The Tiki Room

The Tiki Room, plunges the reader into a vision both elegiac, and horrifying, chronicling the struggles of my family. The landscapes are stoic, small town New Hampshire, during the 1950 s, where I lived with my beloved grandparents, contrasted against the cruelty of life with my mother in Phoenix, Arizona, during the1960 s and my husband s story in Bosnia and in the diaspora. The coalescence of these environments, and some of the tragic consequences, have been passages filled with destruction, loss, and renewal. I have often found myself listening to people tell their stories. People who had never talked about their past would suddenly stop what they were doing and tell me extraordinary things, painful things, that brought soundlessness to my mind. Hearing these narratives I felt a voice inside of me that wanted to respond with my own story. I never allowed myself, until now, because it felt selfish to mention that I had suffered too. The silence created barriers of anger and sadness within me that were hard to breach. That I broke through that barricade by writing has been one of the great surprises of my life. I started out as a visual artist, the painting on the cover is my work, and in other media such as fireworks, and performance art. My work has been seen throughout New England and internationally through artist exchanges in Macedonia and Croatia. Currently, I am the Director of the Allenstown Public Library in Allenstown, New Hampshire. This book began during my undergraduate work at Vermont College and finished during my graduate studies at Goddard College. The award winning poet/writer Nehassaiu DeGannes wrote this about my work: Your memoir is achingly beautiful, exquisitely written, and handled with such deftness and depth, it most certainly demonstrates patient self-reflection, mastery of craft and form as well as a literary tenderness. At times the level of remembered detail, the sensory, the natural world---and your ability to find a language capable of containing your internal landscape, in sentences which flow as naturally as breath, is quite stunning. I am in admiration of your work. I am in admiration of your life. Thank you my brothers and sisters for being there.