|
University
author
hits the big time
After
winning two prestigious awards for works in progress, Judy
Blunt's new memoir, "Breaking Clean," has arrived
in bookstores amid a flurry of favorable reviews and news
of a fourth printing.
The
book, published by Knopf, was called "powerful"
by The New York Times Book Review and "profound, and
profoundly moving," by Kirkus Reviews. It has been
featured on NBC's "Today" show and National Public
Radio. The memoir earned a 1997 PEN/Jerard Fund Award of
$4,000 and a 2001 Whiting Writers' Award of $35,000.
With
vivid detail and unflinching language, "Breaking Clean"
chronicles the first 30 years of Blunt's life on isolated
ranches near Malta, and her subsequent move across the Continental
Divide to Missoula. A single mother of three small children
when she arrived at UM in 1986, Blunt found the two communities
a world apart. But it wasn't until a classroom assignment
that she realized she had a story to tell.
English
Professor Emeritus Bill Bevis had asked the students to
"write your Montana experience" in four pages
or less. A few weeks after turning her paper in, the professor
singled it out and, with Blunt's reluctant permission, read
it to the class.
"What
happened next changed my life," Blunt said in a recent
interview. "He read 'Breaking Clean' to an auditorium
full of students who didn't know who I was, and for 15 minutes
I watched their faces as they absorbed my story, my words.
My life.
"I
listened as his voice paused, then broke, at the ending
line, and he turned his back on his class to compose himself.
For the first time, I felt the power of the written word
from the other side, from the writer's side. I spent the
night awake, rethinking the epiphany and the uncertainty
of that moment in Professor Bevis' class. The next day I
added an English/creative writing major to my journalism
major."
That
first essay, which Blunt initially titled "Clean Break"
but changed after realizing that transition is an ongoing
process, became the germ of her new book. Written in 10
years of stolen moments between mothering, studying and
working, "Breaking Clean" is a series of 13 linked
essays that explore the rewards and challenges of her former
life.
Born
into a third generation of Montana homesteaders, Blunt grew
up on a ranch some 50 miles south of Malta in the rural
community of Regina, Montana. She married at age 18 to a
man 12 years her senior and, as she matured, struggled to
define herself as a woman in a man's world.
Author
and UM Professor Emeritus William Kittredge described "Breaking
Clean" as "a classical American memoir.
"Judy
Blunt lived in a beloved country among beloved people,"
Kittredge said. "She grew up knowing blizzards and
good horses, working cattle all day and then getting dinner
on the table, impassable roads to town and babies with raging
fevers -- a resolute country girl who became a ranch wife
on the shortgrass plains of Montana. And she tells of leaving,
the price of insisting on her right to fashion her own life."
Blunt,
now an adjunct assistant professor in UM's English department,
says her parents, Clarence and Shirley Blunt, are solidly
behind her.
"In
spite of the difficulty of having a writer in the family,
they've been very generous in their support of me as a writer,"
she said. She points out that her mother, too, is an author,
having recently published an essay in "Leaning Into
the Wind," a collection by Linda Hasselstrom. "The
book hit print before mine did, which I thought was marvelous.
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree."
As
for others who might bridle at her candid writing, Blunt
acknowledges that perspective is everything in nonfiction.
"My
experience is a singular one. I am always careful to stress
that my story does not generalize to other farming and ranching
communities, or even to other women within my community.
... All I can say is how it feels to me."
|
