Chana Wilson's moving new memoir, Riding Fury Home, is compelling for many reasons: It tackles mother-daughter relationships, the effects of a parent's mental illness, what it was like to come out into the lesbian-feminist movement of the '70s and, finally, what it means to come into one's own as an adult while making peace with one's difficult past.
Although she's a first-time author, Chana Wilson is a masterful storyteller. The span of Riding Fury Home is immense: It begins in 1958, when Wilson is a child and her mother attempts to commit suicide by putting a gun to her own head. The trigger jams and, instead, her mother is taken away to the mental hospital. The book then carries us forward until almost the present day, well into the author's own adulthood and after her mother's death. Although originally Wilson says, she was afraid "that the truth would come out," if she dared speak about her childhood, she did want to honestly write her mother's story. Yet after she began to write, she found that her own life story was intrinsically tied to her mother's. Thus, she ended up writing her own life story, as well.
"I decided to tell a story of two lives set against cultural history," she says, and it is clear from reading her book that she succeeded. The book begins with Wilson having to caretake her mother during an age when mental illness was not discussed, let alone understood. Also not discussed was her mother's illicit lesbian affair while married to Wilson's father, which was a fairly big no-no in the conservative 1950's. And when this affair ended, the grief of this loss led to her mother's depression, suicidality, and multiple hospitalizations. Eventually given shock treatment, her mother's depression and lesbian tendencies were surprisingly not "cured" by the treatments she received.
Through her caretaking and the witnessing of her mother's struggles, Wilson made a vow oft taken by the children of the mentally ill: that she herself would never succumb to mental illness nor to addiction. Surprisingly, Wilson's father took a job out of the country during this time, so Wilson became her mother's keeper, too big a task for an elementary school aged child. Not surprisingly, Wilson had to go stay with family friends when her mother was again hospitalized, and her parents eventually divorced.
Wilson finally escapes to college, and begins to come out and into her own. By incorporating such vivid cultural moments as the rise of public radio and the blossoming of the Bay Area as a gay and lesbian mecca, Wilson creates a book not just of personal but also of political and cultural relevance. Of the '70s, Wilson says, "There was euphoria at being part of a community and having radical ideas … of having a sense of belonging even when stigmatized, and this created a powerful political force." She writes of her journey to San Francisco: "In the Women's Liberation Movement of 1970, it was as if a huge group of orphans had discovered their lost kin and were gleefully screaming, 'Sister! Welcome!'" Wilson found comfort in being part of this burgeoning LGBT community and in doing her radio work, but also lives for some time in New York City to spend some time with her mother, who has also come out as lesbian.
Riding Fury Home took Wilson 12 years to write. She has said that she rewrote some chapters up to 30 times. During this time, she took writing classes, participated in supportive writers groups—an activity she recommends to other aspiring writers—and gradually pieced together the story she wished to tell. However, the memoir still didn't seem as authentic as she wished. She wondered how she would get fully inside the head of the girl she had been as a child, and felt frustrated by the "disassociation" she felt from what was likely her authentic childhood voice. Wilson then decided took a class that helped her "open up to my subconscious" and write with more emotional immediacy about the childhood trauma she lived through. The book quickly swelled out to more than 550 pages, which was eventually pared down to the 371 gripping pages it is today.
After many years spent in young adulthood drifting professionally, Wilson eventually went back to school to become a therapist. Wilson got licensed and still practices as a Marriage and Family Therapist in the Bay Area. Specializing in "LGBT affirming therapy," she believes that being a clinician has helped in her writing process. "I have been so inspired by the healing of others," she says. "But as therapists, we also need to do our own healing." Writing her memoir, Wilson said, provided incentive to "tackle issues of trauma and recovery" and also infuse the book with "a hopeful air of change."
Wilson plans to tour with the book for the next several months and continue to write and speak about the effects of growing up with a suicidal parent. For more on Wilson and possible local tour dates, visit www.ridingfuryhomebook.com .
