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TWWBF2021 Honored Guest Marita Golden: The Wide Circumference of Love & Us Against Alzheimer's

 


My review of The Strong Black Woman by Marita Golden will post next weekend. 
Mango Publishing Group, October 12, 2021 
It's available for pre-order here: 

The Wide Circumference of Love by Marita Golden 
Literary fiction 
Arcade Publishing, 2017 

What happens when life throws a family off their chartered course?  
The Tate family learns how to navigate unfamiliar terrain while revisiting the sign posts of their individual and collective pasts. It's a rough and enlightening journey. Lovers, spouses, parents, offspring, siblings, birth order, gendered expectations met and defied and reconfigured. Generational trauma and denial and recovery examined from different points of view. Threads about various degrees of loss, denial, rage, surrender, and acceptance entwined with medical, mental, and spiritual health challenges bound within the nuances of assorted kinds of privilege, their advantages and pitfalls. Melodious language offers readers a narrative of soaring scope and intimate emotional details. 


Us Against Alzheimer's, Stories of Family, Love, and Faith 
Marita Golden, editor  
Non-fiction (mostly) 
Arcade Publishing, 2019 

Similar to the progressive phases of Alzheimer's as a degenerative illness, Us Against Alzheimer's unfolds in four sections: "Turning Points" examine moments of inescapable truths and seemingly insurmountable challenges; "All That Remains" strips the assorted human consequences of the disease to their essential, enduring elemental foundations; "I Won't Forget You" explores all sorts of legacies and inheritances; "Stranger Than Fiction" uses facts as springboard for haunting, inspired, imaginative riffs that echo the suffering, rage, grief, resignation, and grace of people who are living with Alzheimer's and other dementia--patients, their loved ones, caregivers, and the scientists who are developing effective treatments while working to find a cure. 

Short story, excerpt or poem, United States, Haiti, Italy, and elsewhere, from agnostics to the devout, seasoned/senior citizens to young grandchildren--each piece exposes various points of view and angles of approach in experiencing Alzheimer's and dementia. Marita Golden's "The Way In" and "Be Here Now" address two aspects for people with the luxury of choosing whether or not to engage to suspend their egocentric concerns. The narrative arc of the O'Briens is distinctive in its poignancy. To read Greg O'Brien's three excerpts from his memoir On Pluto: Inside the Mind of Alzheimer's, then his daughter Colleen (O'Brien) Everett's and his son Brendan McGeorge O'Brien's excerpts a few stories later is heartrending, illuminating, and encouraging. Wren Wright's two pieces honor mundane rituals and rites offered in service and respect to loved ones even--maybe especially--when they're unable to acknowledge their awareness and appreciation. In "Out of Time" by Sallie Tisdale, when sharing some of her experiences as a visiting nurse for a palliative care agency, she writes, "The world I see is far more nuanced than the commentary surrounding it: there is grace... and yes, happiness." This observation is reinforced by the noticeable distinction in overall tone between the three sections of non-fiction pieces and the one section of fiction, which exudes more cynicism and relentless despair. 

Foreword, two introductions, four thematically linked sections each with its own introduction, contributors' brief biographies, acknowlegments, and permissions provide a treasure trove of information and resources. 

Two of my favorite passages 
from "The Way In" by Marita Golden: 
"That day I learned that Alzheimer's does not rob us of memories as much as it shifts them around in the house we call our mind..." 

from "My First Mentor" by Lenore Gay: 
"I watched his mind at work by following the trail of edits."  

A relevant blog is The Lost Kitchen by Miriam Green. 


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