“The Other
Mother: A rememoir”
by Teresa
Bruce
Joggling Board
Press
released
November 5th, 2013
The eight
parts of speech – nouns, verbs, pronouns, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions,
conjunctions and interjections - are a writer’s best friend. These grammatical
building blocks are the foundation of everything literary. But there are some
writers who do more than utilize these parts of speech, they transform and
re-design them, making something unexpected and surprising. It is they who craft
the written word into a living entity – Teresa Bruce is one such author.
Bruce’s newest
endeavor, “The Other Mother: A rememoir” (nationally released on November 5th
by Joggling Board Press), recounts the lives of two women – herself and Byrne
Miller. Though from very different generations, they bond over dance, over
loss, over curiosity, over the present and over the future. And while it is
true that dance frames the entire book, “The Other Mother: A rememoir” is not a
story about dance; it is a story about extraordinary and plain moments alike.
It is about real experience and authentic interactions.
“The Other
Mother: A rememoir” travels through time as it follows its three narratives:
two individual stories (Teresa’s and Byrne’s) along with their shared
experience after meeting in 1991. Beginning with a referential date and location,
each chapter is one piece of a dynamic puzzle. And while these short vignettes
leap from the 1990s to the 1930s to the 1970s and toggle between storylines,
the flow is flawless. One particularly lovely cadence is the re-telling of the
women’s first introduction – Teresa’s perspective is given in chapter eight and
Byrne’s in chapter forty-one.
As noted, “The
Other Mother: A rememoir” is not exclusively about dance, but the performing arts
thread is strongly woven throughout the work, taking on actual, inadvertent and
metaphorical roles. As recalled by Bruce, dance was a very real journey for
both women. The reader first meets Teresa as a young budding ballerina and sees
how many years later, she returns to contemporary movement as an adult. Byrne’s
life in dance was anything but typical, including several long sabbaticals. Her
dance trajectory moved through many seasons and included stints as a Burlesque
showgirl, contemporary dancer, choreographer/Artistic Director and community
dance maven. Those are the dance details, the lines on the résumé.
But on a much
deeper level, Bruce shares how dance was present and moved through both lives
far beyond the studio, stage and rehearsal hall. Dance terms and verbiage were brilliantly
peppered within the regular prose to describe relationships, circumstances, reactions
and situations. One particularly poignant example is when dance terminology is
used to illustrate Byrne’s reaction to a devastating medical diagnosis in her
family:
“She reached for a barre that wasn’t there, off balance. She struggled not to fall,
gripped her feet in second position parallel, knees bent in demi-plié…She exhaled, hands flexed at
the end of hyperextended arms. She was pushing away the word, the palms of her
hands telling the doctor no…” (p. 154)
Another noteworthy
instance comes at the end of the book when Bruce compares the connective tissue
in ballet to the notion of moving on. Her thoughts on how transitional steps
make grand motions possible was transcendent and universally applicable.
The triumph of
Bruce’s book is not only in its storytelling but also in its title. Her use of ‘rememoir’
is purposeful, important and revealing. ‘Rememoir’ feels like ‘remembering’ – a
verb; an action. And as such, “The Other Mother: A rememoir” proclaims that human
life is a work of verbs, both active and inactive: of doing, of believing, of
deciding, of being.
For more
information on “The Other Mother: A rememoir” or Teresa Bruce, visit her blog
at www.teresabrucebooks.com
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