The Background to Writing White Snake Diary: Exploring Self-Inscribers
By Jane P. Perry
I am an ethnographer. I write through the words, sounds, actions and ephemera of others.
When I found a collection of photos chronicling milestones in one girl’s life, I became intrigued with the idea of telling a Coming of Age story using memorabilia and recollections: diary entries, vignettes sparked by snapshots, school assignments, doodles, cereal box text, letters, workplace documents, professional reports, and telephone calls.
Once compiled, I became curious about the writers of diaries and journals. What do they write about? Why were they writing? What did their diaries look like? White Snake Diary is a discourse on self-inscribers. Woven into the essay is a constructed diary that together proves to be far more than the sum of its parts.
Published in the midst of our global pandemic, White Snake Diary highlights the role of records during outstanding times, when we crave both the documentarian and the reflective functions during this time of tragedy and cocooning. Since March 15 when our San Francisco Bay Area shelter-in-place order went into effect for those 65 years and older, “Quarantine Diary” has been published in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and the art work piece “Through the Window” has been published by Persimmon Tree’s “Love in the Time of Corona No. 3.”
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Excerpt from Jane P. Perry’s book: White Snake Diary
I am in a junk store that calls itself a “depot for creative reuse.” It is fertile ground, rich with the germinating possibilities of baskets of ribbons, bins of greeting cards, a box of surplus glass vials, another of bottle caps, reams of perforated computer paper, empty envelopes, half used wrapping paper, books, tired and incomplete board games, cardboard tubes, swatches of hot pink tulle, corks, and drawers and drawers of pens. I rummage through stacks of empty photo albums.
Among them, I come across one that is not empty. It contains a snapshot chronology of a smiling girl I will call Caroline. Crisp notes are jotted on the reverse: “Caroline’s school play,” “7 years old,” “Caroline with her Easter basket,” “Caroline singing with her class,” “Caroline and her glove—on graduation day!” “January 2004.” This photo collection is my garden bouquet, a palette evoking familiar childhood landmarks.
I head toward the cashier, carrying the empty albums I wanted, and the Caroline photos I discovered. On a nearby side table, next to a threadbare overstuffed chair with elaborate mahogany-carved armrests, I spy a child’s diary. I have the same diary, in blue, saved from when I was young. I leave the diary. But I look for my own blue diary when I return home.
I am drawn to Caroline’s snapshots, which spark memories from my own childhood. I add to my new diary, weaving into it bits of these memories. With Caroline by my side, I insert school assignments, snapshot-inspired vignettes, childhood diary entries, cereal box text, poems, letters, doodles, dreams. At times I wonder whether I’m creating my own diary or Caroline’s.
I continue on into my present life, with workplace documents, essays, telephone conversations and professional reports. Caroline’s role is over, I tell myself. She was a muse for my new diary. I thank her for her help, and plan to dismiss her, proceeding with my own stories, inspired by her snapshots. But something in the energy of her photos insists on my attention. Caroline wants to come along for the ride.
WHITE SNAKE DIARY: EXPLORING SELF-INSCRIBERS
Welcome to White Snake Diary: Exploring Self-Inscribers, where author and ethnographer Jane P. Perry asks: What is a diary and why do we keep them? Why do diarists feel compelled to record life, to collect memories and reflections? What happens when snapshots found in a junk store not only spark childhood memories but drive the creation of a diary?
White Snake Diary explores the diary as a literary genre: what it looks like and what it can tell us about life and self-inscribers. Uniquely, White Snake Diary is also a diary, offering a timely #MeToo profile of growing up female. White Snake Diary capitalizes on the fascination of diaries either as precursors to our social media culture or as mirrors of our intimate absorption.
Perry pulls on the allure of the repurposed with found photos, childhood school assignments, diary entries, cereal box text, letters, a newspaper clipping, doodles, essays, and professional reports. Perry writes with humor and attention to the little moments most people miss.
Link to purchase: https://atmospherepress.com/books/white-snake-diary-by-jane-perry/
About Jane P. Perry
Jane P. Perry is a retired Researcher and Teacher from the University of California, Berkeley’s Harold E. Jones Child Study Center. She holds a Ph.D. in Education from U.C. Berkeley and writes on the importance of play in early childhood, climate justice, and the charting of her thoughts and observations as a flâneuse of daily life. Most recently she has written on diaries. Jane is a member of The Society of Fearless Grandmothers and the 1000 Grandmothers For Future Generations.
She welcomes us all to stand in gratitude with indigenous people and youth to ensure a sustainable future for all life, and to respect and protect indigenous sacred land and rights, including restoring land to indigenous stewardship. Jane comes from British colonizer and Irish settler origins. She was born in Pennacook territory (known as Concord, Massachusetts). Jane lives on unceded land of the Chochenyo Ohlone in the territory of Huichin (known as Oakland) with her photographer husband Bob Devaney, where they brought up their two sons. For residents and businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area or anywhere, donate to The Sogorea Te Land Trust, an urban Indigenous women-led 501c3 organization facilitating the return of SF Bay land to Indigenous stewardship, healing from the legacies of colonization and genocide, promotion of a different way of living, and the continuation of the work that the ancestors and future generations call us to do.
Related links
Jane P. Perry’s website: https://janepperry.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jane.perry.79462
Twitter: https://twitter.com/oaklandjane
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51307824-white-snake-diary
Category: On Writing
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