Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac (24 page)

I am thankful:

For books and those who publish and champion them. (Especially my own books, of course—many thanks to Sarah Odedina, Jonathan Pecarsky, Dorian Karchmar, Janine O’Malley, and the good men and women of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.)

For readers and their teachers.

For my parents, who censored nothing, and for Hans Canosa, who is, among other things, the best reader a gal writer could want.

I tell you, this is a good life.

Gabrielle Zevin wrote many scenes about Naomi that didn’t make it into this book, and she’d love to share them with you. Please visit Gabrielle’s Web site,
www.memoirsofa.com
, to read them. For playlists from and inspired by this book, discussion questions, a Q&A with Gabrielle about this book, and an excerpt from her book,
Elsewhere
, just turn the page.

Will’s First Mix

“Fight Test” by The Flaming Lips

“To Whom It May Concern” by John Wesley Harding

“Song I Wrote Myself In The Future” by John Wesley Harding

In Naomi’s Biology Class

“Vertigo” by the Philip Glass Ensemble (or something like it)

At the Planetarium

“Learning to Fly” by Pink Floyd

Will’s Movie for Naomi

“That’s the Story of My Life” by The Velvet Underground

Songs for Visiting Naomi’s Crazy Boyfriend in Albany

“Hallelujah” by Jeff Buckley

“Fly” by Nick Drake

“Angeles” by Elliott Smith

Opera on the Beach in Los Angeles

Maybe something from Puccini’s Tosca?

The Yearbook Song

“I Will” by The Beatles (and the entire White Album)

Will’s Mix for Naomi’s Art Show

“Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Pt. 1” by The Flaming Lips

(Alternative) Songs for a High School Graduation

“Higher Ground” by Stevie Wonder or the Red Hot Chili Peppers

“Bitter Sweet Symphony” by The Verve

“My Back Pages” by Bob Dylan

“Graduation (Friends Forever)” by Vitamin C

“Ghost World” by Aimee Mann

“At Last” by Etta James

“Teenage Spaceship” by Smog

“Baba O’Riley” by The Who

“Race for the Prize” by The Flaming Lips

“Praise You” by Fatboy Slim

“Road to Joy” by Bright Eye

“I’m So Tired” by The Beatles

“Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard” by Paul Simon

“The Only Living Boy In New York” by Simon & Garfunkel

The Song That Has the Erratic Tempo for Marching

“Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen

The Song by Bob Marley

“Three Little Birds” or “Redemption Song”

The Song That May Have Been Used in a Special Olympics Commercial

“Greatest Love Of All” by Whitney Houston or

“One Moment in Time” by Whitney Houston

The idea behind this mix is that it’s one Naomi created on a college road trip when she was in the mood to reflect about that wacky year in high school where she dated three boys and had amnesia.

Part the First: Songs for Will

“Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)” by Arcade Fire

“Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Pt. 1” by The Flaming Lips

“A Certain Romance” by Arctic Monkeys

Part the Second: Songs for James

“First Day of My Life” by Bright Eyes

“Vindicated” by Dashboard Confessional

“Angeles” by Elliott Smith

“World Spins Madly On” by The Weepies

Part the Third: Songs for Ace

“Wigwam” by Bob Dylan

“Ripchord” by Rilo Kiley

“Better Man” by Pearl Jam

Part the Fourth: Songs for Myself

“Foux du Fafa” by Flight of the Conchords (in honor of Naomi’s French class)

“Life on Mars?” by David Bowie (“Changes” can be substituted here.)

“1979” by The Smashing Pumpkins

“The Heart of the Matter” by India. Arie

“That’s the Story of My Life” by The Velvet Underground

“Your Ex-Lover Is Dead” by Stars

The book opens with Naomi in an ambulance with amnesia. As Naomi is discovering who she is, so are you: as she is now, who she has been in the past, and who she wants to be. Focus on some of the things she discovers about her life over the last few years: some of them feel right, such as her friendship with Will; some startle her, such as her mother’s remarriage; some mystify her, such as her relationship with Ace.

1. Build a profile of Naomi pre-amnesia.
   
2. Describe some of the “watershed” moments for Naomi—times when she does not act like the girl she was—for example, when she cuts her hair or quits yearbook. How are the actions defining who she will become?
   
3. Amnesia gives not only Naomi a second chance, but also others in her life. Pick a character and examine how Naomi’s amnesia affects his/her life.
   
4. Why is the fact that Naomi is an orphan important? How does the author weave this theme throughout the story?
   
5. Explore the symbolism of Naomi’s being found as a baby in a typewriter case. How else are typewriters and books relevant to her story?
   
6. Photography is a recurring motif. How does it enrich the story?
   
7. Discuss the role of music throughout the book.
   
8. Compare and contrast Naomi and James.
   
9. Examine the scene in which Naomi’s memory returns. Why is it significant that it is the French word for camera that seems to open the floodgates? Why are the two memories Naomi recounts—and the individuals they involve—pivotal?
   
10. Read the prologue again. Speculate: Would Naomi have made some of the same choices/charges if she had not experienced amnesia?
    
11. What would you do with a second chance?
    

For more information about Square Fish books, authors, and illustrators visit
www.squarefishbooks.com
.

For more information about Gabrielle Zevin visit
www.memoirsofa.com
.

Questions for the Author

Gabrielle Zevin

In both
Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac
and
Elsewhere
, head trauma plays a role. What do you think accounts for your fascination with it?

Although I don’t wish to speak for all authors (I will…), I think that most of us are somewhat interested in gray matter(s) that’s where all books come from, after all.

Now, a more personal reason might be my grandmother’s Alzheimer’s disease. She had just been diagnosed when I started writing
Elsewhere
, and it did make me reflect on the nature of—for lack of a less pretentious term—
being
, i.e. is a person still a person without his or her memories and experiences? You may have noticed that one of the minor characters in the book (Rosa Rivera’s first husband, Sonny) died from Alzheimer’s-related complications.

However, I wouldn’t necessarily say I was
fascinated
by head trauma. The head traumas themselves are dispensed with fairly quickly in both my books. Rather, I would say that I am fascinated with the effect that these traumas have on the characters’ lives.

When I was first conceiving of the book, I described
Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac
to a friend as
Elsewhere
without the afterlife. Two years later, this strikes me as completely ridiculous, of course, but your question reminded me of this. The books do start out similarly enough (a girl has a head trauma), but they move in completely opposite directions. For a very long time, Liz’s “problem” in
Elsewhere
is how much she remembers—her old life and all the people in it. And Naomi’s “problem” in
Memoirs
is how much she has forgotten—her current life and many of the people in it. And yet their dilemmas are the same: two girls doing their best to grow up under somewhat difficult circumstances.

How much research did you do on amnesia and head trauma before writing
Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac
?

My bizarre “fascination” with head trauma has already been well documented (see question one), so one could say that this is the book I’ve been preparing to write my whole life.

Seriously though, my process on all my projects is that I try to read and watch everything I can on a topic
before
I start writing. What I find while researching usually guides the story and the characters. For instance, sensitivity to light and temperature following head trauma was one of the first things I came across, and the knowledge of this really helped me to
see
Naomi. I had this vision of a teenage girl wearing a coat and scarf when everyone else was dressed for warm weather. She had on sunglasses even though the day was over-cast. And it was these details that made me feel like I was beginning to know this girl. Another thing I learned was that the type of amnesia I wanted Naomi to have would, in all likelihood, have contributing pyschological causes. In other words, though anything is possible in the world of head trauma, the fall alone probably wouldn’t cause such a severe memory loss. This made me know that Naomi’s backstory would have to be as complex as her front one.

Why did you decide to make this character an amnesiac? How did that decision allow you to explore themes of identity and development of self for Naomi?

Sometimes, the character comes before the situation and other times, the situation comes before the character. In this case, I knew the situation before I knew the girl. The writing of this book became a process whereby I was introduced to Naomi in the same way she is introduced to herself. Because of this,
Memoirs
was an incredibly challenging book to write. It was impossible for me to know everything about Naomi, and I guess I don’t like being surprised so much as a writer.

As for why I wanted to write a teenage amnesiac in the first place? I thought it was interesting to see how a person in the process of defining herself would define herself in the absence of experience. (When you think about it,
all
teenagers are in the process of defining themselves with the problem of limited experience.) To some extent, I think every YA book is an attempt to answer the questions
Who am I?
and
What is my place in the world?
Naomi’s situation brings these questions easily to the front.

Even after she recovers her memory, Naomi is reluctant to tell anyone. Why?

I think she has come to see that the absence of her memories has allowed her a certain freedom to reinvent herself. She’s changed her hair, her friends, and her activities. She’s effectively become a different person, and I think she’s reluctant to trade that person in for the old one. What she doesn’t yet realize is that she needn’t choose between the
old her
and the
new her
. Maturation (for all of us) is often a synthesis of both, I think.

Was there a particular reason to make Naomi adopted in the book?

Oh, there were many, but here are the top two: 1) I wanted her to have fewer “biological” clues to her identity, and 2) I wanted the revelation of her sister to have greater impact on her as a character.

I’ve had several friends who were adopted, and I think it’s an intriguing and, usually, complex relationship. I remember looking at a picture of one my close friends with her family and saying to her, “Boy, you look just like your parents” and my friend replying, “Well, I’m adopted, but I get that all the time.” She went on to explain that she thought her way of speaking and wearing her hair and other environmental factors actually made her look like her parents despite the fact that they weren’t genetic relations. I remembered this story when I was writing Naomi. A different friend of mine is adopted, but is always going on about how she
hates
orphan stories. (She works in children’s publishing, so I suspect this has more to do with the abundance of orphans in children’s literature than anything else.) Still, I liked the idea of someone who was briefly orphaned hating orphan stories. This is where the beginning of the book came from: Naomi reveals how much she hates orphan stories and then proceeds to tell us a very long one indeed.

Music is a big part of Naomi’s life, and of her relationship with Will. What role did music play for you as a teenager? Do you have personal connections to the songs referenced in the story?

My first job as a writer was as a teen music critic for the
Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
. I’ve told this story quite often, but the way I got that job was by writing an incredibly
outraged
letter to the
Sun-Sentinel
about a review of a Guns N’ Roses concert. Their reviewer said the concert was horrible; needless to say, I didn’t agree. (I should clarify:
at the time
, I didn’t agree….) As a teenager, I think I was sometimes afraid of being effusive. The exception to that was with regard to music. In a way, the character Will is like me at fourteen, fifteen, sixteen—he uses music to say what he would have trouble saying otherwise. I suspect that’s fairly common, and it probably accounts for the popularity of the playlist in YA. (That, and the rise of iTunes…)

In school, I was the girl whose notebooks were covered with song lyrics. I fell in love with a boy because of a mix tape once. I fell out of love with a different one over a CD Christmas present that I thought was lame. I once stayed in a relationship with a boy I had started to loathe for a whole extra month just so I’d have a ride to a concert. I think when we’re young (even more so than when we’re older), so much of how we choose and define our friendships is based on shared references more specificially, shared (pop) cultural references. “Oh you like that?” “I like that, too!” Obviously, when Naomi loses her memories, she loses many of these cues, and these musical cues are, as you’ve noted, particularly important to her relationship with Will. (Will’s taste, of course, is deeply influenced by his dead father.) I feel I should add that other art forms are equally important parts of Naomi’s life. For instance, Naomi’s father is a writer and memoirist, and books comprise a significant part of the bond between them. Similarly, I thought of James as movies, and Naomi’s mother as photography. All of these forms, including music, become ways that Naomi can start to understand her past, present, and future.

In terms of the songs referenced in the book, I tried not to over-think them. I wanted them to be significant, but also, sort of casual. However, I did listen to music while writing this book, which is not something I normally do—I’m typically a “silent room” sort of writer. With
Memoirs
, I had certain songs that would send me right into certain characters. For example, James was a Bright Eyes song called “First Day of My Life.” Will was the Simon & Garfunkel song “The Only Living Boy in New York.” For Naomi, there were probably two songs I listened to more than any others: India. Arie’s terrific 2006 cover of “The Heart of the Matter” and David Bowie’s “Life on Mars?” which has always been one of my favorite songs. The Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony,” one of the songs Will and Naomi discuss as being good for a graduation, is the song my man and I want played should we ever get married—we’re not really “Wedding March” people.

The expression “forgive and forget” might be retooled as “forget and forgive” in
Memoirs
. How important are the themes of second chances and forgiveness to the book?

“Forget and forgive”—that’s funny, but I hope you don’t mind if I revise you a bit. Naomi is not able to truly forgive anyone until she has her memory back. (In my experience, I find forgiving to be much more meaningful when there hasn’t been any accompanying forgetting.) So, I guess I’d have to change it to “forget and remember and forgive,” which is, of course, significantly less catchy than yours.

As for the importance of second chances and forgiveness? Maybe I’m a sap, but these themes are important to all my books and, for that matter, most of the books I really and truly love.