A Toronto psychotherapist embodies her parents' past in ways that aren't obvious to her and grows up in an environment she feels at odds with. Her parents' traumas during WW2 impinge on her life but she gains perspective, understanding and hope.
Dundas, ON Canada, Nov 05
Much interest has been generated about the impact of trauma and its transmission from generation to generation. In this poignant and humorous coming-of-age memoir, Toronto psychotherapist, Pearl Goodman, writes about just that topic.
When Their Memories Became Mine: Moving Beyond My Parents' Past intertwines Ms Goodman's experiences growing up in the 60's and 70's in a predominately White Anglo Saxon Toronto before it became the multicultural and cosmopolitan city it is today. As a young Jewish girl and child of Holocaust survivors, she is bombarded by the popular culture of the time but troubled by her parents who are very much influenced and plagued by their experiences in labour camps, the Holocaust and their lives as refugees and then immigrants in a strange land.
This is a book that will resonate with anyone who grew up with parents who escaped similar tragedies and for anyone wishing to understand that impact on children.
The advance reviews for this book have been glowing.
Dr. Yael Danieli, Clinical psychologist and Director, Group Project for Holocaust Survivors and their Children. New York, NY writes:
"With a keen attention to detail, Pearl Goodman deftly weaves her parents' tragic stories and their aftermath, Canadian realities, and her own, to reveal how legacies of traumatic experiences are lived out from generation to generation. A compelling and insightful read."
Kathy Page, author of Alphabet and Paradise & Elsewhere had this to say:
"Pearl Goodman’s memoir does far more than paint a vivid and often wryly funny picture of her childhood in 1960s Toronto. It charts her growing understanding that her parents' frailties and the consequent eccentricities of her upbringing were not wilful or whimsical, but the ongoing outcome of their suffering during the Holocaust. When Their Memories Became Mine is a moving first-hand account of the way trauma passes from one generation to the next, and how a child of survivors has risen to the difficult task of excavating and articulating a family history that is both intensely personal and historically relevant."
The literary website, Open Book Toronto said:
"Part local history, part cultural nostalgia and part rumination on the legacy of the Holocaust Pearl Goodman's memoir When Their Memories Became Mine (Bridgeross) is a moving, witty portrait of a life. Raised in Toronto by Holocaust survivors, Pearl tells both their story and hers. She also paints a picture of a Toronto struggling, sometimes comically, to find its identity".
And Julia Creet PhD: Department of English at York University in Toronto said:
"When Their Memories Became Mine movingly and powerfully invokes a time and a place and a feeling. Mid-Century, mid-town Toronto, a Jewish family and community rebuilds marked by losses that erupt in unpredictable and anachronistic ways. Time has stopped and time has moved on. Pearl Goodman deftly and compassionately remembers the minefields of living with survivor parents in an era when pop was young."
Pearl Goodman was born, raised, and resides in Toronto, Canada. After graduating from the University of Toronto, she taught high school English and Dramatic Arts. Then she chose to train as a psychotherapist and has now been in private practice for over ten years. Words and the human condition have always been her passions.
When Their MemoThe book can be pre-ordered at Amazon Canada: Amazon US: Chapters/Indigo: Barnes and Noble: Kindle
For further information, ries Became Mine: Moving Beyond My Patents' Past ISBN 978-1-927637-25-8 is distributed by Ingram and will be released on November 16, 2015. please see http://www.bridgeross.com/memory.html
Media Contact: Marvin Ross, [email protected], 289-260-0229
