Lucia Berlin (1936–2004)
Author of A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories
About the Author
Lucia Berlin (1936-2004) worked brilliantly but sporadically throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Her stories are inspired by her early childhood in various Western mining towns; her glamorous teenage years in Santiago, Chile; three failed marriages; a lifelong problem with alcoholism; her years show more spent in Berkeley, New Mexico, and Mexico City; and the various jobs she later held to support her writing and her four sons. Sober and writing steadily by the 1990s, she took a visiting writer's post at the University of Colorado Boulder in 1994 and was soon promoted to associate professor. In 2001, in failing health, she moved to Southern California to be near her sons. She died in 2004 in Marina del Rey. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: luciaberlin.com
Works by Lucia Berlin
Noite no paraíso: Mais contos 3 copies
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Berlin, Lucia
- Birthdate
- 1936-11-12
- Date of death
- 2004-11-12
- Burial location
- Green Mountain Cemetery, Boulder, Colorado, USA
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Juneau, Alaska, USA
- Place of death
- Marina del Rey, California, USA
- Places of residence
- Boulder, Colorado, USA
Mexico
Santiago, Chile
Idaho, USA
Montana, USA
Arizona, USA (show all 8)
California, USA
New Mexico, USA - Occupations
- short story writer
creative writing teacher
switchboard operator
cleaner - Relationships
- Sender, Ramon J. (teacher)
- Organizations
- University of Colorado, Boulder
- Short biography
- Lucia Berlin was born in Juneau, Alaska, and grew up in mining camps in Idaho, Montana, and Arizona, following her father's career as a mining engineer; then in Santiago, Chile, where she led a wealthy and privileged life as a teenager. She began publishing stories at age 24 in national magazines, but her first collection, Angel's Laundromat, did not appear until 1981. Most of her work can be found in three volumes: Homesick: New and Selected Stories (1990), So Long: Stories 1987-92 (1993) and Where I Live Now: Stories 1993-98 (1999). She received an American Book Award in 1991 for Homesick, and was awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2015, nearly 10 years after her death, she finally achieved fame with the publication of her bestselling collection A Manual for Cleaning Women: Short Stories. She had held a variety of blue-collar jobs to support herself, including switchboard operator and cleaning woman, reflected in the titles of some of her stories. She also taught creative writing in a diverse places, including the San Francisco County Jail and the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. In 1994-1995, she was a Visiting Writer at the University of Colorado, Boulder. At the end of her term, she was named associate professor, and continued teaching at UC Boulder until 2000.
She was married three times and had four children.
Members
Reviews
“I love houses, all the things they tell me, so that's one reason. I don't mind working as a cleaning woman. It's just like reading a book.”
Every once in awhile, you stumble on a book, that just reminds you, why books are special, why you have devoted endless minutes, hours and days, to the printed page. This amazing collection of stories, that compile the best work of Lucia Berlin, is one such book.
Many of these tales, are based on Berlin's life, gently linked stories, that show women, show more struggling to make ends meet, working as cleaning women, nurses and switchboard operators. The difficulties of being a single mother, dealing with alcohol and drugs and in the later stories, dreams and mortality.
Obviously what makes all this work, is her writing craft, which makes all this come alive, with humor, intelligence, passion and beauty.
Many readers, are not “short story” fans. Give this one a try: it might just open a door...a very big door. show less
Every once in awhile, you stumble on a book, that just reminds you, why books are special, why you have devoted endless minutes, hours and days, to the printed page. This amazing collection of stories, that compile the best work of Lucia Berlin, is one such book.
Many of these tales, are based on Berlin's life, gently linked stories, that show women, show more struggling to make ends meet, working as cleaning women, nurses and switchboard operators. The difficulties of being a single mother, dealing with alcohol and drugs and in the later stories, dreams and mortality.
Obviously what makes all this work, is her writing craft, which makes all this come alive, with humor, intelligence, passion and beauty.
Many readers, are not “short story” fans. Give this one a try: it might just open a door...a very big door. show less
The forty-three stories in this collection are both a vibrant demonstration of Berlin’s excellence with the from-life short story and, to some degree, the narrowness of her range. Certainly the best of these stories are up there with the highest examples of the artform during the latter half of the 20th century. Some are so poignant and painfully raw as to be almost embarrassing to read. A few are just so sad. Berlin suffered early physical trauma, childhood sexual abuse, emotional show more shrivelling due to rampant alcoholism in her family especially her mother, and constant uprootedness as the family followed the father’s job placements at mines in the American southwest, in Chile, and elsewhere. Perhaps it is no surprise that Berlin herself turned to alcohol and had to battle with its charms and bedevilment for much of her life. She was as sexually adventurous as the female protagonists in her stories, but she also raised four boys, took on numerous service-related jobs to make ends meet, and, as this collection shows, also managed to write and publish dozens of fascinating and skillful stories.
One thing that surprised me here was not the vivid content of the stories or their frank presentations of alcoholism or sexual wandering. Rather it was the near absence of the act of writing, the process, the hours and hours that Berlin, as a real person, must have spent developing and honing her craft. That must have been a major component in her life and yet here it is nearly invisible. For someone touted as a great realist writer who famously draws on her own experience and presents it seemingly unfiltered, this seems curious. I can only assume it is deliberate artistic choice. (Because I doubt she found writing to be more shameful than some of the things she did under the malign influence of alcohol.) My question is what does that choice reveal?
I’m glad I read this collection and got a chance to encounter some of Berlin’s writing. I just don’t think I’ll confuse that with having met her. I think there is more here than what appears on the surface. Which is probably no surprise.
Recommended. show less
One thing that surprised me here was not the vivid content of the stories or their frank presentations of alcoholism or sexual wandering. Rather it was the near absence of the act of writing, the process, the hours and hours that Berlin, as a real person, must have spent developing and honing her craft. That must have been a major component in her life and yet here it is nearly invisible. For someone touted as a great realist writer who famously draws on her own experience and presents it seemingly unfiltered, this seems curious. I can only assume it is deliberate artistic choice. (Because I doubt she found writing to be more shameful than some of the things she did under the malign influence of alcohol.) My question is what does that choice reveal?
I’m glad I read this collection and got a chance to encounter some of Berlin’s writing. I just don’t think I’ll confuse that with having met her. I think there is more here than what appears on the surface. Which is probably no surprise.
Recommended. show less
Added Note: A vigorous discussion at the Breakfast Club prompted me to go and read this story a second time. I have upgraded my rating from a four to a five and I urge everyone to go and read this carefully. It might be the most brilliant modern short story out there.
This is a review of the title story only. No entry on Goodreads for it as an individual story. I would like to read this entire collection.
I love this kind of short story that seems to be about something simple, a cleaning lady show more and the jobs she has, but that succeeds in revealing something basic about humanity. In a few lines, Lucia Berlin tells us everything essential to know about the families our cleaning lady cleans for, and with almost as much brevity, we learn what our cleaning lady herself is up against in her personal life. The story is revealed to us through our nameless cleaner while she rides her bus from job to job and observes the people on the bus, the city outside the bus, and the internal conversation she has with herself. Well worth the read.
Read the Story Here show less
This is a review of the title story only. No entry on Goodreads for it as an individual story. I would like to read this entire collection.
I love this kind of short story that seems to be about something simple, a cleaning lady show more and the jobs she has, but that succeeds in revealing something basic about humanity. In a few lines, Lucia Berlin tells us everything essential to know about the families our cleaning lady cleans for, and with almost as much brevity, we learn what our cleaning lady herself is up against in her personal life. The story is revealed to us through our nameless cleaner while she rides her bus from job to job and observes the people on the bus, the city outside the bus, and the internal conversation she has with herself. Well worth the read.
Read the Story Here show less
This is a charming and engaging collection of stories by Lucia Berlin who must have lived an amazing life. She clearly draws heavily from her own life for her stories, developing characters, communities, and scenery in such vivid and rich detail that the reader is transported. The same characters, communities, and scenery show up again and again but each time presents a slightly different perspective or moment in time. And, of course, the themes are persistent: family, love, loss, addiction, show more and the persistent progress of time with all its "what if"s.
I can see why, in the Forward, Lydia Davis kept quoting little nuggets from the stories. They are full of these perfect simple statements. Here is a favorite:
"Were we a nice family? I didn't know. What I still do is look in picture windows where families are sitting around and wonder what they do, how do they talk to one another?"
And, from "Homing," the final story:
"I have never seen the crows leave the tree in the morning but every evening about a half an hour before dark, they start flying in from all over town. There may be regular herders who swoop around in the sky for blocks calling for the others to come home, or perhaps each one circles around gathering stragglers before it pops into the tree. I've watched enough, you'd think I could tell by now. But I only see crows, dozens of crows, flying in from every direction from far away and five or six circling like over O'Hare, calling calling, and then in a split second suddenly it is silent and no crows are to be seen. The tree looks like an ordinary maple tree. No way you'd know there were so many birds in there."
Who hasn't witnessed this very phenomenon? And Berlin describes it so perfectly, with amusement and wonder and absolute accuracy.
I had many favorite stories among the collection but here is an example of the vast territory of Berlin's writing. Near the end of the collection, "Mijito" broke my heart in a way only the best literature can; I ached as I finished that story. The very next story, "502," was funny and delightful and charming; it left me cheering for its ragtag collection of characters (despite its ominous last sentence).
Highly recommended. show less
I can see why, in the Forward, Lydia Davis kept quoting little nuggets from the stories. They are full of these perfect simple statements. Here is a favorite:
"Were we a nice family? I didn't know. What I still do is look in picture windows where families are sitting around and wonder what they do, how do they talk to one another?"
And, from "Homing," the final story:
"I have never seen the crows leave the tree in the morning but every evening about a half an hour before dark, they start flying in from all over town. There may be regular herders who swoop around in the sky for blocks calling for the others to come home, or perhaps each one circles around gathering stragglers before it pops into the tree. I've watched enough, you'd think I could tell by now. But I only see crows, dozens of crows, flying in from every direction from far away and five or six circling like over O'Hare, calling calling, and then in a split second suddenly it is silent and no crows are to be seen. The tree looks like an ordinary maple tree. No way you'd know there were so many birds in there."
Who hasn't witnessed this very phenomenon? And Berlin describes it so perfectly, with amusement and wonder and absolute accuracy.
I had many favorite stories among the collection but here is an example of the vast territory of Berlin's writing. Near the end of the collection, "Mijito" broke my heart in a way only the best literature can; I ached as I finished that story. The very next story, "502," was funny and delightful and charming; it left me cheering for its ragtag collection of characters (despite its ominous last sentence).
Highly recommended. show less
Lists
Stuff from Bard (1)
Mitski! (1)
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 68
- Also by
- 5
- Members
- 2,679
- Popularity
- #9,585
- Rating
- 4.1
- Reviews
- 88
- ISBNs
- 140
- Languages
- 19
- Favorited
- 9