Show jDjHEDGflHP her family lier father refused to acknowledge her very existence And not only was she cut off from her family she BmsssBsresbsr stciissstOSO lost her entire community T had lost all my friends who were taking off for college” she said "I had planned to go to college but suddenly I had to find a place to live I also lost my church which I had been in since my earliest memories That night when I walked out of my other's house I also walked away from my church” Hus abrupt ejection from the sheltered world she had grown up in lead to the brutal and raw events that she writes about in “Hungry for die dawning Inlast Tuesday’s Kim Barnes sat at - the Cottage Restaurant and enjoyed her breakfast with a view of the Wellsville Mountains and the morning moon This peaceful scene is a contrast to many puts of her tumultuous life that the Idaho author has shared via her two powerful memoirs “In the Wilderness” and Hungry for the World” Barnes now leaches writing at the University of Idaho in Moscow and virited Logan this past week to offer master classes and readings Her two memoirs have won critical acclaim and the first “In the Wilderness” was a 1995 Pulitzer-priz- e nominee The books trace the story of ft ft ' r±3cas±gBsY World" “It was a very dark time” Barnes recalled “I lost my ' way in any number of senses of the term I had never been out in die world I had had up weapons no armor I had no sense of what to Shield myself V ' I JIBhL : mm m LJLJ PSSHStESJthSttS&tCttVBfflSBS ff3SilY8§XV8BM9SlnB9StBS99l her childhood in a family of loggers growing up under the stem eye of her deeply fundamentalist father in the Pentecostal church Eventually Bames rankled igainst the isolation and authoritarian rule of her father and the memoirs lead us through the startling rift with her father family and church y to her eventual return as a woman tolive in theforest y where she was raised “I wanted to go to a graduation party” Bamies recalled during an interview Tuesday “I had the straightest class in the history of the high school because I’d brought every- body into die church Fd saved practically my entire high school class It was going be a very quiet graduation and I asked my dad if I Bames road continued through an abusive relation-s- h odd jobs and many challenges until she finally met this d man who would be her Robert Wrigley a poet and professor at Lewis and Clark College in Lewiston Idaho It was in this period that Bames began toexplore her journey through writing And it would be writing that would eventually heal the rift between she and her family Before “In the Wilderness” was published she gave a draft to her mother y “My mother called and she was crying she said 'Iiead your book and I feel so bad’” Bames tecalled'“She felt enormous guilt that she hadn’t intervened that she hadn’t ' ' stood up for me and I told her ‘That’k not what this is about couldgoandhesaidno Iwas ' I have a great life Finally I’m 18 by a week and I said happy and the reason I’m ‘What if I go anywayT He happy haa as much to do with said'lkkeyourthingsand you and Dad asanything’ She never come bacL'So I did" kept erring though and now it was differ Hus event began years of She was crying whatBamescalted'Vitual for her own lost story She told me it was the first time ' X shunning” from her father - v w with she had contact Although anyone had ever tried to tell Photos by Mich MaacaraHwaM Journal ' Bames explained that the stories in her family had always belonged to die men — dramatic tides of diaris- - -matic figures engaged in dangerous professions like log- - hus-ban- - : : 1 : : : : ' i “Hie women’s stories are all silent you just don’t hear them” she said After their talk Bames’ mother told her foat her father was going to calL “I really feared he would shim me and my children wouldn’t be abte to see their grandparents" she said “When he called die first dung he said was ‘You are y my daughter and you have V made a terrible mistake" ' Butthe“mistake” was not writing the book “I justturoed off when he said that and he continued talking so it took me a while to actually hear what he was-- : saying” she said “He was saying things like ‘If you had called me I could have told you what year your uncle - : — 5s : ging- - : -- her story" y r Roland’s Chevy was’ I still gave me a strong sense of wonder if in that split second meaning about who I had he didn’t change his mind Wb become” Bames said “The talked for four hours which is tilings foat shape us are die same things that make us more than we’ve talked in my ' ! entire life strong The scars make us “At die aid of die conversastrong “Writing some of those tion he said 'Do I want you difficult passages has more to tell this story? No‘I don’t a land ofiaifo and' required Yes I Do I think you should? submission that was painful in That an was incredible da’ she continued “I often itself” from because father gift my cast back to my religious even though in the books I try ' upbrin ging and talk about to treat him with complexity wrestling with the angels of and compassion a lot of peorevision I talk about being on He’s foe villain ple see him as knees in front of die your a complicated difficult man I was writing : When story and he gave me his permis-sufor the World’ there ‘Hungry He knew this wasn’t his were any number parts of that story it was my story” story I didn’t want to tellBut As a writer of memoir -if itwere a short story ora Bames has had to wrestle with novel those would be the V the sharing of intensely per- turning points the tension of sonal moments with a vast foe story You’ve got to have ' audience She said that it’s dif- diem"'- : ficult for her but it has been On a more universal level an essential way to learn about 'Bames believes that by shar-- : y who she was and how that ing stories about ourselves r informs who she is:"::' with the community at large ' think going back and even stories we are perhaps reclaiming my past in a way BARNES on p12 foat was active versus passive : : m v'y d |