Freedman’s Obligation

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What would you do after a loved one died of a heartbreaking disease? How would you cope with the situation? Would you try to fill the missing holes in his/her life or would you make peace with the person you knew him/her as? By writing Who She Was, Samuel Freedman answered all of these questions.

On November 25, 2008, he entered the classroom breathing heavily, as if he just suffered a panic attack. Then he leans on the professor’s desk and comfortably begins explaining how worried he was about being late. He speaks as if he was familiar with the students in the classroom, which wasn’t too hard since he is a professor. Freedman starts speaking about his feelings regarding his book and mentions that it took him a while to start it after his mother’s death from cancer. He wrote Who She Was as a tribute to her individual life instead of her life with his family and stated it was “fascinating because I knew who she became but not how.” The purpose of writing his novel was to offer it is a final form of forgiveness to his mother. Freedman explores his mother’s life in the Bronx because of the remorse he “felt for not being more attentive when she was sick.” He admits that his former career as a theater reviewer plays a major role in helping him connect his book to a specific audience: young adults.

Freedman then opens up his Q&A session by relating past and present through the way historians of the future will see our world. Subsequently, he jumps into the rivalry between historians and journalists, wherein historians claim journalists “don’t know how to do research” and journalists claim historians “don’t know how to tell a good story.” Of the “wonderful narrative storytellers that do primary source research” and thus influence him, Freedman names Doris Goodwin, Anne Douglas, Paul Johnson, and Erik Larson.

The first question directed toward him pertained to his novel and how it changed his views on his parents’ marriage. He answers by saying he has more compassion for his father after learning his mother loved another man (Charlie) and digresses away into his feelings about his grandmother. Shockingly, he states that he hated her after learning the things she denied his mother but goes on to say that he realized the difficult situation she was in at her time and that allowed him to understand her actions. One thing Freedman tells the students while in the spotlight was: “There’s no question you guys can’t ask.” He holds true to his statement by covering all the bases of the questions he was asked, including one that inquired into the relationship between him and his kids after creating his book. Focusing on conveying the importance of his kids’ happiness to him, Freedman says “You have to be careful in denying their heart’s desire.”

Finally, the moment the students have been waiting for arrives when a student questions Freedman about how they should approach their “Who She/He Was/Is” papers. He cleverly states: “Be an insider and an outsider.” This correlates to his honest portrayal of his mother’s sexuality and alcoholism; they’re things he writes and doesn’t deny. After all, Freedman says, “Your obligation is to your reader.”