{"id":115219,"date":"2016-08-05T09:48:27","date_gmt":"2016-08-05T13:48:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=115219"},"modified":"2016-08-05T09:48:27","modified_gmt":"2016-08-05T13:48:27","slug":"gina-barreca-writing-about-those-we-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2016\/08\/gina-barreca-writing-about-those-we-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Gina Barreca: Writing About Those We Love"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gina Barreca\u2019s latest book is as funny and forthright as her previous memoirs. But this one, she says, is even more personal and more revealing \u2013 examining relationships she holds most dear, including that with husband Michael Meyer, who also taught English at UConn.<\/em><\/p>\n

For more stories from UConn Magazine, go to the Magazine website<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

I had enormous fun writing If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?<\/em> And I learned a lot. Yes, this book takes on a number of social and cultural issues \u2013 everything from the \u201cTwilight\u201d and \u201cFifty Shades\u201d phenomena to the powers of Spanx and Goji berries. But it\u2019s different from most of my earlier work, because it\u2019s more personal and unguarded.<\/p>\n

We get braver and more honest as we get older. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s true that we women become invisible as we age, but we certainly become more audible. We become more politicized, less willing to simply nod and smile if we disagree, and more willing to stand up for ourselves and others (instead of leaning in \u2013 I\u2019m not a Sheryl Sandberg fan, and that\u2019s where the title comes from; there\u2019s a chapter about my issues with her work). And both women and men, somewhere between 40 and 50, begin to distinguish what actually makes them happy from what they\u2019ve always done to please others. Being able to define that difference is an accomplishment. It\u2019s one of those areas of expertise that takes at least 10,000 hours to learn. At a certain age, you finally become the indisputable authority on the subject of yourself.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s time to write, to read, and to drive with the top down. <\/cite><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I know I\u2019m getting braver as I get older \u2013 and that won\u2019t come as a big surprise to anybody. Having taught creative writing classes at both the undergraduate and graduate level, I\u2019ve always emphasized the need for writers at every level to figure out what story they\u2019re really trying to tell. It\u2019s usually buried four or five paragraphs deep and embedded in a particularly sharp, fierce, sometimes off-the-cuff line the writer might have been surprised to hear herself or himself say. It\u2019s rarely the well-groomed, much-rehearsed, and overwritten sentence that grabs a reader by the throat.<\/p>\n

I tried to respect that in my own writing while completing this manuscript. While nobody could accuse me of keeping my personal life out of my earlier books (after all, I wrote a memoir about my time as one of the first women at Dartmouth College titled Babes in Boyland<\/em>, and my first book, They Used to Call Me Snow White but I Drifted<\/em>, draws deeply on my Italian upbringing), this latest collection takes more risks.<\/p>\n

For example, in a section titled \u201cIf You Met My Family, You\u2019d Understand,\u201d there\u2019s a chapter about questions I wished I\u2019d asked my mother before she died (she was 47 and I was 16). There are essays about how my parents\u2019 troubled marriage helped clarify what I wanted from my own. And while deep fears aren\u2019t necessarily funny, there\u2019s an essay about my own panic attacks that includes an incident with a butterfly net. There\u2019s also a section titled \u201cIf You Run With a Bad Crowd, Can You Call It Exercise?\u201d \u201cReal\u201d humor is real.<\/p>\n

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\"Regina<\/a><\/div>\n
\"Regina<\/a><\/div>\n
\"Regina<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

I try to write about teaching, writing, my professional life, and my own relationships with honesty as well as humor. When I write about my friends and family, I ask their permission to tell their stories as well as my own. Most of the time they\u2019re generous enough to grant it.<\/p>\n

The excerpt below is from an essay about my husband, Michael Meyer, on the day he retired from the English Department at UConn. I first published it with The Chronicle of Higher Education<\/em>, but even though he\u2019s the focus of the essay, I did not, in this case, show it to him first. I wanted it to be a surprise. It was a delight to adapt it for If You Lean In<\/em> and to have it here in UConn Magazine<\/em>, since Michael was everybody\u2019s favorite professor of American Literature.<\/p>\n

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