Burying a Romance? Bring Extra Caskets

“Before I experienced my second adolescence in New York City, I grew up a lost child,” Jin Moon said to the packed room.

The audience in the tiny, cramped, but well-lit basement of the WORD bookstore in Greenpoint, Brooklyn listened in silence as she told her story of divorce and deception that tore her family life apart. Moon went through her childhood unaware of the truth behind her father’s separation from her birth mother. Although she grew up in her biological father’s home with his new wife, Moon did not know she was a step-daughter until a kindergarten friend mistakenly blurted out to her that she was adopted.

“At the time my six-year-old brain didn’t know the difference between ‘adopted’ and ‘step-child’,” Moon said as she read the passage from her notes to the audience. Her father remarried when she was very young after his previous marriage fell apart. Moon tracked down her birth mother later in life and discovered she had a sister.

Most tales of heartbreak and lost love center on a couple, but many more stories, like Moon’s, focus on the ripple effects caused by failed romances. She joined a small group of presenters at Just Working on My Breakup, a special pre-Valentine’s Day reading event on Feb. 10, 2012 to share short relationship stories and tales of love gone awry. The majority of the evening’s readers shared personal anecdotes of messy breakups and mourned – or celebrated – past relationships. But Moon chose a road less traveled and spoke on her parents’ failed marriage and how it shaped her as a person.

Moon knows better than most that there’s collateral damage involved whenever love decides to throw in the towel and call it a day. For that reason, on Valentine’s Day, when most couples stare longingly into each others’ eyes and singles celebrate their freedom, people like her remember that when a relationship goes down in flames, it can take more than the erstwhile star-crossed lovers with it.

Just Working on My Breakup is the Valentine’s Day offshoot of a long-running reading and critique series, Just Working on My Novel. The series began in 2009 and is now hosted every other month in the basement of the WORD independent bookstore on at 126 Franklin Street.

“Love stories are boring,” said Russ Marshalek, 29, when asked about the inspiration behind Breakup. “They’re boring and they’re old and they’re trite. You want something interesting. And when you have 10 minutes to tell a story for a group of people, the things that are going to entertain the most are going to be humor and heartbreak.”

Marshalek created the Novel reading series three years ago and started Breakup in 2011 when he combined un-Valentine’s Day themes with Novel’s reading and critique format. He said the response among readers and audiences has been overwhelmingly positive.

Cathryn Harding, a veteran journalist, was honored by the audience who chose her entry as the evening’s best contribution. Harding is no stranger to storytelling. When she lived in Virginia, she actively participated in Charlottesville’s fledgling storytelling collectives where she told personal stories without notes.

“The combination of telling personal stories, speaking to a crowd, and having a chance to participate in a literary scene felt very natural to me,” she said. “When [Just Working on My Novel] came along, I thought, ‘Oh, I can get back in the saddle.’”

Like Moon, Harding’s breakup story was not about a personal relationship in crisis, but involved a family member. After her grandfather died, Harding’s grandmother became enamored with a man known only as John that Harding described in her reading as a vagabond. At one point Harding was told she had to move out because there was simply not enough room for the three of them. John eventually left town without a trace and Harding’s grandmother filed missing persons reports – to no avail – in an attempt to locate him. Years later, when Harding asked why her grandmother had fallen for John, her grandmother said she had waited a long time for love and, when it finally came, she took it. After a long – and by Harding’s account, relatively loveless – marriage to her husband, Harding’s grandmother found love at last, in spite of the possibility that John may have just been using her for room and board.

Harding sees storytelling as a way to establish common ground with other people and as a means to create an empathetic experience for listeners.

“I may never see any of these people [in the audience] again,” she said. “And yet somehow there was a moment of connection and it’s sort of life affirming.”

Moon, on the other hand, decided to re-live the pain and confusion of her parents’ divorce though storytelling in front of a live audience for more personal reasons.

“It was really cathartic to bring it up and talk about my mom and my dad,” she said. “It’s still something that I’m dealing with today. Writing is one thing. It’s very solitary. But when you share with the public you spread the ideas around and it helps.”