by Julie Pratt
On the island of old women
we wear sneakers
with thick, sturdy soles,
laces that loosen to
the protrusions of our feet,
shoes in dozens of colors that
may or may not match our clothes.
We don big, floppy hats
to shade our faces,
wear sweaters on warm days,
apply bright red lipstick
whenever we like, and
never shave our legs…
Recently, I’ve been reading through the memoirs in Persimmon Tree’s online classified section, the site we call ArtsMart. It had not occurred to me before how varied and rich the genre is.
Persimmon Tree memoirs come in many flavors. Two of them—Because He Loved Me by Margie Crowe Wildblood and An Old Man’s Darling by Deborah K. Shepherd —are about May/December romances. Too much of the same, I thought before I’d read them. I couldn’t have been more wrong. It was fascinating to compare and contrast such very different perspectives, styles, lives. We all have facile opinions about a young woman falling for a much older man, stereotypes that faltered when I’d read one of these and were totally overturned by the time I’d finished both.
For an age cohort as large as ours to reach their seventies and eighties with so many of us still pretty strong, still basically healthy, still actively doing and seeking, is a new phenomenon. We are charting a (sometimes bold) new course into unexplored territory, and many of us are writing and reading memoirs about our present day selves. They are of inestimable value; but they are not self-help manuals by any means.
Each memoir has unique elements. For a darkly humorous treatment of a woman stumbling through the crises of living with an aging body, I highly recommend Mary Donaldson-Evans’ aptly (and ironically) titled One Foot in the Grave, The Other on the Treadmill.
Sandra Butler’s Leaving Home at 83 and Now What? comprise a two-book saga that takes her, often hilariously, sometimes poignantly, always movingly, from eighty-three to eighty-eight, from a retirement home to living on her own (yes, in that order). Finishing them, you will probably want to join me in urging her to make this a trilogy: “Sandy, I want to know what happens next!”
In If You’d Only Listen, Rosie Sorenson tells a very different story, but one equally important to women of our age. When her husband is hospitalized, she must find the grit to advocate for him in an alien world of self-assured doctors, penny-pinching insurers, and corporate hospitals.
Some of the memoirs, such as Notes from Planet Widow by Gwen Suesse, are about the ultimate loss, the death of a beloved partner or spouse. Difficult as these chronicles may sometimes be to contemplate, ultimately they provide the solace that comes from knowing we aren’t alone and that there are ways not to conquer grief but to live with it.
Many of our best memoir writers focus not on what is happening now, but on people and events from long ago, uncovering, sometimes for the first time, memories that, though buried, framed their lives and shaped their choices for decades.
We read these because we expect the author has found a way to heal old wounds, a way that may also help us confront our own grief or trauma, the mistakes and misdeeds that cloud our own lives, and to heal as these writers have.
Often, as in Countermelodies by Ernestine Whitman, memoirs tell the archetypal woman’s story: a young girl betrayed by the very men whose duty it was to protect and mentor her.
Equally often, the memoir is about the loss of someone deeply loved. In From Seed to Tree to Fruit, Rebecca Mlynarczyk writes about her beloved father, who died while she was still a child. We join Mlynarczyk as she searches old documents, coming to realize that he suffered a psychotic break and died in a mental hospital, his untimely death an event that had been shrouded in fearful and uneasy silence.
Mothers, too, loom large in women’s memoirs. In Mother-Daughter Banquet, Alice Bloch recounts the loss of her own mother at the age of nine, becoming a surrogate mother to her four younger siblings, and then finding surrogate mothers of her own. And any of us who has ever suffered a teenage frisson of embarrassment over a parent will squirm in recognition as we read Mother Once Removed, Ellen Leary’s sometimes hilarious, often poignant memories of the downs (and occasional ups) of being the shy, retiring daughter of a glamorous and flamboyant woman.
Women of our age have lived through many shifts in cultural expectations about what women are supposed to be and do, and many of the memoirs in ArtsMart reflect our own hard-won feminist perspectives. Through memoirs like Claire Kahane’s Nine Lives, we can relive those lifetime journeys of self-transformation and renewal. Kahane’s story rockets from youthful rebellions, some of them aboard a motorcycle, to a late life visit to Auschwitz and a consequent confrontation with family history.
In the aptly named NOT a Father’s Daughter, Elizabeth Rodenz describes the resolve not to be bound by patriarchy and the choices it has enabled her to make. In London Sojourn, Rebecca Knuth describes a very different trajectory towards transformation and fulfillment, one that begins, to her surprise, after she has retired.
And, every so often, someone has to write the memoir its subject could not. In The Story That Must Not Be Told, Persimmon Tree Advisor Deena Metzger has courageously and compassionately stepped in to tell us about a young German woman who committed suicide in the 1970s, felled by the realization that her family’s wealth was from the military shipbuilding company, owned by her grandparents and great grandparents, whose profits had come from sales to Hitler’s Navy.
Jane Manaster has written a memoir in short stories. I challenge you to figure out which stories in Perceptions are Manaster’s, which her relatives’, and which maybe (just maybe) are fiction.
I hope you will enjoy reading these memoirs as much as I have. I know that you will come away from each of them feeling your time was well spent. The easiest way to find them is to click on this link to ArtsMart.
Just a reminder: when you purchase an item from ArtsMart, you are helping Persimmon Tree fulfill its mission of providing an audience for the writing and art of women over 60. ArtsMart’s advertising rates are purposely set very low in order to afford many older women writers and artists the opportunity to connect with potential purchasers.
Persimmon Tree is an Amazon and Bookshop associate, which means our magazine receives a small royalty every time you make a purchase by clicking through to Amazon or Bookshop. The price to you is no higher, but your purchase helps Persimmon Tree continue its vital work.
In Snakeberry Mamas Mary Alice Dixon’s words from the wild conjure an Appalachian landscape of lust, where sex, song, and witchy women charm the reader with chant. From the crossroads of Witcher Way Holler to the waters of Hungry River, these poems carry you into a magic world of owl-women, dandelion girls, and the memories of dead mothers alive in the heartwood of trees. In these liminal places grief makes knife blades of red pickled eggs; a goddess offers salvation in tongue of fire; a hellfire-and-brimstone suffragette shares a recipe for britches with balls. Mary Alice Dixon makes poetry that muses mountains and maps gardens you will never want to leave.
Jean Zorn is publisher of Persimmon Tree and secretary/treasurer of the Board of Directors of Persimmon Tree Inc. She is a lawyer, and retired in March 2018 from the City University of New York School of Law, where she had worked for more than 30 years, primarily as a Professor of Law, and, most recently, as Senior Associate Dean for Administration and Finance. She also taught at the Florida International University College of Law, the Law Faculty of the University of Papua New Guinea, and the University of the South Pacific School of Law in Port Vila, Vanuatu.
Sally Buffington is a writer and photographer. From her home base in southern California, she occasionally migrates back to native ground in Cape Cod, MA. Always aware of sensory experience and memory, Buffington takes you into her thoughts wherever she finds herself. Follow her blog at
I am delighted to find a source of stories where I can read memoirs and stories written by women sixty and over. I am in my late 80s and just learning I too have stories and memories to tell. If I don’t share my stories, I will soon become invisible.