Kickstarter

"The unexamined life is not worth living."

I’m collaborating with my mother to write a multiple-medium memoir called LITTLE BROWN GIRL. It combines essays, poetry, interviews and traditional memoir materials in a story about my coming to terms with who I am given my unusual background. I was born in Synanon, a utopian community. It was often described as a cult. Synanon started out as the most successful drug rehab program for heroin addiction. When my parents met they were looking for a community that would accept them while upholding the same liberal values that they shared. They moved into Synanon to build an alternative lifestyle to that of Middle America. My father is Jewish, he was a lawyer and a finance executive born in the Fairfax district of Los Angeles, California. My mother is half-black, half-Norwegian, born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is a retired educator and school principal.

My goal is to uncover the complexities of being an American in society today through my own story, the ways in which we are also searching for the same basic things -- love, truth, family and identity. Many people struggle with their own identities in the context of their upbringing. I have spent a large portion of my life dealing with these questions as they’ve become mixed up into one giant knot that this book will help to unravel — an unraveling that will not only shed light on my own life, and my own struggle with self-examination, but perhaps that of others’ as well.

Your donation will go to producing this book, which will fuel a documentary. 
 Thank you so much for your support!