Cary Lowe is the author of the award-winning book Becoming American: A Political Memoir. He has published over fifty essays on political and civic issues in major newspapers, as well as professional reports and articles in professional journals.
Mr. Lowe is a retired California land use lawyer with 45 years of experience representing public agencies, developers, Indian tribes, and non-profit organizations. He holds a law degree and a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. He taught courses in law and urban planning at USC, UCLA, and UC San Diego, and he writes and lectures on land use and environmental issues. In addition to his legal experience, Mr. Lowe is a credentialed mediator affiliated with the Land Use & Environmental Mediation Group of the National Conflict Resolution Center.
WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:
Website: https://carylowewriter.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carylowewriter/?modal=admin_todo_tour
As a book bloggin’ and book luvin’ Princess, I’m always curious to find out how authors got the ideas for their books. Can you tell us how you got the idea to write your book?
My memoir Becoming American grew out of a trip I took with my daughter to explore the places of our family’s origin in Eastern Europe, including searching for a hidden cemetery near Prague where my paternal great-grandparents were buried. On our return, I wrote a stand-alone story about our adventures for family and friends. That led me to write more stories about my life growing up in Europe in the years following World War II, with parents who were Holocaust survivors. After writing a half dozen such stories, I visualized making them the heart of a book, describing not only my youth in Europe during an interesting and volatile time, but also my family’s immigration to the United States and my professional and political careers here. That first story became the opening chapter and portions of subsequent chapters of my memoir. And the book evolved into a chronicle of my experience in becoming American.
Can you give us an excerpt?
CHAPTER 1
THE SEARCH
Growing up in postwar Austria, my greatest hope was someday to become an American. A real American, like the khaki-clad soldiers occupying the country or the cowboys in the westerns at the local cinema. My father, a refugee from Vienna who worked on the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal, promised me that hope would be fulfilled one day. What I didn’t realize then was that becoming American would cut me off from my roots. Many years later, after my parents and my brother had died, I resolved to restore that connection.
***
On a sunny autumn afternoon in 1997, I arrived with my nine-year-old daughter at the entrance of a long-closed Jewish cemetery near Strakonice, in the countryside south of Prague. Thirty-five years after we had left Europe for America, a search worthy of Indiana Jones had brought me and Coralea here from our home in Los Angeles. Inside, I hoped to find the graves of my paternal great-grandparents.
Stepping out of the car into a light breeze, I felt the momentary burst of elation of a marathon runner crossing the finish line. Then reality interrupted. Pursing my lips, I turned to Coralea.
“I just hope this is the right cemetery,” I said. “Aunt Mimi told me only that it was near Strakonice, but she didn’t seem sure. It’s been a long time since she was here.”
“It has to be the right one,” Coralea responded with the certainty of youth.
Six-foot stucco-encased walls and eight-foot wrought-iron gates blocked our way. If I could get in, would I find the graves? How would I read Hebrew inscriptions on the headstones?
I felt as nervous as when I stood before a federal judge to take my oath of United States citizenship at the age of seventeen. I clasped Coralea’s left hand. She squeezed back. I took a step toward the gates, then another and another, with her in tow, until the gates loomed over us like sentinels. An ancient-looking lock the size of my fist secured chains wrapped around the innermost bars. I searched for a sign with information on how to gain entry.
A musty smell, a combination of rust and fallen leaves, momentarily caught my attention. Trembling, I reached out with my left hand, grasped the rough bars, and shook them. I knew I would not be entering through those gates.
“We’ve come so far,” I said. “We’ve got to get in there.” Yet, the graves beyond the gates seemed impossibly out of reach.
I thought of the stories of my father’s narrow escape from Vienna on the eve of World War II, of my mother’s years in hiding during the war and her harrowing escape, and of their improbable return to Europe for the Nuremberg trials. I recalled the similarly amazing stories of survival told by nearly everyone I knew. As my father said, “If they didn’t have an amazing story, they wouldn’t be here to tell it.”
Turning to Coralea, I said, “I wish my parents could be here with us.”
“Especially grandma,” she replied with a sigh. “She wanted to bring me back here so much.”
Closing my eyes, I searched for an answer. My thoughts rushed back over the unlikely path that had led me to this time and place. I recalled my childhood in Austria, just a few hours’ drive away. The Iron Curtain had blocked us off from our roots for years, just as the cemetery walls threatened to do now. Although the slaughter was over, the guns were silent, and the armies mostly had gone home, I lived amid the aftermath of the war — the bombed cities being rebuilt, the Hitlerhaus that cast a cloud over my hometown, my refugee nanny Herma, displaced persons in squatters’ camps, and concentration camp survivors piecing their lives back together.
I remembered my first interactions with Americans — the military occupiers, the intelligence agents that gathered at our home and told wild tales, and my childhood friends in Austria and later in Germany. And the combination of excitement and apprehension I felt later, realizing I was becoming gradually Americanized. I marveled at how immigrating and becoming an American citizen had launched me into a life of political involvement in my adopted country.
Most of all, I thought how much those experiences had changed my life. I had evolved from a German-speaking, Austrian-born child of war survivors into an English-speaking American, eagerly drawn into a new and exciting culture. What I experienced and witnessed in the years after the war had shaped how I viewed the world, how I interacted with people, and how I identified myself.
In becoming Americanized, however, I had lost much of my connection, to those early years and to my family’s places of origin. They had receded behind the more recent people and places of my American experience.
I opened my eyes, bringing me back to the present. The gates seemed even more ominous. Still holding my hand, Coralea looked up at me expectantly. I peered between the bars at the rows of headstones. The closest ones looked ancient, like those in the old Jewish cemetery in Prague, with weathered, barely legible Hebrew lettering. Behind them stood newer markers, taller and more ornate. Weeds and grass had so overgrown much of the cemetery that I wondered when anyone had visited last and opened those gates. Whatever I might find inside, I could not imagine being denied after coming this far. I struggled to figure out our next step until Coralea interrupted my thoughts.
“You can do it, Dad,” she said. “You found this place. You can find a way in.”
***
If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would that be?
First, take writing courses early, rather than learning solely by trial and error. Next, be ambitious and begin submitting your writing for publication as soon as you feel it’s ready. The market only gets tighter and more competitive over time. Finally, don’t limit yourself to short pieces. Try writing a full-length book as soon as you have a good enough story.
What would you say is one of your interesting writing quirks?
Whether I’m writing an essay, a short non-fiction piece, or a book chapter, I like to end each with a takeaway for the reader – a lesson or moral that emerges from the story.
Do you hear from your readers? What do they say?
I received consistently positive feedback regarding the fifty plus essays I published in major newspapers and professional journals, though some readers disagreed with my views on public issues. So far, the feedback regarding my book, in person and in on-line reviews, has been quite positive as well, apart from a few readers again disagreeing with my political perspective.
What is the toughest criticism given to you as an author?
Members of my writing group, while usually complimentary of my writing otherwise, frequently tell me I have not shared enough emotion in my first-person stories.
What has been your best accomplishment?
As a writer, my best accomplishment has been completing my first book and getting it published.
Do you Google yourself?
I subscribe to Google Alerts, so I receive notification whenever my name appears on-line.
How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have?
I have begun working on a book about travel experiences with my wife, who is disabled. Many years ago, I began writing a book about my experiences in the Navy, but put it aside to concentrate on law school and then my career. I used some material from that manuscript in my current book.
Fun question – if you were princess or prince, what’s one thing you would do to make your kingdom a better place?
I would ensure that every young person receives an education in civic affairs, in the hope of increasing interest in important issues and improving the quality of public discourse. In the meantime, I’m hoping my book contributes to that goal.
Do you have anything specific that you would like to say to your readers?
I hope my memoir Becoming American will entertain you with a good story, but also that it will teach you something important. You may have read essays which I previously published in major newspapers. This book is much more personal., as well as broader in scope. In addition to telling you about my life experience, I attempt to address one of the great public controversies of our time – the place of immigrants in our society and the meaning of being a real American. With that in mind, I wish you happy reading, and hope that you come away from my book entertained and also inspired.
Becoming American is the inspiring story of the author’s transformation from a child of Holocaust survivors in post-war Europe to an American lawyer, academic, and activist associated with such famed political leaders as Robert Kennedy, George McGovern, Jerry Brown, and Tom Hayden.
Searching for his great-grandparents’ graves in a hidden cemetery outside Prague makes him recall his experiences of becoming American: listening to Army Counterintelligence agents gathered at his family home in Austria; a tense encounter with Russian soldiers during the post-war occupation; seeing Jim Crow racism in the South during his first visit to the United States; becoming an American citizen in his teens; having his citizenship challenged by border guards; fearing for his new country upon witnessing the Watts riots in Los Angeles; advancing the American dream as a real estate lawyer, helping develop entire new communities; and rising to leadership positions in organizations shaping government policies around some of the most important issues of our time.
Becoming American won the 2020 Discovery Award for best political writing from an independent publisher. It features a foreword by bestselling author Edith Eger.
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