Exposure

Writing memoir is not for the weak or unsure of heart.  It requires first of all a self-awareness that comes with lived experiences and secondly a willingness to be completely vulnerable, sometimes at the expense of others. Consider for a moment that individual in your life that has the answer to every question, the solution to every problem and the knowledge of the world at their fingertips. This omniscience individual can do no wrong.  Until one day the unthinkable is revealed and you discover that it’s all a lie.  In the Impostor’s Daughter- A True Memoir, this is the story that Laurie Sandell writes.

Sandell structures the book as a graphic memoir divided into two parts. Although there are fewer words on the page compared to non-graphic memoirs, no detail is left out--from the pictures on the wall and books on the shelves to Christmas trees and snow covered sidewalks. It’s all included in the frame of each scene holding the reader in place surrounded by visual clues that make efficient use of word necessary and easy to follow.   I ask myself if this is the reason I appreciate the book so much.  While the answer is yes, there is more.

Sandell is clearly a graphic artist as well a writer.  She combines the two to deliver an amazing story of love between father and daughter, betrayal and self-discovery just ahead of self-destruction.  She writes, “In truth, I had no idea who I was. This was reflected most glaringly in my relationships, where I tended to take on the identity of whomever I was with until I became enraged with that role and ran (pg 61).”  In this way, father and daughter are alike.

While Sandell shows one example after the other proving her father a fraud and the negative impact it had on her, I become more interested in how she wrote the book.  Not craft, art, structure or framing but how she overcome the pressure from her family and editor, “Are you sure you’re ready to do this? Expose your father as a fraud in front of the whole world? (pg77)” How she overcame the guilt, “For the moment I spent all my time writing at the New York Public Library. Seeing my father’s crime laid out on-screen didn’t make the act of exposing him easier; if anything I felt exposed (pg 85).”  There is some real behind the scene personal fortitude and strength pushing the book forward in addition to solid craft and art.

I found myself wanting to know more about Sandell’s strength to write past the doubt of her sisters, the anger of her father and feeling exposed.  Her strength and vulnerability is what captures me in this read.  That and Sandell’s brilliance to use art to convey a message that might have otherwise been too difficult to write. 

Imposter's Daughter- Omniscient Frame

Graphic novels make me more aware of the ways in which authors are framing narratives, scene by scene. I see craft, character development, structure, etc so much differently— as if it is liberating us from a type of textual tyranny. Importantly, here, the frames create a kind of omniscient narration where Sandell’s memory box, that is backed up with material evidence, is “witnessed” by the readers. I feel like a lot of writers write so that the readers know more about who they are, their sense of the world, while this, and perhaps many graphic novels, are amazing ways for writers to report, give space for the readers to simply witness. 

Perhaps Joe Sacco and visual journalist have created this understanding of graphic novels! At first, I felt as if this entire piece was written in first person POV and was left without a deep connection to her interiority. I got the story, loved it all, but, again, felt like a witness more than anything else. It was like being taken on a ride as her passenger where, like the women Sandell interviewed, she “perfected the art of seeming incredibly open, without giving too much” of herself. Graphic novel frames are perfect for this type of minimal narrative that as a result creates impression management, juggles the subjective and objective, gives room for discretionary disclosures, etc. 

It’s no wonder that interviews are captured so well in graphic novels when delivered properly. 

When thinking of the way Sandell handles minimal narration, my mind first goes to page 37, the last panel where it states, “There was no privacy, no boundaries.” This was stated as an ongoing issue she had as a young adult/teen, illustrated with her dad walking in on her while undressed. The effect that this scene creates, assumedly intentional, the effect of a ghost narrator. Despite not having the book literarily framed with an an adult narrator, being that we start off with the child’s perspective, this intense panel has a writer’s touch and structure to it, although there is a careful control to keep it in the child’s perspective while being suggestive. This panel also transitions the book, right there, where she is not “team dad” anymore, significant in that this is where I begin to think about the difference between a objective event and a subjective event. Everything of her youth was written in a beautifully crafted “objective” way. 

These memories are not questionable to me, even when laid out beside her stories that have hours of interviews and emails. This isn’t a bad thing either, it seems either intentional or interesting/inspiring. The “coming of age” and young adult parts of this memoir seem to be written in relation to subjective events (to define, events where the narrator becomes aware of the signifance through emotional reactions, memory and processing). In other words, moments like page 57 demonstrate how these experiences seem to be the writings of subjective events (where she has a flash back on naive stoicism in the face of peril). To be honest, this shift could be an intentional portray of self-destruction or, simply, the way self-destruction appears when remembered (some suppressed or unremembered part of ourselves that can only be understood through memory, emotional reactions, etc). 

Another example: page 82, an insert of her childhood drawing to juxtapose her making her father feel small after yelling at him and calling out his bullshit. This is an subjective event. The portrayal of his shrinking juxtapose with her small self with his larger-than-life, Mount Rushmore self is clearly one created from internal searching and emotional unpacking. I find this to be beautiful, brilliant, the way Sandell steers us through her mind here. These are the moments where I connected most to her interiority. The restraint she maintained here, that minimal narrative as the frame filtered her world, carried the rest of Sandell’s story.

The Journey for truth and Avoiding Self Destruction (The Impostor's Daughter)

           The Journey for truth and Avoiding Self Destruction

              Reading Laurie Sandell’s The Impostor’s Daughter was an interesting experience because of the way it was formatted. There were several places throughout the story where I was confused as to where it was going and I thought that she had lost the thread of the story. But every time she brought it back and with greater focus and understanding. I felt this most with Ben and her interviews. I wondered at times why so much attention was paid to Ben when this was a story about her father. It seemed that he was not all that important to her. But then I realized that it was a chronical for her abuse of Ambien and how she was an imposter of sorts in her relationship with Ben, and everything made sense to me. And although I still feel a similar way about the interviews, lots of name dropping, that too had a bigger picture, because that that led her to meet the person that would light the way towards her road to recovery. That too had a point.

            Back to the framing, I really appreciated the book end that Sandell created. I fully believe that it was successful because of the form that is graphic memoir. I love the last panel of the book and how it is a picture of the handwritten get it out of your system writing that later became the first panel. That really seemed to put everything together for me. Talk about great opening lines “Whenever my father went out of town, he had the mail stopped. It didn’t matter if he was gone for one, two or ten days—if my father wasn’t home, the mail didn’t come.” That just pulls the reader in.

            The pacing of this memoir was interesting because it seemed to speed through childhood. Most of the stories we have read spend a lot of time in those early days that shaped us. Sandell really didn’t which fits because that who part was in part a lie. I thought it was very interesting to spend so much time with an adult narrator. But that too made sense because it is almost like her adult life up until the time she goes into recovery is her “childhood.”

            Something else I really appreciated about this book was the way it dealt with time. When Sandell lets the reader know how bad her Ambien abuse really had gotten, falling asleep in the bathtub twice, I was taken aback. This moment is really powerful, and it was made so by when it was revealed. Had that information come out as it happened it would have the revelation feeling to it. This book is about the reveling of information the hiding of it, truth and lies. Sandell spends much of the book searching for who her father really is and we as readers are on that journey with her. When we find out that she was holding back on us too, not letting us know how bad she was doing. we feel cheated and lied too. this allows us to further identify with her struggle to discover her father. We also see what her search for him, for the truth has cost her. That moment for me was the most griping emotionally. In those few pages she did what her father was never able to do, face herself.

            I feel like I should spend some time talking about the reliability of the narrator in this book. Because of the way Sandell laid out the Ambien use super slowly at first and then openly but without saying it what it was it made me trust her. It felt like she was giving me bits and pieces of the story and it was up to me to come up with it. This again made me feel a part of the journey. I felt this most when during the brief conversations between her and the PI, and when she received letters from people. There was so much more there that I wanted to know. But that wasn’t the point of the book to a certain degree. The point of the book was about the cost of searching for the truth and what happens when you find it and how you live with yourself and the people around you.

Imposter’s Daughter: The Omniscience of the Frame

Omniscience 1 : having infinite awareness, understanding, and insight. 2 : possessed of universal or complete knowledge.

What an awesome read! Not only was The Imposter’s Daughter completely different from anything else we’ve had in Craft thus far, but it was also welcomed and left me feeling refreshed. The form itself felt like the comic book of life, meaning—real life issues/non-fiction in comic book form. I loved it!

            The first and most major thing I noticed is that, the omniscience of the Frame allows the author/narrator to shift forward and backwards in time, and without it jolting the reader. For instance, on page 22-23 there’s a quick shift when the family moves settings. On top of 22, they’re pictured in their home in California, and then by the bottom of that same page, they’re already in New York. 

Also, check out the wiggly lines. (See Craft of the frame on 77). The author makes this frame look different in order to take the reader out of the present moment to place us in the past.

            There’s also shock factor within the omniscience of the frame. For instance, on page 37, Sandell describes how her father replaced all of the locks in the house with combination locks. Directly following, we actually get to see how intrusive this can be when he walks in on his naked teenage daughter. With the frame, we don’t have to imagine what happens, how it might look, or feel to the narrator, because we’re thrown right into the action with a visual. We can see how petrified Sandell looks in the picture and know how she must have felt with her hand up in a defensive position. Also, just the headings themselves are helpful in cutting to the chase and getting the narrator’s point across quickly and accurately. Sandell writes, “NO BOUNDARIES” in all caps. She doesn’t have to describe anything. Just slapping a heading and picture beneath it is all it seems to take with this format, and it’s really quite a clever and accurate way of storytelling. All this to say, the frames really allow for the storyline to move at a faster pace then normal. We can see this type of fast action depicted on 47-48 as well, but even more the run of emotions that the narrator encounters in a short space of time. We go from a crying face, to a worried face, then angry, then back to crying in very few frames. In short, we get all of these emotions displayed for us by this omniscience frame, so the narrator doesn’t have to describe much to her reader. If she tells us, “My Dad committed credit card fraud,” we don’t have to ask how she feels. Her feelings are displayed on her face in the picture below.

            The frames allow for more storyline in less words. Take page 53, for example. The reader gets three different events on one page. One, a flash forward in the first frame, which describes a four-year timeframe of self destruction. Two, her travels to Israel where she had her first lesbian fling, and Three. The third frame in which she describes the type of person she was back then, just wanting to be in a relationship for the sex. So with the work of the frame, a story like this is perhaps cut down by pages of description of the setting, time frame, character development, etc. However here, the frame lumps it all into a few snapshots and we get three different storylines at a very fast pace. (Check out page 55. Same technique here as well.)

***Since my blog is getting a little long, and I can’t add every example, I want to post my short comments with page numbers in reference to the frame! It was easy to get a bit carried away with this one. :)

-BH

Imposter Notes:
41, 26 27, 22-23, 27, 45,-4647, 48 top rt, 49,53, 55
The windows allow for quick shifts in the storyline. 
Also, a transition forward, and backward in time is necessary . 77 in wiggly lines
*if it's in the past, wiggly lines are there 
57-59
Headings 61
Cinematic windows 
75. He was a habitual liar! Lol
Lmao! Bottom 80
81 the feeling of separation. Feeling smaller, detachment 
92 LOL
101 A little stereotypical. Hispanic?? 😂
102 lol
108 lol
The picture boxes allow the author to say things, without writing them. 
I.e.: We had sex. Just a pic of two people naked. 110.
Ambien? 111
118-119 Favorite! Meeee all the way.

120 My boo
122-123 like a guess who game
131 her intense feelings
148 A picture of frustration, opposed to saying it. 
137 the looks way 
Later that night.... 141 back to 77
Got a bit confused on pg.143. The convo switches from her and the man, to the man and her father.
There are headings in the box sometimes, where the narrator comes in. Then it switches back to the protagonist/main character. 
167 flash back box BIG! Zoom in affect 
169 woman in same color, but younger. Make it simpler for reader to identify the character  
And the reason behind the name change 
228-9 Bald head zoom out. Time reflection 

Multiple Characters in "School Days"

Multiple characters (with the narrator in the center)

Here I am grateful for the multiple-meaning of the word school in the English language. My analogy for the week has a natural link, this time; the little boy, in a school of boys, narrates the individual within the collective like a school of fish. I've never read a collective voice that holds up so well, staying close and unaffected throughout the book. In most other examples I can think of ("The Virgin Suicides", "A Rose for Emily"), the collective voice often tends towards a forced exaggeration of instinct and pack mentality - not quite believable, at least not for me.

What makes Chamoiseau's school-of-fish voice believable? Context matters. Character matters. I'm more inclined to believe in a group's shared emotional responses/experiences when they are bound up in solidarity against a common threat (in this case, that threat being the cruel bewilderment of institutionalized assimilation). I don't feel that so much when it comes to the voyeurism of so many collective voices.
  
New question: How do we know when this craft tactic is a good match for our own work?
(This is a question I'm prodding myself to think on more often).
Related: How do we know when we can pull it off? I have a few guesses at what makes a school-of-fish voice work.

• The characters in the group MUST have something significant in common - preferably something compelling.
• They must know each other well, even if they have never met before.
• That which they have in common MUST relate somehow to the narrative's major conflict.
• Group decisions/actions must come from a place of instinct. Group decisions involving individual reasoning, plus the time/space for that reasoning, are less believable. 

Without intermittent focus on the individual narrator(s), however, collective voice may teeter into extra-terrestrial, shared-brain territory (could be cool, but maybe not the thing for a memoir). There are still individuals within the group, and to flesh out the individual's own experience within the group is to give the group human depth. Plus, you really don't get the full force of shared experience - shared terror, shared shame, shared rebellion, shared victory - without bouts of lone/lonely emotions mixed in for contrast. 

I don't think collective voice is right for any of my work right now, but I'm interested in reading up on other ways it could be done well.