You’re
Not From Around Here Are You? Reminiscences Blog Tour
About the
Author
Helga
Stipa Madland was born in Upper Silesia and emigrated to the United
States with her family in 1954. She has three children and six
grandchildren. She is Professor Emerita at the University of Oklahoma
and is the author of academic and other books. Her husband, Richard
Beck, teaches Ancient Greek at OU in Norman, OK, where they live with
a dachshund and four cats.
For
More Information
About the
Book:
Title:
You’re Not From Around Here, Are You? ReminiscencesAuthor:
Helga Stipa MadlandPublisher:
Aventine PressPages:
202Genre:
MemoirFormat:
Paperback/Kindle
I
start with when I was born, then there was a World War, and then I
went to Norman.—Klodnitz, in Upper Silesia, now a part of Poland,
was my birth place; when everything collapsed in 1945 at the end of
WWII, my family and I became refugees. We trekked across Germany, to
the west, and eventually settled in a small village and then another
one. Next was Canada, then the United States, Missouri; eventually we
settled in Idaho, where my Father, who was a forester, found a job. I
did not stop there! I was married and continued my merry journey,
California, back to three different cities in Idaho, and later
Seattle, where I earned a PhD. My children were grown by then, I was
alone and ready to find a position. That’s when I ended up at the
University of Oklahoma in 1981, and have been here ever since.
For More Information
Book
Excerpt:
Not
long ago I returned from a summer of research in the German Literary
Archive in Marbach near Stuttgart, Germany. Marbach is the birth
place of the eighteenth-century writer Friedrich Schiller, author of
the “Ode to Joy” and many other famous works, and is also the
location of the Schiller Museum. The museum and the library are
visited by many Germanists, teachers and scholars of German language
and literature.
After
I took the shuttle from Will Rogers Airport in Oklahoma City to
Norman, home of the University of Oklahoma, I settled back into my
house and realized I needed an item that required running to a
department store. When I stood at the cash register with one or two
other customers and started speaking with the cashier, one of the
women standing in line with me said: “You are not from around here,
are you?” “No,” I answered. It was a question I had heard
many times. In fact, I had just heard it in Germany when I boarded
my plane at the Frankfurt airport; in German, of course.
My
role in life seems to be a fluent, but accented speaker of two
languages—English and German. German I learned at my mother’s
knee, as the saying goes, and English I learned when we emigrated
first to Canada in December 1952 and then to the United States in
September 1954. I turned fourteen in January of 1953.
This
is going to be my memoir. Friends have startled me by saying “I
can’t wait until your memoir comes out.” I had never considered
writing one, it seemed to me something for someone like Goethe,
Dichtung und Wahrheit
(Poetry and Truth),
or people who write smashing memoirs that turn out to be stunning
successes and end up being false. But then, how can one remember
everything exactly? I am scared to death about telling an untruth,
but somehow I think I am bound to if I proceed with this project.
And
proceed I shall because I have nothing else to do—except laundry,
shopping, cooking, watering plants, feeding cats, dogs and birds,
keeping up with family and friends on the internet, paying bills,
making travel arrangements, that’s about it. Richard keeps the
kitchen clean. And expresses a great deal of sympathy when I
complain, which I do a lot.
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