“Histories of families cannot be separated from the histories of nations”

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“We are not used to associating our private lives with public events,” writes Susan Griffin. “Yet the histories of families cannot be separated from the histories of nations.…

“There are so many strands to the story.… I begin to suspect each strand goes out infinitely and touches everything, everyone. I am reminded that nothing stands alone. Everything has something standing beside it. And the two are really one.” (A Chorus of Stones)

Yes, you and I have observed history-in-the-making—sometimes as bystanders and other times as the movers and shakers—and our personal histories are intertwined with our world’s history.

When we include the historical settings of our stories, we place ourselves into a bigger story, a story that includes our city, school, religion, nation, ethnic culture, gender, industry, or profession.

When we link ourselves with the history that surrounded our lives, we anchor our stories in time and place.

Our stories can make history come alive—they can make history personal—for our readers.

Below is a module I wrote about the Cuban Missile Crisis. (Do you remember what a module is? It’s a short account—in contrast to a stand-alone story that has a beginning, a plot, and a conclusion. A module is only part of a story. Read more at Modules Add Zing to Your Memoir.)

This module is still in rough draft form. I welcome your feedback. Feel free to leave your response in the comments section below.

Cuban Missile Crisis

Against a black velvet autumn sky, the American Flag glowed brilliant, like diamonds and rubies in the spotlight, but my tears blurred its radiance.

Our high school band played The Star Spangled Banner while my friends and I stood, singing along, in our football stadium. But I was choking on the words:

“O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?”

It was Friday evening, October 26, 1962. All I had ever known of being an American—and even of being alive—hung in jeopardy.

Our nation trembled at the forefront of the most dangerous point in recorded history: America was engaged in a nuclear face-off with the Soviet Union.

From my earliest childhood memories, our nation’s people had been gripped in fear over a potential nuclear attack. Fallout shelters, and stocking them with survival supplies, were common topics of discussion. Weekly, usually Wednesdays, every community and school conducted air raid drills. When the siren screamed, we students practiced hiding under our school desks until we got an all-clear signal.

So now, in October, 1962, it had come to this: On Sunday, October 14, US reconnaissance flights revealed that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had installed nuclear warheads in Cuba, just off the Florida coast.

From there, Hiroshima-sized bombs could destroy American cities up to 1,550 miles away—virtually all of the US’s southeast states and beyond—beyond Chicago, beyond Kansas City, beyond Dallas.

Soviet missiles could deliver three-megaton bombs to Washington, DC, within five minutes.

Not only America, but the entire world, stood on the brink of nuclear war and, no doubt, World War III. It would be annihilation. Armageddon.

By Wednesday, October 17, the US had begun Operation ORTSAC (Cuban dictator Castro’s name spelled backwards), with a mock invasion of Cuba carried out in nearby Puerto Rico.

The next day, US forces started mobilizing for an invasion of Cuba.

Friday, October 19, news agencies reported military activities in Florida. The 81st and 101st Airborne were placed on alert.

In response, on Monday, October 22, Nikita Khrushchev said he’d use nuclear weapons to thwart a US invasion of Cuba, and he put Soviet forces in Cuba on alert in readiness for a US paratrooper drop.

That same day, President John F. Kennedy announced a naval blockade of Cuba.

The next day, Tuesday, October 23, American F-8 Crusaders flew low-level reconnaissance flights over Cuba and took close-up photos of Soviet missile sites.

Wednesday, Adlai Stevenson, US Ambassador to the United Nations, put forward evidence of those missiles.

US military forces were ordered to the highest state of military readiness.

Friday, October 26, the day of our high school football game, US intelligence discovered evidence of short-range nuclear missiles ready to target US forces invading Cuba. Khrushchev was following through on the threat he had made a few days earlier.

As children, we’d been educated about the effects of a nuclear attack, but it was my junior high science teacher, Mr. Serwald, who drove home raw truths in the event that we never got that all-clear signal. As I recall, he said if our town came under nuclear attack that within a certain radius, humans would be vaporized. A little farther away from the blast, bodies would have all flesh burned off. A little farther away, bodies would be covered with blisters. Any remaining vegetation and water would be contaminated. The list of horrors went on and on.

Those images filled my thoughts that night at the football field while I sobbed through The Star Spangled Banner, eyes glued to the American Flag sparkling against the night sky.

Related posts:

You are an eyewitness to history

One of the great challenges for the writer is to

Modules add zing to your memoir

What comes to mind when you hear the word module?

When my husband and I worked on the mission field, we collected modules to use in speaking engagements when we returned home.

On the field, we kept our ears alert for coworkers’ stories that would serve as a cultural module, an IIWIA (Is it worth it all?) module, a spiritual need module, or an end result module.

Modules are short accounts (in contrast to stand-alone stories that have a beginning, a plot, and a conclusion) that, combined with other information, comprise a complete story.

In other words, a module is part of a story.

I hadn’t thought about using modules in memoirs until last year when I taught the memoir class at New Tribes Mission’s training center in southern Missouri.

I had been stressing the importance of intriguing beginnings and strong, satisfying conclusions when a missionary asked if her memoir could include a paper on name-giving traditions practiced by the African group she worked with.

She was puzzled because she recognized her naming paper was not a story—it had no beginning, plot, or conclusion.

At the same moment, I recognized she was talking about a module. It was a Eureka! moment for me.

“Yes!” I told her. “Yes, you’re talking about a module—a rich cultural module. Use it!”

Yes, modules work in memoir. Include them in your vignettes, especially if you have written several about the same incident or timeframe or locale.

Here’s an excerpt from a cultural module about a trip my husband, Dave, took with a fellow missionary, Peter, to a remote indigenous tribe in South America. (I changed names for security reasons.)

The ABC people’s culture is laced with taboos to separate them from the outside world. They dwell in scattered mountain villages and only rarely venture outside to buy salt, machetes, or cloth. 

When an ABC man returns from the outside, he and the articles he brings are considered contaminated and must go through the witch doctor’s purification ceremony, lasting four days or longer. 

Especially taboo is paper, so much so that the ABCs believe it cannot be purified, so paper is banned completely.… 

An ABC can be purified, but an outsider is always an outsider—and always impure—so when Dave and Peter called on ABC families, they spread a banana leaf over the bench to preserve its purity. When the visit ended, they took with them their contaminated banana leaf. 

Similarly, the ABCs scurried for trusted banana leaves to cup candies Dave offered them in payment for photos he snapped. The leaves protected the people from contamination until the witchdoctor worked his cleansing magic.…

Note that this account has no plot; it isn’t a story. It is a module that enriches the story of Dave’s visit to the ABC village.

The module helps readers understand the setting and the conditions.

It helps them feel the vibes.

It helps readers experience Dave’s trip with him.

There are many kinds of cultural modules.

Think about family cultures. Each family has its own traditions, manner of speaking, table manners, assumptions, and expectations—and taboo topics for discussion.

Think about city or neighborhood cultures. If you are from Seattle, you instinctively know the difference between living in Medina (where Bill Gates lives)  and Forks (the setting for the Twilight series), but your readers—grandkids, great-grandkids—might not understand the nuances the way you do. A cultural module could make all the difference in helping your readers live your story with you and grasp your deeper message.

A dizzy American is a workplace cultural module about my years in Africa. 

Here’s a historical module:

Land sold for thirteen dollars per acre in his hometown. You could buy a dozen eggs for twenty-seven cents, a loaf of bread went for nine cents, milk was twenty-two cents a quart, delivered to your door. And you could buy a ready-to-wear man’s tailored suit for fifteen dollars.… 

Woodrow Wilson had just completed his first term as the twenty-eighth president of the United States.… The year was 1917, and William Cameron Townsend was twenty-one. 

Had he been interested … Cameron Townsend could have heard for the first time in history, jazz music on phonographs. (from A Thousand Trails: Personal Journal of William Cameron Townsend, Founder of Wycliffe Bible Translators, compiled and edited by Hugh Steven.)

Look for ways to include brief modules in your memoir’s vignettes.

Take a few days to think about the possibilities. Look for a cultural module, an IIWIA (Is it worth it all?) module, a spiritual need module, an end result module, or a historical module. (I haven’t included examples of IIWIA, spiritual need, or end result modules but if you’d like more info, leave a comment below.)

Can you think of other types of modules?

Modules add texture and zing and flavor and richness and depth and pizzazz—and isn’t that what we all enjoy in stories?