And The Winner Is...

Congratulations to Carol for winning Bending Toward The Sun by Leslie Gilbert-Lurie.

Please email Julie or Alice your mailing address so we can send the book off to you as soon as possible. Thanks to all of you for participating.

Girls Just Reading uses Random.org to produce the winner.

Giveaway: Bending Toward the Sun

Earlier, author Leslie Gilbert-Lurie did a great guest blog for us.  We are lucky enough to have a copy of her mother/daughter memoir Bending Toward the Sun to giveaway.

In order to qualify for this memoir, you need to do the following: 

• Be a resident of the US
• Enter the contest by October 30th at Midnight EST.
• Fill out the form below
  
  

...and good luck!

Girls Just Reading uses Random.org to produce the winner.

Guest Blog: Leslie Gilbert-Lurie

Tuesday I reviewed a great memoir, Bending Toward the Sun by Leslie Gilbert-Lurie with Rita Lurie.  Today I am honored to have Leslie Gilbert-Lurie join us for a guest blog.

It Can't Hurt to Ask: 15 Conversations to Have with Your Parents

By Leslie Gilbert-Lurie

Author of Bending Toward the Sun: A Mother and Daughter Memoir

For readers who still have the chance, there may be no greater gift you can give yourself and your children than to know more about your parents' early years. Sometimes the opportunity to ask questions simply presents itself, perhaps at a family reunion, or in a relaxed setting on vacation. But for many, it will not. I've found that since my memoir of my mother and I, Bending Toward The Sun, came out three weeks ago, people have told me that they wish they had asked their parents more questions about their pasts. We often have to pro-actively initiate these probing, more intimate conversations, which are not always in our comfort zones.

However the opportunity arises, what follows are 15 suggestions that will help open up these important discussions among family members.


1. Create a family tree with your mother, father, or both. Ask them to tell you everything they know about your ancestors, including birthplaces and important dates in their lives.


2. Ask your mother or father to describe his or her primary childhood home. Perhaps he or she can go on to tell you about a particularly happy memory of an event that took place there, and a painful memory as well.

3. Ask your parent what books, movies, and music were his or her favorite as a child. You can then move from there to ask about current favorite books or movies.

4. Childhood heroes provide a rich topic of conversation. Ask your parents who their childhood heroes were. Again, you can move from childhood to present day and explore whom they most admire and why.

5. Explore the family vacations your parents took as a child. Ask about where they particularly liked to go, and whether there were any trips they disliked.

6. Try and discover what the rules were in your mother's or father's family, and which of these rules, if any, they felt were unfair. Also use this opportunity to learn what responsibilities your parents had as children, and how these contributed to the people your parents evolved into.

7. Inquire about the things your parents wanted to do as children but could not because your grandparents wouldn't allow them to, they were unaffordable, or your parents did not possess the talent or skills to do them.

8. Ask your parents what questions they wish they had asked their own parents but never did.

9. It is not always easy to ask parents about their own fears, but it provides a good opportunity for mutual understanding. Ask your mother or father what he or she was afraid of as a child and about what he or she fears most today.

10. Ask your father or mother to describe a crush he or she had, or a special teenage romance.

11. Explore how your parents perceived themselves as children. Ask them how they thought adults and peers viewed them, and which aspects of these perceptions were accurate or inaccurate.

12. Ask your parents what first attracted them to each other, and what they most respect or respected in the other. If they are no longer married to one another, see if they will discuss what drove them apart and why.

13. Probe into the highs and lows of your parents' lives. Ask about their proudest accomplishments and greatest disappointments. If they had one thing to do over in life up to this point, what would it be and why?

14. While they are reflecting, ask your mother or father what they would most want to be famous for, if they were destined to be famous for something.

15. Don't miss the opportunity to explore how your parents view you. Ask your parents what about you reminds them of themselves at the same age. Ask what they are proudest of in you. And, if you are feeling particularly comfortable by that point in the conversation, ask if they have any questions to for you.

Most people have neither the time nor the desire to spend a decade writing a memoir about a parent or close family member, as my mother and I had the opportunity to do. But even a couple hours spent exploring the past with a parent could provide new and deeper appreciation and understanding. Moreover, a few pages of heart-felt answers could be very satisfying and useful to future generations.


©2010 Leslie Gilbert-Lurie, author of Bending Toward the Sun: A Mother and Daughter Memoir


Author Bio:
Leslie Gilbert-Lurie, author of Bending Toward the Sun, is a writer, lawyer, teacher of Holocaust Studies, child advocate, and former executive at NBC. Leslie Gilbert-Lurie is a member and past president of the Los Angeles County Board of Education, a founding member and past president of the non-profit Alliance for Children’s Rights, and a board member and co-chair of the Education Committee for the Los Angeles Music Center. She has been a recipient of the American Jewish Congress’s Tzedek Award for Outstanding Commitment to Civil Rights, Civil Liberties, and Justice, and the Alliance for Children’s Rights Child Advocate of the Year Award. This year she will be honored in Los Angeles by Facing History and Ourselves, for her work as a writer and teacher.

She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two teenage children. For more information please visit her website at http://www.bendingtowardthesun.com/

A special thanks to Ms. Gilbert-Lurie for taking the time to share this blog with us.

Alice's Review: Bending Toward the Sun

Summary:  The lasting impact of the Holocaust on a survivor and her daughter emerges in this joint account by Lurie-Gilbert and her mother. Lurie was five when a farmer agreed to hide her along with 14 Polish-Jewish relatives in his attic in exchange for jewelry and furs. While in hiding, Lurie witnessed the Nazis shoot a cousin and an uncle; her younger brother and mother died in the stifling, stinking hideout (years later her daughter, Gilbert-Lurie, wonders if the boy was smothered to quiet him and if her grandmother died of a broken heart). After the war, in an Italian DP camp, Lurie's father remarried to a stepmother Lurie resented; her father became increasingly depressed and remote when their fractured and traumatized family relocated to Chicago; and deep depressions haunted Lurie's own otherwise happy marriage. Gilbert-Lurie in turn recalls her mother's overprotectiveness, her career as a TV executive, a 1988 visit to her mother's childhood village and her own guilt, anxiety and sadness. Although the voices and experiences expressed are valuable, the writing is adequate at best, with none of the luminosity of Anne Frank, to whom Gilbert-Lurie compares her mother. Publishers Weekly

Review:  This has to be one of the most unique memoirs I have ever read.  It's a joint effort between Leslie Gilbert-Lurie and her mom, Holocaust survivor, Rita Lurie.  What drew me toward Bending Toward the Sun is the detail that Mrs. Gilbert-Lurie in particular describes the dynamic of her family and the effect the Holocaust continues to have on them.   The underlying theme of this memoir is whether grief and fear could be transferred from generation to generation.  If that is true, I think it's safe to say that strength and courage is transferable too.

Mrs. Lurie is truly inspiring.  She is a survivor in every sense of the word.  She is a woman who never had a childhood, who suffered such shocking loss at such a young age, yet learned to live a life full of joy.  She took what she was given and made the best of it.  She lived.  I enjoyed reading both her account of her time during the war and also her daughter's memories of her.  She was so brutally honest with herself at times, it was heartbreaking to read.  She moved me to tears during her bouts of depression.  I wanted to jump into the pages, lay down next her, cry into the pillow with her and comfort her in the way she needed but wouldn't allow anyone to give her. 


Mrs. Gilbert-Lurie did justice to her family.  I have been fascinated by World War II for some time now however this is the first time I read a memoir from a Holocaust survivors point of view.  She did a fantastic job of writing in a way that pity for Gamss family is the farthest thing from my mind.  I was honored to get to know a family who did everything in their power to protect each other, to care for each other.  This family did everything it took to survive and instill that will to survive in them all.

My favorite part came towards the end of Bending Toward the Sun during an assembly held by Mrs. Lurie to her grandson Gabe's school. 

"The main message she tried to communicate was that while life was rarely perfect, individuals had the strength inside to overcome setbacks, to love instead of hate, and to influence others to be better human beings...(she) urged the students not to go along with what they knew was wrong, mean or destructive to themselves or others."

And that is how you survive.

Final Take:  4/5

A special thank you to Julie Harabedian  of FSB Associates for providing me with this wonderful memoir.