BARBARA CLARKE: THE RED KITCHEN
BIG BLEND RADIO: Barbara Clarke discusses her new book “The Red Kitchen,” an intimate memoir that depicts change and discovery between mom and daughter, and how it’s never too late to come of age. Listen to her podcast here in the YouTube player or download the podcast on PodBean or SoundCloud.
It’s never too late to find and mend the broken places within ourselves and in our relationships with others. This is exemplified in Barbara Clarke’s compassionate story exploring the long-term effects of an early betrayal of a child and how that transforms her life. In “The Red Kitchen,” (She Writes Press) Clarke shows how to keep a sense of humor in the worst of times — part understanding and part forgiveness — and describes how to work with memory, trust and finding long-term solutions to trauma.
Mother-daughter relationships are notoriously tricky. Add to that a secretive father and an aloof husband, and you have the makings of a memoir full of grit, honesty, and humor. This account is really about two women, Clarke and her mother, who both surrendered for years to society’s expectations before realizing there’s more to life than just being a wife, mother and dutiful daughter. How about being yourself?
A summer spent in a small village in Kenya allowed Clarke to discover why everyone mattered, especially her mother, and that simple is often better. She embraced a new aspiration: to be a complete person — funny, compassionate, complex and often flawed. Both women, in incredibly different ways, come of age, find the loving parts of their early relationship and start living their best lives, all the while detailing how to live with issues ranging from aging parents, sexuality, and the long-term effects of trauma on women and girls.
In the past, Barbara Clarke has written extensively for corporate clients, trade magazines, worked under a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant, non-profit organizations as a grant writer, and for local and alternative newspapers on a variety of topics. In 2009 she published an indie memoir, “Getting to Home: Sojourn in a Perfect House,” about the process of building a house as a single woman. Other publications followed. For more info, visit https://barbaraclarke.net
