(Main Topic):
Anthony Aleman was born in 1988 and raised on the fourteenth floor of a South Bronx housing project at the height of the crack wars. He spent much of his childhood in foster care and group homes. He wrote BARLESS because the truth needs telling no matter how ugly it gets, and because no one is broken - every warrior carries scars. It is his first book, told in the voice of the boy who lived it. He founded Barless Press, and lives in Rockland County.
My guiding principle became: I wanted readers to feel what I felt, not read what I went through. (How did that work for you in reality? Did you use it as a writing prompt, or as an editing tool?)
Write chapter at a time and edit: If I'm rushing past something, I stop and look inside. It becomes a therapeutic session. No one was a villain, even if as an adult, I can maybe see there was. I tell the truth at that time, new emotions not allowed in the book. Betraying the child if I did that. Disconnected from the story as an adult.
Trauma was most solidified memories, but the mundane days are a blur; disassociate
Support people checking in with you as you were writing.
Trust the reader, they understand the immersion,
I started questioning whether things I had always considered parts of my personality might actually have begun as ways of surviving childhood.
Shrinking and hiding is surviving, a bad situation is okay. As an adult, introvert? No. Maybe I'm not.
Response was shocking. Horrified (them) vs. normal (me).
Comes in different forms. Anxiety,
Mom story (FB analytics, mom viewed new story, paranoid that she'll come kill me); relax, It opened old wound.
Dove deeper "I'm going in there!" Followed curiosity, and be delicate, why am I feeling this way? Is it logical? Sometimes that leads you to the best writing.
Connect the dots between the childhood and the adult; somebody else wrote it. Who wrote this? My inner me. Out of body experience.
After leaving the Bronx, to wild nomad, the next memoir installment.
How to be human?
Don't overthink it. Just say it, you can delete it later.
IG @barlessamemoir
Valerie's Linktree: https://linktr.ee/valerieihsan
