Talia Adry pulls back the curtain on her writing process and new memoir “Complicit”
By Sarah Daponde Arts & Features Editor CELTSS hosted writer Talia Adry to discuss her memoir, “Complicit,” with author Bryan Counter on Sept. 25 in the Heineman Ecumenical Center. The event was part of the Scholarly and Creative Showcase Series. Sam Witt, English professor at Framingham State and Adry’s husband, moderated the discussion. Both Adry and Counter lecture at Framingham State. “I think the Framingham English Department is lucky to have both of these minds in the classroom,” said Witt. Adry began the event by reading the preface and first chapters of “Complicit,” a collection of memories of her childhood trauma and early adult life. Witt said Adry incorporated “normally peaceful people and innocent imagery into a violent setting.” He said the memoir became increasingly difficult to read as the subject matter became more solemn, and asked how Adry was able to reflect on the difficult subjects present in her memoir, such as being groomed and sexually assaulted by an adult man when she was a young teenager. “The difficulty of reflecting is the feeling of wanting to be as accurate or as authentic as possible,” she said, adding that her old diary helped her remember certain details of her childhood. Adry said she views writing memories as “collaging.” “Just grabbing all of these separate things and trying to … nail something in,” she added. She does not remember much of her childhood, and feels almost no relationship to her younger self when looking at old pictures. “It’s also confusing to write from different vantage points,” said Adry. Focusing on the movement and landscapes in her memories helped to ground her writing and create more completed scenes. “You don’t have to remember the exact day or even a conversation verbatim. It’s about recreating the experience, recreating the moment,” she added. Adry said her title, “Complicit,” does not refer to herself only, but to the societal framework that allowed her to be taken advantage of as a child. Adry said the man who groomed her was married, and the father of one of her friends. At times, she felt like she chose to be with him and felt cooperative in his crimes. She said she feels differently about the situation as an adult than she did when she was younger. “For many years, I did feel complicit … I lied to my mother, I lied to my brother.” Adry said she has a strong tie to journalism and research, as well as poetry and lyricism. She described the creation of her memoir as “weaving” between the blunt facts and poetic deliverance. Adry did not write her memoir to end with a moral lesson to avoid being artificial or inaccurate. “That is so stale,” she added. She said she believes there should be a secret built between the author and the reader in every book. Witt described this secret in a book as “something inexpressible, almost literally monolithically inexpressible. Otherwise, why would you write it?” Counter said he believes there is no formula for writing, and it is always personal, even in analytical works. Counter said what makes a piece of work true literature are the moments that cannot be “captured by a summary.” English Professor Jennifer De Leon encouraged not only her creative writing students, but all of her students to attend the event. “We get to see the curtain pulled back on the process of writing … in a way that will be published as creative work and scholarly work. What I think is so neat is that the writers are going to talk about their process, and we don’t always get a window into that.”
