Willowdale Author Series: “In Conversation with Suzanne Stempek Shea”

Join acclaimed memoirist Susanne Strempek Shea in conversation with fellow memoirist Melanie Brooks as they discuss Compositions: A Memoir in 42 Essays by 1 Kid on Her 8 Years in Catholic School, Handed In 60 Years Late. Blending humor, reflection, and sharp observation, this conversation explores memory, storytelling, and the lasting influence of our earliest experiences.

An extraordinary memoir about the author’s early years in a close-knit 1960s and ‘70s Polish-American Massachusetts grade school and community, Compositions details a life that revolves in a circle of faith and family. Written in the author’s voice and point of view from her first eight years of school, the humorous and poignant essays show a past still fully present. Graduation photos lining the walls include students’ parents who once sat in the same classrooms with the same wooden desks, same windows, same blackboards, and some of the same nuns. Strempek Shea learns new words—bubbler for water fountain, sodality for club, lavatory for bathroom, Father for priest even if he wasn’t hers.

One snowy afternoon, looking at all the familiar faces, companions from early morning to afternoon, Monday through Friday, from for as long as she can remember, she realizes she likes school, thanks in part to the nuns who taught patiently, sang folk songs beneath a tree, and danced the hula, and despite the ones who wielded a croquet stick or hurled textbooks.  Reverence is everywhere: dropped bread receives a kiss, swimmers bless themselves before diving, parishioners walk on their knees each Good Friday. The miracles in Compositions that Strempek Shea prays for – a horse or at least a pony, her grandfather’s health – never take place. Yet something no less tender and beautiful does as she spins childhood in a kaleidoscope of close-to-the-bone observations and stories written as energetically as if the author had always been waiting to tell the world all she knew. Read them and realize you’ve always been waiting for that, too.