WHEN HISTORY IS PERSONAL

Nonfiction
Moments in her life

WHEN HISTORY IS PERSONAL

By Mimi Schwartz

270 ppp. University of Nebraska Press

Reviewed by Diane Diekman

Mimi Schwartz grew up in the Queens borough of New York City, the first American-born child of German-Jewish immigrants who escaped in 1936 from Hitler’s Germany. She is now an award-winning author and professor emerita in the writing program at Stockton University. When History Is Personal is her collection of 25 essays, taken from 25 moments in her life. “Each essay focuses on a moment that matters to me,” she writes in the preface, “with an eye to the history, culture, and politics that have shaped it.”

The essays are grouped into four sections. “Family Haunts,” covering her childhood and family history, is written from a youthful perspective. “In and Out My Front Door” and “Storyscapes” discuss experiences and conversations throughout her adult life. “Border Crossings” leads into the future, as she grows older and enters new territories of loss and challenge.

Schwartz explains her feelings with such depth that any reader will find something to identify with in her struggles, joys, and experiences. Written mostly in the present tense, her stories draw the reader into them. I understood her frustrations with trying to get her computer repaired and her struggle to be a role model in defending human rights. I gained understanding in reading her reactions to anti-Semitic treatment and her descriptions of ordinary people caught up in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle.

The first essay, “My Father Always Said,” describes the family’s 1953 visit to Germany, when Schwartz was thirteen. Of 350 Jews born in her father’s village, 87 had been deported in 1941-42. They died in concentration camps. “I knew what deported meant, had seen photos of Auschwitz in Lifemagazine,” Schwartz writes. “I’d always been relieved that my dad was smart and got the whole family out in time.” The visit helped her better understand her father and the family history. But for him, “his magical village of memory had disappeared.”

Humor comes through in many of the essays, such as the “In and Out My Front Door” story about making a Thanksgiving turkey as a newlywed. She stuffed it a day early to save time, before hearing an offhand comment from a friend that raw ingredients sitting inside a turkey could cause botulism. Unable to throw away her perfect turkey, Schwartz baked and served it to her guests. “But I could eat no more,” she writes, “even as I pictured myself as a widow in jail.” She watched her husband all night, to be sure he was breathing. In the morning, she confessed to nearly poisoning him, and he responded with, “What’s for breakfast?” The essay concludes with, “We ate my scrambled eggs with optimism, our marriage vows, ’Till death do us part,’ full of new meaning.”

The “Border Crossings” includes Schwartz’s trauma at the unexpected death of her husband after fifty years of marriage. He was in the hospital for mild pneumonia, which turned serious. In arguing for his care, she writes, “I try again to sound like Stu, in charge. People listen to him, but he can decide nothing now, so I, with his medical proxy, must make his choices.” The essay concludes, “It’s been three years now, and I’ve come to terms, mostly, with end-of-life issues being messier than Stu and I thought when we signed living wills.”

“Fix-It Fantasy” describes her attempt, six months after Stu’s death, to replace a toilet seat. Following her failure, she lay on her bed, “sideways, connecting what was his side to mine.” The final essay ends on an optimistic note. Hiking in Rome with a friend who is also a widow, Schwartz describes walking down a trail and comparing it to her life ahead: “. . . and the only sound I hear is my own laughter urging me on.”

I enjoyed getting to know Mimi Schwartz while reading When History Is Personal. Despite our different lives and backgrounds, some of our feelings and experiences are similar.

--Diane Diekman is a retired U.S. Navy captain who grew up in South Dakota and currently lives in Sioux Falls. Her biographies are Live Fast, Love Hard: The Faron Young Story and Twentieth Century Drifter: The Life of Marty Robbins.