Post #72 – Women’s Memoirs, Book & Video Raves – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
I’m delighted to share a new memoir with you, Out of the Transylvania Night by Aura Imbarus.
If you are hearing thunderous organ music, seeing dark castles, and watching for Dracula and bats, then you’ve got the wrong impression. Aura Imbarus was born and grew up in Transylvania, a region of Romania. Her country and its people were scarred by political wars and competing national interests for centuries. As a young person, she walked on streets where trees had microphones as well as leaves. The microphones were monitored by staff of the Communist party to keep tabs on the citizens.
Through her childhood experiences in Transylvania and her adulthood experiences of initial success, failure, and then a new kind of success in the United States, Aura Imbarus gained insights that she decided to share in this brief (115 page) memoir.
Although there are many aspects to her book that I could share, I decided that as memoir writers you might enjoy seeing how she developed one of her themes, returning to it frequently.
As Imbarus tells her about her life, she shares the story of family jewels. These jewels become like a character in the book. I don’t want to spoil all that happens to the jewel character, but the following quotes will give you an advance peek of how she returns to this topic many times:
“…my jeweled Byzantine cross set with diamonds, a cross no longer than the end of my thumb. I’d received it from Buni when I passed my entrance exam to Octavian Goga High School. It was a family heirloom, passed down in secrecy through generations to avoid having it confiscated by the many oppressive governments that had held power over the years. p. 7
Buni made her spitting sound again. Then she went a little pale. “We must hide the china and jewelry!”
Mom agreed. “Fanel, give me the key. Aura, come help us.”
From its hiding place in a drawer, Dad retrieved the long iron key to the cedar chest that held the remaining evidence of what the Imbarus clan had been before “those bastards took all of our land and wealth,” as Buni often repeated about the Communist takeover.
In the dining room, she threw a ragged old quilt over the polished splendor of the two hundred-year-old dining table made from the gnarled wood of nut tree roots, and spread on it the family’s heirlooms. The array was worthy of a Sotheby’s estate sale, but it was more than just jewelry: it represented the success, prestige, and position the Imbarus family had held before the Communist takeover. This treasure had inspired my childhood fantasies. Looking backward in time, I had pictured my blonde, blue-eyed great-aunt Maria wearing the three strings of pearls with her beautiful silk dresses as she rode off in a carriage. I had imagined the amber necklace with beads ranging from light cream to dark brown hanging around the neck of the tall, proud Ana Imbarus. And there were gold pinky rings with stones of onyx and emeralds, no doubt worn by my great-great uncles, Iosif, Valentin, and others. Gazing forward in time, I had imagined myself wearing the ring with the flower petals of rubies and the leaves of emeralds . . . one day, after a higher justice restored my family’s properties. p. 13
With the theme of the jewels well established, notice how Imbarus can reference them but now in relation to a person.
If anything had happened to Michael, something as precious as our family’s jewels would have been torn from my life. p. 29
At least my family was able to unbury our jewels and bring the rest of our nice things out of hiding. I wrote a bit of poetry about facets, that our lives were like faceted jewels. We’d hidden what was precious, and now we dared to mark a new facet of our lives by bringing them out again. p. 51
This time, Imbarus compares her city to a piece of jewelry:
My city was a piece of antique jewelry neatly tucked at the flare of the Carpathian ruffles circling Transylvania. p. 66
As you develop your memoir, you might look for several elements that can be woven into your story that provide a thread for your readers.
The following video was must a month or two before Out of Transylvania Night was released, in other words, a promotional interview. If you are thinking about a book trailer, look at the clever theme at the start of this one:
This video takes quite a different approach. The author is interviewed by Write On! but only the author is scene. The role of the interviewer has been replaced by questions posed in text.
As you look at these videos and other book trailers you might want to start a notebook where you record you thoughts. What do you like. What do you not like. Over time you will begin to develop a sharp sense of how you want to create your videos to promote you memoir.
If you are a Kindle user, then here’s your link:
