How the book began
As a psychologist, I’m interested in how people manage when life remains difficult for a long time. Psychological research has a great deal to say about that. So do people who have lived through it, including those who learned from the experiences of their parents and grandparents.
I’m developing a book that brings those accounts together with original photography and the history of the places where they happened. I want to understand how people learned to cope, how they taught others, and what has changed for the next generation.
Learning from more than one generation
Older residents can describe events they remember and stories they heard growing up. Their children and grandchildren can tell me what became of those lessons. Some are still part of daily life. Others have been changed, questioned, or forgotten.
I’m interested in that whole process, including knowledge people acquire through their own work and relationships. A family might have a clear story about how it survived a difficult period, while individual members remember the experience quite differently.
The questions behind it
When money was scarce, how did people help one another? What happened in a household after someone died? What did children learn about responsibility by watching the adults around them?
Those questions also lead to harder ones. A rule that helped a family through one period may create problems later. I want to understand why people keep a practice, why they give it up, and what those decisions cost them.
Inside a chapter
Each chapter will begin with people and their accounts of life in a particular place. Interviews and photographs will sit alongside family records and local history where those materials are available.
Psychology can help explain parts of what I’m hearing: how a routine supports someone after a loss, for instance, or why a family keeps responding to a danger that has passed. I’ll make those connections where the research supports them. The chapter still needs to leave room for experiences that do not fit a simple explanation.
Starting in Cesuna
My wife’s family has roots in Cesuna, a small town on the Asiago Plateau in northern Italy. I know Giorgio Spiller, a local historian who has collected older residents’ memories for years. I plan to begin with an interview about his life and that work.
The chapter will follow memories of war and emigration, including the experiences of families whose relatives left for Australia, Chicago, and elsewhere. I also want to hear from people living there now about what they learned growing up and what they hope to pass on.
Mauritius is a planned later chapter. I have connections there too, but its history and the people I meet will determine the direction of that work.
From the book to the talks
I want to make a book that people spend time with, both for the photographs and for the writing. The interviews will also provide material for a series of talks, beginning with executives and organizations.
My hope is that hearing how someone else lived through a difficult period helps a reader examine something in their own life. I expect the work to change some of my thinking as well.