& Book Giveaway Comments Contest!
Diana M. Raab, MFA, RN was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1954 and received her undergraduate degree in Health Administration and Journalism in 1976. A few years later she received her RN degree. After 25 years as a medical and self-help writer, she's directed her creative energy towards nonfiction and memoir writing. In 2003 she earned her MFA in Writing from Spalding University's low-residency program.
Diana is the author of eight books. Her first memoir, Regina's Closet: Finding My Grandmother's Secret Journal (2007) was the recipient of the 2009 Mom's Choice Award for Adult Non-Fiction, and the 2009 National Indie Award for Excellence in Memoir. Her award-winning work has been published in numerous literary magazines and is widely anthologized. She has one poetry chapbook, My Muse Undresses Me, and two poetry collections, Dear Anais: My Life in Poems For You (winner of the 2009 Next Generation Indie Award for Poetry) and The Guilt Gene (2009).
After experiencing three successful, but high-risk pregnancies, she wrote a comprehensive guide for other women. The award-winning Getting Pregnant and Staying Pregnant (1989) was updated and revised in collaboration with Dr. Errol Norwitz of Yale School of Medicine under the new title, Your High Risk Pregnancy: A Practical and Supportive Guide (2009).
Diana is editor of the anthology, Writers and Their Notebooks (USC Press 2010), a collection of essays written by distinguished writers who journal, including Sue Grafton, Kim Stafford, Dorianne Laux, John DuFresne, James Brown and Michael Steinberg, to name a few. The foreword is written by world-renowned personal essayist, Phillip Lopate.
Diana's latest book, Healing with Words: A Writer's Cancer Journey (2010), reflects her experiences battling breast cancer at age forty-seven, and then multiple myeloma, a type of bone marrow cancer, when she was fifty-two.
She currently teaches creative journaling and memoir in UCLA Extension Writers' Program. She facilitates workshops in journaling and writing for healing around the country, and is a frequent moderator for panels on writing.
Find out more about Diana by visiting her website, www.DianaRaab.com, her blog, Diana's Notebook, and her Facebook Fan Page.
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By: Wow!,
on 7/12/2010
Blog: WOW! Women on Writing Blog (The Muffin) (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: book giveaway, blog tour, author interview, journaling, Diana Raab, breast cancer, A Writer's Cancer Journey, Healing with Words, Add a tag
By: Melissa Wiley,
on 8/23/2007
Blog: Here in the Bonny Glen (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Art, California landmarks, Outings, San Diego, Impressionism, Balboa Park, Giverny, Monet, San Diego Museum of Art, Add a tag
We've been meaning to visit all the Balboa Park museums since our arrival in San Diego, but the zoo and the aquarium kept wooing us back for repeat visits this summer, hogging our outing time. Then a couple of weeks ago, Alice discovered an incredible art museum near her San Fran abode, and her stories of close encounters with works by Rembrandt, Cassatt, and Monet fired me up to move "take kids to San Diego Museum of Art" from the Sometime list to the Do It Now one.
Yesterday, as I mentioned in my somewhat grumbly tale at Lilting House, was the monthly Free Tuesday there, so off we went.
Lesson number one: You might think you are being all kinds of clever and responsible by spending the morning cleaning house before packing up the kids for the big museum outing—"We'll come home to a nice clean house, won't that be nice?"—but you are wrong. The parking lot police officer took time out from writing tickets for cars illegally parked in the handicapped spaces to tell me, jovially, that you have to arrive before 10 a.m. if you want to get a (legal) parking spot. It was 11:45 when he was telling me this, so: whoops.
He very kindly told me where to go to find a parking lot I could drive around in for 25 minutes hunting for a space. I took his advice, and figured out all on my own how to stalk a pedestrian strolling into the lot with keys jangling, suggesting the possibility that she was returning to her car and therefore about to vacate a space. The space was approximately four inches wider than my minivan, so I spent another 18 minutes backing-and-filling in order to get into it.
By this time the kids were fed up with Balboa Park and asked if we could go home. I laughed like a crazy person and told them if they thought I was going to give up this parking space, EVER, they were sorely mistaken. "We are going to LIVE here from now on," I told them. "Forever. I worked too hard for this space. I am never going to leave it, you can bury me here. Hold on, I need to call Daddy and give him our new address. Honey, we now reside at Space #16, The Lot Behind Spreckles Organ Pavilion, Balboa Park, San Diego, I don't know the zip code yet. Can you change the mail forwarding? Because I can't leave this spot to go to the Post Office."
Then one of the kids pointed out the sign that said the lot closes at 6 p.m.
"Shoot," I sighed. "We'd better go see that museum before they kick us out."
The facade of the museum is currently hidden behind plywood and tarps,
presumably for a restoration of some kind, but you scarcely notice that
as you herd your children up the stroller ramp, because your gaze is
transfixed by the lovely pensive face of the Young Shepherdess, the gem
of the museum's collection. Painted in 1895 by William Bougereau, the
Shepherdess is arguably the gallery's most beloved work of art. My
daughters want to be her (because she is pretty, goes barefoot, and has
sheep) and were desperately eager to see her.
Turns out she is off gallivanting around the country right now. A museum guard told me (very chatty these Balboa Park personnel are, and don't I appreciate it!) that the painting is making a U.S. tour this summer. But she'll be back in a few months, and that's fine because it will probably take me that long to find another parking space.
Instead of the Shepherdess, we visited Giverny. Oh! Giverny! The word is magical. It whispers: Monet, poppies, haystacks, light-streaked skies, picturesque laborers in wheat fields drenched with sun. We made a beeline for the visiting exhibit, a large collection of Impressionist works by the artists who congregated in the little French painters' colony during the late 1800s. They took their easels out to the woods and fields in a golden frenzy of plein-air painting. All right, the wall placard describing the exhibit didn't say anything about a frenzy per se, but it did talk a lot about plein-air painting, a term whose pronunciation I managed to fake quite passably but of whose definition I was ignorant until a kind-eyed Englishwoman explained it to Jane.
She was quite a knowledgeable woman and shared many tidbits of information with us as we strolled from painting to breathtaking painting. Monet was everywhere, shimmering in leaf green and spruce green, plummy shadows, frothy blues. Forget my parking space, I want to live in one of those paintings.
I particularly liked the work of American Impressionist Theodore Robinson, about whom I probably ought to have known before but didn't. (Oh look! I just realized he's the same guy Elizabeth posted about a few days ago. Maybe that's why his name jumped out at me.) We also greatly admired the work of John Leslie Breck and Guy Rose. But it was Monet who gave us the goosebumps. Jane and I could not believe we were standing there in front of his actual paintings, a dozen of them at least. I lost count. I was too occupied with counting the heads—and more to the point, hands—of my own children. "Don't touch the wall, honey. Oh! And don't point at the paintings. What if you accidentally touched one! Good heavens! Oh! No, Wonderboy, don't poke the nice English lady. She's your sisters' only chance of having their questions answered here because Mommy is distr—Oh! No, Beanie, you can't eat string cheese in an art museum!"
I do not pretend our outings are serene.
If I get a chance later, I will link to some of the paintings we got to look at. This one, Morning on the Seine Near Giverny (which looks washed out in every image I could find online but is in reality saturated with color so rich it's like light poured itself into pigment) is the one I mentioned in yesterday's Lilting House post, the print Rose fell in love with in the bookstore. There were other paintings we liked even better: I think all of us favored the golden haystack ones (and there were many—mighty fond of painting haystacks were those Impressionists) over the misty river paintings.
Not that there's any reason to choose. The world is an art gallery nowadays. I foresee many virtual pilgrimages to Giverny in our future. As there have been in our past—Linnea in Monet's Garden and Katie Meets the Impressionists have ranked highly in our book catalogue for many years.
After the Giverny exhibit, we toured several other galleries in the museum, encountering Goya, Renoir, O'Keefe, Warhol, Fra Angelico, and Giotto. We missed Picasso, Rembrandt, and Chagall, but we'll be back.
As soon as I find parking.
By: Lisa Alvarado,
on 8/19/2007
Blog: La Bloga (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Meurent, Manet, Impressionism, biography, non-fiction, authenticity, women's studies, visual art, Raúl Niño, raulsalinas, raulsalinas, Add a tag
Mind you, gente, there can be no substitute for a Daniel Olivas post, but he's getting a little well-dererved R & R, so consider this a humble placeholder. -- LA
by Eunice Lipton
In French Seduction, art historian Eunice Lipton explores her sensual obsession with the icon of France, the pool of memory and the way that obsession is fused to a contradictory history of her childhood and her connection to the Holocaust. But before that, Lipton authored a biography on Degas and in Alias Olympia, she attempts to cast light on a pivotal, but now obscure figure in the Impressionist movement.
Victorine Meurent was the model for Manet’s notorious painting, Olympia. In it, Manet re-stages that ancient pose of the odalisque, however, Victorine appears in the painting as bold, sexually aware and powerful. This caused an outrage in Paris at the time, and sadly, is still the reaction a sexually self-aware woman receives in present time. I stumbled upon this book, looking for more role-models, fodder, inspiration, other lifelines.
I was glad this book found me. The story is so much more than the telling of the painting controversy. Meurent was an artist, a brilliant one in her own right. She and her work were buried in a barrage of lies as result of her posing for Manet. The popular story about Meurent was that she had descended into prostitution, drunkenness and despair. Not so different than the double-standard of scrutiny and criticism that women who push the barriers, especially, barriers of the body and sexuality continue to face. There still is a threat, albeit more sub-rosa perhaps, that in claiming one’s full physical and sexual power, a woman leaves herself open to the psychic version of public stoning for her ‘lewd’ behavior.
While Meurent did know despair, it was one born out of a career thwarted, and a reputation slandered. She lived a ‘comfortable’ life as bourgeois wife, but not one in which she could move freely, express her ideas or create within the confines of women’s roles at the time. Lipton wrote the book in a narrative style, so that it reads and moves like a novel. No stuff of fiction here, but the complex and brilliant story of a women who dared conventions, and was meted out the punishment of a gilded, dulled existence and obscurity as a result.
I was struck with how women are still offered the choice of ‘comfort’ vs. authenticity, with the implied message that an authentic will surely be the more painful one, the one with the greatest social and emotional costs. To the extent that this blackmail is still being played out, Lipton’s book is a sadly cautionary tale.
ISBN-10: 0801486092 ISBN-13: 978-0801486098
Raúl Niño , author of Book of Mornings will be appearing at:
Rudy Lozano Branch Library, 22 August at 7:00PM
1805 South Loomis Street
Chicago, Il 60608
312-746-4329
Please come and enjoy the readings, and diversity of Chicago neighborhoods.
And also.....
In preparation for City of Austin's Mexican American
Cultural Center's grand opening September 15, 2007,
The Public is invited to a MEET AND GREET Sneak
Preview featuring--
AMORINDIO:
Tributo y Celebracion for
raulrsalinas/Fundraiser for Red Salmon Arts:
Join usto honor and celebrate the life of Austin's elder
Xicanindio poet/human rights activist. A veterano of
Chicano literature/letters, raulrsalinas' writing and
activism have earned him international recognition as
a spokesperson for a diversity of political causes,
ranging from prisoner rights and national liberation
struggles to gang intervention and youth arts
advocacy.
raulrsalinas is the author of three collections of
poetry: Un Trip Thru the Mind Jail y Otras Excursions
(Editorial Pocho-Che, 1980; Arte Publico Press, 1999),
East of the Freeway: Reflections de mi pueblo (Red
Salmon Press, 1995), and Indio Trails: A Xicano
Odyssey thru Indian Country (Wings Press, 2006).
Recently, UT Press published a selected collection of
his prison wirtings, raulrsalinas and the Jail
Machine: My Weapon Is My Pen (edited by Louis Mendoza,
2006).
The tribute will feature performances and
presentations by renowned Chicana/o and Latina/o
writers and scholars: Miguel Algarin (NYC), Sandra
Cisneros (San Antonio), Carmen Tafolla (San Antonio),
Norma E. Cantu (San Antonio), Alejandro Murguia (San
Francisco), Rosemary Catacalos (San Antonio), sharon
bridgforth (Austin), Roberto Vargas (San Antonio),
Tammy Gomez (Fort Worth), Celeste Guzman Mendoza
(Austin), Levi Romero (Albuquerque, NM), Tony Spiller
(NYC), Jessica Torres (San Antonio).
Presenters on raulrsalinas' life include: Antonia
Castaneda (San Antonio), Roberto Maestas (Seattle,
WA), and Alan Eladio Gomez (Ithaca, NY). There will
be an opening ceremony by Danzantes Concheros y musica
movimiento Chicano by Conjunto Aztlan.
The celebracion will also include a Silent Art
Auction, curated by Chicana artist Jane Madrigal, with
over 30 pieces by artists throughout the Southwest,
and food and refreshments provided by Alma de Mujer
Catering Dept.
All proceeds will support Red Salmon Arts, a Native
American/Chicana/o based cultural arts organization
with a history of working within the indigenous
communities of Austin since 1983. This event is
sponsored by Red Salmon Arts, Alma de Mujer, PODER,
and UT Press. $10 dollar suggested donation.
Saturday, August 25, 2pm - 7pm.
Mexican American Cultural
Center, 600 River Street.
For more info:
512-416-8885/ [email protected].
Donation: Please send to Red Salmon Arts, 1801-A South
First St., Austin, TX 78704 Austin, TX.
For tax-deductible contributions, please contact Rene
Valdez first at
[email protected]
Bios for Performers:
Miguel Algarin (NYC) is the "poet laureate" of the
Lower East Side - and founder of the Nuyorican Poets
Cafe in New York City, where he has nurtured the
spoken and written word for nearly three decades.
Sandra Cisneros (San Antonio) is an American novelist,
short-story writer, essayist, and poet, whose works
helped bring the perspective of Chicana women into the
literary mainstream. Author of House on Mango Street,
Loose Woman, and Caramelo, among other works.
President and Founder of the Macondo Foundation.
Carmen Tafolla (San Antonio) is an internationally
acclaimed writer and regarded as one of the masters of
poetic code-switching. She often employs the
bilingual idiom of her native San Antonio’s Westside
in her poems. Author of various works, including
Sonnets to Human Beings, Sonnets and Salsa, and
Curandera.
Rosemary Catacalos (San Antonio) is the author of
Again for the First Time (Tooth of Time Books, Santa
Fe, 1984). A past Dobie Paisano Fellow, Stegner
Creative Writing Fellow, and the recipient of an NEA
grant, she has been the Executive Director of Gemini
Ink since 2003.
Norma E. Cantu (San Antonio) currently serves as
professor of English at the University of Texas at San
Antonio. She is the author of the award-winning
Canicula Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera, and
co-editor of Chicana Traditions: Continuity and
Change.
Alejandro Murguia (San Francisco) is is a two-time
winner of the American Book Award, most recently for
This War Called Love: Nine Stories, City Lights Books.
His memoir The Medicine of Memory: A Mexica Clan in
California, University of Texas Press, has been
nominated for the Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic
Writing.
sharon bridgforth (Austin) is the Lambda Award winning
author of the bull-jean stories (RedBone Press), and
love conjure/blues a performance/novel (RedBone
Press). Bridgforth has broken ground in the creation
and presentation of the performance/novel and in doing
so has advanced the articulation of the Jazz aesthetic
as it lives in theatre.
Roberto Vargas (San Antonio) is a community/labor
organizer and author of two poetry collections:
Primeros Cantos and Nicaragua, yo te canto besos,
balas y sueños libertad. He was a founding member of
The Pocho Che Collective, a loose coalition of writers
who published some of the first books of the
contemporary Latino literary renaissance taking place
in San Franisco.
Tammy Gomez (Fort Worth) is a native Texas writer and
performance poet, is featured in the PBS documentary
"Voices from Texas." She has published the work of
Yoniverse, a women's poetry group she founded, in the
anthology In a Loud Kitchen (Tejana Tongue Press,
1998); a second anthology, North Texas Neruda Love,
published by Tejana Tongue Press, was released in
January 2006.
Levi Romero (Albuquerque, NM) is an Embudo Valley poet
& author of In the Gathering of Silence (West End
Press).
Celeste Guzman Mendoza (Austin) is a San Antonio
native. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as
Salamander, Poet Lore, and 5 a.m., and in various
anthologies, including Telling Tongues, Red Boots and
Attitude, and Floricanto Si. She won the Poesia Tejana
Prize in 1999 from Wings Press for her chapbook of
poems, Cande te estoy llamando.
Jessica Torres (San Antonio) is a youth filmmaker,
activist, visual artist, and singer/musician. Her
short film, Los Punkeros, Chicano punk rock movement
with a twist of Conjunto, appeared on San Anto TV, a
TV Magazine produced by local youth through the San
Anto Cultural Arts Multi Media Institute (SAMMI).
Bios for presenters:
Antonia Castaneda (San Antonio) is a Chicana feminist
historian, teaches in the Department of History at St.
Mary's University. Her research and teaching interests
focus on gender, sexuality, and women of color in
California and the Borderlands from the 16th century
to the present.
Roberto Maestas (Seattle, WA) is the co-founder and
Executive Director of El Centro de la Raza, a center
for Seattle’s Latino Community. He has long been
involved in the ongoing struggle for civil rights in
the city.
Alan Eladio Gomez (Ithaca, NY) earned a Ph.D. in
History and an M.A. in Latin American Studies from the
University of Texas at Austin. A community organizer,
scholar, and radio journalist, Gómez studies post WWII
social movements involving multiracial and
transnational alliances of U.S. Third World peoples,
prison rebellions, political theater, and Latin
American revolutionary movements.
Bio for Conjunto Aztlan:
Conjunto Aztlan (Austin) represents a spiritual and
musical journey expressed through poetry and song.
The Conjunto was born of the Xicano Movement in
Austin, Texas, in 1977. Their purpose is to
celebrate, defend, and expand the musical, cultural,
and spiritual legacy of the Chicano people.
Lisa Alvarado
Dear Diana, sometimes I wonder if the mantra of my life is 'tired'!
And this Monday morning, your story is exactly what I needed to give me an inspirational boost. Sometimes life can seem like such constant hard work and one (ie me!) can get that overwhelmed, bogged down feeling!
Thank you for this - I feel renewed, revived and empowered!
What a great interview and a wonderful way to walk through your journey. I've long been a believer in journaling and encourage every person I counsel to do so. I would love to read your book!
edwina[dot]cowgill[at]yahoo[dot]com
Having been diagnosed with breast cancer in 2001, I don't consider myself a "survivor"...I am a "THRIVER"! Part of that healing process was journaling.
I look forward to reading your book.
Blessings,
Lynn
You are very inspiring. I recently lost a cousin to cancer. She wrote poetry and expressed herself with that. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you for sharing your journey with us.
Diana, thank you for sharing your story. I don't feel so alone. I had surgery to remove a number of organs, six months ago due to cancer. Because my thyroid continues to cause problems, I haven't been able to get back to writing yet but hope to soon. Your inspiration has been great and I look forward to reading your book.
Thank you.
Faye
Wow! This is so phenomenal and wonderful. I've recently been studying the effects that journalism has on people, but not in such a moving way. I look forward to such a wonderful book.
Thank you and be blessed!
My mother passed away in June from cancer, so your topic hit a chord with me. After watching my mother-in-law battle and lose 16 years ago I have been acutely aware of the emotions, fear, and acceptance we fail to see in those going through such an experience. I also am intrigued by your first book about your grandmother. My mother passed on to me letters my grandparents sent to one another before they were married. It is her wish they be put in book form and published (self-published if need be). I will be checking out your books soon.
It's so important to write the truth of our feelings, and to facilitate the healing process. You are a brave survivor and courageous person whose work will inspire others to thrive and write to heal.
I love that you are inspired by life. It's wonderful when strong, intelligent women endorse journaling. This is a great interview. Thanks.
B. Lynn Goodwin
www.writeradvice.com
Author of You Want Me to Do WHAT? Journaling for Caregivers
It is interesting that you started journaling around the age of ten...that was when my mother gave me my first journal, also. Her advice was, "write something every day, even if it just your name!"
My journals have kept me sane through much trauma. They have also inspired my other writing.
You are such an inspiration, Diana! Thank you for sharing your story with us.
Blessings...
I've always been a writer, but have had a block when writing about my daughter and my best friend's battles with cancer. I would hope that this book could help me both write myself and encourage my daughter to do the same. My friend always wanted to create a book, but was not afforded the chance before she passed on.
Thank you for writing this book, thank you for encouraging others and thank you for sharing your story.
Thank you SO much for having me on your blog and posting my interview. I'm delighted your readers enjoyed it.
Feel free to ask any questions you may have!
Diana- Like you I use writing to make sense of the world, and also like you, I was diagnosed with breast cancer almost 4 years ago. Joining a writing group for women cancer survivors shortly after my treatment was literally like a lifeline for me. I look forward to reading your book!
I can totally relate this: (Cause)"I try to live in the moment and appreciate and notice what is around me." (Effect) "I always have too many ideas for the amount of hours in the day." It's a beautiful thing in a sometimes painful way!