Priscilla Kipp

We humans tend to like our maps, our GPS devices, explicit directions and clear instructions. We want the how-tos: how to get there, how to cook, build, decorate and repair things. We need to know how to do it—and that we can do it. How We Are, the first book of Vincent Deary’s forthcoming How We Live trilogy, is such a handbook for the questing spirit.

With the patience and assurance of an articulate guide, Deary invites us to consider intriguing ideas about human behavior. Drawing on his experience as a health psychologist and using a wealth of cultural, historical and literary references that range from the Buddha, to Nazi concentration camps, to Dorothy in the land of Oz, he leads us to examine ourselves. He shows us how, in the “grooves of the heart” and the pathways of the brain, we are conditioned to seek comfort in the status quo.

Human beings are creatures of habit. Change makes us uneasy, whether we seek it (as in a new opportunity at work or in love) or find it thrust upon us (as in grief, sudden illness or the classic midlife crisis). Yet this process of adapting is what elevates us from the automatic responses of a life hardly lived. Change, he tells us with wit and contagious energy, frees us from the stifling weight—and security—of the same-old, same-old.

Deary knows about change. At the age of 40, he moved to Edinburgh and began a new life there as an aspiring writer and, eventually, a single parent of a teenager. He is transformed by the experience. By the time he has helped us examine our innate struggle to accept change and even find comfort there, we too are ready to welcome and appreciate what he calls a new “conscious competence.” Such mindfulness is the higher calling we deserve, Deary says—and with a better understanding of human nature, we’ll be far more likely to achieve it.

This article was originally published in the January 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

We humans tend to like our maps, our GPS devices, explicit directions and clear instructions. We want the how-tos: how to get there, how to cook, build, decorate and repair things. We need to know how to do it—and that we can do it. How We Are, the first book of Vincent Deary’s forthcoming How We Live trilogy, is such a handbook for the questing spirit.

American History, History, Nonfiction

Nonfiction History American History

Al Roker

Interview by Priscilla Kipp

by Priscilla Kipp

With Ruthless Tide, Al Roker offers a riveting account of the 1889 Johnstown Flood, one of the worst disasters in U.S. history, and shines a light on the human causes behind this tragedy.

Why did you decide to write about the 1889 Johnstown Flood?
This was one of those stories that you hear about in weather folklore, but I didn’t really know the full story. When I started to look into it, I was blown away by its complexity and its underlying layers of class, wealth and power in this country.

Nature alone was not responsible for the flood. Can you expand?
The Johnstown Flood was a confluence of events: severe weather, a disregard for proper engineering and proper planning, and a disregard for the environment and the people living within it who are less fortunate.

Were you surprised by the seeming callousness of the elite society in the face of the disaster? Do you think such upper-class indifference still affects matters today?
I don’t think you have to be a student of societal problems to see that, in many instances, class differences and total disregard for those less fortunate still exist today. And we are seeing a rollback of the protections for environmental and societal issues at a rapid pace. It’s only a matter of time before another natural disaster brings destruction and misery because of the elimination or relaxation of those rules put in place over the years to protect people.

Clara Barton’s Red Cross faced its first real test in Johnstown after the flood, and many doubted that the organization would be effective in providing relief. How do you think this played out?
I think that expectations were low for Clara Barton and her organization’s success, and in a way, that worked to her advantage. She was able to work in and around the establishment to really get things done. And once she started to achieve results, her momentum added to her success.

Lending greater historical reality to the event, you write about the thieves, scammers and exploiters who preyed upon the survivors. Is that something you felt the overall record needed?
Anytime there are human disasters, it follows—just like night follows day—that there are those who will exploit, prey upon and take advantage of those less fortunate or people thrust into a horrible situation. We’ve seen it time and time again after hurricanes, floods or tornadoes. It’s just interesting to note that it’s not just a modern phenomenon.

Tom L. Johnson, who worked to make public transportation free as Johnstown recovered, was a revolutionary urban planner ahead of his time. What intrigues you about people like Johnson and Barton?
In the face of human tragedy and natural disasters, people can be changed forever and can rise to great heights when called upon. Tom L. Johnson went from being a somewhat callous pursuer of wealth to a believer in the greater good for his fellow man. Clara Barton helped expand an organization that to this day is synonymous with help and healing.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Ruthless Tide.

This article was originally published in the June 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Author photo by NBC Universal.

With Ruthless Tide, Al Roker offers a riveting account of the 1889 Johnstown Flood, one of the worst disasters in U.S. history, and shines a light on the human causes behind this tragedy.

Memoir, Nonfiction

Nonfiction Memoir

Haben Girma

Interview by Priscilla Kipp

by Priscilla Kipp

Haben Girma was born deafblind in California, to refugee parents forced to flee war-torn Eritrea. While her mother and father struggled to cope as immigrants, Girma simply yearned to belong—“a deafblind girl in a sighted, hearing world.”

Today Girma speaks from a global stage, advocating for improved access to education and services for disabled people. We asked her some questions about her new memoir, Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law, and about making education accessible for all people.

As a child, you confronted a bull. As a teen, you helped build a schoolhouse in Mali. As an adult, you slid down an iceberg in Alaska. To what or whom do you attribute such fierceness when it comes to your risk-taking?
Seeing is knowing for most people. I can’t sit on the sidelines and watch the world. I could settle for not knowing, or I could choose to experience the world. My sense of curiosity urges me to approach a bull, sift sand for bricks, climb an iceberg and learn everything I can about our surprising world.

Your parents were refugees from the besieged country of Eritrea. You were born with disabilities that made you intensely aware of exclusion: Your diminishing hearing and vision often left you feeling isolated from your peers. How do you relate to your parents’ experience, and how has that helped your own advocacy work?
I grew up listening to the stories of my parents’ struggles during the war. They paved a path through injustice, finding their way through thousands of unknowns. Their stories inspired me to pave my own path as a deafblind woman in a sighted, hearing world.

“The biggest barrier [to inclusivity] is society’s underlying assumption that people with disabilities are incompetent and do not add value to society.”

You once saw your parents’ natural protective instincts as a hindrance to overcome. What advice would you give today, as an adult, to parents of a child who is disabled—and to the child?
Parents, please give your kids the freedom to explore their world, make mistakes and develop into confident adults. Whenever you feel yourself about to utter, “You can’t . . .” pause and give yourself time to research the question. Help your child find solutions.

Kids with disabilities, build friendships with other people with disabilities, including adults. You’ll learn new alternative techniques and advocacy strategies from each other.

Your sense of humor infuses your book. You relate how you learned in childhood that laughter inspires warmth and makes communication easier all around. Have you always had this lightness of heart, or is it something you’ve developed?
Many of my family members express love through joking and teasing. When I started joking back, their laughter delighted me. Since then I’ve actively worked on developing my comedic skills, and recently I’ve been taking improv workshops, too.

You employ a cane, a Seeing Eye dog and electronic technology as assistive tools. What are your hopes for the future of adaptive aids, and how can access to them be broadened?
Some of the most crucial assistive technologies, like Braille computers and power wheelchairs, are not affordable to the people who need them. I’m hoping that future innovations will bring down the cost of assistive tech.

At Harvard Law School, assistive technology and the school’s enlightened approach (providing interpreters, for example) helped you to succeed. Do you think it has become any easier for disabled students today? How can schools do more?
Overall, students with disabilities have greater access now than in the past. Many barriers still exist, though. Schools continue to buy inaccessible learning tools, and teachers continue discouraging disabled students who express interest in math and science. We need all schools to remove barriers so that disabled and nondisabled students can contribute their ideas and learn from each other.

When you are out with people, you ask them to describe in detail the environment you are in, as if, as one friend says, they are setting the scene for a book or movie. In doing that, they become more aware of their surroundings as well. Do you think this is one way to build community between people who are sighted and hearing and people who are disabled?
Disabilities invite people to become more aware of their surroundings. You might tap into senses you rarely pay attention to, like smell and touch. You may notice barriers in the environment, such as garbage cans blocking sidewalk access for wheelchair users. Spending time with someone who experiences a life different from your own will increase understanding and pave the way for meaningful relationships.

“Spending time with someone who experiences a life different from your own will increase understanding and pave the way for meaningful relationships.”

Your ambivalence about acquiring and training a Seeing Eye dog is likely something a sighted person would not consider. What advice would you give to blind or deafblind people when making that decision for themselves?
Blind people need to develop strong travel skills before training with a guide dog. Without travel skills, the blind person and dog will both end up lost. The dogs depend on their human partners to feed them, offer water and provide directions on how to get home. I love traveling with a guide dog and have encouraged many friends to apply to guide dog school. One must master cane travel first, though.

In your “Brief Guide to Increasing Access for People with Disabilities,” you offer clear advice about how not to marginalize disabled people and how to, instead, work together for creative solutions that can benefit the entire community. How do you think children can be sensitized and educated at an early age to be the empathetic, informed adults needed for such cooperation?
We can help children grow into empathetic adults by introducing them to diverse stories at an early age. We can also encourage kids to identify when someone might feel left out and teach them how to reach out and build friendships with kids who may feel marginalized.

In 2015, you met President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden at the White House, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). You were honored for your own work. What would you say to leaders today, to help ensure the ADA remains viable?
The promise of the ADA depends on enforcement. Leaders need to insist on the removal of barriers that have denied access for people with disabilities for far too long. In cases where stubborn institutions refuse to create inclusion, then leaders can employ the ADA to remove barriers through the legal system.

In your epilogue, you say that today your mission is to “help increase opportunities for people with disabilities through education-based advocacy.” As a public speaker on a global stage, what are you hoping for specifically as the results of your own advocacy?
Through my advocacy I hope to shift the dominant narrative from one where businesses think of disability entirely in terms of charity, if at all, to a world where businesses recognize that choosing inclusion drives growth and innovation.

What do you think are the biggest obstacles today to the inclusivity you seek for disabled people?
The biggest barrier is society’s underlying assumption that people with disabilities are incompetent and do not add value to society.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law.

Author photo credit: Sean Fenn

Haben Girma, the first deafblind graduate of Harvard Law School, answers some questions about her new memoir and about making education accessible for all people.

Memoir, Nonfiction

Nonfiction Memoir

Danielle Henderson

Interview by Priscilla Kipp

by Priscilla Kipp

In The Ugly Cry, Danielle Henderson writes about experiencing abuse from family members, being abandoned by her mother and growing up with her foulmouthed, horror movie-loving grandmother. Individually these topics seem unfathomably heavy—but Henderson leavens them with humor to create a wholly original testament to survival.

Why did you choose the title The Ugly Cry?
It’s something my grandmother said whenever a child was crying in her presence. “Oooo, you look ugly when you cry.” Then she would laugh, and her laugh would make me stop crying and laugh, too. I realized as an adult that she never actually cared if it made us stop crying, and she wasn’t saying it as a kindness. She genuinely loves teasing children, because she is a tiny maniac.

You use your power of observation to deliver vivid portraits of your family members in this book. Did you rely on diaries or journals for this? Do you still keep a journal?
I never felt safe keeping a journal when I was a child. My abuser would have used it to embarrass me, and later I shared space (including my bedroom) in my grandparents’ house to such an extensive degree that the concept of privacy was tantamount to winning the lottery—impossibly out of my grasp. I always wrote in great detail when I was in school, but I didn’t start journaling in earnest until I was 18 years old.

I journal every day now and have for years, but I think the reason I was able to deliver such vivid portraits of my family is that I’ve observed them for over 40 years. I narrowed in on my most vivid memories and used my knowledge of how my family acts and reacts to fill in the story. I realized in therapy that hyperobservation was a response to my trauma, a way of keeping myself safe. I learned at a very early age that I could not stop trauma from happening, but I could gain some sense of control if I was prepared for it—which doesn’t work either, as it turns out. But that’s what turned on the switch.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our starred review of The Ugly Cry.

What’s the appeal for you of writing memoir instead of fiction?
Memoir creates deeper connections, whether you’re writing a book or telling a story over dinner. I thought about the books I needed to see on my library list when I was a teenager, and I would have felt so much better about myself if I knew that other women had survived similar families. I’m compelled to tell my story as it happened because I am compelled by connection as a form of healing.

Since finishing The Ugly Cry, have you received any reactions from the family members you write about in your book?
My brother is the only person in my family I’ve allowed to read the book, and his reaction was unexpected, because he apologized. At first I couldn’t understand why, but he felt terrible for not being there for me more when we were younger. I reminded him that we were both children, both reeling from trauma in different ways, and the important thing is that we reached a place in our 20s where we became very close again. But he felt a lot of grief when he was finished reading and considered that there were a lot of things about our childhood that he’s never addressed. He may go to therapy. The fact that my book could even make him consider it is a triumph.

My great-aunt (my grandmother’s sister) has also read the book and is incredibly supportive. She loved seeing her little sister come to life on the page, and we both laughed about stories from my childhood. But she also had some grief—even though she was aware of what happened to me, she did not know the details. It hurts to put someone in a place years later where they feel guilt about something they could not control, but the beauty that comes from the connection of it alleviates that pain.

My mother knows about the book, but I haven’t sent her a copy yet. She will definitely read it, but our relationship is in such a tender place as we try to reconnect that I kind of don’t want her voice in my head. As present as she is in this book, this is not her story to tell.

“I thought about the books I needed when I was a teenager, and I would have felt so much better about myself if I knew that other women had survived similar families.”

You originally set out to become a fashion designer but became a writer instead. What changed your course?
Oh, my résumé reads like I’ve been on the run from the law. Most of the work I’ve done has been out of survival—I’ve supported myself entirely since I first left home after high school—and that does not leave a lot of room to dream or define your goals. I didn’t become a fashion designer because I left school, and in 1996 I could see no other way to reach that goal. I worked in coffee shops, bookstores and restaurants, having two or three jobs at the same time, because I had to pay rent and eventually size up from a futon mattress on the floor to an actual bed.

The thing about my writing career is that it was never supposed to happen. I never set out to follow that dream; my writing was always just for me. My course changed as I changed, as I grew, as I gained more confidence in my abilities or felt more desperation about how I was living. Going back to college at 30 years old was very freeing; I was being valued for my brain by people who encouraged me to take bigger chances.

When I left my Ph.D. program, I started freelance writing full time. The first time I was able to pay my rent and bills with a paycheck earned from writing was my tipping point. My agent found me through my freelance writing, which jump-started a writing career in television that I was also never supposed to have. My literary agent was a friend of a friend; when he heard my stories over dinner, he said, “You should write a book.”

There are plenty of writers who know what they want to do in utero and map their lives toward those specific goals. I’ve never taken a writing course, I’ve never been to a writer’s retreat, I’ve never taken a year off to work on my craft. I survived, and I keep surviving. Then I write it down.

“I’m compelled to tell my story as it happened because I am compelled by connection as a form of healing.”

The tenacity and grit you demonstrate throughout your memoir is impressive. What, or who, helped you persevere the most?
This is the most difficult question to answer, because I truly do not know. There’s no way I should have survived what I did, and as early as I did. If you look at my beginnings, that’s not a kid who eventually moves to Alaska for four years on a whim. This may be an unfulfilling answer, but I persevered because I had no choice. I did not have the option of moving back home once I was gone. My family was never going to support me financially. I didn’t have a therapist until I was in my 20s. There was no scaffolding, nothing propping me up. If my life was going to be worth living, I had to figure that out on my own.

In The Ugly Cry, you acknowledge the racism embedded in your community, but you seem to consider it more a fact of life than an obstacle. Has your perception of that racism changed as you’ve gotten older?
Absolutely not. Racism is still a fact of my life every day. Racism didn’t get worse; it got louder. It got confident. But so did I.

Your honest voice shines through in this book, especially when treading softly around the abuse you experienced. Through your craft, you let these dark times speak for themselves while keeping the focus on your own behavior and reactions. What was it like to write about these heavier topics? Did you rely on any forms of support or comfort to soften the emotional blow?
My therapist deserves her own chapter at the end of this book! She was crucial to helping me get out of my own way and find value in my voice. For a long time, I didn’t feel like my life story was worth telling; bad things happen to everyone, and some experience far worse things than I have. My therapist helped me to remove that layer of comparison and learn how to write without focusing on the audience.

It wasn’t difficult to write about my abuse. That may seem strange, but I’ve been telling my story for years and am very adept at flopping out those facts. Perhaps that’s why you feel the darker times speak for themselves; I just told what happened without giving any thought to spicing it up with glitz or glamour. In those scenes I was more of a reporter. The events were enough.

“Racism didn’t get worse; it got louder. It got confident. But so did I.”

Flannery O’Connor said, “The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.” What would you say to that?
I understand the sentiment, but I don’t think that’s entirely true—especially now, when hypervigilant parents are shielding children from their own childhoods as a way to avoid any kind of pain. A lot of people emerge from childhood as absolute chumps, and they remain chumps until their dying day. This is a statement made from a place of privilege.

I would say the opposite was true of my experience. Yes, I had a clear picture of the horrors the world could throw at you, but it took me decades to learn that I was worthy of love. It took me even longer to learn that I could love someone else. For me, surviving childhood meant that I started my adult life at a deficit.

Your acknowledgements are extensive and heartfelt, and they include your mother. Are you at peace with her?
I’m at peace with myself. I was able to find an astonishing amount of grace as I was writing about her, which came as a surprise. We reconnected last year when my aunt was dying; I flew my mom, brother and sister out to say goodbye. But our relationship is still in flux. I’ve made peace with her in that I see her for exactly who she is, and I’m no longer willing to spend effort on being angry at all the things she’s not. That does not mean there is a happily ever after for us, but it does mean that there is a happily ever after for me.

“I don’t think grandparents get enough credit for the myriad ways they save our lives.”

The people in your memoir are so memorable. Can you see your story as a movie? Any thoughts about who would play your grandmother?
I actually optioned the book as a TV show years ago, when it was just a proposal. It landed in a place that wanted to emphasize the sitcom elements, which ignored so much of the reality of my life that in the end it didn’t work out. I’m trying to enjoy the book as it is, existing in the precise way I wanted people to receive this information about me, before I entertain it as a film. And truly, I may be avoiding it because absolutely no one could play my grandmother.

Who would you like to see read your book?
Everyone. I will not rest until I am casually sitting next to someone on public transit and they are reading my book, gently crying tears of blood.

Everyone, but especially grandparents and people raised by grandparents. There are so many of us, and those relationships are so special. I don’t think grandparents get enough credit for the myriad ways they save our lives.

What do you hope readers will take away from The Ugly Cry?
The great capacity we all have to survive. The boulders of joy we can find among the pebbles of pain. I want readers to feel that their families are an origin story, not an endpoint.

Danielle Henderson reflects on a memoir’s ability to create connection, and connection’s ability to heal old wounds.