Marilyn's Musings

In early 2011, the company I worked for was bought out. Over the next few months, 90% of our employees were laid off. I was one of the last. Looking for work, I learned a great deal about age discrimination. That’s a story for another time. After about a year, I spotted a notice for a writing class at the local senior center, a place I had sworn never to enter. From the notice, I had the feeling it was a resume improvement presentation. Oh, well, swallowed my pride. The class was about creative writing. I fell in love with the process, and, in addition to taking the local class, I returned to college and began taking English classes. One afternoon at the senior center, the instructor randomly passed out pictures. The assignment was to describe the setting in fifteen minutes. I couldn’t do it. I was astonished that a story filled my mind. In the time allotted, I had a rough outline of The Mona Lisa Sisters . The title then, and eight-plus years later, it still is. Until then

I’d describe this collection of stories as historical fiction loosely based on actual recollections of childhoods in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. But then I’d say: These tales address major historical events and societal problems (including child abuse) in the idiosyncratic way of memoirs . They are snapshots of events from one individual’s viewpoint, and the narrator for each story is different. Some are humorous; some are not. They vary in length from four to fifteen pages. If you’re a sophisticated reader, publisher, or bookstore owner, you’re thinking: Are you sure they’re genre fiction? Memoirs are non-fiction. The problems of defining literary genres. Publishers think genres are a way of classifying fiction in order to target marketing of books to receptive audiences. Fine. What if a book or a collection of stories fits into more than one genre? So-called literary experts say “genre fiction” (as opposed to literary fiction) is plot-driven. That bothe