Journalist EA Hanks shared that his father, actor Tom Hanks and brother Colin Hanks were among the first to read her deep personal new memoir, “The Ten: A Memoir of Family and the Open Road,” detailing her childhood with her late mother.
“The first thing my dad said was, ‘This is an accurate depiction of what he loves and fears this woman.’ Once I found out I got her right, everything else went off,” she appeared on Wednesday’s “CBS Morning.”
The book details Hanks’ six-month journey along Interstate 10 from California to Florida, during which she attempts to better understand Susan Dillingham, who passed away in 2002, and reflects on her own difficult childhood.
“I’m another girl trying to understand her dead, crazy mother,” Hanks said.
Hanks revealed that while growing up, she had a language to understand addiction – her mother hosted a 12-stage program at home, but she had no vocabulary for mental illness.
“My mom – we had an addiction language because we were hosting a 12-stage program at home. My mom would have been with us. I had a language about addiction since I was 8 years old, but there was no mental health language and there was what was wrong at home,” Hanks explained. “A lot of the books are what I try to create and share that language.”
The author describes the relationship of “fluid” to mother’s reality, and states in the book, “The relationship with mom’s reality is fluid. The truth was fed through a meat grinder for mental illness.”
She detailed both emotional and physical abuse at her childhood home. Hanks explained in the late 1980s that in California, family law required evidence of physical abuse before children were removed from the situation.
“The California family law in the late ’80s wasn’t enough space, and at the time you had to have a receipt for physical abuse to be pulled out of the situation.
What Hanks learned about his mother
Despite the difficult relationship, Hanks said he continues to protect his mother. When writing memoirs, she adopted her mother’s poem as a way to reconnect with her.
“At the time, my mother had this stance like a thoroughbred who was put on the meadow too early. She, like my father, didn’t get a chance as an artist because of her devastating fame,” Hanks said. “I think including her poems in a book is a way to treat her seriously as an artist and return to conversations with her. And anyone buried by their parents knows that two-way conversations can suddenly become one-way conversations.”
When asked about the truth she now understands, Hanks said, “The truth is, my mother had good and bad days, and I was fortunate to experience good days. I didn’t reduce all the care and protection for the child what happened between us.
Memoirs also explore the themes of place and identity. As a journalist who is used to interviewing others, Hanks says, “When you’re talking to a stranger like a stone, you can’t start with ‘Tell me about your mom’, but you can start with ‘Tell me where you came from’. If anyone wants to talk about their hometown, it is an elevator to their deepest self. ”
She said, “Identity and where you came from, that’s the whole story. I learned where I came from.”
“TEN: A Memoir of Family and the Open Road” is currently available.
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