Ann S. Epstein writes novels, short stories, memoir, essays, and poems. Please use the links or site menu to go to the HOME PAGE; learn about her NOVELS, SHORT STORIES, MEMOIR, ESSAYS, and POEMS; find interesting facts in BEHIND THE STORY; read REFLECTIONS on writing; check NEWS for updates on publications and related events; see REVIEWS; learn about her END-OF-LIFE DOULA credentials and services; and CONTACT US to send webmail.
The actors who played Munchkins in the 1939 Hollywood classic The Wizard of Oz were paid only $50-100 a week, less than Toto the dog whose salary was $125. Some resorted to boosting their earnings by pimping and prostitution, even begging. They reportedly propositioned crew members, leading to wild, though unsubstantiated, tales of drunken orgies. Read more about the Munchkins and the making of the movie in A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. (see NOVELS).
My Amazon and Goodreads review of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Rating 5) – The Balm of Words. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by award-winning poet and debut novelist Ocean Vuong is a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age and coming out story. The narrator, Little Dog, writes of being a Vietnamese immigrant and a gay man, growing up alien and poor in Hartford, Connecticut. The novel takes the form of a letter to his illiterate mother, traumatized by a childhood napalm attack and often abusive. The odds of her reading, let alone understanding, the letter are slim so Little Dog is writing to himself as much as to her, trying to make sense of the forces that shaped him: his mother and grandmother, his quasi-grandfather, and the older redneck boy who was his first love. The imagery is transporting, invoking not only the five senses, but also hallucinatory states. As a fiction writer, I know how difficult it is to describe the indescribable. (See my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page.) I attribute Vuong’s metaphorical acuity to his gifts as a poet. Some descriptions are overwritten and desensitizing, but then a shattering scene reawakens readers’ nerves. Little Dog, like Vuong, escapes in books and writing. When his mother and grandmother are mocked for their lack of language, he vows never to be without words himself. The novel tells that tale, and is a testament to the phenomenal fruits of his pledge. Words are Little Dog’s balm. Vuong’s family story is horrific and while far removed from the lives of most readers, it remains a common truth for refugees today. Vuong triumphed, but the rare beauty of his writing reminds us that most trauma survivors will not.
One hundred years ago, American women averaged six children, not counting miscarriages and stillbirths. Without adequate medical care, new mothers often had complications, making subsequent births more painful and dangerous. In addition, working-class women had no time to rest and recover after giving birth, and were expected to resume domestic chores and employment, along with mothering their newborns and other children. Read more about motherhood a century ago in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).
In World War I there was only one attack on U.S. soil, dubbed the Battle of Orleans. On Sunday morning, July 21, 1918, the German submarine U-156 surfaced three miles off Cape Cod and fired at an unarmed tugboat and four barges. The submarine’s aim was so bad that many of the 150 shells landed on Nauset Beach in the town of Orleans. However, the barges sank and the tugboat was badly damaged. An air base in the nearby town of Chatham dispatched two planes. Each dropped a large bomb called the Mark IV but, famous for malfunctioning, they failed to detonate. Unaware the bombs were duds, the German sub retreated and the Coast Guard rescued all 32 persons aboard the tugboat and barges. Read more about WWI and its veterans in A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. (see NOVELS).
My Amazon and Goodreads review of The Friend: A Novel (Rating 4) – A Grieving Woman’s Best Friend. In The Friend: A Novel by Sigrid Nunez, a woman writer, grieving the suicide of her friend and mentor, adopts his dog. The Great Dane is named Apollo, the multifaceted Greek god of archery, music and dance, poetry, truth and prophecy, healing and diseases, the Sun and light, and the epitome of beauty. Slightly imperfect, but still stunning, the beast is the book’s only named character. He is a stand-in for the man, prompting the question: If dog is man’s best friend, and the man was the woman’s best friend, can the dog becomes the woman’s best friend? The suicide comes as a shock to her. The dog, old and ailing, will soon die too. The difference is that the woman has time to prepare herself for the dog’s death. Some say authors write fiction in order to rewrite history, their own or society’s. As a writer (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I find this motivation limiting; it chains imagination to the past. But in the novel, the woman does attempt to edit her relationship with the absent man through her connection with his dog. Given that her aim is to come to terms with her grief, she is only partially successful. She skirts around it. Avoidance is fine for a character, but I wish Nunez herself had been less reluctant to plumb how inexplicable grief writes on us with indelible ink.
In the 1936 Battle of Cable Street, people from London’s East End stopped the British Union of Fascists (BUF) from marching through the city’s largely Jewish area. In the previous two years, BUF had recruited working class members. The day of the battle, BUF planned to gather on Royal Mint Street and then destroy shops and beat Jews. But Britain’s labor movement, unlike in the U.S. and other countries, opposed racism and fought the BUF. They borrowed a slogan from the Spanish Civil War’s anti-fascist movement: “No Parasan: They Shall Not Pass!” Read more about old London in A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. (see NOVELS).
“David’s Crossing,” my piece about my father’s emigration from Poland to America as a young boy, nominated for a Pushcart Prize in creative nonfiction, is now online at Ponder Review (Spring 2019, Volume 3, Issue 1).
“When I finish something and it seems good, I’m dazed. It must have been fun to write. I wish I’d been there.” — “The Art of Dying” by Peter Schjeldahl (Personal Essay in The New Yorker, 12/23/19). Schjeldahl captures the “Did I really write that?” sensation that many writers, including myself, experience. Writing is a present/absent process. One is at once fully immersed in the act, yet also removed to another plane. For more of my literary thoughts, see REFLECTIONS.
At 2 AM on Nov. 26, 1947, the San Diego Aqueduct opened, bringing the city its first water from the Colorado River. It began as a trickle, but soon grew to a torrent, just in time to avert the region’s worst water crisis. Construction began as a WWII emergency when naval installations and support industries more than doubled the county’s population. The project was almost cancelled when the war ended, but since the military bases and industries remained, the Navy agreed to complete the $17.5 million pipeline and the city of San Diego pledged to lease it for half a million a year until it was paid off. Discover more San Diego history in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).
I’m happy to announce that bioStories will publish the creative nonfiction essay “My Name Could Be Toby Gardner,” a seriocomic lament about the loss of my name in a family whose pathology included the obfuscation of their real names. Below is a photo of my parents, my brother, and myself, taken in 1951. In reference to the essay, I’ve captioned it “Gussie, Cal, Steve, and Toby, a.k.a. Kate, David, Joel, and Ann.” Read more about my creative nonfiction in MEMOIR.
