Moving to www.gillianmarchenko.com. Join me!

After careful consideration, I have decided that in the interest of sanity, design, and simplicity, I will no longer post on Pocket Lint.

Instead, I will post at least once a week at www.gillianmarchenko.com. I hope that all my friends from Pocket Lint will join me over there. Please? I have so enjoyed our interactions here and look forward to continuing relationships in my new digs.

The Beautiful One Has Come, Stories by Suzanne Kamata book review

The more I dip my feet into the ocean of writing, I am surprised by others in the water; gracious, talented writers willing to share a little insight and provide encouragement.

A great writer is far better than a rock star (sorry Bon Jovi, I still love you). So I'm blown away when a fabulous writer not only accepts my friend request on facebook, but also returns an email, or answers a question or two, and points me in the right direction with my work. These writers are night lights helping me stumble along, illuminating a very dark hallway known as the publishing world.

Suzanne Kamata is a night light author for me. I'm a huge fan of two anthologies Suzanne edited. In fact, I keep both next to my bed.

Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs

Call Me Okaasan: Adventures in Multicultural Mothering

Suzanne is a Michigander, living as an expat in Japan. She has a child with special needs and she's a writer! Our similarities make me a bit giddy. So when I heard she was looking for reviewers for her new book, I thrust my electronic hand up in the air.

It is my privilege to review The Beautiful One Has Come, Stories by Suzanne Kamata on Pocket Lint.


After reading the first story in the collection, I started to tweak my daily schedule to secure an earlier bed time. I couldn't wait to score a few blissfully quiet moments to jump into another story in "The Beautiful One Has Come." Suzanne is a gifted writer. Story after story confirmed the universality of real life, braided effortlessly with continents and struggles and humanity.

I lost my breath as I was eerily whisked back to Polly's birth while reading "Polishing The Halo," a story about an American mother coming to terms with her baby's disability while living as an expatriate in Japan.

Here's an excerpt:

Trina was wrapping up one of her hilarious tales about trying to find underwear in her size in Japan. Their laughter drowned out the Japanese pop music coming from the
speakers. When things had settled down, Trina leaned over toward Ana and clucked her tongue.

"Aren’t you the sweetest little baby?” she said in a high voice.

“She can’t hear you,” Kelly blurted out. “We had her tested. She’s deaf.”

The smiles died. Eyes dropped to laps.

Elizabeth was the first to recover. Oh, honey,” she said, laying her hand on top of Kelly’s. “Please. If there’s anything we can do to help, let us know.”

Kelly bit her lip, determined not to cry, and nodded.

“Things could have been so much worse,” Lisa added. “She’s perfectly healthy in every other way. She’ll be fine.”

“She can still be Miss America,” Trina chimed in. “Or an actress like that woman who won an Academy Award.”

“Sure,” Elizabeth said.”She can do anything. I heard there’s a deaf guy playing Major League baseball.”

I appreciated the gentle camaraderie between a straight, American woman and a gay, Hawaiian dance teacher in "Hawaiian Hips." And I loved "Woman Blossoming," a story about a young painter who seems to place her art behind her marriage to help her husband achieve greatness. She holds her talent close, though, and that one act of not losing herself proves to be all the fulfillment and provision one could ask for in life.

I am not much of a critic. The way I measure a good story is how much of myself gets lost and found in words. I can only get lost in words when the writing doesn't get in the way. I can only be found in writing when the story points to something in me that connects to another person.

If you were to ask me what constitutes a good story, my answer would be staying power. If I find myself thinking about a story days afterward, it is good.

Many of these stories still roll around in my mind.

Buy a copy of "The Beautiful One Has Come" here.

Here is Suzanne's biography from her website:

Suzanne Kamata was born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan. She is most recently from Lexington, South Carolina, and now lives in Tokushima Prefecture, Japan with her husband and two children. Her short stories, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in over 100 publications including New York Stories, Calyx, Crab Orchard Review, Pleiades, Kyoto Journal, The Utne Reader, The Japan Times, Brain, Child, Skirt!, Ladybug and Cicada. Her work also appears in the anthologies Yaponesia, The Beacon Best of 1999, It's a Boy, It's a Girl, Literary Mama: Reading for the Maternally Inclined, Not What I Expected and Summer Shorts. Formerly fiction editor of Being A Broad, a magazine for foreign women living in Japan, she now serves as fiction editor for the popular e-zine Literary Mama, and edits and publishes the literary magazine Yomimono. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and received a special mention in 2006. She is also a two-time winner of the All Nippon Airways/​Wingspan Fiction Contest.

How my Dad pointed me to God

Here's a short excerpt about my dad from my memoir, "KRASATA." Happy Father's Day, Dad!

I have this memory from the day I moved into the dorm my freshman year of college. My dad wasn’t thrilled with the idea of Bible College for me.

“What kind of job can you get with a Bible education? You need to learn something marketable. I had hoped you would go into journalism, maybe consider helping out at my newspaper later in life.”

He consented though, after learning that the college was tuition free, a two-hour car ride from home, and that I would major in Communications and minor in Bible.

The day I moved in to the dorm, after my brother-in-law Bill, a friend, and my father had moved everything up to the eighth floor to my room, mostly without elevator assistance, my dad and I stood in the foyer. We were trying to say goodbye,but both of us were distracted. Another family near us had formed a circle by holding hands. They bowed their heads and the father began to pray. My dad looked at them and then looked at me.

“Come here, Gill,” he said, sweeping his arm towards the hallway. I followed him out the door.

He put his hands on my shoulders while other new students and their families walked by, some turning around to see what we were up to. “Now, I know this is a big step for you. Do well, and, um, call us if you need anything. And, uh, here’s twenty bucks.” He handed me a stiff twenty dollar bill and kissed my cheek. Even though we don’t share the same core beliefs about God and the world, I was assured of his love and support that day, as I have been for my whole life.

While I hugged my father after our long trip back from Ukraine with our newborn daugther who had Down syndrome, I imagined that we were in the corridor of another huge shift in my life: we were stepping into the world of special needs, and the hug evoked similar stirrings in me, as it had on the first day of Bible College. Although my dad didn’t understand what it felt like to have a child with a disability, his presence was a sure thing. He would be there for me through this transition and he would love our baby more than life.

Part of God's plan for my life was to provide me with a dad who loves me and supports me unconditionally. When I was sixteen years old and my friend told me that God was someone I could trust, that he was a good heavenly father, it was no stretch of the imagination to believe her. I believed easily partly because of the stability and love I receive from my Dad, love that provided me a quasi-healthy self esteem (I mean, I am still a girl and I hate my jello-like tummy) and the belief that I am valuable. My Dad has always made me feel like I wasn't alone in this life.

I don't take this gift lightly. I know many daughters do not have these thoughts about their fathers.

And today, on Father's Day, I am thankful.

Conundrum about my memoir KRASATA

So... I am in the throws of rewrites for my book KRASATA, a Memoir of Motherhood, Down syndrome and Unexpected Beauty.

Writing is going well. I am glad that I got help from an editor before rewrites. Worth every penny!

The conundrum? Well, I am still a few chapters away from finishing and the word count is already over 68,000 words. KRASATA is getting a tad long at this rate and I can't decide if I should include both Evie's adoption and Polly's stroke at the end.

The options?

Include both, and have a looooong memoir, place the adoption where it fits chronologically and end with Polly's surgeries.

or

Cut out Polly's stroke and surgeries. Then the story would start in Ukraine with Polly's birth and end in Ukraine with Evie's adoption?

Opinions, PLEASE! I beg of you. I'm stuck!!

An Excerpt...

...of my memoir, (a taste of the book, if you will) is up at my writing blog IN A WORD.

Check it out!

Writing, reading, yoga and friends

So... maybe a few of you have noticed my absence here recently. Although you're probably not frequenting this blog as much if there aren't new posts. It's all quite cyclical, isn't it?

Someone on facebook asked me about the lack of new posts. Besides the fact that it feels good not to have to post about adoption paperwork and pending brain surgeries, the answer is quite startling (at least to me). I've actually been been busy doing things in real life. I know. Altogether surprising! It's been at least four years (coincidentally, Polly will be four years old next month)since I've been involved in structured, out of the house, non-mommy (but really, can one escape?) activities.

On Monday nights I go to a yoga class at Hamlin Park down the street from our house. I was afraid of what the class would be like, envisioning that $40 for three and a half months would land me in a cold gym with a 'yoga' instructor named Butch, in sweat pants that need to give just a tad more, barking out orders for everyone to find their downward dog.

Pleasantly, the class is taught by someone who seems to know how to teach yoga and we meet in a theatre room transformed with a padded surface, warm lighting and floor heaters. I usually get a place near a woman I've deemed 'the Darth Vader of yoga.' She breathes in and out so heartily, at first it was annoying. Then I realized she's actually relaxing, something I need to work on. Upon this discovery I've become her rebel soldier, learning from the master how to breathe deep.

On Thursday nights I go to to The Writer's Loft, a writer's workshop just minutes from my house. It's been wonderful to learn more about story craft. I always change my shirt right before leaving the house, insuring there won't be any left over dinner fed to the girls or spit up on my writer alter-ego. I try to act very non-motherish in class but it's a challenge. The first week there weren't enough chairs for everyone. It worried me greatly. I kept offering my place to a paper thin woman on the floor in front of me, practically threatening her at the break to PLEASE TAKE MY SEAT. This young woman did not come back the next week but it can't have anything to do with me, right?

Then last week someone left a credit card in the bathroom. That would not do. I went around the group asking whose card it was until I found the owner. I think now everyone there knows I'm a mom. If there is only one tea bag left during break I'll go without.

The class inspires me to make more of a priority to write. I'm working, once again, on Polly's project, a story (if I ever finish) about Polly's birth in Ukraine etc. I'm also playing with a short story (well, it's short for now but may morph into something else, I'm just the person holding the pen) about a middle-aged man grieving the loss of his marriage and family after his daughter dies. Happy stuff, I tell you.

And then there's the absence of television during Lent which allows plenty of time to read and hang out with family and friends. I am meeting a friend tomorrow and some more people on Thursday. Last night my friend Amy from church came over for a few hours. It's been very good for me. Very mind opening, I feel like I'm engaged more day to day. (and yes, I'll probably resume my television stupor on Easter right after the celebratory service).