ADVERTISER BOOK CLUB
'Territory' tracks tough times of 'love child'

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Books Editor

Good-read guide This month's selection: "The Territory of Men" by Joelle Fraser; Random House Trade Paperbacks, $12.95 (paperback release date is Tuesday) Next book to be announced: Aug 3 To post a comment or read others' comments: See "Talk Back" link at honoluluadvertiser.com. To suggest a book: See "Talk Back" link at honoluluadvertiser.com. Write a mini-review of the book, or just a paragraph or two offering your reasons for suggesting it. That way, even if we don't choose the title, others can take your suggestion. If you lack Web access, write: Wanda Adams, The Advertiser, P.O. Box 3110, Honolulu, HI 96802, or fax 525-8055. Listen: To the "Sandwich Islands Literary Circle" at 9:30 tonight, KHPR 88.1 FM, KKUA 90.7 FM Maui, KANO 91.1 FM Hilo; or hear the program online, starting tomorrow online.

Joelle Fraser Writer, writing teacher Graduated: Roosevelt High School (1984), University of Hawai'i (B.A., Journalism, 1989), University of Iowa (Master of Fine Arts) Next book: "A memoir of sorts, a nonfiction exploration of the tango, and its relationship to love, passion and risk." About Hawai'i: "Hawai'i is family to me. It represented my father, where I would go twice a year to visit him. My brother lives there, and other family and friends." On writing: "You have to have amazing nerve to write a memoir." Web site: www.joellefraser.com

"I never write with an agenda. It's more of a discovery process for me," Fraser said in a telephone interview. But she discovered in essays she did for a graduate writing program that two themes emerged. The first: staying too long in what she called "the territory of men" and not long enough in her own head, heart and soul. The second: forgiveness of your parents, no matter how difficult your childhood.

In the year since "The Territory of Men" was released in hardback, Fraser has talked to dozens of people at book signings and other events who felt her story pierce deeply. And the book has been assigned in college and even high school classes. "It seems to reach daughters and parents, even sons and parents," she said.

"My mother calls it a bridge book. It seems to bridge the generations to bring them together and get them talking. I'm really proud of that. I had no idea it was going to happen but, wow, it was a gift!"

Fraser was the child of '60s "Love Children"; her earliest years were spent barefoot and in paisley, in Sausalito and on Kaua'i, crashing on houseboats and in old plantation houses, treated as a little adult without curfew or bed time but also sometimes neglected and frighteningly credited with abilities beyond her years. (An indelible scene in the book has her being sent to the grocery store carrying a list she was too young to be able to read.)

Her father, the late Ken Goring, wrote a now-classic cult novel, "Gone to Maui," during a period of sobriety, but battled alcoholism most of his life and died too young, his promise not fulfilled. Her mother went through a series of short and unhappy marriages — Fraser speaks of "when they would break up" as though it was a regular event — before she gave up drinking 20 years ago. She is a therapist now.

This upbringing had its saving graces, Fraser says. "I wouldn't want my book to seem like bashing of that time because there was so much freedom that children had that made me who I am. I really wouldn't rewrite my past," she said.

"There was too much freedom, and the drugs and alcohol I don't condone at all. But I look at a lot of children today and see how structured their lives are, carted from event to event in the afternoons and all summer long and I think, 'Gosh, I wish they had a little bit more time to play in the mud.' "

Nevertheless, her childhood also left scars: anger at the neglect she experienced, scary times when people around her were out of control with drugs or alcohol, the painful scenes witnessed, the step-fathers and -mothers who came and went.

"In some ways I felt like I was in an emotional wheelchair," she said. Later, she would repeat her mother's pattern of serial relationships that left her empty.

But in a sense, her parents also gave her this book, a means by which to heal herself, and a career in writing. Her mother kept diaries, her father constantly scribbled notes. Books were all over every house they lived in. She wishes every day that Goring were still here to offer her advice, she says, and she still employs some of his ideas in her work (skip the adverbs). Indeed, her guiding principle — to get to the truth of your story, no matter how difficult — is one he taught her. "I am still striving to be as good a writer as he was," she said.

After Fraser began working on the book in earnest, she received an extraordinary gift from her mother: the journals the older woman had kept when Joelle was a baby. "That's part of her generous spirit ... she recognized the value of healing. She wanted me to look at my past and thought that would bring us closer together, and it sure has," said Fraser.

In exploring her own emotional response to her upbringing, Fraser is candid but gentle with herself and others. Learning the lesson that "love has to come from within, you have to love yourself first," came hard. "It cost me, going from relationship to relationship. I wish I hadn't had to spend 15 years of my life getting back to what I lost, which was a sense of self," she said. "I was hoping that through the experience of my book some young women wouldn't have to go through that."

Fraser makes another key theme look easy: letting go of resentment.

"I didn't want to stay angry. For me that's not useful, it doesn't help me. ... The book forced me to see the connections between (my parents and I). There's this cycle of generations, this baggage," she said — baggage she didn't want to carry forward.

She chose, instead, to focus on the love: "I was able to look back and see the pain in my father and my mother. When you're an alcoholic in the midst of the disease, it's a painful place. Somehow, I was perceptive enough to see that and not get too angry. And I remember the love."