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Thanks to Lauren and the wonderful folks at Penguin/Random
House, I have a print copy of this intriguing book to giveaway to one lucky
visitor. Please see the end of the post for more giveaway details.
“A gorgeously textured, beautifully crafted
book that touches the heart, tenderly, with laughter and with wonder, even as
it reminds us of the strange, unyielding, often magical force of family in our
lives.” — Jay Neugeboren, author of Imagining
Robert and Transforming Madness
Here’s a bit of detail about WHITE WALLS:
Judy
Batalion’s mother was a hoarder. She grew up in a home stuffed with tuna cans,
VHS tapes and piles of junk that her mother couldn’t bear to throw out. As
the collection of flyers, old clothes, and bags of flour slowly grew, so did
Batalion’s desire to break free from the metastasizing clutter. After high school, she did a 180 from her
parents, trading a messy, emotional, “Yiddishy” Canadian upbringing for a
compulsively ordered, militantly minimalist lifestyle in Boston, London, and
eventually New York.
A former
standup comedian, Batalion recounts her experience in a new memoir that is “part
Nora Ephron, part Woody Allen” (Honor Moore). WHITE WALLS: A Memoir About
Motherhood, Daughterhood, and the Mess In Between (New American
Library Trade Paperback; January 5, 2016;
ISBN: 9780451473110; $16) is not a clinical look at hoarding and
compulsions, but a personal story about intimacy, stuff, survival, and the
things—both physical and emotional—that we pass on to our children.
Batalion
recounts how, growing up, she felt buried beneath the clutter—separated from
her mother, both physically and emotionally, by trinkets and trash. But at age
nineteen, she burrowed out, and onto Harvard, where her fascination with home—and
its power to foster or suspend intimacy—was fed by a thesis professor, who
suggested she write about Victorian asylums, and the asylum as home. Batalion
thought: “Who could write about that better than me?”
But just as she
seemed to have left behind all chaos—including a serendipitous marriage to the
son of a hoarder—she found herself enmeshed in one of life’s most
uncontrollable and messy experiments: motherhood.
That birth
of a new generation is what spurred this textured, clear-eyed, and genuinely
funny examination of her family’s search for home, and how it has manifested
differently in each generation: from her refugee grandmother’s flight from
war-ravaged Poland after the Holocaust; to the genesis of her own obsessive
compulsive tendencies; to the strange way she saw her genes expressing
themselves as her daughters grew older.
Do we ever
have control over the habits, idiosyncrasies, joys, and hardships we pass on to
our children? In WHITE WALLS, there
is no direct answer—only an illuminating and heartfelt meditation on the
meaning of home, family, and the stuff that fills the space between.
Please
join me now in a conversation with Judy.
You talk openly
about the isolation, fear, and frustration of being raised by a mentally ill
mother. Has she read the manuscript?
Judy:
My mother
asked me if she could read the manuscript and I felt I owed her that privilege
(or maybe punishment!). I decided to give it to her while I was visiting
Montreal. I was terrified she’d become upset and even threaten suicide so I
wanted to be nearby. “Judy,” she called me in her serious voice. “I’ve read
your book, and well…” My heart exploded. “The tone in chapter 17 is really off.”
What? “Your use of humor is jarring.” I wrote a whole book about your emotional
dysfunction and that was it?! But of course it was. Above all else, my mother
loves literature and appreciates writing. She regularly checks my website for
new clips. “I can’t believe you wrote
this,” she’ll say, which I try to take as a compliment.
In the book
you discuss your grandmother’s flight from Poland during the Holocaust, during
which she was pregnant. You write “[my mother] was conceived into the tempo of
a heart stalled, terrorized. . . . What pulse had been passed on to me?” How
does trauma pass through generations?
Judy:
My
grandmother (Bubbie Zelda) gave birth to my mother in 1945 in Kirgizia, on the
way from a Siberian work camp to war-ravaged Poland in a makeshift hospital
staffed only by a janitor. I gave birth to my daughter Zelda in 2011 in a
world-class operating room on the Upper East Side. While it might seem like as
a lineage of women we’re “out of the woods” (literally) of tragedy, we aren’t
really. Of course, I am exceptionally lucky and my daughter Zelda’s life is
incomparably more comfortable than my mother’s. But the emotional impact of war
and death lingers.
I once read
that it takes four generations for trauma to pass through a family. Recently a
study came out saying that this might even be genetic. My grandmother, the
survivor, was a wild anti-Hitler ranter; my mother, I think, experienced a
complex survivor’s guilt that played out as paranoia and a pathological victim
complex. Her refugee life, the constant movement, how she was born into so much
loss—I am sure all this affected her ability to self-soothe and feel confident
and whole.
You grew up
at a time when mental illness was taboo and less understood. Would your
experience be different for a child growing up in 2015?
Judy:
I think so.
I don’t think the word “hoarder” even existed in the 1980s, let alone formed
the title of a popular reality TV show. I think that if I’d been able to see
that the conditions around me had concrete titles and diagnoses—that they
existed outside my own home—I may have felt slightly less alienated and
confused.
What were
the biggest challenges in narrating the tale of your mother’s falling apart?
Judy:
The
challenge of memory. As much as I tried to mentally re-enter the moments of my
youth, to smell the carpet stenches and be in the backseat of that damp
seatbelt-less Pontiac, to touch the room around me and feel the awful anxious
uncertainty and unfairness of childhood, it was very difficult for me to recall
past scenes without them being colored by my current knowledge of diagnoses, by
how the story turned out. Was our living room really that dirty in 1986, or am
I imposing the 2015 version on my recollections?
Another
challenge is writing about family. I think of my parents as fair game! Then
there’s my children. The more Zelda matures, the less I feel able to write
about her. My husband Jon reads everything personal that I write—he usually
doesn’t mind what I’ve said. Then again, he’s usually the hero of my stories!
I’m always aware that I implicate other people, and I am constantly concerned
about how they might feel.
You wrote in
your college thesis that “a person creates a room, and a room creates its inhabitants.”
Judy:
The
philosopher Ernst Bloch wrote about how people design chairs, but the design of
chairs creates the way people sit. This
is a central idea to my college thesis, my PhD, my memoir, and my life. The
relationship between spaces and their inhabitants is, I believe, reciprocal. At
home I felt like I was drowning, inconsequential, seen in an oblique way.
Outside the house, then, I found it hard to touch people, literally. I wanted
nothing more than to be seen clearly.
You’ve said
“It’s taken me years to accumulate all this nothing.” How did you finally
separate your identity from your mother’s?
Judy:
The major
turning point came when my father finally reacted to the histrionic,
near-violent way that my mother treated me in a particularly bad episode. As soon
as he saw me, I could see me too. I was 30 years old.
A few months
ago I was trying on a skirt in a dressing room and caught sight of some spider
veins on the backs of my knees. I nearly had a heart attack at Joe Fresh. I
HAVE MY MOTHER’S LEGS. Identical. It was troubling for me, that connection. I
have a strong impulse to not be her, to not be her depression and anguish. But
I am her, in many ways.
How has
having a daughter changed your relationship with your mother?
Judy:
My mom was
hands-off, and though I’ve spent most of my life bemoaning her distance, I’ve
started to see the positive elements too. She may have crowded my life with
tuna cans but she gave me room to make my own decisions and mistakes, which is
something I try to give my daughter. Zelda herself is so organized and
clean-obsessed. Is she emulating me? Or was she always like that? As a child I
blamed a lot on nurture, but as a parent, I’m starting to think a lot more is
down to nature.
I’ve also
had some—sinister drumroll—hoarding inclinations. I don’t want to throw out
baby swings and onsesies. I have to force myself to get rid of Zelda’s craft
scraps. These objects are tied with so much positive feeling—love, creativity,
hope. I understand the desire to hang onto remnants of the good-times; who
knows when they’ll come again? All to say, I think I understand my mother and
her actions a little bit better. I feel closer to her.
Judy, thanks so much for
visiting with us today and sharing this insight with us. It’s always
interesting to learn about the author’s experiences.
Now for those who aren’t
familiar with Judy, here’s a bit of background on her.
 |
| Author Judy Batalion |
Judy
Batalion grew up in Montreal. She studied at Harvard before moving
to London, where she worked as a curator by day and a comedian by night.
She now lives with her husband and daughters in New York. For
more on Judy and her writing, visit her website.
ADDITIONAL PRAISE FOR
WHITE WALLS:
“In this terrific and powerful book about
hoarders, anti-hoarders, parents and children, Judy Batalion tells a
laugh-out-loud story about her own mother and daughter—and shows how profoundly
all of us are shaped by events before we were born, how trauma moves through
families, and how responsibility can be the most meaningful path to freedom.”— Dara Horn, author of A Guide for the Perplexed
“White Walls is an unforgettable trip
into a truly original mind. . . . You won’t read another memoir quite like this
one.” — Matti Friedman, author of The
Aleppo Codex
“Sharp,
quick, funny, but the kind of funny that sometimes has you feeling kicked in
the stomach and teary with the delight of recognition.” — Honor Moore, author of The
Bishop’s Daughter
“Clear-eyed and compassionate, Judy
Batalion’s White Walls is a sharply funny, evocative and moving
memoir chronicling her voyage from daughter to mother as she finds her place in
the world amidst the shifting currents of history, religion, time and place.
The wisdom of how to move forward while caring for the past emanates from every
page. Batalion brings a palpable warmth to difficult subjects that will leave
her readers inspired to contemplate the construction of their own stories and
how transformation is possible.” — Ruth
Andrew Ellenson, winner of the National Jewish Book Award for The Modern
Jewish Girl’s Guide to Guilt
“This book is honest, difficult, and perfect.
Batalion’s sharp wit and hard-earned wisdom provide the reader with hope that
we can all somehow find it in ourselves to embrace the inevitable chaos and
change that comes with living an imperfect life.” — Nicole Knepper, LCPC, author of Moms Who Drink and Swear
GIVEAWAY DETAILS:
Thanks to Lauren and the
wonderful folks at Penguin/Random House, I have a print copy of WHITEWALLS: A Memoir About Motherhood, Daughterhood, and the Mess in Between to giveaway. The giveaway is open to residents
of the U.S. only and will end at 12 a.m. (EST) on Friday, Jan. 15.
To enter, just click on the
Rafflecopter widget below and following the instructions. The widget may take a
few seconds to load so please be patient. A winner will be selected by the
Rafflecopter widget and I’ll send an email with the subject line “Thoughts in Progress White Walls Giveaway.”
The winner will have 72 hours to reply to the email or another winner will be
selected. PLEASE be sure to check
your spam folder from time to time after the giveaway ends. If you win and
you’ve already won the book somewhere else or you just decide for whatever
reason you don’t want to win, once again PLEASE
let me know.
Thanks so much for
stopping by today during Judy’s visit. Are you a hoarder or do you know someone
who is? What do you think is the advantage or disadvantage of being a hoarder?
a Rafflecopter giveaway
It’s time once again to share a few new videos from Penguin
Random House with you. 
