Lucia Brown Berlin (November 12, 1936 – November 12, 2004) was an American short story writer. She had a small, devoted following, but did not reach a mass audience during her lifetime. She rose to sudden literary fame in 2015, eleven years after her death, with the publication of a volume of her selected stories, A Manual for Cleaning Women.
Early life
Berlin was born in Juneau,
Alaska, and spent her childhood on the move, following her father's career as a mining engineer
. The family lived in mining camps in
Idaho,
Montana,
Arizona, El Paso, Texas and
Chile, where Lucia spent most of her youth. As an adult, she lived in
New Mexico,
Mexico, New York City, Northern and Southern
California, and
Colorado.
Career
Berlin began publishing relatively late in life, under the encouragement and sometimes tutelage of poet
Ed Dorn. Her first small collection,
Angels Laundromat, was published in 1981, but her published stories were written as early as 1960. She published seventy-six stories in her lifetime.
Several of her stories appeared in magazines such as
The Atlantic and Saul Bellow's
The Noble Savage. Berlin published six collections of short stories, but most of her work can be found in three later volumes from Black Sparrow Books:
Homesick: New and Selected Stories (1990),
So Long: Stories 1987-92 (1993) and
Where I Live Now: Stories 1993-98 (1999).
Berlin was never a bestseller during her lifetime, but was widely influential within the literary community. She has been compared to Raymond Carver
In 2015, a compendium of her short story work was released under the title, A Manual for Cleaning Women: Short Stories.
Influences and teaching
Throughout her life, Berlin earned a living doing working class jobs, among them a position as a cleaning woman and one as a telephone receptionist.
Up through the early 1990s, Berlin taught creative writing in a number of venues, including the San Francisco County Jail and the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. She also took oral histories from elderly patients at Mt. Zion Hospital.
She was interested in artist's books and the publishing process. Working with Frances Butler, she designed some of her own books and typset them. She would revise them as she set the print.
In the fall of 1994, Berlin began a two-year teaching position as Visiting Writer at University of Colorado, Boulder. Near the end of her term, she was one of four campus faculty awarded the Student Organization for Alumni Relations Award for Teaching Excellence.
She has entered the canon of the most important North American authors who published after 1950.
Style
She is compared to
Lydia Davis,
Tom Wolfe,
Raymond Carver, and
Saul Bellow.
Tom Wilhelmus explained that "Lucia Berlin's stories are "raw" in the sense that they appear to spring directly from life and contain almost no literary pretensions." He described her style as "declarative and unadorned, casual, sometimes with a bit of self-mocking humor."
Lydia Davis, herself often cited as a similar writer, placed Berlin "somewhere in the same arena as
Alice Munro,
Grace Paley, maybe
Tillie Olsen."
August Kleinzahler, with whom she exchanged personal letters, noted that Berlin's writing was at times musical, with elements "including the extended jazz solo, with its surges, convolutions, and asides. This is writing of a very high order."
The topic of motherhood appears repeatedly in Berlin's work, for example in the story "Tiger Bites" (1989), where the protagonist travels to Mexico in order to have an abortion and then decides against it. Her husband leaves her as a result. The story "Carmen" (1996) tells of a Mexican girl giving birth in the USA, but she understands nothing going on around her because she lacks English skills. "Uncontrollable" (1992) portrays a pregnant woman forced by her addict husband to go out into the streets to buy heroin for him.
Personal life
Berlin was married three times and had four sons.
Berlin was plagued by health problems, including double scoliosis. Her crooked spine punctured one of her lungs, and she was never seen without an oxygen tank beside her from 1994 until her death.
Works and publications
Bibliography
-
A Manual for Cleaning Ladies. Illustrations by Michael Myers. Washington, D.C. i.e.: Zephyrus Image, 1977.
-
Angels Laundromat: Short Stories. Cover art and illustrations by Michael Shannon Moore. Berkeley, CA: Turtle Island for the Netzahaulcoyotl Historical Society, 1981.
-
Legacy. Berkeley, CA: Poltroon Press, 1983. Illustrated by Michael Bradley.
-
Phantom Pain: Sixteen Stories. Bolinas, CA: Tombouctou Books, 1984.
-
Safe & Sound. Berkeley, CA: Poltroon Press, 1988. Illustrated by Frances Butler.
-
Homesick: New & Selected Stories. Santa Rosa CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1990.
-
So Long: Stories, 1987-1992. Santa Rosa, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1993.
-
Where I Live Now: Stories, 1993-1998. Santa Rosa, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1999.
-
A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories. Edited by Stephen Emerson. Foreword by Lydia Davis. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015.
-
Evening in Paradise: More Stories. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018.
-
Welcome Home: A Memoir with Selected Photographs and Letters. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018.
In periodicals (posthumous)
Multimedia
-
Berlin, Lucia, Yasunari Kawabata, and Amy Hempel. Lucia Berlin: Summer 1991. Naropa Institute, 1991. 3 audio cassettes. Audio of two classes held at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado during Summer 1991. Naropa Audio Archive: 20051107, 20051111.
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Berlin, Lucia. Lucia Berlin Reading 12 Nov 93 at Lincoln Lecture Hall, Naropa. Naropa Institute, 1993. 1 audio cassette. Lucia Berlin reading at Naropa Institute November 12, 1993. Naropa Audio Archive: 20051208.
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Berlin, Lucia, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Molly Giles, and Lorna Dee Cervantes. W&P Reading Cervantes; Hawkins; Giles, Berlin. Naropa Institute, 1997. 2 audio cassettes. Writing and poetics reading featuring Lorna Dee Cervantes, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Molly Giles, and Lucia Berlin. Naropa Audio Archive: 20060118, 20060119.
Other
-
Berlin, Lucia. Rigorous. Oakland, CA: Mark Berlin, 1992.
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Berlin, Lucia. From Luna Nueva. Boulder, CO: Kavyayantra Press at Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, November 1993.
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Berlin, Lucia. The Moon: There's No Moon Like on a Clear New Mexico Night. Boulder, CO: Kavyayantra Press at Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, 1997.
Further reading
External links
