Tag Archives: memoir

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Going on the ride of her life

Classic car. ©iStockphoto/Zoediak

Classic car. ©iStockphoto/Zoediak

“What is your favorite comedy?” my hairdresser asked as we talked about movies. “Being There,” I said without so much as a pause naming the film based on the classic by Jerzy Kosinski. Add truth to the comedy/drama genre mix and I might as easily have said Riding in Cars With Boys. I liked it so much, I read the memoir on which it is based.

Based on her own experience, Beverly Donofrio’s memoir is both confessional and redemptive. Having made what seems, to her parents immediately and not long afterwards to Beverly, too, a bad decision, the youth finds herself pregnant at 17 and married to a drug addict barely able to provide a roof over their heads. Beverly, divorced with son in tow, is able to begin clawing her way hand over hand out of poverty when the doors of the prestigious Wesleyan University open to her at age 24.

On graduation Beverly packs herself and her son and moves to New York City where in 1988, according to a 2011 interview with Amye Archer in Hippocampus Magazine, she sells her memoir based on two memoir articles and a five-page proposal. Donofrio illuminates the path to life narrative good enough to find an audience saying, “Although one tries to tell the truth, in order to make a story readable, one must choose what is told and what is omitted, enforce a structure, a story arc, impose meaning on raw life.”

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Philomena

The last, yet certainly not the least, in our examination of true life Oscar nominated stories is Philomena. Philomena is a young innocent girl when she has an encounter with a young man at a fair in 1951. Pregnant, she is sent to the Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea, Ireland, where she gives birth to a son she names Anthony. At some point during the four years that follow in which Philomena works to pay off the debt of her stay at the abbey, her son is adopted out suddenly and without warning. Philomena is greatly distressed.

Antique cradle. ©iStockphoto/Anastazzo

Antique cradle. ©iStockphoto/Anastazzo

Confession. Philomena might be Catholic and well aware of the practice of confession to God through a priest and the forgiveness it promises. Confession leads her no closer to the son she was forced by Sean Ross Abbey nuns to give up for adoption until she confesses her secret years later to her grown daughter. Is there a mystery in your life that might be finally broken open by confidential confession to another?

Contact. Philomena’s daughter approaches a newly unemployed journalist, Martin Sixsmith, at a party suggesting he write about her mother. Sixsmith has no interest in writing a human interest story until he meets with Philomena and hears her scandalous tale. Who has the skill set that could help you on your personal story quest – a journalist, an investigator, another individual who was there?

Investigation. Yet another trip by Philomena to the Abbey, this time with Sixsmith, yields no new information. Fortunately, the local pub holds clues. Locals says the fire that destroyed adoption records was a purposeful bonfire. They also indicate that many of the children had been sold to Americans. The tip leads Sixsmith and Philomena to America where Sixsmith’s contacts help him discover Anthony’s adoptive parents and his new name, Michael A. Hess. Hess was a lawyer who had served high up in Republican Ranks. In a devastating story twist Sixsmith discovers Hess died nine years earlier in 1995 of AIDS. Is there a “death of a vision” for your story?

Pressing on. Philomena and Sixsmith try to gather more information on Michael through a colleague of Hess, his sister Mary, and his love. It’s shocking when they learn from the latter that Michael had visited the abbey where he was told his mother abandoned him and that they had no information on her. Are there ways you can press on after hitting a dead end to discover more information?

Coming full circle. The most shocking news Philomena and Sixsmith hear is that her son is buried in the abbey’s cemetery. Sixsmith is angry at the sisters for withholding information that could have connected Philomena with her son. Philomena chooses to forgive. She also tells Sixsmith to tell the story because “people should know…” Martin Sixsmith writes The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, the book on which Philomena is based. Is there a story you should tell because “people should know” what happened? Are you aware you can both forgive and tell?

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What does the wolf say?

Saturday before the Oscars I picked up my 90-year old mother for a “2014 Oscar nominated film” marathon. We saw Philomena which she adored, Nebraska which she loved but less, and The Wolf of Wall Street which she hated.

Silhouette of howling wolf against forest skyline and full moon. ©iStockphoto/tntemerson

Silhouette of howling wolf against forest skyline and full moon. ©iStockphoto/tntemerson

I take the blame for that. I didn’t know Scorcese’s film was such a graphic display of sex, drugs, and greed. On a positive note, the abundant stripping of clothes in Jordon Belfort’s life in the hands of director Martin Scorcese models the stripping of masks on those who want to tell their “no-holds-barred” life story.

Want to try your hand at revealing shocking truths from your fallen nature in naked reality? Watch The Wolf of Wall Street and be thankful you can. We wouldn’t have that opportunity if Jordon Belfort hadn’t written so honestly about his life experience. I doubt he would have written his story had he not been arrested, convicted, and sentenced to prison. It still might not exist had it not been for the fact that Belfort was encouraged to write his story by his prison bunkmate who according to Aly Weisman was Tommy Chong who along with his partner Cheech and George Carlin so humorously captured life in the 1970s.

If you are considering shining a harsh light on your life of excess, be aware of the complications. Belfort avoids the fatal flaw of exposing others while protecting self by making no attempt at trying to stick even a tarnished, warped halo on himself.

Our tendency to “fix facts” in our minds is superbly illustrated in a scene in Wolf. Belfort gets a call from his attorney telling him to go to a pay phone. High on expired Quaaludes, Belfort drives his vehicle (a Lamborghini in the film, a Mercedes in real life according to The Daily Beast) to a pay phone where he learns his friend has been arrested and his phones have been bugged by the FBI. Collapsed when the expired drugs finally kick in, Belfort crawls to his car and drives, slowly and carefully he thinks, back home. Belfort doesn’t realize the extent of his drug-enhanced delusion until officers arrive and ask if he had been driving the vehicle. When Belfort takes another look at the car, it is heavily damaged.

Belfort seemingly holds nothing back in telling his story. While he doesn’t want to rat on his associates and even warns his partner Danny that he’s wearing a wiretap and not to incriminate himself, I don’t get a sense from the film that Belfort is repentant or remorseful. Belfort seems part of the “too cool for school” crowd. Belfort is too cool when he flies his helicopter stoned and crashes, too cool when he invites FBI agents aboard his yacht, too cool when he refuses to take a securities deal and step down. James S. Murphy in Vanity Fair thinks DiCaprio’s cool factor which elicits admiration, envy, and desire instead of understanding and empathy might have cost him the Oscar.

Another problematic issue with the tell-all that exposes yourself is the potential lawsuit. According to CNN, attorney Alan Greene has filed a lawsuit claiming he was defamed by his portrayal. Telling Tales has some good questions you should ask your lawyer before pursuing your revealing story.

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Did you hear about the kidnapping in our nation’s capitol?

The victim was Solomon Northrup, an African American carpenter and violinist from Saratoga Springs, New York, in 1841. A prime example of human trafficking, this free-born, property owning African American, was transported to Louisiana and sold into slavery. Northrup would spend the next 12 years on plantations.

Bound. ©iStockphoto/katjawickert

Bound. ©iStockphoto/katjawickert

Northrup was eventually freed to return home to his family and tell his story.  In 2014, the film story based on Northrup’s book found box office and critical success winning the Golden Globe for Best drama and  Oscars for its producers (Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Steve McQueen and Anthony Katagas),  actress Lupita Nyong’o,  and screenwriter John Ridley proving enslavement is a strong story theme.

The blight of human enslavement and trafficking didn’t disappear in the middle 1800s. It still exists globally today in the form of forced and bonded labor, involuntary domestic servitude, child soldiers and sex trafficking.  Slavery might also be an addiction, a marital, work or organizational situation you feel you cannot leave for any reason, or even ideology if it is harmful, dissatisfying, or would be difficult to abandon. To what have you been enslaved?

Northrup accepted a short-term music job only to emerge from being drugged to find himself chained. How and when were you enslaved? Did it start as a simple trying of something that would become addictive? Was it caused by another? Was it hereditary or simply being born into a family that held a certain world view? Has true Biblical Christianity been mixed with “contemporary culture” to approve or justify something that is inhuman, immoral, or just plain wrong?

Northrup recognized excessive mourning for his children, wife, and life is unproductive. He set about to use his talents – carpentry, creativity, and musicality – for his new master’s use. He learned to hold back information that could cause him harm like the fact he can read and write. He learned to spin the truth for self-preservation. What steps did you take to remain safe? Have you held your tongue, cooperated, used your creativity?

Though it could mean his life, Northrup risked telling his story to a white carpenter hired by his master and found a sympathetic ear. The carpenter got word to Northrup’s family who sent help. Northrup was freed in 1853. What risks – physical, emotional, legal, spiritual – did you take to obtain your freedom? What turned the enslavement tables to give you back your freedom?

Back home Northrup told his story. He became active in the abolitionist movement and lectured on his experience and against slavery. As with some true stories, there wasn’t a clear, fairy tale ending. Legal charges against Northrup’s perpetrators went nowhere. By 1857, Northrup had “disappeared” from the face of the earth. The date and manner of his death and place of burial is unknown. But Northrup’s tale stands more than 150 years later as an affront to human trafficking and enslavement. What will you have to risk to tell your story to help others alive today and in future generations?