Good morning everyone! Please welcome author Marcia Rosen to Full Moon Dreaming today! She is here to talk about her new release, My Gangster Father and Me. Marcia will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN GC to one randomly drawn commenter via Rafflecopter during the tour. The more you comment, the better your chances of winning. To find the other stops on her tour, go here. Don't forget to look for the Rafflecopter at the end of this post!
MY GANGSTER FATHER AND ME
Marcia Rosen
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GENRE: Memoir
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BLURB:
Happy Fathers Day.
Our history and experiences can define us,
inspire our actions and as writers impact our words and stories. Mine
most definitely has. My father was a gangster. Really!
This is my story about my relationship with my
father and how his profession affected me and my life, “He called me Sugar
Plum. Both a blessing and a burden, I learned interesting lessons from my
father: about generosity and determination, taking risks, and certainly finding
the willingness to live life as an adventure.”
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EXCERPT:
You can command respect by your actions and deeds. You most
certainly can’t demand love. I’m pretty sure my father never really felt loved
by his family or by my mother, except perhaps briefly when they were dating and
first married.
My father showed me by example the importance of helping
someone who is homeless and hungry. He often bought a meal for those in need. I
watched him do those things. One time, I was walking with him on Main Street in
downtown Buffalo, past the five and dime store. A man, who looked like he was
around fifty, asked for money. My father said, “Let’s go inside and I’ll buy
you something to eat.” I can still picture us going inside to buy him a meal.
I grew up learning to be tolerant, yet at times he was
intolerant. He taught me to believe in the necessity of fairness and justice,
yet he himself did not always demonstrate those traits. He taught me to respect
others, yet from my point of view he showed a lack of respect for some people.
I believe he was a racist and told him so. His own history figured largely in
his feelings and way of thinking.
My father’s attitude towards Black people had its source
when he was in his early twenties. He and my grandfather had a small, thriving
business providing farm-grown produce to some of the larger grocery chains in
the city. Several times a week, leaving well before dawn, they would drive
outside of the city to buy fruits and vegetables, often returning after dark.
Tired and in need of some rest, a young Black man who worked
for them took over the driving. He too must have been tired and fell asleep at
the wheel. There was a serious accident killing my grandfather and sending my
father to the hospital for several months. He was lucky to have survived, as
was the driver. My dad was not told about his father until the doctors were
sure about his recovery. He spent the rest of his life taking a small white
pill each day to stop him from shaking; he had nerve damage from the accident.
He rarely spoke about it. Yet it affected his entire life.
We strongly disagreed about his being a racist. He would
always say, “I’m not racist.” I think he was. When I became very friendly with
the daughter of a Black family who moved in next door to us, we moved. As a
teenager, when my African American boss drove me home from work one day, my
father had a fit. “What if someone sees you? What will they think?” It was the
1950s and people thought all sorts of illogical and irrational things.
There was more of this type of attitude and comments from
both my father and mother. I was not at all happy with them, and they were not
too pleased with me. This was a frequent topic of controversy between us.
For me, like many others in this country, I cried tears of
hope on November 4, 2008, when it was announced an African American was elected
President of the United States of America. Tears were on my cheeks, as they
were on thousands of others: leaders and everyday Americans, white and Black.
We voted and sent an important message. Not everyone heard it, but on that day
reasonable voices prevailed.
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AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Marcia Rosen is an award-winning author of twelve books including
nine mysteries, the most recent is An Agatha, Raymond, Sherlock, and Me
Mystery: Murder at the Zoo. She is also the author of The Senior Sleuths, the
Dying to Be Beautiful Mystery Series, and The Gourmet Gangster: Mysteries and
Menus (Menus by her son Jory Rosen). She wrote The Woman’s Business Therapist
and My Memoir Workbook and has given Memoir Writing presentations and classes
for close to twenty years. Her Memoir Blog can be found on her website. For
twenty-five years she was owner of a successful national marketing and public
relations agency.
Marcia has frequently been a featured speaker at organization
meetings, bookstores, libraries, and Zoom Programs presenting talks on
Encouraging the Writer Within You, Marketing for Authors, Writing Mysteries…Not
A Mystery and A Memoir Detective…Writing Your Life Story. She has also helped
numerous writers develop and market their books.
She is a member of Sisters in Crime, Southwest Writers, New Mexico
Book Association, Public Safety Writer’s Association, International Memoir Writer’s
Association, Women’s National book Association and National Association of
Independent Writers and Editors—for which she is also a board member.
www.MarciaRosen.com
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