There is more to it than meets the eye: Alice Walker's “The Temple of my Familiar”, a narrative of the diaspora

Revista de Estudias Norteamericanos, n. º 9 (2003 ), pp. 9 - 22 THERE IS MORE TO IT THAN MEETS THE EYE: ALI CE WALKER' S THE TEMPLE OF MY FAMILIAR, A NARRATIVE OF THE DIASPORA SILVIA DEL PILAR CASTRO BORREGO Universidad de Málaga Remembrance is the Kcy to Redemption. Inscription 011 memorial to J ews w ho died in World War II concentration camps, Land's End. San Francisco The complcxity nf Alice Walker's bnok - a rainforest tangle. the front and back of thc tapestry seen ali at onceperfectly emhndies its vision of li le. not alienated. rigid. hicrarchized. bleached .... but life interlocked. multiple. multiplying. endless, dcsirous. vociferous, and gorgeously peacock-colored. URS ULA LEGL'IN Alice Walker's Tlze Temple (~f My Familiar. published in 1989, joins her contemporaries in the effort of deconstructing history in a way that creates space for thc stories that form the history of black people in the United States.1 Contemporary African American women writers are engaged in a project of reconstruction and revision that deeply affects the thematic and formal features of their novels. Writers such as Toni Moffison, Alice Walker, Paule Marshall, Sherley Ann Williams, Gloria Naylor, an d filmmakers such as Julie Dash, are involved in a project of historical l. Writers such as Alice Walker. Toni Mnrrison. Gay! Jones. Gloria Naylor or Paule Ma rshall d aim that they learned to write by list cn ing to older women talk around the kitchen table. by hearing th c sto ri es that lheir parents told repeatedly about their Jives . about myths and old fables. See Paule Marshall's «The Making of a Writer: From thc Poets in the Kitchen» in Reena allll Other Stories. 10 S il v ia del Pilar Cas tm B orrego dec: onstrucion that shows the ambivalent position of history when it relates to th e experienc:es and st orie s of Afri ca n Am eric:ans living in the contemporary U nited States.2 In this project. fiction ap propria t es histor y. and the relationship between fi ction and history is ar once one of inte r<l cpenden ce and of opposit ion. Fiction stands as the a ll y of histor y, as the Janguage of the truth, restoring truth to the represe ntation an d the te ll ing of the historical past of rh e diasporic identities of Afri c:a n Americans living in thc Unitcd States, situating their history within the lar ger con text of the African diaspora. Simultan eo usly, tic:t ion subverts hi story. relie ving the written text from the rigidity a mi closure of tradicional historical <l i sco ur se. Fiction functio ns, in conremporary African American wr itin g. as a version of hi st ory which Ralph Elli son describcd as « ... chao ti c and full of contra<lictions. cha ng es of face, and surprises as life itself» (247). As Justine Ta ll y sta t es in « His t or y. Fiction. and Comm unity » black people have « tra diti ona ll y b cen cxcludcd from mainstre am history». She refcr s to T on i M01T iso n whe n she argue s that w hit e Amer i can li tcratu re an<l its re pre sen iation of hist ory emerges from a co nt ext that for bl ac ks mea ns «history -les sne ss» a nd «co nte xt - lessness ». Therefor e, c:rc ative black writers have «under takcn the reconstruction of both history and context fo r their peop l e». As Tally further points out, African Amer i can women writers are located at the core of our dí scuss ion in the relationship of history to fiction si nce , his torica lly. they ha vc been denie<l the entrance int o histo ri ca l an<l literary discourse by both race and sex. Black wom en writers of th e l 980s and l 990s strongly claim the authority to control dis course. achieve power and re-write (re-right) history (357-8). Th e storytelling structure of co ntemporary novels functions as a mnemonic <l evice. tracing the origins of African Am erican cult ure to so uthern. rural and African roots. It also functions as a mea ningful unit of the prcscnt Afri can Amc:rican culture, beliefs and forms of exprcssion. The un der lying purpose of this cultural pr es er vation is. as we should undcrstand, an effort that still today, fo ur hundr ed years a ft er th e arrival of t he first group of «fresh Africans» to North America a slaves. still perseveres in t he African Am erican co mm unity. Th e search for the disru pte<l wholeness of an Afric an systcm of mcaning and be li ef that b lack s la ves passe<l on r ec reated from mcmory, pr eserved through or al tradition. im prov ise<l upon in ritual -as in music and the r epea ted oral n ar rativc. was willed to the subsequent generations as «hermetically s ea led an<l encoded charts of cultural descent (Gates 5). Thus, contcmporary fictional works by black women in the United States have the trope of slavery at its heart. The series of ci rc umstanc:es t ha t slavery set into motion ha ve defin cd to greatcr and lesser degrees Amer i ca n exist cn ce. Amer ican cultural formation. African American life, and white Am erica·s subtle and blatant racism. Walker"s Th e Temple of My Familiar cxte nd s this project to the revision of thc history of people of color not only in rhe United States but also in South Amer ica and 2. Pau le Ma rs hall. Praisesong for rile \Vidm•· ( 1983 ). Sherley Ann Willi ams. Dessa Rme ( 19 86 ). Toni M01Ti son. 8t'lm·ed ( 19 87). Gloria Nay lor. M ama D ay ( 1 988), Julie Dash. Daugilrer.\ of 1.re Du.11 ( 1991 ). 111ere is mo re to i1 tlum me ets the eye: A/ice Wa lke r's The Tem p le of my Fam il i nr 11 Africa prior to colonization. A li ce Walkcr puts the r het or ical device of storytelling traditionally rooted in A fr ican Am erican fo lk culture at the heart of t he structure of her novel. Walker pl aces a feminine ancestral figure. the godde ss archetype, at the center of the skelcton of her tex t. Lissie Lyl es , the ancestor, will tell us th e stories of h er pr evious lives. since she has been rcin ca rnated many tim es eith er as a human or as an animal. The reco ll ection of a li the memories from her previous lives. the mul ti pl e story te lli ng struc tu rc to which the text tu rns. wi ll arou se the reader's consciousness in th em es and issues that ha ve been traditi ona ll y left out fr om historiography, since histor ical discourse h as been at the se rvice of s uprema cist, colo ni al, pat riar cha l ideologies. Walker, wi th th e help of the dream of the memor y, since the memory, as the rnind, has the ca pacity to dr eam, takes us b ac k to the origins of culture a nd civilization in an attempt to explain the wrongs that modern societies inflict on people of color ali around the w or ld. Contrary to Sethe. the m ai n charact er in Be lov ed, who fi nds it so hard to rerncmber and nceds the ghost of Beloved to force her to remcmber, Lissie is will ing to remember. It is her re-memory that b ri n gs to us the stories of her Ji ved past(s). These stories, mainly old. will shape co nsciousness into th e Iives of the r est of the characters in Temp le. giving them an understan ding a bo ut th eir lives that directly stcms fr om the old stories· wisdom and knowledge. Alice Walker establishes the relationship be tw een memory and th e imagination in a way that is distin ct ively diffcrent from Morrison 's . First of ali, Morrison structures her narrative from th c starting po int of a fac tual histori ca l event recorded in American history. Walker. in her represe nt ation of m emo r y, goes even furth er than her conte mp orar ies beca use she <l oes no t need his toric a ll y recorded events to start herstory(s). In having her f ema le characters develop their remembran ces from the ir drea ms, Wal ker is sh ow ing h er distru st in traditional hi storiograph y. In this wa y. Walker tells the unrecorded history of the b la ck fema le in the di aspora wit ho ut following any socia lly or traditi on ally accepte d pattern s of hist orica l res ear ch. Fur t herm ore. this is an instancc of the s pi ritual w isdom anti a rti stic cr eat ivity that Walker sees and seeks to represent as relevant in black women 's lives. The memory and the mind are all powerful fo r Walker. Lissie stat es that the memory is the site of drca ms , a nd in this way. from a sm all scrap of memory, sh e is able to dr ea m, imagine, remembcr, or «construct» the past. No t o nl y lhe mcmory and th e imagination, but also the dr cams are vali <l instruments in Walker 's wo rk to te ll the wo rl d about history as rememb ered a n<l lived in African American cxperiences. The idea of ancestry is at thc core of the act of re-membrance and places the figure of the ancestor as a mediati ve device betwecn history and memory. past and prescn t. The fi ctional r emembrance which c ha rac t ers un der go in co ntcmpora ry Afr i ca n American women's novels stand as a textual ac kn owledgment of the spiritual history that A fr ican Ameri ca n women writers attempt to recover and re-integrate from what has been lost in th e A fr ican Amer i ca n co ll ective hi sto ri cal past .3 3. Crncial to this project of thc recovery of the spiritual history in Afril:an American li terature i' the urg um ent of whokne ss. Sce my arride «The Quest for W ho leness: Empowermcnt t hro ugh Spirituali ry in Afr ican American Literature,, . 12 Silvia del Pilar Castm Borrego A ti ce Walker 's novel, The Temple of My Familiar, challen ges h egemo ni c his tor y and memory in the ve ry struc tur e of the n arrat i ve as it confronts the importance of memory to personal and cultural identity. The text in Temple creat es a space tha t interrupts the traditional linear narrative allowing the entrance of a multipl icity of voi ces and perspectives. Th e structure of Temple re li es on the restorative effects of storytelling. Storytelling and the arch etypal , ancestral storyt eller, Miss Lissie, allow Walk er to clarify the importance of th e past to the reconstruction of repressed cultural identity. The past provides powerful a nd important co nn ections th at are essential to the historical and s pi ritual revision that T emple und ertakes. Th rough the use of postmodern techniques such as temporal fragmentation, intertextuality. parod y. and repetition, Walkcr subverts institutionalized histor y. Th e textual fragmentation of Temple in which many sto ri es unravel simultaneously, fus in g past and present, and in volving a multitude of charactcrs and vo ic cs, points out the value of history because of its discontinuities. its concern w ith blanks, ruptures, and interruptions. By exploring the valucs and limits of fragmentation not only in the narrativc but also in its content, Walker includes the notion of fragmentation as a condition of history and as a strategy of representation. However, we ca nnot detach Temple from Walker 's previous l in e of work. always marked by a strong sense of growth towards a larger project of wholeness. As B arbara Christian points out , Walker's poc try, fiction. and essays always focus to sorne extent on the m ajo r character s' perceptions of their p astas crucial to their personal transformation in the present and t he possibility of change in the future (72). The characters of Temple achieve a potential for growth through their experiences of listening to each other's sto ri es that furth er on wi ll reconnect them with other hu man beings and with t heir cnvironment. Th e narra ti ve of Temple is divided into six parts, ea ch one containing multiple stories th at eventually are related towards the end of th e boo k. The contemporary stories that open Temple evol ve around four main characters, Suwelo a nd Fanny, Arveyda and Carlotta. However. th e book has its hidden ce nt er in the character of Lissie Lyles or Miss Lissie, who represents th e figure ofthe matriarchal go ddess. Miss Lissie 's r eme m ory allows her to recount the multiple stories of her successive pasts as white or black women, or men, that extend in a revisionary fashion through the whole history of mankind. Miss Lissies' ever-present ancestor's v oice and memory ex tend to a distan! p as t w he re h umans and animals li ved in h ar m ony as fam iliar s. Th e storytelling d ev ice, in whi ch most of Miss Liss i es' conve rsation s are shap ed, contributes to the keeping alive of that traditional ha rm ony-Native American as well as A fr ican, as one of her ma in functions in the world of the l 980s and l 990s. Part I of Temple introduces us to Ca rlotta. a Latina living in contemporary United States. The narrat io n focuses first on Ca rl ott a's mother, and grandmother in South America, and we learn that: In the old country in Sou th America, Carlotta 's grandmother, Zedé, had tee n a seamstress, but r ea ll y more of a sewing magician. She was the creator of clothing, especially capes, made of feathers. These capes were worn by dancers ard musicians and priests at traditional vi ll age festivals and had been worn for There is more to ir tlum meets tire eye: A/ice Walker·s The Temple of my Familiar 13 countless generations. When she was a young child, Carlotta's mother, also called Zedé. was sent to collect the peacock feathers used in the designs. (Walker 3) Al ready in the first paragraph of the narrative, Walker introduces the reader to important themes such as grandmothers, and ancestral figures, feminine arts and spirituality which survive and are perpetuated in the culture of women through history and memory. Zedé, a South American exile, still cont inu es her female family tradition, making feathered capes which now she sells to rock stars of the Sixties. This is how Carlotta meets her husband, Arveyda, the rock star for whom she delivers peacock capes made by her mother. As the present life of Carlotta's marriage with Arveyda unravels, so do the stories of her mother's past in South America, and we learn that originally there were the women who were the priestesses, who had the responsibility of keeping the spiritual and cultural well being of the village. However, eventually, the men out of envy because women were able to produce life, destroyed matriarchy. stealing the women 's feathers and their rights to be priestesses. In this way, ironically, the expressions of female powers and spirituality are r ed uced by an encroac hing patriarchy into mere producers of robes for male glorification. By the time Zedé learns to make the feathered garments, they can only be sold in gringa boutiques, since North American capitalism has outlawed village traditions and religious practices, placing the dallar as their new god. Zedé eventually returns to her country of origin. This journey reinforces her identity, since she again embraces her cultural traditions. By recalling these stories of her past that she passes on to her daughter Carlotta, Zedé enables her to incorporate this remembered identity into her own self as a Latina living in the United States. Fanny Nzingha is an African American woman whose life at the beginning of the novel is marked by a strong sense of alienation that stems from the anger she fe els towards her husband, Suwelo. and towards white society. She confronts h er anger towards white society by returning to the African country that represents half of her cultural heritag e. Her father, Ola, is African, and she has an African sister, Nzingha Anne. By meeting her sister, Fanny ga ins a better understanding of the African pait of her identity. As they have mirror names. Fanny Nzingha and Nzingha Anne, Fanny also feels that by looking at her half-sister, she is «looking into a mirror as an African- American ... and the mirror was reflecting only the African» (Walker 25 1 ). In Africa, Fanny understands that her anger is real, but also that by directing it towards white people, she is missing th e point: any society that represses is the enemy, regardless of color. Alice Walker extends her concerns with the wholeness of women of color by examining the negative effects that fragmentation and alienation have in the lives of black women, and by expanding her focus to ali women of co lor living in the United States, demonstrating the ways in which this alienation prevents them from forming bonds with others. Ali characters of Temple, male and female, have to look back to their pasts in arder to progress. This is made possible by structuring the telling of th eir past and 14 Silvia del Pilar Castro Borrego pr esent exper i ences t hrou gh the cul tura l med i um of storyte lling. Storyt ell in g undcrtakes th e function of the exploration of m emo ri es of many characters in Temple in order to br ing to the surface the unremembered parts of their existence; recalling memories that can account for th ei r past. Fanny is married to Suwelo, a profe ssor of history. He persists in tea ching history not on ly from a ma le, but from a white perspective. At a point in the book when Fanny is trying to encourage him to r ead Afr ican hi s tor y from an African feminine perspective, Suwelo admits to himself that «he had ne ver read a book by a woman ... He did not want to change the way he thought of Africa. Besides. w hen he wanted insight into Africa, he'd read a man» (Walk er 176). Suwe lo represents the masculine failure of the post-sixties generation to overcome sexist stereotypes and whose philosophy about life is persistently focused on white ways of knowing and behaving. As the narrator tells us, his generation of men had failed women - and themselves ... for ali thei r activi sm and po litical development during the sixties, all their understanding of the pervasiveness of oppression, for most men, the preferred place for women had remained the home; the preferred position for women, wherever they were , supine. (Walker 28-29) Suwelo has lost contact with his ancestry. and in this way. he is disconnected from Fa nny and from himself. ~ Fanny and Suwelo 's relationship deteriorates as Fanny experiments with severa! progressive personality changes suggested by her readin gs and events after returning from Africa. Simultaneously, Suwelo travels to Baltimore whe re his uncle R afe. recently deceased , has lcft him a hou se. Suwelo , to his astonishment, feels comfortable in this old house. surrounded by his uncle's things. He barely knew his uncle who, to his surprise. now app ea r ed in his memories , encouragi ng him to look around and get to know him better. However, Suwelo will indeed have the chance to know his uncle Rafe through his uncle's friends, Mr. Hal, an d Miss Lissie. Whenever Mr . Hal and Miss Lissie visit Uncle Rafe's house, they bring unending stories about their past. As Suwelo is more and more dr a wn into the worlds of these stories, he realizes how much he misses talking to old people and realizes the value of these oral experiences re corded in memory. These old people, as Suwe lo later acknowledges, are the ancestors, to whom time and experience had insta ll ed with knowledge a nd a sen se of wis dom th at only now he is beginning to understand: Suwelo realized with a start that in his real life, the life in California away from h is uncle's cozy Baltimore row house, he was nev er around old people. He 4. As Le nn ox Birch points out. Walker's own experiencc of teaching illiterate black women about a history th ey had been taught to regard with sham e. makes her awarc of t he need to revise that account of events frorn which black women had been wri uen out by white men . There is more to ít tlw11 mee /s the eye: A/ice Walker's The Te mple of my Familiar 15 didn't know that one of the skills they acquired with age was the ability toread minds. For as he sat there, embarrassed. he knew Mr . Hal was reading him. Easily, casuall y. as he himself might read a book. (Walker 39) Suwelo 's parents died in a car accident when he was in college, a part of his past that he needs to learn to accept in order to find harmony within himself. Mr. Hal and Miss Lissie are offering Suwelo the chance to reconnec t with a past filled with stories, that to his amusement, he feels delighted in listening. Miss Lis sie, «the one who remembers everything» (52), is the ultimate goddess figure, the one who contains within herself the archetypal memory of humanity. Lissie conceives that h er capacity to remember lies in her memory, which acts as «a battery ,» continuously recharg ing her brain. The memory «like the mind, has [also] the capacity to dream» (83), and the «drcam memory» resides in our subconscious levels in the brain. This is how Miss Lissie. the ancestor, remembers her many past lives, and through her stories. which she relates to Suwelo in full detail. we learn about the history of humanity from the very beginning, befare civilization, patriarchy. co lonization, racism, sexism, and the separation of the human and natural world occurred. Seen through the eyes of a woman. these stories fill in the many holes that Suwelo has in his knowledge of American and World history. The microhistories that Miss Lissie recalls leave Suwelo with the desire to write «an "oral'" history -one of those unofficial-looking books, foil of "he said" and "s he said" that he 'd always despised-about Mr. Hal and Miss Lissie» (191 ), once he returns to California to look for his wife Fanny. By then , by listening to the stories, he would have acquired the knowledge about his past, and a bout women's ways. This, he thinks, will allow him to try to save his relationship with Fanny. Somehow. Miss Lissie is gifted with the ability to recreate her ancient, unfolding selves visually through the images created in pictures. When Suwelo arr ives at his Uncle Rafe's house, he notices that many pictures in severa! parts of the house have been taken away, and tha t his uncle Rafe leaves notes and scribbles on all kinds of materials around the house -napkins, newspapers. shoe boxesali refe:ring lo Miss Lissie. These are little clues about his uncle's life that Suwelo cannot resist exp loring. Only wh en Miss Lis sie has told Suwelo about sorne of he r se l ves and stories, and she mak es sure that he learns h ow to listen, is she ready to show Suwelo h er pictures -the ones shc h erself removed. She knew that whomever Rafe 's nephew would be, he wou ld be ab le to understand them. When he looked at the pictures, Suwe lo remembered what Mr . Hal had to ld him: «Lissie is a lot of women» (91 ). Indeed, to his astonishment, Suwelo saw thirteen pictures of thirteen entirely differe nt women. One seem ed tall, anoth er very short, one light -sk inned, with light eyes , anot her dark with eyes like obsidian. One h ad ha ir to her waist, another had hardly enough to cover her skull. One appeared acrobatic. healthy, and glowing. Another seemed crippled and barely ambulatory. (91) 16 Sil1' ia del Pilar Castro Borrego Those thirteen pictures, taken in a period of over thirty years, revealed many di ffe rent women, even those who Mi ss Lissie was in previous, even ancient life time s. Her many selves claimed their place as hi sto ri cal facts, testified to both personally and by th e un e qui v ocal proof of pho t ograp hy. The se pictures represent th e «unspeakable»,s the inher itance of a com munal memory of endle ss oppress ion . African American writers and many other ethnic writers from the United States are invol ve d in the project of filling in the gaps in the mar gi nalized co ll ective memory since hi stori ca lly, and in the words of Toni Morri so n, «[they) were seldom invited to par ti cipate in the di scourse even when [the y] were its topic» (Site 111). In this way, Toni Morrison emphasizes the necessity for African Americans to build a collective historical memory, the necessity of remembering a past which, although in sorne ways de s irable to forget, is impossible to forget: slav ery and th e Middle Passage , Emancipation and th e Reconstruction period. Both Miss Lissie and Mr. Hal are artists in more than one way. Not only are they able to transfer their kno wledge about the world and humanity by t elli ng wonderful stories, but they also are painter s. When Suwelo drops by th eir house to say good-bye, they both have, as presents for him, self portraits representative of the ir ancient selves fused within the universe. It was the center of the paintings that was different from anyth in g Suwelo had ever seen. For instead of faces, as in a po11rai t, th ere were merely the outlines of their upper bodies, a ma n·s shape and a woman's shape, a nd these out lines surrounded blue, in finite space, painted with such in tensity, depth, and longing that it was luminous andas in vi ting as the sky. Wonderingly, Suwelo turned the paint in gs over, as if that infinite space might have l eake d through to the other side ... On the back of Lissie Lyle 's self-portrait were the words, in emerald lettering, «Painted by Ha! Jenkins». On Hal's self-portrait, in bright red, were the words «Painted by Lissie Lyles». (193) Through the way these portraits are painted, we perceive a cert ai n dimension of androgy ny in these ancestor s' selves, as gender duality int egr ates in the wholeness of the co sm os and nature. As Ikenna Dieke points out, « for Alice Walker creative intelli ge nce is an in strument for promoting the acceptance of nature as ultimately spiritual, and existing indepe nd ently of any su bj ec ts (510). Thus , Walker presents a communality of experience that e st ablishes re-memory as so mething social, offeri ng an intercultural way of finding the common origins of hu manity with no in dividual h ero or heroine at its cen ter , and thus further br ea king with the dichotomies of indiv id ual/collective, man/woman, oral/written. Through the common recalling of 5. Toni Morrison. «Unspeakable Thin gs Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Li terature». Morrison and her contemporaries are co mmitted to acccss and recreate the untold and unwritte n interior liv es of black people. of their an ces tors. and , by ex tention . of the re st of marginalize <l pe op le of color in th e United States. Thel"<' is more to it tha11111e e ts tire eYe: :Hice Walker's The Temple of my Familiar 17 memories, men and women have to wo rk t ogether in re constructing the past for a bctter present am i future. Throughout the novel, there is a continuous link age among ar t. creat iv ity. and the pos sibili ty of valuing difference, co - operation an d growth. At one point. the narrator tells us that ar ti sts have «the rcsponsibility for unit in g the world» (Walker 1 25 ). As Walkcr rcm inds us in her essay. «Saving the Life that is Your Own: the Importance of Models in the Artist's Lifc», artistry and creativity are not only for a handful of artists, but r es ide in cvery single human being, each of wh om posscsses his or her unique artistic expression. Thercforc, Miss Lissie and H al's storytelling and paintings. Miss Lissie's dreams, Fanny's massages, Arveyda' s music an d Carlot ta's wind chimes and bells are a li artistic expr es sions of an in ner creativity that reveals spiritual growth. Be cause of its importance in the narrative as the central trope for revision through which the connections for p ersona l and collect ive healing emerge, Liss ie's dream memory, an cxtension of the collective unconscious, descrves consideration. Th e stories stemming from Li ssic's d ream memory expla in the loss of culture ami conncctcdness to the past. Thcy also pres ent a na rrati ve model of storytelling. rooted in black culture. and therefore uscful to study the Afri can American narrative as moving away from the aus pi ces of white control. Lissie' s dream memory is an cncyclopedia of stories, for she be lieves th at «it is the nature of the eye to have secn forever and the nature of thc mind to recall anything tha t was ever known» (65). The idea of a past and a continuous pr esent that leads into the future, is the foundation upon which Walker constructs her ideas of dream memories and r e-me mories. As Walker herself says: I think my whole program as a writer is to dea l with history just so 1 know where 1 am . I catú move through time in any other way, since I have strong feelings about history and the need to bring it along. One of the scary things is how much of the past. especially our past, gets for gotten. (Tate 185) Questions such as time and identily interlock in Walker's narrative of Templ e, fo r each character of the novel makes a persona l effort to recapture the past in his or her quest for identit y, as a significan! eff011 in his/ her present experience. As time flows into the ever presenl, hu man s expcriment a scnse of growth that connccts t hem to the rest of the universe. However, recalling the pa st is easier for sorne characters than for others. For instance, Suwe lo h as a vcry difficult time in remembering his parents. Lissic urges him, in a cassette rcco rding that she made before passing away, to l ook past the pa in, to reconnect with his parents' memories: Hal am i I felt you have closed a door, a very imp or tan! do or , agaínst me mor y, against the pain. That just to say thcir na mes, «Marcia» an d «Louis », is t oo heavy a key for your hand. And we urge you to open lh at door . to say their names. To speak of th em , anything you ca n r emember , freely and often, to