By Candice Yacono
FROM: Orange County Register

On any given day, you might find Susan Straight walking along the Santa Ana River or throwing darts at the local Elks lodge.

While her air is unassuming, Straight, a distinguished professor of creative writing at the UC Riverside, has published 10 books, along with myriad short stories and essays. She was mentored by James Baldwin and has won countless awards, including being longlisted in October for the 2020 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction.

“Everyone’s good at something, and I always told my girls when they were little that I’m just good at story,” Straight says. “I always took refuge in books, and when you read other beautiful sentences, you want to write beautiful sentences.”Her latest book and first memoir, “In the Country of Women,” published in August by Catapult Press, is a powerful account of six generations of family members who made unsung odysseys for love, a second chance, or an escape, interwoven with Straight’s own story as well as those of her daughters.

Straight’s impetus to write the book came as family members both old and young began to pass away — and to take their memories with them. Her memoir weaves together the stories of several family members, women like Straight’s own Swiss mother, who learned English by listening to Vin Scully; her daughters’ ancestor Mary, who threw her own daughter Daisy into a roadside ditch to save her when white drivers drove into her, killing her; and Fine, the orphaned daughter of a slave woman who was taken by a white family during Reconstruction and pressed into service. Read Rest of Article Here