Judy Sandler is the author of the new memoir What Kind of Mother: A Reckoning. It focuses on her son's mental illness. She is the creative nonfiction editor for The Stonecoast Review and The Awakenings Review, and she lives in Maine.
Q: In your book’s acknowledgments, you write, “I didn’t mean to write a book.” How did you end up writing this memoir?
A: I received my MFA in creative nonfiction writing from Stonecoast, at The University of Southern Maine. Every few weeks I had to turn in 25-30 pages of writing to my mentor.
I wasn’t working on a particular project or book when I entered the program, as many students were. I started out writing essays about random experiences, but soon realized I was avoiding the thing I most needed to write about.
Later, I learned the expression, “Write about the thing you don’t want to write about.” For my packets, I started to hand in pages about these experiences raising my son, as well as my reflections on my own upbringing by my parents.
When it came time to write my thesis at Stonecoast, I put these essays together and turned them in to my thesis advisor. He told me, “These are great, but you have told your son’s story, now you have to tell your story.”
It took me a few years to understand what he meant—the difference between my son’s story and my own story, but once I digested that idea, I realized I had a book that could be the one I was looking for, but could not find, when I went through these experiences.
I went back to my thesis and changed the voice and the perspective to make sure the story was my story: what was happening to me, in my body, around me, what I said, what I heard. And in that way, I wound up with a memoir that reflected my story of raising my son.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: The working title for this book was “How Did We Get Here?” I still like that title, but my main reader for this book, Susan Conley, suggested I think of a title that was more specific to me as a mother and the questions I ask of myself throughout the book. I think “What Kind of Mother” more accurately reflects the voice in the book, which is that of a mother’s story.
The title is also meant to ask the question rhetorically, as in, “What Kind of Mother? All kinds of mothers”—because the decisions I made as told in this story, are decisions I believe all kinds of mothers would make, and that is the point: to share my story of raising my son with severe mental illness so that this story does not remain silent, surrounded by stigma. I hope that by publishing the book all kinds of mothers will feel to tell their stories of mental illness in their children.
Q: The writer Morgan Talty said of the book, “[T]his is art, this is literature with a capital L, literature built on the foundation of emotion, the very thing that allows any reader to connect to.” What do you think of that assessment?
A: First, I am flattered by Morgan’s words. I think the assessment is accurate though.
In reference to the book being described as “literature,” I wanted the reader to feel the experience in the same way that I did. In order for that to happen, I decided the chapters should be concentrated, powerful descriptions, without a lot of explanation about background.
I think readers are smart and figure out the back story, if the writer pushes on with the scenes with enough pace and vivid detail. The book is written in the same way I remember events, which is not necessarily chronological, but feels more fragmented and whip-like.
And then, in reference to the book being “built on the foundation of emotion,” I feel like I achieved that goal. If a writer does not tell the truth in a piece of writing, the piece will not succeed in connecting to the reader, it won’t resonate.
In telling my truth and not running away from the emotion, I believe the book is made all the more relevant to any reader, and particularly a reader experiencing the same situations with a child.
It’s a great feeling when an author like Morgan Talty nails what a writer was trying, all along, to do in the writing of a book.
Q: What impact did it have on you to write the book, and what do you hope people take away from it?
A: To write a memoir is to make yourself vulnerable in the world. Emily Rapp Black, who wrote The Still Point of the Turning World about her terminally ill son, reports that she often was told, “I would die if I were you,” from other mothers who had read her story.
Along the same lines as “I would die if I were you,” I often get the comment, “You are so brave.” But I did not write this book to be brave, or to focus attention on my story.
In fact, the desire to publish the manuscript came more out of a frustration with my own shame and silence. I think I was tired, no, I was exhausted, from pretending mental illness had somehow escaped my family, and all was perfectly fine.
And when I started to look closely, I realized not only was I not alone in my experience of having a child with mental illness, but chances were very good (one in five, according to National Alliance on Mental Illness) that the people I with whom I was speaking had a child, mother, sister, brother, husband, who also had a mental illness.
I suppose publishing this story makes me vulnerable, but I prefer to think of it as just telling the truth. If more people told the truth about their relationship with mental illness, writing a book like this and putting it out there would not have to be considered an act of bravery.
Q: What are you working on next?
A: I am working on a nonfiction researched book about an incident that occurred in an independent school in Baltimore. I hope it will be titled “How Did We Get Here.”
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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