A Tell Me Again sample
A Childhood in Another Country
Beverley Clarke is an example, not a customer. We’ve written her to show you what the book does, because we’d rather do that than describe it.
Born 1944, Clarendon, Jamaica · came to Birmingham at eighteen · commissioned by her granddaughter
Two Answers, One Afternoon
Many of the people who answer these questions had a childhood and an adulthood in two different countries. Here is what that carries.
Full Interview
“What did your childhood kitchen smell like?”
“Wood smoke and pimento. My grandmother cooked outside, under a zinc roof at the side of the house, and everything we ate had a little smoke in it — rice, fish, everything. I have never got that back. I have tried. You cannot get it from a gas ring in Handsworth.”
“Was there a time you thought things would not come right?”
“The first winter. Nobody had told me about the cold in a way that meant anything — they said cold, and I thought I knew what cold was. I had one coat and it was not a coat. I wrote to my mother every week for a year and I never once told her I was crying, because she would have sent for me, and I would have gone.”
The Written Story
Her grandmother cooked outside, under a zinc roof at the side of the house in Clarendon, and so everything Beverley ate for the first eighteen years of her life had a little wood smoke in it. Rice, fish, everything. She has spent sixty years failing to get that back, and is quite clear about why: you cannot get it from a gas ring in Handsworth.
The first winter was the one that nearly ended it. People had said cold, and she had understood the word without understanding anything. She had one coat, and it was not a coat.
She wrote to her mother every week for a year. She never once mentioned that she was crying, because her mother would have sent for her — and, she says, she would have gone.
More Samples
Four other lives, the same set of questions.
- A Working Life — Walter Nowak, thirty-four years on the line.
- A Courtship — Peggy Whitfield, married in 1959.
- Two Languages, a Grandson Asking — Rafael Villalobos, Guatemala to Houston.
- What If Someone Doesn’t Want to Answer — Joan Petrie, and the questions that go unanswered.
Every book starts the same way: you choose twenty-five questions once, from eight categories and one of your own. What comes back depends on who you’re asking and whether they’ll write.