Linda Murphy Marshall returns to the Spotlight this week to discuss her latest memoir, Immersion
Author Name: Linda Murphy Marshall
Book Title: Immersion: A Linguist’s Memoir
Book Genre: Memoir
Release Date: September 24, 2024
Publisher: She Writes Press
Welcome back, Linda! Please tell us about Immersion.
I was raised to believe I had no real worth in the conservative, male-dominated family in which I was raised. In my mid-30s, I managed to break away and move to the East Coast with my small children and gradually forged a new identity via my often dangerous overseas work assignments to Africa. I had to leave home to be led home to myself.
What drew you to write a memoir about this experience? What made you want to tell this particular story?
My first memoir — Ivy Lodge: A Memoir of Translation and Discovery, tells the first part of my journey: the struggle of growing up in a male-dominated family in which I wasn’t valued, the struggle to survive emotionally. The second memoir — Immersion: A Linguist’s Memoir — continues my story, a very different story, about dangerous and important work assignments that helped me continue to discover my worth.
What was your research process like for Immersion?
Fortunately, I kept journals on my overseas work assignments and I drew from those. In addition, I had copies of letters I sent while in Spain and Brazil, and in various countries in Africa, and I used content from those. Finally, I did extensive research on the various countries I wrote about and traveled to: Spain, Brazil, Zambia, South Africa, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, and Tanzania. I did this to ensure that I could plug in the background of what was occurring in those various countries at the particular time I was sent there for my work, to make sure I included the context of my trips.
Any new writing project in the works? We’d love to hear more!
Nearly 30 of my essays and short stories have been published, and I’m compiling them to put into an anthology of my work. And I’m always working on new essays. Most of my essays and stories can be found on my website.
And where can readers find you?
WWW.LINDAMURPHYMARSHALL.COM [WEBSITE]
INSTAGRAM: LINDA MURPHY MARSHALL
FACEBOOK: Linda Murphy Marshall
PLEASE SEE WEBSITE FOR UPCOMING LIVE/ONLINE EVENTS
I’m a docent at the Library of Congress [www.loc.gov], so I’m a constant presence there, guiding guests, helping to create interactive activities for adults and children.
I’m an associate for the National Museum of Language [languagemuseum.org], an online language site, contributing content and participating in in-person events.
Thank you, Linda! Immersion is out TODAY.
Immersion: A Linguist’s Memoir
Fans of the self-discovering journeys in Cheryl Strayed’s Wild and Andrew McCarthy’s The Longest Way Home will love diving into linguist Linda Murphy Marshall’s adventure-filled international journey as she overcomes her past to find her place in the world—all over the world.
Immersion is a memoir that takes the reader on a captivating emotional and physical journey through Linda Murphy Marshall’s life: from the longstanding, crippling impact of family members’ low expectations and abuse, to her discovery as a young adult that she possesses special skills in foreign languages.
Linda is taught from an early age that she has little of value to offer the world. But her love of and affinity for languages enables her to create a new life—to separate herself from her toxic environment and to build a successful, decades-long career as a professional multilinguist. It’s a rewarding vocation, but a challenging one: her assignments with the US federal government take her on some hair-raisingly dangerous journeys, some to countries with unstable governments and even active war zones. But these sometimes-harrowing experiences teach her how to open the “windows” around her, unearth her true self, and develop a healthy sense of self-worth—and ultimately, paradoxically, her work and travel so far from home allow her to come home to herself.
Author bio:
Linda Murphy Marshall has a Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literature and an MFA in Creative Writing. Her memoir, Ivy Lodge: A Memoir of Translation and Discovery received a starred review from Kirkus. She is also an Associate for the National Museum of Language and a docent at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Her second memoir, Immersion: A Linguist’s Memoir, comes out in September of 2024.