Auburn author Debra Rose Brillati will explore the art of oral history interviewing, offering tips and techniques that can be used to gather your own family stories. Brillati used the techniques she will discuss in researching her recently published memoir, THE HOUSE OF MANY DOORS: A MEMOIR OF FAMILY. Brillati will also do a reading from the book.
Book Description: A combination of memory, stories, and research, The House of Many Doors draws readers into the lives of two immigrant families—one German, on Italian—who left all they had ever known for the promise of work in the coal mines and rail yards of Northeastern Pennsylvania at the turn of the 20th Century.
Each essay focuses on a grandparent, parent, aunt, or uncle, telling their personal story as well as the story of how they shaped the author’s world and touched her life. Characters include:
As the author steps into the shoes of the ten family members profiled here and fills in historical details, each person emerges as a complex, flawed, and more remarkable human being than she had ever imaged. Walking with them through wars, immigration, the Great Depression, grueling work lives in the rail yards and coal mines, the unyielding drudgery of domestic life, and the struggles to move up generation by generation, readers will discover lives lived in the fulcrum between dark and light, joy and sorrow, regret and hope.
The free book talk will begin at 6 PM at the Cayuga Museum Downtown location at 144 Genesee St., Suite 100 on Wednesday, July 24. Copies of “The House of Many Doors: A Memoir of Family” will be available to purchase, and the author will remain onsite to sign books after the presentation. If you would like to purchase the book beforehand, copies will be available for purchase in the Cayuga Museum Downtown bookstore. Contact Geoffrey Starks at geoffrey@cayugamuseum.org or (315) 253-8051 with any questions.
This program is supported by the Nelson B. Delavan Foundation Part A and Cayuga Community Fund.
Debra Rose Brillati (she/her) received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Nebraska Omaha in January 2022. She recently published a book-length composite memoir about her Italian and German immigrant families and her youth in a coal mining town in Northeastern Pennsylvania. She enjoys writing about family relationships–their joys, sorrows, and surprises–and the political and social issues that impact the human condition.