by Donna Salli | Dec 12, 2025 | Blogs
I’d worked three days, writing the essay. Three days of reflection on the ways in which the people in this family picture had shaped me. Yesterday, I shared the draft with my husband, as I always do—and he basically said (though trying to be kind), “Who cares? So—it’s your family. I can’t see what the point is.” I can’t say that his response surprised me. Bruce is a writer who worked as an editor for a literary journal. He speaks aloud what my own writerly instincts are whispering. “You should write this for the New Yorker,” he said. “That audience.” Well, I figured I should just bury the corpse and be done with it. “Okay,” I said, “I’m going to go out and lie in the street now and wait for a car to run over me.” I was laughing, painfully. He was laughing, having been in the same position many times, and at my hands. It’s morning now, and I know exactly why I’m writing this essay. It’s about family, yes—and, because of what I know about my own family’s history, it’s about immigrants, and poverty, and the damn hard work of building a life—the damn hard work, too, of writing something worth reading.
by Donna Salli | Jul 24, 2020 | Blogs
I grew up in a family that believed in ghosts. I know eyes are rolling. I should say—enough people in my family experienced apparently ghostly encounters to lead me to believe in them, despite never seeing one myself. The photo above is of the upstairs landing at our family farm. The house was built by my Finnish-speaking grandparents. Through the small door dimly visible in that little bathroom was a dark and narrow closet that we called a putka. Its ceiling was slanted, nestled under the roof, and you had to crouch and crawl to move in it. It’s been almost five years since we emptied the house and sold it, and as the anniversary of the closing approaches, I’ve been thinking about that house. When I was a kid, I thought the putka had a ghost. No one in particular, just a ghost. Lately, I’ve been thinking more and more about ghosts—the one in the putka, the ones on our streets. There are suddenly things that frighten in our streets. Figures in camouflage, unidentified, driving ominous vehicles without markings. I’ll get to them shortly. But perhaps you’d like to meet my putka ghost first?
by Donna Salli | Oct 13, 2017 | Blogs
My grandparents had apple orchards, right next to their houses. As my grandfathers grew older and stopped mowing the hayfields, apple trees popped up everywhere. I like to think it’s a metaphor for my family. Quite a few of us on my mother’s side are writers, and I see no surprise in it. One of my mom’s grandfathers was a writer in Finland, the original tree. Growing up, I would hold in my hand the one book of his that we owned, and I’d burn with certainty: this, this shaping of words, was my purpose.
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