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Robyn Ringler: Posted on Tuesday, March 01, 2011 1:39 AM
 Some people are very comfortable with a person's depth of feeling while that sort of depth makes others squirm. I've learned to be comfortable with nearly all emotions and feelings because I teach memoir and memoir can be brutal. In our memoir classes at East Line Books, we have students who have gone through the worst tragedies--death of a child, spouse, parent, friend; loss of a job, identity, physical ability; divorce, both amicable and filled with fury and sorrow. Before memoir class starts, I have now gotten into the habit of slapping down a box of tissues in the middle of the table. More often then not, they get used. By all of us. A successful memoir piece will make others cry. Or laugh. Or feel--something, anything. Terrified, joyful, tentative, excited, reserved. When someone reads a memoir piece and readers at the table show genuine emotion, I tell the writer how skillfully written the essay was and how it resonated wtih its audience. Believe me, if you are sobbing through the writing, you are usually doing a good job of getting the story on the page. And if the tears are streaming down the cheeks of most of your fellow students during your reading time in class, you get an A +++. |
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Robyn Ringler: Posted on Tuesday, February 01, 2011 3:25 PM
Share My customers at East Line Books have family all over the world. A particular family that I am very close to has grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins in Cairo and Alexandria, Egypt. I wrote to ask if their family was okay and received an answer back from the mother and this answer from Sarrah, the 16-year-old daughter: Thanks so much for your concern. It really means a lot that you care about us so much. Our family is fine, my dad has talked to them and none of them are hurt, but order is quickly slipping away so we won't be sure until the situation is solved. That being said, I'm really proud of the protesters, and just amazed at the vitality of the human spirit. I know things will turn out alright--whether it be my naivete or the truth--and in the meantime we can watch a bit of history. Thank you so much for caring about us, a lot of people don't even know what's going on.  It is hot. I look around at the other women and wonder how they survive in long dresses, pants, long sleeves, and veils. In New York they'd be dressed perfectly for a September afternoon. But it's April in Egypt, and though there are many other tourists out to see the pyramids of Gaza--right outside the gargantuan city of Cairo, though no one will ever tell you the short cut is through back roads where you might catch a glimpse of a family slaughtering a goat, or piles of trash on the sides of the dusty roads--all I can see is the school girls and boys climbing on the mountains their ancestors built. I am amazed that the sky never sees fit to rain, as if it has the same mentality as me. Crying is a weakness to be reserved only for pain and never for emotions. The lack of clouds gives it a dusty appeal. Everything in the country is dusty. Sarrah continued to write to me about her feelings about what is happening now in Egypt:  When I visited Egypt in April, I was honestly mystified by the ancient city. I saw many examples of poverty that an American teenager cannot comprehend. It surprised me that a soldier could stand outside carrying some massive piece of artillery. I feel that the recent events in Egypt are not only a turning point in the history of the country, but a turning point for me. Yes I am worried for my family, but I'm too naive to believe that they will fall into harms way. I'm amazed at the human spirit. About three hundred million people live in America and almost all of them have ancestry in another country. Many of us have family still living in other countries. Yet I've never thought that I would see something like this hit my life. I never thought that Egypt would be the one making history, to me it would always be some other person's protest. Some other person's life. I went to Egypt as an American, and came back as an American. But when I was there, I never thought of it as a police state, I saw it as a poorer country. However, it is a police state. When I saw the riots on TV I wasn't surprised at all, and I wasn't scared. I was proud that I can honestly say I have blood running through my veins that comes from two nationalities not willing to take any oppression. As you can see, Sarrah is an extraordinary person as well as an extraordinary writer. I am honored to know her and her family and would never have met them if I didn't own a bookshop. |
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Robyn Ringler: Posted on Monday, December 06, 2010 12:00 PM
 On Sunday, I participated in the Pearl Harbor Day ceremony at the American Legion's Lt. Fred H. Clark Post 91 in Mechanicville. It was my 15th year speaking to veterans and leading them in a rousing rendition of the 1940s song "Let's Remember Pearl Harbor" (lyrics by Sammy Kaye). I first attended as a Girl Scout Leader with 25 second grade girls who stepped up to the microphone to read passages of soldiers' stories from that infamous day. We Girl Scouts continued to participate each year until those former second graders graduated from high school. Now they are in college and I attend with my husband, sometimes my daughter if she is home from school. Now I speak to the group as a representative American citizen who believes we must all remember Pearl Harbor and our WWII veterans who we are rapidly losing. In my speech on Sunday I reminded the veterans and their families that they must not leave this life without having told their stories so that those stories could be passed down through the generations.  In my store and every bookshop and library, you will find tons of books on all the wars, but WWII in particular because that war was a unique time in history when everyone sacrificed to protect our freedom. We must read these books. We must talk with our grandfathers and grandmothers and great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers and aunts and uncles and learn their stories. And then we must tell them to our children so they can know not only our family histories but the history of our country. Question: What are your favorite WWII books? Please share them with me by posting a comment--THANK YOU! |
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