Hendrika de Vries is the author of the new memoir Open Turns: From Dutch Girl to New Australian. She also has written the memoir When a Toy Dog Became a Wolf and the Moon Broke Curfew.
Q: In our previous Q&A, you said you were inspired to write your first memoir after the events in Charlottesville. What inspired you to write this new memoir?
A: My first memoir, When a Toy Dog Became a Wolf and the Moon Broke Curfew, was a surprising success. As you know, it told the story of my childhood in WWII Amsterdam and ends with my family’s decision to emigrate to Australia when I was 13 years old. The book won many awards, and after reading it my friends, colleagues and readers urged me to write the continuation of my story.
This made me look at the significance of my experiences in Australia. I lived in Australia for 14 years until I moved to the U.S. as a young wife and mother.
I have since lived in America for most of my life, and I asked myself how the story of an immigrant girl, a teenage swimmer with emotional trauma and big dreams in 1950s Australia, could be of interest to anyone today.
But in sharing pieces with writers and readers, I began to realize that my Australian story is all about facing loss and belonging, the power of intentions, resilience and hope. These were all issues that brought many clients to my therapy practice.
And when I thought about it more, I saw how much a migrant, an adolescent and any person in a major life transition have in common. It’s not just my narrative, but the story of all of us.
What inner hopes and resilience do we draw on when we face loss and the need to adapt, as perhaps in the loss of a home and familiar neighborhood through natural disasters that are becoming more frequent, or the death of a loved one that turns our life inside out, a threatening disease or a new stage of life. How do we navigate those crucial transitions in our life story?
As a family therapist for 30 years, I was privileged to help people navigate those turning points in their lives, perhaps because I had experienced so many myself. And so, I was inspired to write the book Open Turns in the hope that my experiences might now be helpful to readers.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: I wasn’t sure at first what to name this book. Some working titles were The Woman I’d Be, Audacious Dreams, My Destiny Down Under. I ran them by friends and colleagues, even family in Australia, who said “I don’t think you are quite there yet.”
Then my editor Krissa at She Writes Press suggested I look at swimming terms. One term that jumped out at me was “Open Turns.”
As a young state champion swimmer in Australia, my strongest strokes were the breaststroke and butterfly, which demand that at the end of each length of the pool, you place both hands firmly on the wall, tuck the knees under, turn and push off with all your strength.
It is called an “Open Turn” in the swimming world, and it’s the way I have symbolically envisioned many a challenging turning point in my own long life. Those transitions, those times when we must take a breath and access the inner strength and resilience to face the next length, the unknown future, with hope and determination. We have all experienced those turns in our lives, whether we swim or not.
For me the title Open Turns: From Dutch Girl to New Australian, captures both the turns I made in my young years as a swimmer, but also symbolically as an immigrant, a young girl becoming a woman, a wife, and a mother, and at the end of this book, another transition as I leave Australia for the U.S.
Q: The author Christine Downing called the book “honest, sometimes sad, but ultimately hopeful…” What do you think of that description?
A: As you know, we all read and hear stories through the lens of our own unique experiences. Some readers of Open Turns have stressed the victories and accomplishments in my story. They love the champion swimmer.
A fierce feminist friend focused on the 1950s misogyny, while a male reader felt especially moved by the depth of my relationship with my father.
The reviews and responses to both my books have made me more aware that our stories change and evolve as we launch them into the world, and through our readers and reviewers they become part of a much larger unending story.
Christine Downing is a dear friend and colleague, who loved the book for the way it evoked memories of her own experience as an immigrant and as an adolescent.
She could see behind the swim championship victories and beauty contests and understand the struggles and sadness of the displaced immigrant girl who seeks to find her place of belonging in a completely new and different world, where, as Christine pointed out to me, there was no understanding of the war trauma I had just survived.
Open Turns is an honest book. I wanted my younger self to tell her authentic story, even as I was writing and remembering her experiences from my more mature woman perspective.
It was daunting at times to hear her honest voice with all its teenage ups and downs, her preoccupation with the female body as she matures from puberty into full womanhood, and the intense introspection of an adolescent girl who is struggling to find her own identity in a strange land and separate from her strong, heroic mother.
But her story is ultimately hopeful. It shows that it is possible to come through the challenges of trauma and painful transitions with resilience and hope for a brighter future. In the end, it is a success story.
Q: Can you say more about the impact it had on you to write this book, and what do you hope readers take away from the book?
A: As I said, writing from the point of view of myself when I was a vulnerable traumatized adolescent immigrant girl in the 1950s was both daunting and humbling.
The cover of the book shows the photo of a triumphant 17-year-old standing at the edge of the pool. I had just been chosen to represent the State of South Australia in the Australian National Swimming championships.
That girl is full of hope, but in the writing of her story I reexperienced the challenges of adolescence, the self-doubt and the strength of will as she intends to find her place in a new world far away from her roots. At times I had to stop writing, because the mature me felt like a mother who looks back and tells her daughter “You did good, my girl, I am proud of you.”
It renewed my admiration for the courage and guidance I received from both my parents and reminded me again of the resilience and courage needed to dare to leave behind everything familiar in the hope of creating a better life for your children.
I kept realizing that in some sense this was not just my narrative, but the story of all of us when we come of age in this complex world. Where do we belong? What sustains us? How may we hold on to our dreams when life can change on a dime?
In today’s increasingly polarized world where hatred and prejudice seem to be trending, I hope my readers will take away an appreciation for their own ancestral migrant stories and the power of compassion and kindness to unite us.
And for parents of adolescent girls, I hope my story helps affirm the benefit of women’s sports. Especially at this time when so many adolescents are constantly at the risk of being manipulated by social media outlets.
Being involved in a sport, in my case swimming, can help young girls find confidence in the strength of their own bodies rather than the constant disempowering focus on their appearance.
It creates community, overcomes differences and gives girls a chance to believe in themselves as Katie Ledecky, the Olympic gold medalist, points out in her lovely memoir Just Add Water.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Well, right now I am busy sharing the story of my new memoir Open Turns: From Dutch Girl to New Australian. I am writing guest articles, responding to requests for interviews, preparing for book launches and speaker’s engagements.
My memoirs have opened doors to conversations with authors and readers that make me feel part of a creative global community. They remind me that it’s never too late to create, to reflect, and to contribute something meaningful.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I feel great sadness and fear right now at the current division, prejudice and hatred that is being fanned in this amazing country of which my husband and I, my children, grandchildren, and great-grandson are citizens.
Seeing masked men with guns, like a modern-day Gestapo, break into homes, raiding restaurants, supermarkets, and agricultural fields to tear apart families and drag away, deport, and imprison hardworking people who grow our vegetables, take care of our children and elderly, manage our gardens, instead of giving them a pathway to becoming citizens, reminds me too much of my childhood in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam.
I remember when Nazis broke into our homes, including our own, to drag away those that were deemed inferior or unwanted. You would not dare leave your house without carrying the “right” documents that might keep you safe from being deported to a prison or death camp.
Truth telling is an expression of active resistance, Robert Jay Lifton, the psychiatrist who worked with survivors of Hiroshima and the Holocaust, writes in his book Surviving Our Catastrophes.
I agree and that’s why I believe that those of us who have witnessed oppression, bigotry, and tyranny have an obligation to tell our stories, and that is what I will continue to do as my personal act of active resistance.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Hendrika de Vries.
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