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 Novelist
and Essayist
5th Avenue Theatre, November 1, 1999
Biography
Excerpt
Selected Works
Links
Biography
Ursula Hegi’s development as a writer came in fits and starts.
While growing up in Germany, she wanted to write but lacked encouragement
and craft. She moved to America when she was 18 and studied writing at
the University of New Hampshire. Her first two books, Intrusions
(1981) and Unearned Pleasures (1988), were set in America. It wasn’t
until Hegi was in her forties that she began to write about her native
country and to explore her own heritage. She was raised in a small town
just outside Düsseldorf, similar to the fictional town of Burgdorf,
the setting for her novels Floating in My Mother’s Palm (1990)
and Stones from the River (1994). Living in a small town, she was
able to observe the peculiarities and unique pleasures typical of a close-knit
community. In writing about her heritage, she began to understand the
strange conspiracy of silence that settled upon Germany after the war,
a conspiracy that permitted the persecution of Jews during the war and
continued after the truth of the Holocaust was revealed. Hegi recalls,
“When I came to this country, I found that Americans of my generation
knew more about the Holocaust than I did. When I was growing up you could
not talk about it; it was absolutely taboo. We grew up with the silence.
It was normal and familiar; these are terrible words considering the circumstances.”
A research grant, awarded to Hegi in 1986, allowed her to travel back
to Germany for the first time in 15 years to research background material
for Floating in My Mother's Palm. During her visit, she also kept
an eye out for the Zwerg (dwarf) she remembered from her childhood. She
didn’t need to look far. While sitting in a café, the Zwerg
appeared at her table. Instead of replying to Hegi’s polite questions
about relatives, the gossipy Zwerg retorted, “I hear you’ve
been divorced.” It was only after Hegi shared some of the details
of her marital break-up that the Zwerg would give her information about
her grandparents. This bartering of information was the inspiration for
Trudi Montag, the beloved protagonist of Stones from the River.
Hegi’s work, Tearing the Silence: On Being German in America (1997),
explores the impact of the Holocaust on postwar German-Americans through
powerful interviews.
Ursula Hegi is the recipient of over thirty grants and awards, including
an NEA Fellowship and five PEN Syndicated Fiction Awards. She was nominated
for a PEN Faulkner award for Stones from the River and Floating
in My Mother’s Palm. She has also written over a hundred reviews
for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and The Washington
Post. For many years, she lived with her family in Spokane where she
was a Professor of Creative Writing at Eastern Washington University.
She now lives in New York City.
Excerpt
taken from Floating in My Mother's Palm (1990)
My mother swims in churning water, her face damp from cool drops that
descend upon her as if magnetized by the quarry hole. Wet now, her long
blonde hair looks dark. Her legs kick the water into frothing swirls which
she leaves behind. She dives a long smooth shape arching her back underwater
before her head and shoulders emerge above the surface like a reed springing
back into place.
*
* *
Lightning divides the sky like a new star, and my mother raises her face
toward the cool drops that fall faster now, harder. She can dance in the
water without her feet touching the ground. She does this by twirling
her arms in such a way that her body propels itself around. One early
summer evening, when I was nine, she shows me how. My father is at a dentist
convention in Bremen, and Frau Brocker has left for the day. My mother
and I walk to the quarry hole, shed the dresses we wear above our bathing
suits, and run into the water as raindrops strike our bare shoulders.
The water is warmer than the air, and I feel giddy and daring as I race
my mother toward the middle.
*
* *
Luminous bubbles from around my arms, my legs, and when we reach a place
too deep for us to stand, my mother teaches me how to dance. She twirls
around, and I try to imitate her movements. At first I’m clumsy,
slow, but soon I find that I, too, can dance in the storm, alone, without
holding onto her. When we leave the quarry hole, the brilliant lights
have stopped flashing across the sky, and the only sound is that of our
sandals slapping against the sidewalk. Though we don’t talk about
this, neither of us will mention our swim to my father.
Selected
Works
Intrusions (1981)
Floating in My Mother's Palm (1990)
Stones From the River (1994)
Unearned Pleasures and Other Stories (1994)
Salt Dancers (1995)
Tearing the Silence: On Being German In America (1997)
The Vision of Emma Blau (2000)
Hotel of the Saints: Stories (2001)
Web
Site Links
Reading guide
for Stones from the River
Book review
of The Vision of Emma Blau on Salon.com
Seattle P.I. interview
with Hegi
Underwritten
by Elliott Bay Book Company and Third Place Books
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