First, for any of you who were unable to watch, here is a link to Literary Nights with Unsolicited Press, the YouTube reading series that Timothy Boudreau and I participated in this past Wednesday. We had a great reading and conversation about our books and writing. After hearing Tim read the title story of his collection, I’ve just preordered his book of short stories, Stepdad on the Dance Floor.
Tsunami is making its official way into the world on Tuesday! It’s a short book, 120 pages comprised of a preface, 36 vignettes, and an epilogue, with the main part of the book starting on December 18, 2004, and going through January 2005.
Although I attempted to write about it earlier, I couldn’t. It wasn’t until 2011, after the Tōhoku Earthquake and Tsunami and the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, that I really began writing. I was traumatized and I didn’t feel I deserved to be. I needed the perspective of time, of distance, to access the deeper emotions of the experience.
I was in Rai Leh, a small peninsula connected to the mainland but only accessible by boat because of towering limestone cliffs that block direct access. Rai Leh wasn’t hit as hard as Phuket and Koh Phi Phi. Seventy percent of Koh Phi Phi was destroyed, 2000 confirmed dead, though the number could be much higher. In Phuket, more than 250 people died. Phang Nga province was the hardest hit. Overall in Thailand there were an estimated 5400 fatalities.
However, the tsunami killed 230,000 people, across 14 countries—from Indonesia to Africa. Most of the fatalities, approximately 167,540, were in Indonesia, particularly in Aceh province where the waves hit within 15 to 20 minutes of the 9.3 undersea earthquake off the coast of Sumatra. The resulting tsunami went as far as Kenya in East Africa. Most of the people who died lived in those countries. They lost their lives, their families, their livelihoods, their homes, their communities. Those who survived had to rebuild everything.
I was not hurt. I didn’t lose anything. I went home to my nice life in the United States. To my mind, I hardly deserved to say I was there. I had a great deal of surviver’s guilt. Yet I did eventually want to own my experience and to share it. Tsunami is my story of what I experienced. I am so grateful to have survived. I realize that I am so fortunate and blessed. But so many people weren’t.
I plan to share some short essays about the writing of the memoir and other aspects of the book and my experience over the coming months, interspersed with other posts and poems. Thank you so much for being here, for reading, for commenting. Welcome to all my subscribers and followers and especially to those who have just joined.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.