Tag: non-fiction memoir

Family Stories: Leaving a Legacy of Words

e-Grandma4girlsEvery family has them: stories of Great-Uncle Harold’s time in the trenches of WWI, Grampa’s side trip into bootlegging during Prohibition, Aunt Helen’s wanderlust that took her around the globe twice, Grandma’s ground-breaking work as the first female at Lockheed Aeronautics during WWII. These are the stories that may only get trotted out once a year or so, maybe at Christmas or the infrequent family reunion, but otherwise stay hidden away in shoeboxes at the back of closets or in the dimly-lit corners of an oldster’s mind.

And very often, the story and its teller are, eventually, lost for all time. Why? Because the stories don’t get written down.

There’s a Mandinka proverb that says every time an old person dies, it’s as if a library has burnt down. Continue reading “Family Stories: Leaving a Legacy of Words”

Sneak Peek: Which One Am I?

Which One Am I Today, we feature a sneak peek of the memoir, Which One Am I?, by Thomas Smith and James Darrell Williams.

There are at least 16 personalities inside James Darrell Williams. But who is he really? And why? Which One Am I? is a singular story about universal truths, horrors and grace. Setting their work apart from other memoirs, the authors explore the nature of family and how Darrell – and all of us — are shaped by culture, history and geography. Darrell and his partner Thomas Smith dug into family secrets, Southern culture and Darrell’s own psyche to explore portrayals of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) in culture and psychiatry, linking them with the events that made Darrell the man he is.

Which One Am I? is available through Amazon.com and Amazon UK for kindle and in print.

Here is an excerpt from Which One Am I?: Continue reading “Sneak Peek: Which One Am I?”