SAMPLE — Fictional subject. This chapter and worksheet are illustrative only. "Dorothy Mae Calloway" is not a real person. All details are invented to show the BOOJEE Memoir method.

The Kitchen
on Maple Street

A sample chapter from a fictional memoir, followed by the interview worksheet questions that produced it. This is what the process looks like from the inside.

How to read this page: The chapter below is the finished prose — what would appear in the printed book. Beneath it, the worksheet excerpt shows five questions from the "Childhood and Early Home" interview round, along with the subject's actual answers. The chapter is drawn directly from those answers: nothing invented, the editor's job was to listen and arrange.
Chapter Two

The Kitchen on Maple Street

Dorothy Mae Calloway — b. 1931, Meridian, Mississippi  ·  SAMPLE CHAPTER

The kitchen on Maple Street smelled like lard and cornmeal in the morning, and by afternoon it smelled like whatever was burning on the back burner. Something was always burning on the back burner. My mother didn't believe in low heat.

She kept the radio on the windowsill above the sink, tuned to a gospel station out of Meridian that came in clear on Sundays and scratchy every other day of the week. She didn't seem to notice the static. She'd sing right along with it — her voice and the radio's voice and all that crackling white noise blended together into something that, to me, just sounded like home.

There were seven of us children, and the kitchen wasn't built for seven children. It was built for one or maybe two, with a table that could fit four if everyone kept their elbows in. We ate in shifts during the Depression years. My father would eat first, then the older children, then my mother and the little ones last. She always said she wasn't hungry. I didn't understand until I was a grown woman with children of my own that she was keeping herself hungry so we wouldn't have to be.

The icebox sat in the corner by the back door. In summer, the iceman came on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and we would trail him up the back steps just to stand close to the cold. He never ran us off. He was a heavyset man named Mr. Jasper — I never knew his last name, only that he had large hands and always smelled of sawdust from the packing, and that he would sometimes chip off a small piece of ice and hand it to the youngest child without being asked.

We had a Victory garden during the war years — a long strip of it running along the side fence. My mother grew butter beans, okra, and something she called "long tomatoes" that I have never seen in a grocery store since. They were narrow and pale, almost yellow, and she pickled them in tall glass jars that she lined up on a shelf in the pantry like a row of amber bottles. Opening one of those jars in the middle of winter was the closest thing to summer we had.

People ask me now if it was hard, growing up the way we did. I tell them I didn't know it was supposed to be different. The kitchen was full. There was always a sound coming from it — my mother's voice, or the radio, or something boiling over on the stove. I have lived in larger houses since, with better kitchens, and I have never once felt as settled in any of them as I felt sitting at that crowded little table, keeping my elbows in, listening to the radio crackle through the static and my mother singing right along anyway.

Interview Worksheet — Childhood and Early Home

These are five questions from the "Childhood and Early Home" round of Dorothy's interview worksheet, along with her responses as she wrote them. The chapter above was shaped from these answers — the editor's job was to listen for what was alive in her telling and give it form on the page. Dorothy's language is preserved throughout; the structure is the editor's.

Question 1
What did your mother's kitchen smell like? Pick a specific time of day or a specific season if that helps.
Lard and cornmeal in the mornings. In the afternoons it was always something burning on the back burner because my mother never used low heat in her life. She just let things go until they were done or too far gone, and mostly they came out all right. The smell was good even when something was burning a little. It smelled like a kitchen that was actually being used.
Question 2
Was there a sound that was always present in your childhood home? What do you remember it being?
The radio. She kept it on the windowsill by the sink and it was on whenever she was in the kitchen which was most of the time. Gospel station out of Meridian. On Sundays it came in clean but the rest of the week it was mostly static. She sang with it anyway. I can still hear what that sounded like — her voice and the crackling together. That is just the sound of being home to me.
Question 3
How did your family eat — all together, in shifts, at a table, wherever there was space? What do you remember about it?
Shifts. The kitchen table only fit four comfortably and there were nine of us counting my parents. My father ate first, then the older children, then my mother and the little ones. She always said she wasn't hungry. I believed her for years. I didn't understand it until I had my own children.
Editor note: followed up in next round to confirm number of siblings — seven children confirmed.
Question 4
Is there a person from the neighborhood you remember clearly — not family, just someone who was a regular presence when you were small?
The iceman. He came Tuesdays and Thursdays in the summer. We would follow him up the back steps just to be near the cold. His name was Mr. Jasper, I don't know his last name. He had big hands and smelled like sawdust from the ice packing. He used to chip off a small piece for the youngest child without anyone asking him to do it. He just did it.
Question 5
When you look back at that time, is there something specific — an object, a food, a ritual — that brings it back most sharply?
Those jars of pickled tomatoes my mother put up. She grew them along the side fence — they were long and pale yellow, I've never seen them in a store since. She pickled them in tall glass jars and lined them up in the pantry. Opening one in winter, that was summer. That's the thing I remember most. Not the hard parts. Those jars.
BOOJEE Memoir

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