"Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness" by Alexandra Fuller
Jeff Glor talks to Alexandra Fuller about her new memoir, "Cocktail Hour Under The Tree of Forgetfulness."
Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?
Alexandra Fuller: Inspiration crept up on me in surges and waves and finally on a crest of illness. To begin with, mum was furious about the first memoir I had written, "Don't Let's Go To the Dogs Tonight" (a work about my childhood that she calls "the Awful Book"). She said I had not seen her as she saw herself at all and that I had missed the "point" of her, so as part of an effort to reconcile, I asked to interview her at length. To my great surprise, she agreed. So we met in Scotland at her sister's house and talked for hours with a tape recorder in front of us. It turned out that her childhood, her sense of herself and her heritage, were so rich (she is such a vivid storyteller) that I started to make pilgrimages into her geography to better understand her past--the Isle of Skye and Kenya. That initial interview and the travel that resulted from it led to more questions and interviews over several years. Still, I wasn't sure I had the material for a book until a couple of years ago when I found myself sick in bed with whooping cough for 100 days. Too ill to wade through my pile of magazines and periodicals, and too depressed to listen to the radio, I dug out my tapes and notes from all those trips and conversations and lay in a dark room listening to mum's voice. The experience lifted me out of my mildly fevered state and directly into her world. I was mesmerized by her story and started to write the book right then, propped up in bed. In retrospect, I think a temperature of about 101 was just about the perfect level of remove I needed from my own world to begin to really hear mum. The quality of my listening shifted from judgment to compassion.
JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?
AF: I was shocked to learn that a single decision--answering an advertisement in a Kenya newspaper--led to my parents moving to Rhodesia in 1967 and that that single decision had such huge, tragic, long-term consequences. Mum doesn't believe in questions that begin with, "What if?" but I can circle that eddy for months.... What if my parents had never left Kenya? What if they had never gone to Rhodesia? What if they had gone to England instead? Moving to Rhodesia seemed like such a lamentable decision--it was a rogue, racist country on the brink of war--but I was also surprised (a little shocked even) that my parents truly have no regrets for their choices. They live very much in the present.
JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?
AF: I can't even imagine that world. I suppose I'd grow my own food to keep my body and my children's bodies alive and keep writing for myself so that my soul didn't untether. In ways I don't entirely have the words for an experience, thought or a lesson isn't real for me until I've written down.
JG: What else are you reading right now?
AF:I am reading--and love--Binyavanga Wainaina's memoir "One Day I Will Write About This Place." I think his use of language is utterly distinct and groundbreaking. Also, lately I have been spending a lot of time on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for an assignment so I've been getting deeply into the stories of historic and continuing injustices meted out against the Lakota people by the U.S. federal government. It's disturbing and thought-provoking material made most accessible I think via Ian Frazier's "On the Rez."
JG: What's next for you?
AF: I thought that was an illegal question to ask a writer. If it isn't, it should be.
For more on "Cocktail Hour Underneath The Tree of Forgetfulness," visit the Penguin Group website.
