Martina Reaves' Memoir: Her Edges of Change...

 

I'm Still Here by Martina Reaves
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wyndy Knox Carr, The Berkeley Times, Knox Book Beat, 19 November, 2020 

Martina Reaves’ I’m Still Here: A Memoir, chronicles a young woman who comes to the Bay Area in 1969 out of a peripatetic “military family” upbringing and goes through huge relationship, self-image, occupational, physical, social, spiritual and health changes over the next forty years.

I really felt like I had gone through a lifetime of Bay Area, Berkeley AND All-American transitions from the late ‘60s to 2015 when I read this, because both Reaves and her partners had very close family in Texas, conservative religions and communities; as well as Bay Area and “outstate” experiences, associates and employers on the far right of the “Berkeley Bubble” politico-social spectrum. 

Working women, open relationships, back-to-the-landers, child care, disrupted social norms, same-sex relationships, divorce and other marks of that period are the subject matter; handled in an unflinching, though sometimes admittedly exhausted, confused or overwhelmed central persona. (Weren't we all?) “Unconscious shadow material” erupts and moves mountains we thought would forever stand...

The courage and honesty Reaves shows throughout her various and vacillating explorations is remarkable. As a trusting newbie on a San Francisco streetcar; a doubting, contemplating, often doggedly determined elder undergoing cancer treatment at Stanford; as well as a happily partnered Mom admitting the shock of “I feel my heart torn out” when their only child leaves for college in the Middle West and "empty nest syndrome" sets in in spite of her busy, friendly, fruitful life.

You can tell that Reaves has taken advantage of the many brilliant and varied teachers, writing groups, advisors, bookstores, editors and literary options in the Bay Area to hone her craft. She chooses pertinent, brief vignettes with realistic dialogue that ring true and carry us forward in a fluid, believable way; even through shocks, wonders and surprises we perhaps haven’t seen, imagined or shared.

I’m surprised that as experienced a publisher as Brooke Warner of She Writes Press let Reaves keep her title in 2020, within a year of Ram Dass’ death, the renowned author of Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing and Dying, published in 2000; and the difficult “interweaving” (staggering) of chapters between 1969 and 1986, two alternating “time frames” that do not converge until the Epilogue almost 250 pages later. I'd gotten used to it by the seventh or eighth chapter, but uncomfortably so. The entire plot is also encapsulated on the back cover (SPOILER ALERT!), which I was glad I didn’t read until I was well into the book.

I held back when her cancer treatment descriptions went on a little too long for me, seeming like an “intentional fallacy” meant to bring about the very weariness she felt. Maybe it’s because I went through several years of pain and medical turmoil myself not too long ago and didn’t want to “go back there,” even through "someone else." 

Mostly, her storytelling was inspiring, brave and fascinating in its authenticity, however. The best thing I can say about a memoir, I will say about Reaves’: By the time I got to the end of the book I felt like family, too, loving and understanding “where they were coming from,” “like” them (us) or not. 

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