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If you're not moved by Liz Murray's memoir Breaking Night, then surely you've a heart of stone. Hers is the kind of real-life story people gather around like winter dwellers are drawn to a campfire.
A child of New York City drug addicts who shot heroin at the kitchen table, Murray watched as her mother and father drifted in and out of work, relationships and rehab. "My parents," she writes, "were muddled voices rising and falling unpredictably through the thick door that separated our rooms."
Like homeless-to-Barnard author Jeannette Walls' best-selling 1995 memoir The Glass Castle, Murray's book is remarkable for her ability to recount childhood memories with detail and clarity. It's as if she survived neglect because she was occupied at a young age with making sense of what her family was going through.
Murray is one of those who lived to tell the tale, thanks to her hardscrabble nature, her progression through school due to skill at taking standardized tests, and her ability to connect the dots between those who cared enough to guide her. A 2009 Harvard graduate, today she's a 30-year-old expectant mother, well-traveled motivational speaker, and founder and director of New York-based Manifest Living, which helps adults achieve their goals.
Do you believe curious and questioning people have better survival skills?
Not having anyone wholeheartedly focused on me, I became the observer. For a kid, survival is all about love, about being accepted and noticed. In my world, it was about focusing on [my parents]. I don't know if curious or observant people have better survival skills, but I'd say those skills are supportive of survival. The more you observe, the more you learn to get what you need.
Success stories despite hardship are almost a staple of American nonfiction. Have skeptics ever approached you to say, "Liz, you survived, but so many other children do not"?
Having "homeless to Harvard" attached to you is almost like a Rorschach test. Once, after speaking at a country-club benefit for the homeless, a gentleman patted me on the back. "You're the reason poverty does not matter," he said. People need determination and help. It's not either/or. I was helped in New York City by an organization called The Door, a haven for homeless teenagers in lower Manhattan. I had revolutionary teachers. But I also made sure that if I fell asleep on someone else's party floor, I got up for school the next morning. Success is a soup, you mix together all kinds of elements to make it happen.
A turning point in the book arrives when you use the imagery of the track runner to get you out of bed for high school. You realized that "obstacles are a part of the course."
The track runner is about realizing that you can't change a lot of things, but you can change your relationship to those things. When I started thinking about the track runner in terms of hurdles, rather than barriers, absolutely nothing changed in the outside world. I was still homeless. But it changed the way I saw myself in the world.
You dedicate the book to one person whom you credit for teaching you that "you do get to choose your family." Certainly the book concerns how you surmounted your family circumstances, even if you loved your parents.
No one brings a child into the world, then holds that child in their arms saying, "Wow, I can't wait to screw this person up." For whatever reason, that realization came naturally [to me], and I'm grateful for it. Not having my eyes closed in blame helps immensely. Move on. If terrible things happened to you in the past, they're not happening now!
Sundance Resort Author Series: Liz Murray
P Murray will read from Breaking Night: A memoir of forgiveness, survival and my journey from homeless to Harvard.
When • Saturday, March 26, noon
Where • Tree Room at Sundance Resort, 8841 North Alpine Loop Road, Sundance, Provo Canyon
Info • $75 ticket includes author lecture and discussion, signed copy of author's book, plus brunch at the resort's Tea Room (alcohol not included). Reservations are required, at 866-734-4428 or http://www.sundanceresort.com.