Interview with women's history writer Suzanne Sherman

Writer Suzanne Sherman joins me today to chat about her women’s history / memoir Girlhood in America: Personal Stories 1910 – 2010.

Bio:

Suzanne Sherman is a professional editor, memoir teacher, book consultant, and writing coach. She has ghostwritten memoirs and business books and her book proposals have gained representation by top agents and small publishers. Her newest book is Girlhood in America: Personal Stories 1910 - 2010, available in print on Amazon, local bookstores, by order through Ingram, and as an e-book.

Please tell us about your current release.

Girlhood in America is a fun and fascinating look at the life and times before age 13 in every decade across a century in the words of 56 women and girls. A short cultural history of each decade and highlights from pop culture open the chapters, about inventions and advancements across the 20th century. It's a time capsule, an educational and entertaining living history that shows what's unique and what's universal across a century of change.

What inspired you to write this book?

I started teaching memoir in 1996, when my students were mostly women and men born in the early years of the 20th century. Fifteen years and hundreds of amazing true stories later, I realized the times that led us to where we are today were disappearing with the people who had lived them. I wanted to be a storycatcher and share some of the stories with more people. Florence’s dad bought a car from a door-to-door car salesman when she was 5 in 1911—that story is the 1910s chapter. Lois went to one of the first “talkies” in the 1920s. In the 1960s, Victoria went to Woodstock, at 12. And then there are the stories I collected from girls who came up in the ‘70s, ’80s, ‘90s, and 2000s. I saw the girls go from mother’s helper at home to contributors to culture.

Excerpt from Girlhood in America: Personal Stories 1910 – 2010:

from CHAPTER 8: The 1980s

Ms. Pac-Man Is IT! 
Nicole Bivens — Little Rock, Arkansas

.... Nicole wore Levi’s button-up jeans and T-shirts to school because, she says, dresses just weren’t practical. Dresses were for church or weddings or Easter. And the superhero underwear? That was good any day of the week.

My underwear was decorated with characters like Tinkerbell or Care Bears and superheroes like Wonder Woman Everyone had them. My favorite shoes were KangaROOS, with the little zippered pocket on the side where you keep coins. We thought we could run faster in those shoes because that’s what they said on the commercial.

For years, my hair was long, down to my butt. That changed with Dorothy Hamill. I wanted more than anything to be a figure skater like her, but there wasn’t a chance. The best I could do was get the Hamill haircut. I never had long hair again.

Halloween was Nicole’s favorite holiday, until safety became a new concern for trick-or- treaters. It wasn’t all about putting on a costume and going out at night with friends to collect a shopping bag full of chocolates anymore.

We’d get a costume at K-Mart — Wonder Woman was one of my favorites — and our mom or a relative would go with us while we went door to door trick-or-treating. We’d come home with huge bags of candies, all kinds, and we’d sort through them for what we liked best and trade some with each other. Then we started hearing about razor blades showing up in Halloween candies and people talked about poisoning. It was all over the news: check your candy. We still went out, but as soon as we got home the adults checked every piece of our candy to make sure everything looked okay. The fun game — free candy — suddenly became something you had to fear.

That was just before seventh grade, when Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” campaign against drugs was on full force. They showed movies at school where people high on angel dust thought they were Superman and wanted to dive out second-story windows, and alcoholics were shown in all kinds of extreme situations. In class, we made a commitment not to take drugs and signed a “Just Say No” card we were asked to carry around in our pocket or purse. I know I took it seriously even though I have no idea what happened to that card.

What exciting story are you working on next?

I’m collecting stories now for the next book in the 100 Years in the Life series: Teenage Girls! Coming of Age Through a Century. These are stories about experiences that affected you as a teenage girl (13 to 20 years old) and that reflect the era or decade when you were that age. Topics can be any experience that gave you a new sense of independence or in some way made an important impression on you. At the website you’ll find a form to submit your idea for contributing a story for the book. As with Girlhood in America, I’ll be including a fun and interesting write-up of culture for girls in every decade, from 1920 to 2020. This book, though, will have much to say about first loves, dating, learning to drive, and all the rest that comes crossing that bridge between childhood and being a woman.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

That first diary I had when I was 10 could be called my first book, but I found the few lines to fill out for each day limiting. I had a lot more to say than what happened with the summary at the end: “It was fun” or “It wasn’t fun.” Two years later I was filling pages in three-ring notebooks detailing the day’s events (including conversations with boys) and calling those books my diary. By high school my favorite classes were poetry and creative writing. In college, I majored in creative writing, writing short stories and a short novel. I knew writing was the only world I wanted to live in.

Do you write full-time? If so, what's your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?

I write for much of the day every day. Besides my own writing, I am an editor, ghostwriter, and memoir teacher, helping other people write and get published. I am busy with words all day. Fortunately, I like to wake up early and use that quiet time for writing the short memoirs I publish occasionally in The Sun magazine, write my memoir blog articles, and work on my books.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

I do my best work sitting with a laptop in my recliner with my feet up. Sitting at a desk or using a desktop computer is creatively confining for me.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

A novelist. I didn’t know yet about memoir and how good it could be.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?

In the 1960s, when I was a young girl, there were a lot of new foods and toys, some of them two-for-ones, like the Thingmaker, with its Gobbedy-Goop to make the little creatures in the supplied molds on the electric stove; I mention that in my story in the book. We get so busy with our lives we tend to forget about or discount our younger years, but writing this book I got to remember and laugh about some of the stuff that gave me so much pleasure. I’ve heard the same from women whose girlhoods were in the 1970s and on. Not all times were happy ones, and I appreciated hearing about the challenges that showed up in every decade for girls from all walks of life. I wish everyone a great experience time-traveling!

Links:

Website | Facebook | Amazon

Thanks for visiting today, Suzanne.

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Interview with social historian Dr. Viv Newman

Social historian Dr. Viv Newman is here today and she’s chatting with me about Tumult and Tears: The Story of the Great War Through the Eyes and Lives of its Women Poets. It covers social history of World War through the writings of women poets – including U.S. poets.

Bio:

Viv has been interested in social history since primary school, when her teachers commented upon her “very many questions”.

Viv’s doctoral research on women’s poetry of the First World War uncovered a treasure trove of long-forgotten women’s poems. These widen our knowledge of women’s wartime lives, their concerns, and their contributions to the war effort and subsequent Victory.

Viv has taught women’s war poetry in both academic and non-academic settings and spoken widely at history conferences (both national and international).  She gives talks to a variety of audiences ranging from First World War devotees of organisations such as the Western Front Association as well as to Rotarians, Women’s Institutes and U3A.

Welcome, Viv. Please tell us a little bit about your current release, Tumult and Tears.

During the First World War and its immediate aftermath, hundreds of women wrote thousands of poems on multiple themes and for many different purposes. Women’s poetry was published, sold (sometimes to raise funds for charities as diverse as ‘Beef Tea for Troops’ or ‘The Blue Cross Fund for Warhorses’), read, preserved, awarded prizes and often critically acclaimed. Tumult and Tears will demonstrate how women’s war poetry, like that of their male counterparts, was largely based upon their day-to-day lives and contemporary beliefs.

Poems are placed within their wartime context. From war worker to parent; from serving daughter to grieving mother, sweetheart, wife; from writing whilst within earshot of the guns, whilst making the munitions of war, or whilst sitting in relative safety at home, these predominantly amateur, middle-class poets explore, with a few tantalising gaps, nearly every aspect of women’s wartime lives, from their newly public often uniformed roles to their sexuality.

What inspired you to write this book?

From an early age I loved the poetry relating to the Great War but always wondered why there were no women poets. About 20 odd years ago, I discovered that 25% of all published poets between 1914 and 1918 WERE women but that they had been sidelined and then ignored so basically, I decided to set the record straight!

Excerpt from Tumult and Tears:

“These poems speak to us across the century and enable us to listen to an alternative story of those fateful years. This is a story told through the quiet voices of those who, in one poet’s words, were forced to learn the bitter lesson that whilst ‘Men made the war; mere women’ had to live through its terrible consequences.” By the end of the book, we are left unable to answer the question posed by Jessie Wakefield in her poem “Whose”,

And now for me remains the shell of life;

A round of days that pass without a goal;

Dark, wakeful endless night with anguish rife,

When Fear long-chained, stalks forth and rules my soul.

Lover of mine afar or near, dear heart,

Say now; Whose is the harder part?

What exciting story are you working on next?

A totally forgotten spy whom the Germans (for whom she spied) considered their most powerful non-mechanised weapon – but she too has been forgotten by history. She was a ‘bad girl’ but a totally fascinating one. Her story will be published in October 2017 as Singer, Siren, Spy: The Undercover World of Agent Régina Diana.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

Really when I began the PhD as I realized that I adored both the research and crafting the thesis itself. When one of the examiners commented that he had sat up all night reading the thesis for pleasure, I felt that maybe this was something I could actually do quite well.

Do you write full-time? If so, what's your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?

I wish!

I am also an educational psychologist working for a number of British universities. I fit writing and research around this but luckily I am an insomniac so often am at my desk by 5.30 am!

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

My husband would say that it is the way that I have books in what he considers total disarray all around me and can barely see where the keyboard is for books. He once tidied them up for me – he has never dared repeat this!

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

The first female British Ambassador. However, I met my husband on my first day at university when I was barely 19 and in those pre-enlightened days, the diplomatic service would not offer jobs to married women. (Luckily, we are still together 40 years later!!)

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?

I am also an inveterate trekker and have trekked in Inner Mongolia and to Everest Base Camp amongst other places. I tend to (hopefully) keep other trekkers entertained with stories about my amazing WW1 women.

Links:

Website | Twitter

Books:

We Also Served: The Forgotten Women of the First World War

Pen and Sword: http://tinyurl.com/zwjvqep or Amazon http://tinyurl.com/jzbmflt

Nursing Through Shot and Shell: A Great War Nurse’s Story

Pen and Sword: http://tinyurl.com/z42l7pqor Amazon http://tinyurl.com/gpol9v9

Tumult and Tears: The Story of the Great War Through the Eyes and Lives of its Women Poets Pen and Sword: http://tinyurl.com/j295t6y or Amazon http://tinyurl.com/ju4d7wu

Thanks, Viv!