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit"

Ben tipped me off to this song. Billie Holiday, otherwise known as Lady Day, adapted this song from a poem and melody written by an English teacher named Abel Meeropol who wanted to address the southern atrocity, lynching. Holiday performed this at the risk of losing her career. Her music was a seminal contribution to the jazz musical surge towards the end of the Harlem Renaissance. It popularized the intimacy that is felt while listening to this song, watching her visage, and reading her words. Read the lyrics first, then listen, then read and listen at the same time.

Strange Fruit

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Some things to think about:

What does Holiday do differently with her voice? Her face? What effect does it have on you as you watch her?
Why does Meeropol use the poplar tree as a vehicle to portray lynching?
What is significant about the scent of magnolias?

Billie Holiday (April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959)
Abel Meeropol (February 10, 1903 - October 30, 1986)

Thanks for that awesome observation Ben.