From Orphan to Cultural Father
The Memoir My Dad Wouldn’t Write is a Radically honest conversation between a daughter and her dad. My dad has had an incredible life as a poet, activist, professor, and cultural worker. He wouldn’t write a memoir, so this series of conversations is partly that.
My dad says he was orphaned through the death of his mother at age 9 and through the abandonment of his father at the same time. In this episode he shares his memories of Emma Jean Hutchison, a woman who bore 9 children and was pregnant when she died of an aneurism in 1947. We talk about how his mother’s death, which to him felt like a disappearance, informed his work as a mentor over his 40 year teaching career.