Life In Three Houses

Life In Three Houses is a memoir that explores the history of the women on the
maternal side of my family. The book chronicles my grandmother’s memories of her life
in occupied France, beginning when her father won the 1936 French National Lottery and
built the house which would later be seized by Nazi forces, and continues with her
emigration to America and explores her life as a mother before the narrative shifts focus
to retell the story of her youngest daughter—and my mother—Michelle. Their stories are
juxtaposed with vignettes of my personal experiences exploring my family history and
what it means to be a woman in my maternal lineage. Through the book’s disjointed structure and weaving together of narratives, I
attempt to find a balance between reporting fact-based information and creating
nonfiction through my meditations on the excavation of memory and the subjectivity of
perception.