The first preview of Amy's Tiny Altars audiobook, released on day 3 of the DNC in Chicago in honor of her specific relationship to the political lineage that we all share. While Tim Walz does not come into this chapter, first published in 2023, it's noteworthy that he was Minnesota's governor as this story reached its conclusion.
A note from Amy about this excerpt from Tiny Altars: A Midlife Revival
Every book, like every child, seems to arrive in its own divine timing and have its own significant birthday, and this is especially true for this memoir of history witnessed in real time. Because I had abruptly ended my teaching career midyear, I was available to be an up-close observer of a remarkable period in America, as a longtime student of 20th century German literature and film.
And that's just a taste of my curriculum vitae.
I always intended to release an audiobook of Tiny Altars, originally published in paperback and ebook in April 21, 2023. (On the anniversary of Prince's passing, a significant event in my book and for Minnesotans. Among other reasons.) For whatever reason, this audiobook production didn't align until early 2024. As in, it steadfastly refused to get going—until it did. All year, I've slowly but surely recorded and listened to every chapter, bringing this version to life, in collaboration with K.O. Myers at Particulate Media.
Recently, K.O. and I have been weighing which chapters I'd like to excerpt here first, on my podcast.
As I've revisited my own words aloud, it has fascinated me to recognize JUST HOW TIMELY AND RELEVANT this book has become in the summer of 2024. So much so that when my beloved Joe Biden (I saw him speak in Minneapolis when he was campaigning for Barack Obama's second term) stepped down from his candidacy for reelection as President of the United States, passing the torch to Kamala Harris, we both knew this was the section for me to start with. K.O. set about producing the episode for me.
That was even before my beloved Minnesota Governor Tim Walz joined the ticket. You won't see his name in my book. It's too late to add him to this episode. But he's in it. Along with this, our Minnesota Nice culture, once again in the world's spotlight.
Yesterday Kamala and Tim accepted the nomination, and it occurred to me that today, the third day of the DNC in Chicago, is exactly the right day to release this episode. Two notes on its content: My book is about finding personal responsibility and freedom in my American homeland, and this chapter is about my personal and political lineage.
I do mention two characters. My aunt "Vivian" and my paternal grandmother "Doris" are significant elders to me.
I believe that Tiny Altars, my audiobook, will premiere on October 3, 2025—leading up to the election.
But we'll see!
Thanks for listening now.
Love, Amy
Podcast 12-4 Excerpt
[00:00:00] Amy Hallberg: So one of the things that's interesting that happens when you write a book and you feel compelled and you don't know where the book is going, but the book calls you forward and you start writing it, is that when things start to happen related to that in the world, that book is there and it starts to be like the setting that you can put those stories into. It starts to create a context. It starts to create an ecosystem. It starts to create its own sense of being.
You're listening to Courageous Wordsmith. I'm Amy Hallberg, author, story coach, and book writing mentor, and these are conversations with real life creatives on how we find and embody our voices. Because if you want to be a real life creative, it helps to know what that looks like for you. Welcome to Courageous Wordsmith.
So last year in 2023, April 2023, I released my second book, Tiny Altars, A Midlife Revival. And there was some context going on there. I say this all the time, but in case you didn't know this, I was a German major and I had been to Germany West Germany as an exchange student before the Berlin Wall came down.
I saw the Berlin Wall on both sides and I had a German exchange sister who really talked me through what was happening in her country so that I saw that lineage, that German lineage. Okay, so there's that. And then I went on to become a German major, It wasn't really what I wanted to do, but it kind of was.
It was like, why would you be a German major? And I mean, like the wall came down. This doesn't even make sense. Why would you be a German major? But I did. So there's that piece. And I went on to teach German for 17 years. And then I wrote my big behemoth of a manuscript that's subdivided into two books, German Awakening and What Would Then Become Tiny Altars.
As German Awakening was being written, a lot of stuff was happening in politics that really was freaking me out. Really freaking me out, okay? And a lot of this stuff touched very close to home. So as I was writing, wrote Tiny Altars, Joe Biden was elected, right? Well, I wrote this thing, and it made a lot of sense then, in that context.
And of course, Joe Biden did win, and Kamala Harris was his successor. So, let me tell you just a little bit about Tiny Altars. Tiny Altars is me exploring my lineage. And I mean my lineage on many different levels, right? So, my grandmother belonged to the Daughters of the American Revolution. Something I chose not to join, by the way, but she did.
And so, by all rights, I could have joined the Daughters of the American Revolution. You know It's a beautiful thing to be proud of where you come from except when it happens at the expense of other people and especially when your group of people are responsible for the, um, subjugation of, cultural appropriation, disappearing of other groups of people.
Right. So I, I didn't join Daughters of American Revolution. My grandma, she really wanted me to be, um, to take over her legacy in genealogy of her legacy of her lineage, right? The, the, the keeper of her lineage. And I really chafed against this. So like, like my Christian faith and, you know, the people that went back to the revolutionary times, pre revolutionary times, like early pill, like, you know, early America.
Right? And I didn't want to, because I didn't want to. Something about her story felt hollow to me. Okay. And I come from two sides, right? So I come from that side, but I also come from immigrants who, um, Scandinavian immigrants. So like desirable white, very, you know, like Swedish immigrants, Nordic. That's hardly the kind of immigrants that really got picked on.
Let's just say, but, but still they had hard lives. And so I, I come from both of these things. Someone whose family is very much rooted in the history of everything America has been through, come up through the South, and Scandinavian immigrants who came to Minnesota. This is who I am. And so, it's interesting.
I didn't mean to write about Germany exactly, except that was my story and that was the story that I had this big behemoth manuscript and I gave it over to an editor. The editor was like, look, Amy, nobody wants to hear your family stories. Just tell us the German stories. And I was like, I don't want to tell you the German stories because there's some bad shit going on in America with the, um, with the GOP.
Okay. With, with the candidacy of Donald Trump, who. He and his people have taken their cues from Nazis. I'm really sorry. I can't say it any other way. Um, and they're using Christianity, my childhood faith, my family tradition. I don't know what other culture I have if it's not Protestant Christian, right?
Like they're using my culture, my religion, my faith tradition to do this. To subjugate people, including, by the way, me, and my daughters, and, you know, people of color, which isn't a new thing in America, and LGBTQ people, and, and, and, the list goes on, right? It's a really interesting tightrope to walk, and I didn't want to be writing this book, it's just like, it's a certain point, it's like, really, okay, like, I see this, I'm going to write this, like, it's just my life path that has put me in a place to be very aware of certain things.
Yay, that's for me. I also understand that, you know, when I was growing up, um, one of the things that my family was like, Oh, you're very smart, Amy, you can go to the good schools and you could be so like when I would say like, what do I want to be when I grew up, I was trained to say, um, I will be the first woman president.
This is not a job for me. You know, it really isn't, but I mean, I, I am smart. I have a certain kind of, of smarts. I see connections, right? All this to say, I fast forward to, you know, publish my book and I talk about the election. Now, here's another fun fact. My grandmother was the city clerk of her Minnesota town.
And she ran elections. And so like this, an election denial bullshit where like, Oh, the election was stolen, that really would have pissed my grandmother off now. Grandma's dead. So I can't know how this would go, but I do know she would not have voted for Joe Biden and she sure as hell would not have voted for Kamala Harris.
She, well, she didn't necessarily like, this is an interesting thing too. My grandmother had a place. In City Hall, but she was one of those women who fit herself to the role and I don't know that she was necessarily great at bringing other women into the fold or being an ally for other women. That's another generation, right?
And yet my grandmother really had high expectations for me. And so there was always this tension between us and like the genealogy thing. Well, I wrote a chapter. It was not an easy chapter to write, but I wrote a chapter in Tiny Altars about going through that election cycle and my lineage and trained by grandma, right?
But also a lot of feisty resistance on my part. And so part of what Tiny Altars is about is looking at where we came from and not just dishonoring everything, right? My, my, my ancestors. My relatives brought me to a place where I now am in the position to live. To do good things in the world, and they would have wanted me to do good things in the world.
They would have wanted me to use those gifts. So here I am. I've been recording the audiobook for Tiny Altars since early in 2024. Been working with a great guy named K. O. Myers. He's been producing it for me, doing the, you know, the audio engineering of it, right? Because nobody does it alone. Nobody. That is a myth.
Any big thing you do, if you want to get it done in any kind of like, you know, I mean, I suppose I could do the whole thing, but in a timely manner, you got support, right? So K. O. Myers is doing this in particulate media. He's doing my audio book for me, and I'm working through, you know, listening to the pieces, you know, so it's a whole other thing when it's your own book, right, and I'm reading these things and first of all, my body energetically, like I'm feeling some of this stuff again, like, Oh, I thought I'd healed all this, but Oh, wait, there's more.
Okay, so there's that, right? But there's also reading the book going, Oh, Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. What? What is Wow. Like, like the book. I really wanted it out when I did so like it wouldn't lose relevance. Right. But this book, as we gear up for the 2024 elections is more relevant now than it ever has been.
And so I want to tell you two things. First of all, If you are feeling called to write, but you don't know what you're gonna write, but you feel strongly about it and it feels important, and maybe even people are giving you nudges, you know, like women of color I knew who were like, Nope, Amy, sorry, why you need to write about white racism,
Like, I don't want to. Yeah, Amy, but you're in a position to do it. So do it. So if you have people nudging you, you know, I'd really like to hear about this. And our response is, we're going to protect ourselves. We don't want to stand out. I don't want to be, I don't want to be putting myself into this thing.
Right. And who would want to read my story? Blah, blah, blah. First of all, I No, if you're feeling it, then start doing the work. You don't need to know how it's all going to turn out. You just need to show up. And if it's anything like my books, they appeared, you know, you worry about publication and can I get them out there?
No, no, no, they come out at the exact right time. And it's entirely possible that the relevance will grow. And you don't need to worry about, well, yeah, but I'm such a unique person in this way, and who's even going to understand? Yeah, the more you ground into your story, your story, fully, and not project it onto somebody else, your story, the more people are going to relate to your story, and they're going to feel it universally for a From their own perspective and they're going to connect and they're going to feel it and so instead of just kind of connecting on a head level, but being disconnected, they're gonna feel it.
So that's first of all, and you don't need to worry about what all shows up when you start creating that container, you'll recognize this belongs in my story and you have a place to put it, whereas if you never, ever start. If you never start, then you won't have that. You'll just have these pipe dreams.
You know, this isn't anything new. This is, you know, Henry David Thoreau talks about this in Walden. You built castles in the sky. That's great, but start building the foundation, please. So you have somewhere to put these stories because these stories can heal you and they can heal me and they can heal all of us.
We all have our healing to do so that we are putting forth. Our best, our gifts, in service to the greater good and not from a place of fear, but from a place of, this is a way that I can make a difference. So, if you're feeling like you might want to be writing, start writing. It's time. And secondly, I want to introduce you.
I've been wanting to share some of my audio book in this podcast to introduce this audio book to you because, you know, some people read the printed page or ebooks, but some people really want to hear it and I was trying to decide what like it feels so relevant. I read it and go, Oh, my gosh, I wrote this quick.
Good going. Former Amy starting writing this when you did. Thank you, Amy in 2010 for starting the writing. Thank you, because here I am in 2024, and I really needed the work that you did for me back then. Please get started. So, there are many chapters I could have shared with you, and I will share more going forward, but this is the chapter that I want you to listen to as a way of understanding Of, of getting a sense of what Tiny Altars is, and Tiny Altars is my example of how I became a working creative, both to share my story, but also to say, okay, so here's what I'm doing.
What would you like to do? And what if you were to do that? You see what I'm saying? And when you hear this, remember that I wrote this chapter, Much closer to 2020, and that's how writing works. You'll write stuff and you're just like, wow, thanks former self. So, I think you can get where I'm going with this.
So, here's this excerpt from Tiny Altars. Enjoy.
The day early voting opened in Minnesota, Mom and I masked up, and I drove us to City Hall.
Everything - forms, machines, pens, even the moistening bottles to hygienically seal envelo - pesreminded me of Grandma, who reverently ran elections those many years. She would have done her level best to make sure that all of the ballots were counted properly.
Any insinuations to the contrary would have offended her honor. Grandma would never have voted for Joe Biden or any black woman candidate, to be honest, but my mom and I did. Nevertheless, grandma taught me the sacred covenant of the vote.
That same evening. Near sunset on the high holy day of Rosh Hashanah, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court Justice, passed on. Grandma turned 16 the year RBG was born. It occurred to me that both women shared a tireless work ethic. both listened intently and pored over words, getting them just right by burning the midnight oil after evening events.
They were public servants. Widows and wives, grandmas and mothers, separated by one generation. Grandma got to retire, and RBG never would.
One beautiful thing that happens when our beloveds die, if we're lucky, is the way we look back, review stories, and follow the dots. When the veil of space and time lifts, we see how connected we are. In this sense, their memories truly offer a blessing. From here I see a progression that I never noticed before. In 1962, the year that Vivian married at 22 and started to put her first husband through school, Grandma became a primary breadwinner at 45 with clerical work. That year, Ruth Bader Ginsburg newly graduated at the top of her class from her second Ivy League law school, couldn't get a job in America.
So she went to Sweden and saw how society could be better for women. In 1964, Kamala Harris was born.
Justice Ginsburg started her revolution, landmark cases with which she ushered in new ideas in 1970. The year I was born. Her work changed the world. I wouldn't learn her name until the summer I left St. Louis when she received her lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. Because of RBG, I had options. I chose to be a teacher. And a mom. I choose to publish my stories under my own name. My grandmother grew up in a whole different America. There but for the grace of Ruth Bader Ginsburg go I. Grandma believed she'd been born at the greatest of times, and it would only get worse.
She tried to make me a lady of her generation, and I was trying to make her a woman of mine. We left so much unresolved, so much unspoken. And in the end, the only thing we knew for certain that we agreed upon was love. She felt sorry for later generations. Perhaps she was right, if you value unquestioned white Christian male hegemony. That perspective loomed unbelievably large.
. There's not enough mercy to change the past. I can't undo privilege received, nor sorrows endured. That's an impossible frame. I don't know what my ancestors went through. I'm not here to feel ashamed of them, or judge them, or glorify them. I can only tell truth as it reveals itself now.
I can acknowledge what got me here and repurpose those gifts in the present. It's my job to gather artifacts and ponder their meaning for me. In this context, and create fresh meaning from there. So, I'll never join the Daughters of the American Revolution, nor another Christian church, but I am from the Protestant DAR tradition.
I'll never be an impoverished child of immigrants, nor a starving artist. I do come from homeless immigrants who learned not to starve, who still believed in a greater good. I'll forever bear the markers of this inheritance. And there's this, Though I'm no longer a language teacher, I still teach through words.
Thanks for listening to Courageous Wordsmith. Today's episode featured an excerpt from my Tiny Altars audiobook. Wanna hear more about that? Check out my links in the show notes. Or visit amyhalberg. com Backstage at Courageous Wordsmith, our production team is the brilliant Brooke Roy and me. Amy Hallberg.
You can support this podcast when you subscribe right on this page. Leave a comment, share with a friend, and sign up for my emails to hear about future episodes. I appreciate you, and I don't say this lightly. You have stories to tell. What if you let yourself tell them? I can't wait to hear. I am Amy Hallberg, and until we meet again, travel safely.