Divine Aphasia: A Woman's Search for Her Father

Divine Aphasia's poignant story is tragic and often dark, yet hope permeates the struggles of the author, Nancy Owen Nelson, as the background in her childhood exposes her vulnerability to men and life. The story reflects a loving but delicate father, Woodford Owen Nelson, a military officer, who passes these same qualities to the author. As an adult, the author labors through multiple marriages and relationships in a difficult search for identity blurred by the experiences of the constant moves of her father from one Army base to another. These experiences, along with his alcoholism, ultimately result in the codependencies of Nelson, her mother, and sisters as well as stiff barriers to stability. Only in her final unsuccessful marriage to a colleague with Aphasia does the process reach a breaking point that shatters these barriers and leads Nelson to understand, as she writes, that "he could not give me any more love than he did. That he gave love in ways I didn't recognize."

Biographies & Memoirs

Nelson, Nancy Owen

Community & Culture

Ardent Writer Press, LLC, The

Divine Aphasia's poignant story is tragic and often dark, yet hope permeates the struggles of the author, Nancy Owen Nelson, as the background in her childhood exposes her vulnerability to men and life. The story reflects a loving but delicate father, Woodford Owen Nelson, a military officer, who passes these same qualities to the author. As an adult, the author labors through multiple marriages and relationships in a difficult search for identity blurred by the experiences of the constant moves of her father from one Army base to another. These experiences, along with his alcoholism, ultimately result in the codependencies of Nelson, her mother, and sisters as well as stiff barriers to stability. Only in her final unsuccessful marriage to a colleague with Aphasia does the process reach a breaking point that shatters these barriers and leads Nelson to understand, as she writes, that "he could not give me any more love than he did. That he gave love in ways I didn't recognize."

Ardent Writer Press, LLC

How would you be affected if your mother died giving you life? And how would such a loss affect your children? These questions are the foundation of many issues raised by the author in her search for the missing pieces of a grandmother who in 1905 died giving the author’s mother life. It was a tragedy that seemed to affect multiple generations, the voids in identity and ill-spent guilt flowing from the stream of blood that kept mother from daughter, and then from granddaughter. But it was a search well-spent.
 The Reverend Roger Mohr, First Unitarian Universalist Church of Detroit, may have said it best. “Often the tapestry of family history does not seem to offer us the sort of clarity about who we have become, and why. And sometimes the narrative tells us a story about ourselves that we do not wish to accept.” 
Nancy Owen Nelson’s search resulted in raising more questions about herself, even as it answered questions about her mysterious grandmother. Nonetheless, in the end her journey toward discovery was one of startling self-awareness and connection. No matter whether you feel connected or lost in family, you will be unable to avoid the heartfelt pleasure and pain that comes from the author’s brave attempt to connect three generations of Southern women.

Searching for Nannie B.: Connecting Three Generations of Southern Women

Searching for Nannie B: Connecting Three Generations of Southern Women

How does a progressive woman with southern roots confront the racial tension that exists in our country today? In these poems, Nancy Owen Nelson grapples with how to embrace her ancestry while resisting, as Rev. Dr. Stephen Butler Murray states, “the social sins that drench the soil of that beloved ground” on which her ancestors are buried. The poems move from the violence of the 2017 Charlottesville incident though Nelson’s family history, focusing on women who loved and sustained their families and men who, farmers, fought for the Confederacy, narrative accounts of former slaves, and finally, to the 20th century Civil Rights Movement. Author Judith Hillman Paterson calls My Heart Wears No Colors “a cycle of poems portraying four generations [including the author] trying to come to terms with their roots in a sometimes violent, often racist, Deep South.”

My Heart Wears No Colors

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

FutureCycle Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Nelson, Nancy Owen. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Nelson, Nancy Owen

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Nelson, Nancy Owen. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Divine Aphasia: A Woman's Search for Her Father

Divine Aphasia: A Woman's Search for Her Father

Searching for Nannie B.: Connecting Three Generations of Southern Women

Searching for Nannie B: Connecting Three Generations of Southern Women

My Heart Wears No Colors