Please
enjoy this interview with Phil Jourdan, author of the touching
memoir, Praise of Motherhood. Then read on to
learn how you can win huge prizes as part of this blog tour,
including $500 in Amazon gift cards and 5 autographed copies of the
book.
1. Who was your
mother?
Hey, perhaps the obvious thing is that
she was the single greatest person in my life--a woman who set
everything aside to help me when I went through a few rocky years, a
lover of animals and nature, a professor of mathematics and computer
science who worked because she needed something to do…
She was that lady who'd bring clothes
out to the homeless people in the streets when it was cold. She spoke
Portuguese, French, English, and Russian fluently. She took people
into her life and made them stronger, happier. She drove very
carefully.
She was one person among many to die
from something as trivial and terrible as an aneurysm; just one out
of all the people who died on November 11th, 2009, for no reason, and
without saying goodbye to any of us.
And, now, she's the subject of my book.
2. Who are you?
I'm a bearded, forever-anxious guy in
his mid-twenties living in the UK. I'm working on a PhD in Literature
and Religion. I have a band, I run a press, I write articles for
various publications, and I pace around a lot when I talk about
things that interest me.
3. Why did you write
Praise of Motherhood?
Because I couldn't bear the idea that
my mother's death might be just another sad event in the lives of a
few people. I wanted my mother to be remembered somehow — not just
by those who knew her, but by those who could end up wishing they had
known her.
It's not easy losing a parent, and I
wanted to write my way out of some dark places. To focus on the good
things. To remember with gratitude the way she did everything she
could to make her children feel okay.
4. Were you a mama's
boy?
Of course, I was. She was worth the
teasing from my young classmates. I loved her even when I was
furiously angry with her.
5. When were you
furiously angry?
From the age of 14 to 16, I was so
psychologically unstable that I had to leave school for a while to
stay in a private clinic and "recover" — which means they
pumped me full of medication and made me sleep for a few weeks. This
happened twice. My mother's support was crucial back then, because I
was a mess. I hallucinated, I was paranoid, and I wanted to die. Of
course, like any screwed up kid, I took it out on my mom.
I'd get so angry that I couldn't
breathe. Everything seemed to hurt me--physically and emotionally.
Because I trusted my mother so much, I took her for granted, too. I
knew she wouldn't abandon me if I broke down or lashed out. She was a
saint about my outbursts.
6. Is that what
Praise of Motherhood is about?
In part. What you'll find in Praise
of Motherhood is a series of short chapters on various
ways I related to my mother. Let me be clear that it's not a book
about mothers in general. It's a memoir about my relationship with my
mother, before and after her death. It deals with my weird
adolescence, then it moves on to questions about her private life
that I'll never be able to answer, and then it turns toward fiction.
I imagine a world in which mother didn't die on that day. I try to
reconstruct conversations I had with her and my father. Then I end
the book because I could go on forever and I think it's best to be
brief.
7. What was it like to
show the book to your family?
It was less terrible than I'd
anticipated. My great fear was that someone might object to the way
I'd written it. It's not "conventional" — there's a scene
in which I imagine my mother breaking into pieces and my sister and I
have to tape her back together before she accuses me of having killed
her. That scene worried me: what if my sister hated
it?
I'm happy to say it all went well. My
sister found that chapter moving, and my grandparents each expressed
their support. My father, who hadn't been married to my mother for
over a decade, was equally moved and helped me through the various
drafts.
8. Is everything you
write in Praise of Motherhood true?
If you read it, you'll see that some of
it is obviously fiction. I don't think the right distinction here is
between fiction and nonfiction; it's between truthfulness and
untruthfulness. The book is certainly truthful: if I make things up,
as in the chapter where I imagine what my mother's "secret life"
as an occasional spy might have been like, it's to show what I think
about when I wonder about her as a private person. I paint myself
pretty much as I was back then: irritable, self-involved, afraid. I
paint my mother just as she was: patient, terrified of losing her
child, and often helpless but willing to do anything.
The events that I depict in the more
"conventional" chapters are true. The dialogue is obviously
not going to represent exactly what was said, but the spirit of the
past is contained within it.
9. Who is this book
for?
It's for people who have lost someone
they loved and want to know how someone else handled their pain.
It's for parents who need a reminder
that their children can and will end up appreciating all the
sacrifices, all the patience, all the secret suffering.
And it's for anyone who is interested
in teenage depression, psychosis and anxiety, and wants to read a
memoir about how those conditions affect family relationships.
10. What's next?
A novel that begins with a mother's
funeral… and then goes in a totally new direction. I started it
just as I was wrapping up Praise of Motherhood,
and I was ready to let go of those memories for a while, but the
image of my mother's coffin going into the earth has stayed with me
so vividly that I had to begin a work of fiction with it. But beyond
that, it's an entirely different thing.
As
part of this special promotional extravaganza sponsored by Novel
Publicity, the price of the Praise of Motherhood eBook
edition is just 99 cents this week. What’s more, by purchasing this
fantastic book at an incredibly low price, you can enter to win many
awesome prizes. The prizes include $500 in
Amazon gift cards and 5 autographed copies of the book.
All the info you need to win one of
these amazing prizes is RIGHT HERE. Remember, winning
is as easy as clicking a button or leaving a blog comment--easy to
enter; easy to win!
To win the
prizes:
About the book:
Praise of Motherhood is a son's
tribute to the woman who not only gave him life, but helped him live:
through various psychotic breakdowns, tumultuous teenage years, and
years of feeling out of place in the world. Get
it on Amazon or Barnes &
Noble.
About the author:
Phil Jourdan fronts the lit-rock
band Paris and the Hiltons, runs the fiction press Perfect Edge
Books, and occasionally works on a PhD.
Visit
Phil on his blog, music site, Twitter, Facebook, or GoodReads.
1 comment:
I have this book on my TBR pile. It sounds so interesting. Thanks for sharing.
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