Photoessay #1113 - Liverpool Blitz

Every week at my memoir class, we 'workshop' pieces written by our fellow students. The first few weeks, we just did 1/session, then 2/session. This week we will do 3 and by the time we do my piece at the end of the month, 4 pieces will be featured. 23 people in the class!

Generally a positive experience. I find it quite challenging to look at the student pieces as writing, looking at technique, etc.

I'm doing my Priscilla story.

The other day, I thought, I've read nearly 10 pieces, is there one that really stands out in my mind. Some are fragments, some fully developed stories. Everybody in this focused lively class really throwing everything into it.

I remember talking to S on one of the first meetings. She wanted to do a piece on her mother's early life in Liverpool. A challenge because she hadn't been there herself and not sure her mother could help.

But her piece really did the trick. She writes the German air attacks on Liverpool (Liverpool Blitz) and its destructive aftermath on her mother's family. At the end of the short piece, I was grieving for all of the losses suffered by her mother. The grandmother who mentally broke, the grandfather and uncle killed, the breakup of the family, the broken promises. All of it, terrible.

Her secret was expressive detail, so many specific ways to show how it felt. How it happened. How could she know? Memoir is an interesting intersection between fiction and non-fiction. Must have really happened, been the experience of the narrator but you must build 'on the facts'.

The message to me is that I need to drag the narrator into UCSC 1970. Expressive detail to set my story. If I don't it could be any college at any time. And it wasn't. Since I base my central story on this premise, I better get busy and get that done.

And have you ever heard of the Liverpool Blitz. Part of the WWII canon? I've never heard of it but, from this story, I can get an idea of the immense destruction. Picture taken from a history website showing the destruction in Liverpool.