Nonfiction Books Take a Long Time

This winter I’ve been reading Maira Kalman’s newest book, Still Life with Remorse over and over again and beginning to understand the structure that my own family stories will take as a collection and I can start to see how I never could have completed this project before. I had to wait and do research and draw and write and think for a decade first.

I’m also thinking about what a nonfiction book can be. There are so many things! Here are three that I love and have read severaal times, that could also be used as a structure for a nonfiction book about my family:

1. Let’s Not Talk Anymore by Weng Pixin

2. This Land is My Land by Andy Warner and Sofie Louise Dam

3. Cook Korean by Robin Ha

The first book gives very personal stories that are vignettes from the lives of the author, her mother, grandmother and her great grandmother. Each of the stories relates to the others by theme and similarities/differences that come to light as each person’s experience is revealed. The last part is an imagination of the future so in a sense fiction, but since it’s also something the author is telling us about her own imaginings, it is nonfiction.

I would love to do something like this, focused on the women in my family try and their life experiences. I would also love to imagine ancestors further from the past, using historical research to figure out what their lives would have been like.

The second book is about failed utopias (because all utopias fail) and it’s about places. Any book about people can also be about places and since my ancestors are all immigrants to the USA, the places they came from and places they went to would make a great structure for a book. Research would include reading histories of the various places, looking for photos and paintings of the towns and villages from different time periods, as well as possibly visiting them if possible.

The last book is a cookbook and that’s not something I would do, but it also includes comics about the author’s mother, background about Korea, info about ingredients, and one page comics and paintings that go with each chapter. I could build a structure about the food in each place where my ancestors live without making it a full-blown cookbook, and perhaps include a few favorite recipes that have been passed down to me. Food traditions are always fascinating to people because we all eat to live and many of us also live to eat!

So, just some thought on how to organize a nonfiction book that includes personal and family stories but also uses research to flesh everything out, add depth, and make sure it’s accurate.