Why the change of heart? “I sat on that advice for a while, the idea of turning it into a memoir, and then sometime around 2019, I read Ocean Vuong’s. I know it’s not classified as a memoir, but that’s how I read it. It was so powerful, and I loved that he wrote it to his mom, because he wanted to explain things to her that she never understood: about him coming out, about how traumatizing it was for him moving to the United States," she says."That approach made sense to me.
Leftwich’s son doesn’t remember much of what happens in the book for three reasons: his young age, the trauma informed by his biological father, and his epilepsy, which erased too much of what memory he might have had. “I wanted to give him a peek into my mindset, why I made the decisions I did," she explains."They weren’t always the best decisions, but I want him to know my reasoning behind it all, whenever he’s ready.
For much of the book overall — at least as it exists in its published state — Leftwich credits Future Tense Books’ Kevin Sampsell. “He was more than a publisher on,” says Leftwich. “He was a book doula.” For example, much of the recollections of Leftwich’s early life had been left out of earlier drafts. “I did not want to write about that,” admits Leftwich, “but he [Sampsell] said that I had to let readers know where I was coming from. He was right about it all.
What’s not in the book is intense description of physical abuse. It’s there; readers will know essentially what happened, but won’t experience it vicariously in-scene, as other books attempt. Leftwich says that was absolutely purposeful. “I didn’t see the point,” she says. “It’s there. You can fill in the blanks. There’s no great mystery I’m keeping, but I know my son will at some point read this, and I just wanted to be careful with that."proves.
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