The Persian Versian, Wrinkles, Miscarriage, Lobsters and Love, Love, Love ❤️

All the News that's fit to Cross My Giant Five-Head

The Persian Version

In the 90s, when I was earning my MFA at the University of Arkansas, sometimes my writer pals and I would sit around daydreaming about what success would look like.  This was the era of Oprah the star-maker. (Once I met the Melinda Haynes, whose Mother of Pearl was an Oprah Book Club Pick; she told me her first royalty check was for over 1 million).  So naturally Oprah naturally featured in my peers’ fantasies. Some had visions of success featuring TV segments on talk shows; some daydreamed of “handlers” who’d drive them in a Lincoln town car from bookstore signing to bookstore signing. 

Me?  I fantasized about being translated. This seemed then, and seems to me now, the most exciting possible outcome of getting published, due to my love of travel and other cultures.  I’m not a translator myself, though I wish I was. But I’ve studied a lot of languages in my lifetime and finagled some abroad experiences.  Beyond the college Spanish, I mean. When I graduated, I lived for a year on the Czech/Polish border, teaching English, and left that place with proficient in Czech (though I’m not sure what, if any, is left now.) And in 2008 I had a Fulbright to Brazil and I worked pretty hard on my Portuguese and left being able to communicate freely—full of errors and bad pronunciation, sure, but I could talk with anyone I wanted to.

So, the dream of being translated—it’s come true a few times for me. It’s pretty random what country buys what book, but always a thrill. Here I am with a few foreign editions of the novel I co-wrote with my husband, The Tilted World:

I just heard from my agent that an Iranian publisher wants to translate this novel nto Persian (Farsi).  My agent, whom I adore (the AMAZING and old-school Judith Weber, of SobelWeber) was less than enthusiastic about the offer, which was only for $300. I could guess that she wanted me to turn it down—the agency’s fee of 20% will net them $60, not even enough to pay the lawyer to review the contract.  But a Persian version?  Hoo boy.  I know little about Iran, though I admire the writing of Kaveh Akbar, Sholeh Wolpé, and Porochista Khakpour.  Even though I knew this deal isn’t what my agent wanted, I sheepishly asked her to go ahead and lose money on my behalf.  Far more valuable than the $240, which is what I’d get after the 20% agenting fee, is the idea of holding in my hand my book translated into an Arabic script, which I believe is a right-to-left alphabet (someone correct me if I’m wrong). To think that people in that nation I might likely never see can read our story about the flood of the Mississippi River in 1927: that is my own baby Oprah’s Book Club, and I’m grateful. Grateful for every beautiful thing that writing life empowers.

Learning to Love My Five-Head. . .and its Wrinkles

You know that photo I shared above, me with a few foreign translations? Maybe you see a happy author. I do, too, . . . .but I also see a large head. If you’ve read my Substack before this edition, you’ll already be familiar with preoccupation with my freakishly large head. Not a forehead. A Five-head. And now, to make matters worse, my five-head is seamed with wrinkles. Including my thinkle, which I earned by frowning while I read something difficult. And I don’t LOVE that, but I’m at peace with it. I mention this because I’ve been thinking about a recent New York Times article talking about people in their TWENTIES getting “preventative Botox.” One reason they feel compelled to do this is that they don’t know what a “a natural” face looks like, but they’re scared of the proposition. FWIW, here I offer my natural face, in a conversation with my student Damian. For those folks in their 20s who’ve never seen a face without Botox—this is what a 53-year-old woman’s forehead looks like when she’s intently discussing metaphors, which she feels strongly about. She doesn’t adore the wrinkles. But each one of them was earned through thinking, through reading, through living, through conversing. If she could erase the thinkles and had to erase the living, she wouldn’t do it. She’s never gonna do it.

It’s Time for Difficult Truths About Miscarriage and Body Automomy

When I was 29 and newly married and newly pregnant, I was so happy—all I wanted was to be a mom. But it wasn’t to be—at the start of the second trimester, things went suddenly, terrifyingly wrong. I was teaching a writing workshop with my husband Tommy when I felt a pain wrench me as if trying to pinch me and pull me inside out by my intestines. I was wearing a dress with pockets. I turned my back to the class, put my hand in my pocket and touched my panties—then pulled my fingers out. They were bright red with blood. I was miscarrying in front of my students. Tommy dismissed class and rushed me to the hospital where were learned in an ultrasound that the technician couldn’t find the baby’s heartbeat. What followed was an incredibly dark time, days of follow-up tests and uncertainty and finally accepting the fact that the pregnancy wasn’t viable, that the fetus would have to be removed. I went to the hospital and received a d & c, Dilation and Curettage—an abortion.

I’ve never thought of that miscarriage as “lucky”—but in a way I was lucky to suffer that miscarriage under the right supreme court. Now, post-Roe, the d & c is being left up to states. In Mississippi, where I live, along with 21 other states where abortions are banned or restricted, the D & C that perhaps saved my life cannot be performed in the second trimester. In Mississippi n 2024, I likely would not have received the surgery that perhaps saved my life.

According to ProPublica,

But since abortion was banned or restricted in 22 states over the past two years, women in serious danger have been turned away from emergency rooms and told that they needed to be in more peril before doctors could help. Some have been forced to continue high-risk pregnancies that threatened their lives. Those whose pregnancies weren’t even viable have been told they could return when they were “crashing.”

I was operated on in 2000 in a state that didn’t wait for me to “crash,’ and I survived.

Being a pregnant woman in Mississippi in 2024? Mississippi has the highest maternal mortality rate, with “82.5 deaths per 1000 births,” according to the CDC.

If the mother is a woman of color, her chances are even worse. In 2021, the Black maternal mortality rate was nearly three times the rate it is for white women.

To take even one case: in Georgia, in 2024, Amber Nicole Thurman, a Black woman, died in the hospital after waiting over 20 hours for a D & C, an operation the state of Georgia had declared a felony. Her death was preventable.

I’m sharing this poem about my private grief, a grief that I don’t have a good way to process because we don’t have a good way of talking about or memorializing miscarriages or abortions. The poem isn’t about the D & C as much as it is about my yearning after this lost child, over two decades later.

But right now, in this political moment, the death of my my first baby in utero is no longer just a private sadness. It’s a national call to arms. See you November 5 in the voting booth, my friends.

What is the instinct that creates a teacher?

If I had to boil it down, I’d say someone who, as soon as she begins to figure something out, can’t help but share tips so others can figure it out, too. That’s the reason I like Estelle Erasmus—I subscribe to her Substack and I like her book, Writing That Gets Noticed. She seems to be someone who is figuring it out, as as soon as she has one little piece locked down, she wants to share it with others, too. Lewis Hyde, in The Gift, writes that our impulse to share leaves a trail of “interconnected relationships in its wake.” That’s what I want from art, from life—that connection. “Check this out,” coming from a friend—that’s my love language. David Dark calls this “intellectual hospitality.”

Estelle had me as a guest on her podcast—her 100th episode! And I didn’t break the podcast! The podcast is still going! Listen to a 50 second trailer here. And then find the entire episode, if you desire, here.

Do You Write Morning Pages?

Here I am, waxing poetic on the practice of morning pages in a video design to inspire the practice as a facet or mental health. If you write morning pages, I’d love to know how the process works and feeds you, in the comments below.

And have you checked out Abigail Thomas’ Substack, What Comes Next?

One of my favorite books of short-form nonfiction is Abigail Thomas’ Safekeeping. I love that Thomas, 83, has a Substack in which she shares her observations about life, writing, and making things with clay. I get the same joy from it I get from her books. And I love the acerbic yet humorous tone she takes towards mortality. Her Substack, unlike mine, is DAILY, and quite short; like mine, it’s not behind a paywall. You might like it?

Wanna Meet In Maine This Summer?

Dear Substackians, I’ve just agreed to return to Maine Media in July! I hadn’t planned on teaching this summer, but it’s such a dreamy place—I taught there two summers ago an LOVED it, so I accepted their invitation. I’m putting my class together now and will share more soon—but save the week of July 28 if you can meet me by the Maine coast for words & walks, love & lobsters. Speaking of lobsters, my friend Robert Townsend, who is an incredibly talented painter, also has a Substack. His work is worth more than a brief mention here—in fact, I’ve written an entire essay about him—but for now I’ll share something fun that happened after I came home from my last trip to Maine Media. I told hime I ate 8 lobsters in 10 days. True fact—and he worked up this maquette that he says he’ll paint at some point, me with my 8 lobsters swimming around my head. Isn’t it wonderful?

and I hope your fall is wonderful. Thanks for taking a few moments to check into mine.

In Closing, I’ll Remind You

The Bethannigan is free! The Bethannigan doesn’t want your money. The Bethannigan only wants your love. Praise me, pet me, share me, feed me. Take me home and tell your friends. Apparently if you like or comment below, it helps other people find The Bethannigan? Or if you have a Substack, recommend me? Do the thing! Point the way! Thanks, pals!