Barbara Fischkin is the author of three books of narrative nonfiction and fiction and is currently writing an autism-related historical novel, working title The Digger Resistance. The book spans the years 1900-present and takes place in Ukraine and other European and American locales. She holds a SUNY interdisciplinary Master of Liberal Studies Degree in “Autism Past and Present,” and has taught journalism at three universities. Her books include Muddy Cup: A Dominican Family Comes of Age in a New America—published by Scribner and considered a landmark work about Dominican immigration to the United States and two satiric novels published by Bantam Dell at Random House: Exclusive and Confidential Sources. As an international journalist, Fischkin covered stories in Latin America, Asia, and Europe and wrote for major publications including Newsday, where she was on staff, the New Yorker, and the New York Times. Email: barbarafischkin [at] gmail.com
Website: https://www.barbarafischkin.com/
by Barbara Fischkin Another eight weeks have passed since I wrote about my Cousin Bernie—and how, posthumously, he adds to my understanding of him. To review: Earlier this year I wrote two chapters about Cousin Bernie completely from memory. Then his widow, Joan Hamilton Morris, sent me more material—pages she’d found of an incomplete memoir…
by Barbara Fischkin Eight weeks have passed since I wrote about my Cousin Bernie—and how, posthumously, he adds to my own memories of him. As readers may remember from my last offering, Cousin Bernie’s widow, Joan Hamilton Morris, sent me the pages of an incomplete memoir her late husband pecked out on a vintage typewriter…
by Barbara Fischkin Cousin Bernie’s Own Memoir Surfaces Years After His Death (a.k.a Cousin Bernie, Free-Range Professor-Part Three) As much as I loved my late Cousin Bernie, I figured that in regard to my own memoir, I was done with him. Cousins are great but those two earlier chapters—on just one cousin—were more than enough.…
by Barbara Fischkin Warren Wilson College Swannanoa, North Carolina Winter 1989 Now, it sounds exciting. And unusual. Back then I was terrified. I would be moving with my foreign correspondent husband from Mexico City to Hong Kong—a place I had never been—with a toddler and a Mexican nanny in tow. Mari, the nanny, was calm.…
by Barbara Fischkin Part One: Before Mari Saved Us This is the back story: Maria Angeles Garcia, known to us as “Mari,” was a godsend to our family. In part two, which I plan to publish in May, readers will find out more about how this young, single mother from a small village in northern…
by Barbara Fischkin The place where I learned the most about diversity, equity and inclusion was not at my liberal summer camp in New York’s Catskills mountains—but at a pig farm in northern Kansas. To be fair, if it wasn’t for camp, I never would have pitched a tent under the big sky of the…
by Barbara Fischkin People who have never been to sleepaway camp, don’t get it. They tease me when I speak about memories that are decades old, as if I am recalling a past life that never happened. They find it strange that I view my many years at camp as not merely summer vacations but…
by Barbara Fischkin Objects. Objects. Objects. I need to drop objects into my writing. This advice keeps popping into my brain, as I write a second chapter about my cousin, Bernie Morris. For this writing tip, I credit Sands Hall, a teacher beloved by many. Sands may have worded it differently but in my mind’s…
by Barbara Fischkin I remember the day I realized that my cousin Bernard Moskowitz—my father’s nephew—was nothing like my other relatives. The realization came in a flash as I spotted a newly arrived letter on the dining room table at our home at 4722 Avenue I in the Midwood section of Brooklyn. Two pages. Typewritten.…
by Barbara Fischkin It was the summer of 1961. I was six years old. My mother and I had arrived in Omaha the night before, flying out of what was still “Idlewild,” not JFK International Airport, as it is now named. We would visit relatives with roots in the same Eastern European shtetl as my…
by Barbara Fischkin Moving forward, I plan to use this space to experiment with chapters of a memoir. Please join me on this journey. Another potential title: “Barbara in Free-Range.” I realize this might be stepping on the toes of Lenore Skenazy, the celebrated former New York News columnist, although I don’t think she’d mind.…
by Barbara Fischkin I arrived in Ireland in the mid-1980s to cover the seemingly intractable bloody conflict colloquially known as “The Troubles.” I studied up on materiel: Armalite rifles, homemade fertilizer bombs, the plastic bullets protestors ducked. And on the glossary of local politics: Loyalists were mostly Protestants who wanted to remain British citizens; Republicans…
by Barbara Fischkin Part One This story begins, as no great story ever has, with a dustbuster. That’s right: A cordless, rechargeable handheld vacuum cleaner. If you don’t know, consider yourself lucky. It means you have had so much household help, that you never needed to recognize that dustbusters exist. Align yourself with George H.W.…
by Barbara Fischkin At dawn on February 24, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation,” in Ukraine—a euphemism for war, if ever there was one. Since that morning, the fortitude of the Ukrainian people has resounded, even as the Middle East vies for our attention. For me, evidence of this grit—as fertile…
by Barbara Fischkin In 1919, after a brutal anti-Semitic pogrom in a small Eastern European shtetl, my grandfather knew that his wife and three young children would be better off as refugees. He prepared them to trek by foot and in horse-drawn carts from Ukraine to the English Channel and eventually to a Scottish port.…
by Barbara Fischkin Our elder, adult son, Dan Mulvaney, has non-speaking autism. For the most part, Dan has a good life. He lives near us—his mother and father—in a lovely group home on Long Island in suburban New York and often surfs the Atlantic Ocean off Long Beach. During quiet moments when Dan is out…
by Barbara Fischkin I once wrote a political column for Fox News. My point of view was liberal and at times decidedly leftist. This is true-true and not fake news. The notorious Fox was then a media baby, albeit an enormous one. At its American launch in 1997, it already had 17 million cable subscribers.…
by Barbara Fischkin As the Jewish New Year 5784 unfolds, the late newspaperman Jimmy Breslin comes to mind. Jimmy was a great guy, an awful guy, and a Catholic guy. Channeling him now might be tantamount to sacrilege. Or, maybe not. My immediate ancestors, whose memory I honor this week, loved sacrilege. I imagine their…
by Barbara Fischkin Deep Water Background For an opus on surfing, I recommend Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan. I am humbled each time I pick up this book. Four summers ago, at 64, I decided to try to surf. People who do not surf, and even some who do, are impressed when…
by Barbara Fischkin Again, I thought about changing my name. I dreamed about publishing essays under a new byline. I tried out pseudonyms for my next book. I wrote down alternate names, said them out loud. A name change would make introductions easier. Now, when I extend my hand and say “Fischkin,” people look at…