Nashua author discusses her father’s illness
We all are likely familiar with a variation of the saying “the truth will set you free.” What they don’t tell you is how hard it can be to set the truth free. For Nashua author Melanie Brooks, it was a process a decade in the making, described in her memoir, A Hard Silence, released on Sept. 12. Brooks will be at the Bookery in Manchester on Thursday, Sept. 14, at 5 p.m. for a book reading and signing and at Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord for a reading and conversation on Wednesday, Sept. 20, at 6:30 p.m.
When Brooks’s father was infected with HIV in 1985 after undergoing open heart surgery and receiving contaminated blood, her family decided to keep it a secret.
“It was right at the height of the AIDS epidemic and there was so much ignorance and stigma surrounding the disease,” Brooks said. “There was a lot of prejudice and homophobia that was surrounding it and so my dad decided to keep it a secret, not expecting that it would be a 10-year secret. He was a doctor and he expected he would be dead in months.”
Originally from Canada, Brooks moved to New Hampshire 26 years ago after completing undergraduate studies. While pursuing a Master of Fine Arts degree, she started the process of writing about her experience, which would result in her memoir.
“It was really difficult. It felt like I was breaking rules even though the rules weren’t there anymore,” Brooks said. “The secret of his illness was known before he died, but I kind of carried that silence really closely and I didn’t talk about it to a lot of people. … When I finally decided I was going to open that box and look at what was there, it was pretty difficult because it was really the first time I was acknowledging a lot of trauma and pain that resided in that experience.”
While working on her thesis, she had an additional project she needed to complete for her MFA for which she decided to interview other memoirists, like Andre Dubus III, Abigail Thomas and Kyoko Mori, who had written about their own difficult experiences. This resulted in Brooks’s first book, Writing Hard Stories, published in 2017.
“That book [was] actually kind of the book I needed to write to finish writing the current book,” Brooks said.
While the context of her memoir is her father’s illness, the book tells the story of her own experiences.
“The memoir’s really about what happens when we’re forced to stay silent, the things that are impacting our lives and the consequences of secrecy,” she said. “It chronicles my journey to come to that place of being able to tell this story and my experience.”
Brooks says it took a while to find a publisher willing to take a chance on her story, as many people feel that HIV/AIDS is less relevant today.
Just as the memoirists she interviewed for Writing Hard Stories helped her tell her own story, she hopes her memoir can do the same for her readers.
“I started to recognize that this is a story that’s about more than the HIV/AIDS epidemic,” Brooks said. “Whatever the secret and silence is [that] people are carrying, I think they need to recognize that it doesn’t have to be an experience that they hold in isolation. …. I hope [readers] will see that even in the most difficult circumstances, speaking those circumstances brings a level of relief.”
Melanie Brooks
Book launch and conversation
When: Tuesday, Sept. 12, at 6:30 p.m.
Where: Nashua Country Club (25 Fairway St. in Nashua)
RSVP: Via balinbooks.com/events
Book signing and reading
When: Thursday, Sept. 14, 5 p.m.
Where: Bookery, 844 Elm St., Manchester, bookerymht.com
Reading and conversation about writing stories of health/illness
When: Wednesday, Sept. 20, 6:30 p.m.
Where: Gibson’s Bookstore, 45 S. Main St., Concord, gibsonsbookstore.com
