Founding Editor's Note

candida lawrence Response     Our Managing Editor has written many words praising me and I want immediately to object and say oh no, no, no. I tell the truth as I see it, as often as I can but, following Emily Dickinson’s advice, I tell it slant in order not to hurt feelings or to put myself in a better light. I am not always candid, sometimes I even fawn. In fact, when choosing a penname I was asked to explain why I chose to call myself Candida and I promptly stated that the name would remind me never again to tell the truth in a courtroom, or to a judge. That said, I certainly agree with Joan and with Audre Lorde that silences do not protect and in fact they fester and spread falsehood into all the crevices of a person’s life. Also it is true that I didn’t publish my first book-length memoir until my parents were dead and I know the reluctance we feel when first we contemplate stirring up possible resentments. Most of us don’t want to hurt relatives or offspring but we know our words, however slant, will be misconstrued, misread, and the resentments will ooze out of their households. It is unusual in the extreme that our Managing Editor funnels thousands of memoirs through her mind and she praises the courage of memoirists while at the same time she writes down her secrets, shows them to her writing group, but will not submit them to an editor or a journal. They are vivid, honest, interesting, sometimes horrifying and, were they another’s submission, would be quickly approved for publication. Instead they hide in files. I hear them wailing, saying “It’s not fair that you publish all these memoirists but you won’t let us speak. Please.” These are odd editors’ notes concentrating as they do on each other, but we, like you, our memoir writers, love talking about ourselves. Bravo!                                                     Opening the window, I open myself.                                                     —Natalya Gorbanevskaya, 1972                                                                                      — Candida