I Never Did Tell You Did I? (Unsent Letters)
Editorial Reviews
Book Description
Through a series of letters she writes to friends and family, a woman in her early forties attempts to understand the world she finds herself in but never expected. As she enmeshes herself in new dilemmas, she reflects back on the experiences that have brought her to this seemingly impossible reality. In Susan Smith Nash's hands, this familiar if important rite of passage tale becomes startling and strange, terrifying and at times grotesque. No experience in _I Never Did Tell You Did I?_ ever turns out to be simply private; gender problems, family problems, work problems intersect with international economics, politics and violence in a swirl of misunderstanding and danger both emotional and physical. The story takes us through the shock of day-to-day life in Oklahoma, Vermont, Bolivia, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kenya, and many other surprising locales. Ultimately, the narrator's search for love in a time of desperate loneliness requires her to look, no matter how disturbing it may be, at the sources of the world's great contemporary disasters.
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Susan Smith Nash, whose honest and benevolent gaze is democratic and inclusive, is a funny, invincible letter-writer. In these unsent letters, we are reminded of how vision and "re"-vision are a living process inspired by hope but purely grounded in wisdom. ---Maxine Chernoff
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About the Author
Since her teen-age years, Susan has been on an endless road trip of the mind, in a kind of "Endless Summer" travel, searching for the perfect wave, the wildest mountain, the most vivid sunset-sunrise sequence, the most expressive language for poetry, literature, geology -- and since the mid-90s, the Internet. In her quest for intellectual and emotional "limit experiences," Susan has learned various languages (some well, others for survival) and has traveled throughout South and Central America, much of the Central Asia, the Caucasus, Russia, Africa, and Europe. She has developed web-based educational programs for entities in Paraguay, Colombia, Uzbekistan, and Azerbaijan, as well as the online courses and programs she has developed and overseen for universities and textbook publishers in the U.S. Nash is the recipient of awards and grants for her work with Paraguayan women writers (PEN award, Oklahoma Books Award finalist, Paraguayan-American Cultural Center commendation), for promoting Slovenian writers (Trubar Award), and for her poetry and experimental writing (Gertrude Stein Award,others). Currently chair for the Institute for Stabilization through Technology, Nash is actively involved in projects to promote online education and information exchange. Her son, Michael, is a U.S. Marine.
I Never Did Tell You Did I? (Unsent Letters),Susan Smith Nash,Avec Books,1880713322,Fiction,Literary
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