The sun is glorious on this October day. It’s hard to believe Autumn is just around the corner. These blossoms survived a bouquet cull and I’m so glad they perked up instead of expiring in the bin. Sometimes all it takes is a little love and care for living things to find their beauty once again. Time, love and care, are so necessary in today’s fast paced world. I love the hashtag going around: if you can be anything #bekind and perhaps like these faded flowers we can all bloom once more.
Here’s the US paperback release of White Chrysanthemum. Hopefully this beautiful new cover will reach many more people across America. There are so few Korean ‘comfort women’ still alive today–eight women died this year. I still meet so many people who have never heard of them, what they endured, or how many perished during WWII. History is written by the victors, yet women’s history is largely ignored. It’s time to remember, to tell women’s stories, so they will be ingrained in our collective memory. White Chrysanthemum tells one story, a historically ‘shameful’ one, hidden for decades, until a woman finally comes forward to tell her loved ones what happened to a sister long forgotten.
It’s been nearly one year since I attended my first literature festival as a debut author. Cheltenham Literary Festival invited me to discuss White Chrysanthemum before it had even reached bookshop shelves. A year has passed, many translations have been published around the world, and I’m headed back to Cheltenham to speak on a panel with Korean American author Min Jin Lee (with her fabulous novel, Pachinko). What an amazing journey I’ve had since stepping off the train in Cheltenham Spa last year–I’m so pleased to return because it feels like I have come full circle. ❤️🙏🤗 Come by, say hi, and take some books home with you!
It’s a full moon tonight. Does it make you feel different? Bolder, more emotional, full of what life was always meant to be? Or is it just another Monday night, another banal evening where nothing feels different? How do we measure change in a life that just goes on and on until it abruptly doesn’t, and even then we wouldn’t be aware of its end, it wouldn’t change for us, we would just be done? The harvest moon historically held an important place in the human calendar. It signaled the time for farmers to harvest their crops in preparation for the coming winter. It notated the autumnal equinox when the Earth’s equator is in line with the centre of the sun. What does it mean to us today? Are we still human enough to care? I live in a city of flats that assault the midnight sky. When the clouds don’t hover above our heads, bricks and mortar breach their absence. The moon and stars are elusive celestial creatures we rarely remember to search the skies for. Do we even look up at the heavens anymore? Do we still pray? It’s a full moon tonight. Can you see it? Can you feel it? Do you care?
Translated into German, White Chrysanthemum becomes And Above Me The Sea. I love the cover, the poetic title and the timing. It’s the day after the autumnal equinox and the days grow darker from here. I hope German readers fall in love with Hana and Emi. I hope the story of the ‘comfort women’ translates across language and border and personal experience. I hope so much for this novel. ❤️
Some days are better than others. These books of beautiful poems arrived today and I can’t wait to get lost in them. Poems are meant to be read, re-read, read aloud, chewed over and discussed so they can sink into the marrow of our bones and bond with our souls. Here’s to a soul-bonding weekend 📚🥂
The 2018 Forward Prizes for Poetry
— Read on www.litro.co.uk/2018/09/2018-forward-prizes-poetry/
My review of the fabulous Forward Prizes For Poetry award night.
This Saturday, 22 September is the Milton Keynes Literary Festival and I’m very much looking forward to this event. Join me for a Book Club talk about White Chrysanthemum. We’ll discuss the book, ‘comfort women’, haenyeo divers, Hana and Emi, and I’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have about writing, publishing, and first books (and the trials of writing the second)! More info here: MKLITFEST
Remembering the Marikana massacre of mine workers in South Africa in 2012. By artist Haroon Gunn-Salie, Senzenina (2018), the surrendering bodies have no heads and no hands, as though their minds and their physical agency are removed by the state. Primeval and shocking, it is worth a visit.
A great oak tree on Hampstead Heath in full bloom. Shelter for hundreds of organisms, from the ivy encircling its grooved trunk to the gray squirrels running along its crooked branches and magpies nesting in its yawning canopy, it is a haven for life and a feast for the eyes. It can live for centuries, as time passes more slowly for this enormous and beautiful creature. Come to the Heath and fill your lungs with nature’s sweet breath to recharge your soul. Sit beneath this lonely tree and ponder the meaning of life, the despair of love, the impending arrival of death. Exit the city and enter a dreamland.
Mary Lynn Bracht 