Fern Schumer Chapman
Critically acclaimed Chicago-based writer Fern Schumer Chapman has written several award-winning books. Viking/Penguin released BROTHERS, SISTERS, STRANGERS: Sibling Estrangement and the Road to Reconciliation in 2021. She writes a blog about sibling estrangement for psychologytoday.com: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/bl... Some of her blog posts are compiled in her latest work, THE SIBLING ESTRANGEMENT JOURNAL: A Guided Exploration of Your Experiences .
Her memoir, MOTHERLAND -- a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, and a BookSense76 pick -- is a popular choice for book clubs. She has written two picture books in the HAPPY HARPER series., which explores little people's big emotions.
Her other books -- IS IT NIGHT OR DAY?, LIKE FINDING MY TWIN, STUMBLING ON HISTORY, and THREE STARS IN THE NIGHT SKY -- are used in middle and high school classrooms. In 2004, Illinois Association of Teachers of English (IATE) named Chapman "Illinois Author of the Year." Twice, Oprah Winfrey shows have featured her books. The Junior Library Guild has selected STUMBLING ON HISTORY, IS IT NIGHT OR DAY?, and THREE STARS IN THE NIGHT SKY as featured titles.
“Smells, I think, may be the last thing on earth to die.”
“The living take a part of the dead with them, carrying them around in their minds, like a song that lingers after the music has been turned off.”
“The past is a presence between us. In all my mother does and says, the past continually discloses itself in the smallest ways. She sees it directly; I see its shadow. Still, it pulses in my fingertips, feeds on my consciousness. It is a backdrop for each act, each drama of our lives. I have absorbed a sense of what she has suffered, what she has lost, even what her mother endured and handed down. It is my emotional gene map.”
“Most German perpetrators were never punished or rewarded for their behavior, but they had learned something about themselves. They know what they did or didn't do in the most morally fraught moment of their lives. They have seen themselves in extreme circumstances and, in that, they have seen their own extremes.”
“Memory for most is a kind of afterlife; for my mother, it is another form of life.”