Award Winning Author Marita Golden is in THE HAVEN!

Award-winning author, MARITA GOLDEN is back! She was on in Season 3 when we celebrated the 30th anniversary of her book, MIGRATIONS OF THE HEART, and MARITA just recently released her book, US AGAINST ALZHEIMER’S: STORIES OF FAMILY, LOVE, AND FAITH…which is her 2nd book on the subject of Alzheimer’s.

Episode Transcript

(00:54):
Hello, Dreamcatchers, Welcome to anotherexciting day in the Writers Haven. Award
winning author Marita Golden is back.She was on in season three when we
celebrated the twenty fifth anniversary of herbook, Migrations of the Heart, and
Marita just recently released her book UsAgainst Alzheimer's. There it is Stories of

(01:15):
Family, Love and Faith, whichis her second book on the subject of
Alzheimer's. This is a very importanttopic and I'm happy to have her here
to share insights on the making ofthe book and her advocacy on the subject.
So without further ado, please joinme in welcoming author Marita Golden to
the Haven. Hello Marita, gladto be back, Glad to have you

(01:38):
back, and you know so muchto talk about just Alzheimer's is just a
topic that would probably take two sessions, but I really wanna focus first on
your process of writing, and Iwanna go back to your first book,
The White Circumference of Love, whichMigrations of the Heart I love dearly,
but this one is my absolute favoritebetween the two. Between the two,

(02:02):
and you know what I love mostabout this book is the way that you
told the story, even from thehead of the person that all had Alzheimer's,
and so, just as Acra recapfor our dream Catchers, it's a
story. It's a family story aboutGreg and Diane, married couple and the

(02:27):
husband, Greg was an architect,very very successful architect, and he was
the family was devastated by this newsof Alzheimer's, and you told the story
fiction. But it just it's justa beautiful, beautiful story of love and
just the tragedies of the of Alzheimer's, but still the silver lining of it,

(02:54):
if there can be one. Letlet's talk a little bit about it.
And you know what, why wasit important? Well? I hadn't
planned to write the book. Iwas working on another novel and I kind
of hit a wall. I reallyjust felt like I couldn't go any further
with that project, so I putit aside. And then a couple of
weeks later, the characters in thatnovel showed up in what became The Wide

(03:17):
Circumference of Love, and to mysurprise, I found myself writing a story
about Alzheimer's disease. I think thatI wasn't surprised in one sense, because
I've never been afraid to tackle kindof serious, difficult subjects in my work,

(03:38):
but I don't have any particular familymember or family relationship to the disease,
so I had to do a lotof research. I've had to do
a lot of research for a numberof my novels. For my novel After
about a police officer who shoots ayoung man during a police stop, I
had to ate a few lots ofcops. So for this one, I

(03:59):
spent about four years talking to families, reading a lot of books, novels,
nonfiction, and just really immersing myselfin what this disease did to families
as well as to the people withthe disease. I spent a lot of
time at a memory care unit justwatching people with the disease going through their

(04:20):
daily life. And I talked towomen who were married to men who have
the disease. Because in the book, Diane Tate is the main character,
and it's really the story of howthe disease affects her as a caregiver and
the changes that are imposed on herlife as well as a life or the
whole family, right, And theway that, as I said at the

(04:44):
top, that you really really gotinto the narrative as far as helping the
reader to understand from the perspective ofthe person that was afflicted with Alzheimer's is
it's just a extraordinary I've never readany work that has done it to the
degree that you've done it. Andso how difficult was it in finding that

(05:08):
voice? You know? As awriter, Well, fiction is the place,
the space, the home of thosethings that it's difficult for us to
imagine, to think, or tospeak. And so once I had done
a certain amount of research and reallytalked to families, I then said,

(05:29):
okay, well, how do Ireally get the reader inside the skin of
the experience of someone who's living witha disease. So I gave myself permission
to imagine what that would be like. Now. Imagining that voice was informed
by interviews with people who work withthose with Alzheimer's, as well as my

(05:49):
own experiences of just sitting with peoplewith Alzheimer's, talking to them, being
present with them. So but evenwith the rece I still had to make
an imaginative leap. I had tosay, okay, you can do this.
You as a person, as awoman who doesn't have Alzheimer's, can

(06:09):
imagine what it's like to be inthe mind of a man who does have
Alzheimer's. So I also relied onreaders to very well informed people who knew
a lot about the disease, sothat after I'd done a certain draft,
I would send it to them tomake sure that it rang true. I
mean, imagination is very powerful,and imagination can take us very very far,

(06:33):
but you also want to be accuratewhen you're dealing with a specific kind
of disease or a specific job orwhatever. So they were very important readers
for me. And not only talksabout the story of Greg and Alzheimer's and
how it impacted his relationship with hiswife, it touched on other emotional feelings

(06:59):
amongst the family members, like uh, with the wife and seeing her husband
who I guess didn't remember that hewas married to her, and then having
that affection for someone else, right, you know, And and those are
real things that happened, definitely,But the way that you just kind of
show the realities of Alzheimer's, itwasn't just about reading about someone who had

(07:25):
all of these symptoms and and wasgoing through life as a person afflicted with
it. It showed all of thedifferent ways in which his life touches the
other yeah, people around him.So in in in highlighting those things,
and also in doing the research thatyou did in the subject in general,

(07:46):
did you did you find a placewhere you definitely mixed those elements in because
you intentionally wanted to have the readerin this fiction piece see that world as
in a folds every day in mostpeople. Well, I really wanted to
write, essentially, I guess,a love story set against the backdrop of

(08:07):
Alzheimer's disease. And when I saya love story, I mean the love
story of two people who had asolid marriage, a good marriage for thirty
five years, the love of adaughter or father who has kind of walked
in her father's footsteps, and thelove of a son who has felt like

(08:28):
a prodigal, felt like he didn'tquite measure up, and yet found as
his father descended more into the diseasethat they actually were more intimate than perhaps
they had been in many, manyyears. So it's kind of a wheel
that turns and turns around and examinesthe different ways that love is manifested,

(08:52):
the different ways that it's transformed asthe disease hits this family. Okay,
since you were here with us lastMarch, I mean, the book has
really really taken off. And Ithink you mentioned, or at least I
read some great news that has alsocome out of the writing of the book.
Did you wanna share that with them? Well? Aleiah Williams, who

(09:16):
is an African American film producer,UH has a production company called Just a
Rebel, and she read the bookover the summer and really loved it,
and she wanted she wants to makea TV adaptation of The Wide Circumference of
Love m the first production of hercompany, which is a company UH dedicated

(09:39):
to celebrating the lives of black women. So she and her people UH working
on a script and everything to approachHBO and Netflix and and then and then
where you also nominated INAAC. Yes, it was nominated for the NAACP.

(10:03):
Yeah. Yeah, that is awesomeand extraordinary news. So I'm very happy
for you and the success of thatbook. And so you finished it,
you went on tour, you allkinds of accolades. How did us against
Alzheimer's, How was it conceived?Well, the four years that I spent

(10:24):
researching Alzheimer's really affected me very deeply. There's a part of me that is
an activist at heart by nature,and I like to do what I can
to solve problems. So so manyfamilies told me stories, very moving stories

(10:45):
of how the disease yes. Whileit is deeply disruptive of families, While
it is an ugly disease and whatit does to the mind and souls of
people, it is very cruel diseasein what it demands of caregivers. Even
despite that, many families shared withme very uplifting, I guess inspiring stories

(11:09):
of how caring for their loved onehad deepened their love of the person with
Alzheimer's and deepened their awareness of howresilient they were, and the bonds actually
that they shared with the person throughthe act of caregiving had been strengthened,

(11:31):
even as this disease was enormously challenging. So if I'd heard that, you
know, once or twice, Iwould have thought too much about it.
But I kept hearing this again andagain. So I said to myself,
well, there's a story there.We know the story of the darkness of
Alzheimer's, but we are less familiarwith the story of the light behind the

(11:56):
darkness. The fact that for manyfamilies and caregiving particularly those who are able
to engage in self care, thatis, who take care of themselves physically
and mentally and spiritually so that theyhave that emotional resilience to really see the
depth of what's happening to them onall levels. That's the story that we

(12:18):
very rarely hear. So because Iwas so impressed by the work of the
organization US Against Alzheimer's and they're anational, in fact international organization that works
with researchers and advocates all over theworld to find a cure. And one

(12:39):
of their major goals is to makesure that the voices of African Americans,
women and Latinos and other marginalized groupsare part of the conversation, the dialogue,
and that they're part of the clinicaltrials to find a cure. So,
because they have that emphasis, thatsort of targeting of Africa, Americas

(13:00):
and others, I wanted to dosomething to support them. So I came
up with the idea of this anthology, and all the profits from the sale
of the anthology go to support theirresearch. And it's an anthology that's I'm
very very proud of. There's awe have short stories fiction as well as
essays and there's a beautiful short storyby the Haitian writer Edward Dondicott. MM.

(13:28):
The anthology is actually a global lookat a at Alzheimer's because fifty million
people around the world have the disease. So there's a beautiful essay by a
writer from Trinidad, from Haiti,from Dominican Republic, from India, as
well as all over the United States. Multicultural and you know, there is

(13:48):
a endorsement here by Lisa Jennifer.You know, she says the power of
story to educate and demystify, todemolish fear and shame, to generate conversation
and and connectedness, to humanize.I think that that really really summarizes the
work that's embodied here. You hadforty authors contribute and it's divided into four

(14:11):
sections. Talk to us a littlebit about how you came to categorize them
in that way and the well thesections are, for example, all that
remains. When we think about Alzheimer's, we think of everything that's lost,
everything that's gone, but there's alot that remains. There's a the soul
of the person with Alzheimer's, thatis, they still have a soul and

(14:35):
they are still very very present.So the relationship is a is a different
relationship, it's a new relationship.So that remains I won't forget you as
another section. That's a section ofthe book that where where people are writing
about loved ones who had passed,but the legacy of love that remains stranger

(15:00):
than fiction is the section where thefiction, uh, the stories are because
Alzheimer's I think is kind of perfectfor fiction because, as I say,
fiction is kind of the realm ofthe unspeakable. Mmm m. And when
you went through the process of editingit, you've done other anthologies. Were

(15:24):
there any similarities in how you approachedthe editing for this book? Well,
I just sort of it's sort ofsimilar in that I put out a call,
you know when on social media.I asked a number of my friends
who are writers and I also workedwith us against Alzheimer's and Y asked them,

(15:48):
so that there was a combination ofways that I've found the writer.
So their award winning very accomplished writerswhose work many of us read already.
There's some very moving pieces by caregivers who may have written for the first
time. So it's a very mixedbag of pieces. And writers. Okay,
and just on the subject of Alzheimer'sdementia in general, do you you

(16:12):
know, and this is something thatwe talked about offline, do you feel,
given our current healthcare system, thatwe're ready to even deal with the
impact of what's to come. No, we're not. I mean, I
think that everybody who's doing research,everybody who's advocating, knows that we are

(16:33):
not ready for the virtual tsunomi tsunamiof diagnosis of dementia and Alzheimer's that is
coming in the next couple of decades. By twenty forty, I think it's
estimated that forty percent of the peoplewith Alzheimer's and other dementias will be African
American and Latino and Black women arethe fastest growing segment of that population.

(17:00):
But we don't have a unif areally effective universal healthcare system that emphasizes prevention.
Uh. We really don't have enoughneurologists, we don't have enough general
practitioners, and the healthcare system thatseniors need really is not in place.
So we're gonna be caught flat footed. But that doesn't mean that we can't

(17:25):
try to do as much as wecan. Fortunately, Uh, Congress has
been allocating more and more money toNIH and NIA for research. So that's
a good thing, but we reallyhonestly are not prepared. Yeah, and
there are a lot of organizations outnow, uh that are particularly in the
in the local areas that are doinga lot to support and assist those who

(17:49):
are caregivers who are just kind oflooking for answers on how to deal with
a lot of the challenges that they'redealing with. And so are viewers will
have an opportunity at the end ofthis show to see a PSA and to
also get some information from that PSAon places that they can go to to

(18:11):
get that kind of support. Sowhat's next? I have no idea right
now. I'm just promoting this bookand uh, doing my my workshops and
and uh, just sort of enjoyingthis yes moment. Yeah, and so
y you have owned being in Alzheimer'sa advocate and so there's probably a lot

(18:37):
more of that coming down the roadfor you. D Are you seeing that
there is? There are a lotof folks, organizations, maybe even people
in politics that are coming to youto as you know, a voice to
those without a voice that are ac well I think the the books have

(18:59):
have Certainly I do identified me withthe subject, so I do get uh
requests to speak before groups. ButI'm always amazed at h I meet so
many families that are just really overwhelmedmm and uh, they're overwhelmed by caring
for the person with Alzheimer's, sothey don't we really have time to find
the resources. There are a lotof resources out there, but it's almost

(19:19):
like another job, yeah, tryingto find the resources and the the healthcare
industry and doctors don't do a verygood job of connecting you with the resources
cause they're still growing. There's they'rein their infancy in terms of trying to
make those connections. Well, it'sit's time is running out. Yeah,

(19:41):
it is. Be touring with thebook, well yes that just last week
I read at the Langston Hughes Houseokay in Harlem, OH which was really
quite inspiring to read in the veryhouse where Langston Hughes wow wrote some of
his work. Uh. I willbe at the Baltimore Brilliant Baltimore CITYLD Festival,

(20:04):
I'll be at the National Press Club, I'll be reading at Mahogany Books,
and I'll be continuing just to domy own writing workshops and working with
writers who are working on writing projects, which always keeps it too busy.
Yeah, okay, well, thankyou Dreamcatchers. I'm certain you've enjoyed this
episode of our show and our discussionon Marita's latest book, Us Against Alzheimer's.

(20:30):
Tune in next week when we willhighlight the work of playwrights with productions
showcased as part of Arena Stages twentynineteen twenty twenty lineup of award winning theater.
And in case you haven't caught upon our seasons one through four episodes,
go to our website at www dotWritershayman Show dot com for links to
our broadcast and streaming channels. Don'tforget to subscribe and you'll never miss a

(20:56):
show. Stand by for public serviceannouncement on Alzheimer's and I'll see you next
time in the Haven and until then, catch fire on purpose. Hi.

(21:32):
I'm the Helena host of The Writer'sHaven Show, and I'm here with Marita
Golden, the award winning author ofThe Wide Circumference of Love and Us Against
Alzheimer's, two books that deal withthe subject of Alzheimer's. We have an
important message about resources for caregivers andthose stricken with this disease. Alzheimer's is

(21:52):
a chronic degenerative brain disease that usuallystart slowly and gradually worsens over time.
It is the most common form ofdementia and five point seven million Americans are
afflicted by it. African Americans aretwice as likely to develop the disease as
whites. It is the sixth leadingcause of death, with the most common

(22:17):
symptoms being difficulty and remembering recent events, problems with language, disorientation, mood
swings, loss of motivation, anddifficulty managing self care. As a person's
condition declines, they often withdraw fromfamily and society, but they are not
alone. There is help available toassist caregivers and those suffering from this devastating

(22:41):
disease. The Alzheimer's Association is dedicatedto finding a cure at providing support to
those who are impacted. Go totheir website at www dot alz dot org
or a listing of resources at achapter near you. Also see the listing
at the end of this message foradditional resources and stay encouraged. Hello dreaming

(23:32):
people, and welcome to another excitingseason of the Writers Haven Show. I'm
v Helena, your host and executiveproducer. Since twenty seventeen, we've invited
you into the Haven, where weshowcase the passion, process and projects of
writers of literature, television, filmand music. Over two point five million
of you are tuning into one oftwenty three channels for streaming us on iHeartRadio,

(23:57):
Sono, spreaker It, SoundCloud,Spotify, Alexa and YouTube. We
appreciate the love and hope our programminginspires and motivates you. We drop new
episodes every week, so subscribe andnever miss a show. I want to
stay connected to you, so hitme up socially on Facebook, Instagram,

(24:17):
Twitter and Tumblr at author b Helenaat Writers Save the Show with being Helena.
I look forward to seeing you inthe Haven and until next time,
catch fire on purpose. This isthe moment I k you his future at

(24:40):
no boundaries. There are some momentsonly the forest can inspire. Find yours
at Discover Theforest dot org. Heydid you know two point four million loving
cats and dogs and shelters and rescuesneed our help to find our home.
Let's go to the Shelterpetproject dot org. Meet if you are in a shelter
near you, Harlow. She's onegreat listener and loves to hear all your

(25:04):
stories. By kind of cat.Trulo's a sweet, goofy boy who's eager
to please. Sounds just like anotherdog, I know. So go to
the Shelter Petproject dot org, searchyour local shelters and rescues, and go
for a cuddle with your next bestfriend. Adopt. Are you yeah?
You getting that college education? Whatare you gonna do? Graduate and take

(25:27):
some office job, be like everybodyelse? Or well, you dare do
something different, like be a teacher. You could be my teacher. You
got the skills, the smarts.Yes, you you could be the teacher.
I never forget. It'll be cool. Does that corporate job even have
recess? What are you gonna makeof yourself? What are you gonna make
of me? Oh? Did youknow dragging chains can sparkle wildfire? Believe

(26:18):
can prevent wildfires? Open up yourbooks to page three seasons? Did you
just look at your phone while youwas in clubs? You played yourself about
inspirational quotes. You gotta believe inyourself. Don't ever play yourself. The
key is to make it so makeit. Louise, Louise, can you

(26:40):
give me an example of an inspirationalquote. Don't play yourself. The key
is to make it. And whosaid that I did? Now that's a
major key. Alert. Learn thereal major keys to get into college at
get school dot com. Red shirt, blue shirt, yellow shirt, oops,

(27:15):
red pants, green pants, don'twait, communicate, make your emergency

(27:52):
plan today. There are sixteen millionchildren struggling with hunger in America. That's
one in five daughters, sons,neighbors, and classmates who don't know where
their next meal is coming from.Yet, billions of pounds of good food
go to waste every year. It'stime we do something about it. Feeding
America is a nationwide network of foodbanks that helps provide meals to millions of

(28:15):
kids and families in need. VisitFeeding America dot org to help them feed
even more. Together, we cansolve hunger together. We're Feeding America. Who b