Writing fictions, memoirs and versions of my truth
In the last few months I have published three books.
The first is a novel, the second is a book of poetry, the inspiration on which the novel is based and the third is a memoir.
They are – The Love and Wisdom Crimes
A coming-of-age adventure story about a young white woman who discovers that in apartheid South Africa, it is dangerous to love a revolutionary and a crime to love someone black.
Poems from southern Africa that inspired The Love and Wisdom Crimes.
I recount my first year in London as an exile and the unmarried mother of a mixed-race child in the Swinging Sixties.
Writing these three books challenged me in ways that I didn’t expect because I had to engage with the truth of the stories I tell. It was a fascinating aspect of writing that I imagine all writers have to consider. The close relationship of these three books to each other and to me certainly focussed my mind on the delights Read More and Comment …
There are facts we don’t know and facts we choose not to know because they don’t suit us. There are facts that are hidden from us by politicians and power-hungry people and there are facts which are distorted by the media, by myth-makers, advertisers and film makers. When it comes to war and war stories the facts may be so extremely complex and convoluted that they are manipulated or simplified “for our own good”!. At the same time, writers, film-makers and artists, by telling stories, can and do remind us of what really happened and why it matters. It stands to reason, for example, that freed slaves would be as likely to seek their fortunes in the Wild West as German and Irish immigrants. It hadn’t occurred to me that there once were black cowboys until I saw Mel Brooks’ outrageous film 
I quote from Texas Democrat Marc Veasey – “It is a fact that too few know: 75 years ago, it was American soldiers of every race that hit the beaches of Normandy. 75 years later, it is our duty to remember and honor the courage of these men. As the world hung in the balance, 
The child in the garden goes hop, skip and jump and sings to herself.