'A Family Place' recalls heritage of Rensselaer woman
LEE GOODEN, For The Saratogian
03/25/2003
'A Family Place, A Hudson Family Farm, Three Centuries, Five Wars, One Family''
By Leila Philip
Penguin Books 2001
276 Pages
''What is the analytic process anyway, but that crude digging up of stones and pebbles, then the slow turning of memory or phrase over and over until it begins to gleam?'' Leila Philip writes in ''A Family Place.''
Philip's memoir follows her family's trials of maintaining an agrarian life on a small farm in Rensselaer in a modern, profit-motivated and technologically oriented corporate America.
Through exhaustive and intensive research into her family's history, Philip answers the age-old question, ''Who am I?''
By exhuming the past, she discovers the connective tissues of her and her family's relationship to the legacy of their land.
''A Family Place'' reads like a novel. The reader gets caught up in the seemingly effortless prose that is almost lyrical and musical.
Philip writes about a childhood memory of riding her horse: ''Peter, his mane flying, his eyes wild with delight, is galloping hard across the meadow. I am on his back crouched down, bareback, the pressure of my legs urging him on -- he smells sweet and salty, sweat beginning to dampen his copper hide. I will never fall because he will never let me. He is Pegasus, one wing dipping as he turns, racing through the clouds, each hoof beat, the steady rising pulse of my own childhood.''
The author's research spans three centuries of her heritage. Philip discovers that she is not so different from her father, or her father's father, in that they were willing to work hard and make sacrifices and reluctant changes to keep Talavera, their land, their home, alive.
Leila Philip is the winner of the 1990 PEN/Martha Albrand Special Citation for her memoir about her apprenticeship to a master potter in Japan, called, ''The Road Through Miyama.'' She teaches creative writing at Colgate University.
LEE GOODEN, For The Saratogian
03/25/2003
'A Family Place, A Hudson Family Farm, Three Centuries, Five Wars, One Family''
By Leila Philip
Penguin Books 2001
276 Pages
''What is the analytic process anyway, but that crude digging up of stones and pebbles, then the slow turning of memory or phrase over and over until it begins to gleam?'' Leila Philip writes in ''A Family Place.''
Philip's memoir follows her family's trials of maintaining an agrarian life on a small farm in Rensselaer in a modern, profit-motivated and technologically oriented corporate America.
Through exhaustive and intensive research into her family's history, Philip answers the age-old question, ''Who am I?''
By exhuming the past, she discovers the connective tissues of her and her family's relationship to the legacy of their land.
''A Family Place'' reads like a novel. The reader gets caught up in the seemingly effortless prose that is almost lyrical and musical.
Philip writes about a childhood memory of riding her horse: ''Peter, his mane flying, his eyes wild with delight, is galloping hard across the meadow. I am on his back crouched down, bareback, the pressure of my legs urging him on -- he smells sweet and salty, sweat beginning to dampen his copper hide. I will never fall because he will never let me. He is Pegasus, one wing dipping as he turns, racing through the clouds, each hoof beat, the steady rising pulse of my own childhood.''
The author's research spans three centuries of her heritage. Philip discovers that she is not so different from her father, or her father's father, in that they were willing to work hard and make sacrifices and reluctant changes to keep Talavera, their land, their home, alive.
Leila Philip is the winner of the 1990 PEN/Martha Albrand Special Citation for her memoir about her apprenticeship to a master potter in Japan, called, ''The Road Through Miyama.'' She teaches creative writing at Colgate University.
posted by Lee Gooden | 9:44 PM
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