Carol Bergman

I’m from New York, born and raised in New York on 104th Street and West End Avenue. I’m born of European parents, refugees, exiles from the European continent, educated German-speaking cultured Jews, both of them doctors. If they hadn’t escaped and found safe-haven in France and America, they would have been killed and I would not have been born. They were dreamers: a new continent, a new language, the “promise” of America and all its implied protections.

My family’s dislocation and relocation is embedded in my writer’s brain and heart. I write about it often, sometimes directly, sometimes obliquely, sometimes unconsciously. Their experience was unique and also typical of most Americans. Unless we are Native Americans, all of us, absolutely all of us, are from someplace else or have ancestors who were from someplace else. That includes the Pilgrims and Puritans, the slaves who were forcibly stolen from West Africa, and the economic migrants, and the undocumented adults and children who are escaping gangs in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, and the current President of the United States. Ignorant, pathological, abusive, so vile is this man’s blunt racism that the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has formally denounced him.

Where I’m From. I’m from a progressive family, European Social Democrats. They loved Bernie, understood his rap, couldn’t understand why he didn’t make it to the White House. Their paradigm, even after so many years as citizens of America, was a European parliamentary paradigm. Build coalitions. Get things done. The Fascists are still present, but the newly formed Post-World War II coalitions will defend liberal democracy. “The courts work,” my European lawyer step-father might have said. He was enamored of the Supreme Court and read everything that was written about them. And, in this sense, he was as American as apple pie.

The term is about to begin, and this being New York, I will have students from everywhere, Dreamers included, in this ostensibly sanctuary city. But ICE is on the move. And this is worrisome. I think of my students from despotic regimes--China, Iran--many returning to their home countries after the term is over. What do I say to them? Speak boldly. Write without self-censorship. This room is a safe haven. No one will arrest you. But now I am not so sure of any of this, though I won’t stop saying it.

Every writer must feel entirely free. And even if we are not certain of our external freedoms in America right now, or our countries of origin if we are visitors here on visas, we can cultivate freedom, civility and courage within ourselves and write with a bravado that brings tears, laughter and inspiration to everyone who reads our words. Read More 

Definition: 1. The ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills. “He writes with intelligence.” 2. The collection of information of military or political value.

My husband, Jim, was in an intelligence unit in the United States Navy (dates classified). He’d been on active duty in the Seventh Fleet for two years and had a six-year reserve commitment. Once a week, he put on his Navy Whites and headed for Treasure Island to read, interpret, and write dispatches and reports. Although he never received his top secret clearance—that takes years—there was plenty he was able to read, interpret, and re-write in plain English. That much he told me.

Of course, I was curious. We were living together but not yet married. I tried to seduce him with a meal before his departure every week, Thursdays I think it was, in the car by 6 p.m., over the Bay Bridge, and onto the base for his obligatory monthly duty, home by 10 p.m. “So how was it? What did you find out?” Silence.

Why has this anecdote surfaced today? Well, I’ve been reading some Le Carré (“Russia House,” “The Night Manager”), a fine writer who was in the intelligence service himself, and a thriller by Dan Fesperman called “The Amateur Spy.” A relief worker friend had boasted he’d been interviewed by Fesperman as he was researching. They’d met in Bosnia when Fesperman was a reporter for the Baltimore Sun. Like other war reporters—Hemingway, Steinbeck, Sebastian Junger more recently—Fesperman has used the trove of collected stories from war zones as inspiration for fiction. But how fictional is “The Amateur Spy?” Would there be clues to my relief worker friend’s mysterious life in the text? Why does he only have a P.O. Box at the moment, refuse to give me his address, and disappear at regular intervals? Had he, in fact, been recruited as a spy long ago when he was in the field as a relief worker? Does it matter? Doesn’t someone have to do this work? Is the work of a spy for the greater good? And whose greater good? Yours and mine? France, Britain, Russia, Iran, China? Are these rhetorical questions or can they be answered?

I’d often heard from refugees and asyless that relief workers were suspect, in the pay of governments as spies, and not to be fully trusted. I had tried not to believe these stories. It’s obvious, isn’t it, that the dark world of intelligence gathering is almost impossible to decipher unless one is in it. Spies live in the shadows; they can never be fully known. The stories they tell, where they live, where they have traveled, remains hidden to normal mortals, friends, lovers, even relatives. And, so, in addition to my husband’s brief foray into intelligence work, I think, possibly, I have known three spies. The most recent was a man at a dinner party who said he’d just returned from Syria. That was all he said—and it was probably too much. It was difficult to imagine him wandering in that now desolate country. How had he managed to return safely? Who was he traveling with? The mind wanders, imagination kicks in.

I was thinking about all this on the subway yesterday as I was reading Talk of the Town in this week’s New Yorker. “Some spy stories will be forever confined to memory, locked safes, and invisible ink,” writes Nicholas Schmidle. He goes on to describe a literary journal, “Studies in Intelligence,” published by the CIA! Browsing their website—submission guidelines on the site—I have decided it is more an academic journal than a literary journal. But never mind. Spy literature, the CIA calls it, and who are we not to believe the CIA? For the youngsters in the family there’s a “Kids’ Zone,” which includes a coloring book, puzzles and a word find.  Read More 

The term is over, grades are in, I’ve done my holiday shopping. It’s time, I’m weighing in. I have to say something. How can I justify remaining mute? I’m a woman, a working woman, who has experienced her share of harassment and discrimination over the years, once quite recently, as you will read below. So I’m back at the computer trying to lace together coherent thoughts about the recent fraught weeks of sexual allegations, confessions and tumbling heads. What’s striking is how similar all the stories are, as though the words and sentences were churned out by a Hollywood script factory. What would Hawthorne (“The Scarlet Letter”) , Roth (”The Human Stain”) or Arthur Miller (“The Crucible”) have to say if they were still writing? That there is historical precedent, undoubtedly: the witch trials, the McCarthy era, America’s “persecuting spirit.” But these writers, much as I admire all of them as writers, they were all men. And this situation, this moment in our history, it’s similar, but also different. It arrives at the end of a dark year, a man in the White House who, himself, has been accused by no less than twenty women of sexual “misconduct.”

So let’s begin with this: every organization, corporation, and institution, including the United States Congress, needs a transparent and reliable mechanism to sift through allegations. Are they true or false? Is this a vengeful denouncement or real? Bill Cosby is not Charlie Rose. One will possibly go to jail for—allegedly—drugging women to have vampiric sex with them when they are out cold, the other will crawl under the couch and, sooner or later, figure out how to regain his amour propre, the French gender-neutral expression meaning self-respect.

What about heartfelt mea culpas long after the fact? Do they make a difference, or not? Shall we consider them as we study what’s happened and mete out punishments? Shall we banish or forgive?

Obvious questions, perhaps.

Less obvious for me are these questions: Why are some powerful men still behaving so badly? Why don’t they know that what they are doing is not permitted even in law? Why are some women not accusing openly in situ, as it happens, or soon after? Why do some men fall and others amplify their power for years and years? Why has one become president of these United States? Why do some women succumb to intimidation and others speak out forcefully? What can all of us learn from this sordid episode in American history?

“Understanding is a two-way street,” said one of my feminist heroines, Eleanor Roosevelt. So let me try to understand the man who came into my classroom this past term to berate me in front of my students for writing on the screen instead of the whiteboard, and who thought he could get away with it when he said—in front of my students: “That was an $8,000 mistake.” He knew nothing about me except the monniker “professor,” and perhaps that was the problem, and our encounter was more about class and status than power and prowess, or perhaps it was both. When he left the room I called his supervisor, immediately. He came upstairs. He was alarmed. This man could lose his job if I formally charged him.

The perpetrator—for this is what he was even though he did not lay a hand on me-- wasn’t finished trying to reduce me, a woman professor, to supplicant: he waited for me after class, waved his finger at me and told me to “never do it again,” meaning what exactly? Write on a screen instead of a whiteboard, or dare to report him?

During this second encounter, the hallway had emptied out, I was headed home, I was alone with him on the fifth floor. I said nothing and walked away, down the escalator, as fast as I could go.

Words and gestures matter; they have an escalating power. Talk one day, abuse and violence the next. I was not comfortable and that, in itself, is cause for concern, and against all the mandates of the university that employs me. These rules were not in place a mere decade ago. We fought for them, and I am grateful for them. They are a civil right.

So here’s another Eleanor Roosevelt aphorism: No one can feel inferior without their consent. But what about feeling afraid? What about that? The women coming forward are now in a community of women, sharing experience and language to tell their stories, safely. Hopefully, their example will give other women, especially young women, the courage to speak out quickly whenever they are confronted by intimidation, harassment, hateful words, threats, or—worse—physical violence and rape. This is the spectrum of misogyny—contempt for women—we have been hearing about in recent weeks.

When a predator comes lurching into our personal or work space—whether we are male or female, gay or straight, transgender or gender fluid—it’s incumbent upon us to at least try to stop him, for our own sake and, ultimately, for theirs.  Read More 

I am reminded, by the FB business department, that my many FB friends have not heard from me in a while. Maybe that is because they have migrated to Instagram. All those news feeds on FB!!! FB has not heard from me for a while and I have not heard from me in a while, more than two weeks since my last blog post to be exact. Days of resting, reading, taking inventory of abandoned projects, and spending time on the phone with my insurance company explaining the iconic phrase “Catch 22” and its origins.

There are friends overseas who care about such a hiatus in communication. They wonder if I am okay and what is happening here at the moment. Here meaning New York. Here meaning the United States. I will answer their concerns soon with personal letters sent on email. I will include some photos. I will send links of the most dangerous malaprops uttered by our Commandant in Chief and a recent diagnostic conference by noted forensic psychiatrists at Yale.

Oh, it is difficult to concentrate these days, dear reader. And so I am meandering today, picking up scraps and leftovers coursing through my writer’s brain.

I have a friend in London I still miss very much. Her name is Norma. (Norma, I hope you will read this.) She’s a gifted performer and writer, a devoted single parent, a clear political thinker, an activist. For many years after I returned to New York we exchanged snail mail packages filled with clippings, theater programs, gallery brochures, drafts of stories, and taped messages, a potpourri of seemingly unconnected fragments, but only seemingly so. The taped messages, at least an hour long, pulled the fragments in the packages together into stories.

These days Norma and I send emails, “see” each other on FB, and talk on the phone. Our daughters are grown, and we are aging well—working on books, writing articles, and teaching. Our connection is so deep, continuous and lifelong that it sometimes feels as though we have digested the paragraphs of day to day existence into a book of friendship. We’ve only had one quarrel I can remember and it was, as the British say so endearingly, “sorted,” over a period of painful months. And then it was over.

Norma remembers the Thanksgiving meals we had in London. Our British friends found them both amusing and oddly historic. After all, they were a celebration of a breakaway colony of which we were the living representatives, returned to the Mother Country, for a while anyway. Very little was leftover from these frugal meals. We were young, struggling, and food in London was expensive. We kept our turkeys small and our conversation focused on contemporary transnational concerns. The focus was as much on the gathering as the food. Christmas was near, a very important holiday in England, and we always looked forward to that, too, and were always invited somewhere.

Back in America, the bounty in the supermarkets was overwhelming. Huge stores, many choices on the shelves, enormous turkeys. And there were leftovers wrapped in foil for days and days. We lay them out, we warm them, we eat them in a more desultory way. Every morsel must be reconstituted before a post-Thanksgiving meal feels pleasurable. The foil is crushed into the recycle bin, bones are tossed, dishes washed and stored yet again. We are tired. We require rest.

The fragments of projects in my storage bins and filing cabinets are similar. Once I truly believed they were cooked to perfection, a sequence of events and ideas that made sense, that were coming to fruition. Now I study some of them and wonder how and why I wrote those sentences, or why I let an idea that felt sensational drift away. Something wasn’t working, but what? Did one draft lead to another that worked? Is that possible? Or did someone else write those sentences, a less experienced writer, namely me? Were some of these stored fragments merely writing practice? Probably.

I know that it’s essential to keep going to achieve mastery, to write every day, to sharpen observation. And not to feel discouraged by stale, incoherent leftovers, all of which are the unfinished business of the writing life. It’s not that we have to go back to everything, not at all. But to pull out some of the old work that still resonates and to try to make a pleasurable meal of it, that’s a joy and a discipline.  Read More 

Have you noticed, dear reader, that personal hashtags on FB posts, for example, are getting longer, and longer, and longer? This being the case, what does the evolving length of #wordsconnectedtowords without spaces signify for the writer? A stop sign, I’d say.

Let us take a breather and ask some questions about this linguistic phenomena. Did Chris Messina @ Google (in 2007) intend his content search invention to be used to tell stories? Probably not. Nor did he want to patent his “invention,” if indeed it would have qualified as a patented “product,” because he knew that the internet highway would capture and proliferate whatever was useful in hashtags with our without him, for free. Which it did.

My concern is solely that of a writer: hashtags are useful for content searches, but they are not the content itself. They make a mishmash of words, sentences, concepts and stories. They are not stories. They are indicators, symbols, short-cuts, synopsi, compressed thoughts, instantaneous observations, and symptoms of a time-pressured, hyperkinetic, goal-driven tweeting culture. Writers, real writers, not #hashtagwriters, cannot function well in such a charged environment except to say: meet me here—at this literal or virtual place—where something is happening you may be interested in.

Is it retro of me to suggest that writers stop writing hashtags, or use them only at the end of a narrative prose story? Probably. Think of me, and all educators, as guardian angels of language. The more our language is diluted, over-simplified and distorted, the harder it will be to retrieve the complexities of thought required in our challenging world. Our children must be taught to think, to analyze, to discern fact from fiction, to make intelligent decisions and choices. They need language to do this, not #soundbytenews or #hashtags. End of story: #writersresisthashtags  Read More 

I wish to say only this: let us dedicate this blog post and this day to the murdered cyclists on the West Side Highway of Manhattan. Let us put our arms around the terrified children, their teachers and caretakers, the pedestrians who witnessed the carnage, the brave men and women of the NYPD, FDNY and FBI. Let us think about our human frailty, our resilience and our resistance. Let us not stop listening to one another. Let us not build walls. Let us study colonial history intently and understand why a lunatic terrorist came to America if only to kill. This trouble we are in did not begin out of thin air. And though utterly irrational in many respects, it has a source, a reason. Let us begin there in our understanding and our effort to find solutions.

I offer you, dear reader, a photograph of beautiful, innocent children, soccer fans, far away from New York. If we could transport them to New York they, too, might have been victims of the terrorist’s truck. Indeed, children in many countries are living in war zones and desperate poverty. They are in grave danger. What are we, as adults, doing to protect them, to make the world a more peaceful and safer place?

These are very abstract thoughts for this writer, but I am weary this morning, and sad for the afflicted families. It took me two hours in a slowed down, partially locked down city, to get home yesterday, and when I arrived, and only then, did I find out what had happened. I was safe, all my friends and loved ones were safe, messages were flooding Facebook, a troubled sleep, some journaling, this blog post, and onward into a new day.

But not without some reflection. And, as a writer, not without some thoughtful words. What can we do, little by little, one small action at a time, to make the world a safer and more peaceful place?  Read More 

In celebration of Halloween, a completely true story:

My name was handwritten on the envelope: “Ms. C. Bergman.” A New York postmark, no return address, no note. Inside, tear sheets from JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association, a review of a new biography of the manic-depressive poet, Robert Lowell. It was interesting in many ways, most particularly in its assertion that to medicate mentally ill artists risks interfering with their creative process. But why had the sender underlined the words “mutely alone,” or bracketed the sentence, “The reigning assumption is that depression and anxiety are meaningless?" And why send it to me anonymously? Was one of my former students in trouble? A friend? Someone asking for help? Or was it meant to disturb my sense of well-being?

It wasn’t the first time I had received an anonymous letter, or been threatened, or denounced, or stalked. Years ago, in London, I’d written an investigative article for the educational supplement of The Times and received a threatening post card from the National Front. The—unknown someone—wanted me to go back where I came from. And I am not sure they meant the United States of America. Hell maybe? The police considered the message a form of “gentle” terrorism, if that isn’t an oxymoron. Most disconcerting: whoever had penned that sweet note knew my address. So, too, the person who sent me the most recent anonymous message.

Weeks have passed since I received the JAMA article and I have still not thrown it out, nor have I shown it to the police. Dear Anonymous Reader, it’s Halloween, the game of Hide and Seek is over. Come out, come out wherever you are! Patiently, I await a phone call, an email, a broomstick delivery by the Wicked Witch, or a middle-of-the night epiphany that will reveal you/the sender to me. Someone who might say, “Oh, I thought you’d be interested. Sorry if I spooked you in any way.”  Read More 

My mother adored his books and gave them as gifts to everyone. The only one I had ever read was “The Constant Gardener,” because it was about a relief worker and le Carré had written a foreword to my book, “Another Day in Paradise; International Humanitarian Workers Tell Their Stories.” That book, thanks to him, is still in print in the English-speaking world. His offer to write the foreword , well, dear reader, that was an offer I could not refuse.

I had been invited to the headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva for “war games,” and was picked up at the airport by the PR who had arranged my visit, a Brit.

“How is your French?,” he asked.
“Pas mal,” I answered, perhaps too boldly.

He would be introducing me to the assembled in French, which is still the diplomatic lingua franca. I let that daunting thought slip as he continued his questioning about the book, which was nearly complete. Had we commissioned a foreword? Not yet. “How about le Carré?,” he asked. “He’s deeply involved in humanitarian initiatives. He’s high profile. He’ll sell your book.”

“But can you arrange it?”
“I know his agent.”

I was on un nuage, a cloud. This wonderful news dampened, somewhat, the disturbing effects of the war games. I studied the Geneva Conventions—in French and English—and rode in a jeep into a bombed out city, casualties and corpses everywhere. It was difficult to sleep. I’d brought melatonin, useful beyond the jet lag. I returned to New York and called my publisher: “I’m going to write to le Carré’s agent.”

“Good luck,” he said.
I wondered if he believed me. I wondered if I believed me.

Dear reader, it took about five minutes for le Carré to agree to write the foreword to my book. The manuscript arrived before deadline, pristine, not a comma out of place. I had hoped to meet him to thank him personally, but he sent his agent to the launch in London, which was enough. His presence might have upstaged the relief workers who were present, I thought to myself. And I knew he would never have wanted to do that.

Years have passed and there are more refugees than ever before wandering the world in search of shelter. And more relief workers in grave danger. The Red Cross sign and the UN and NGO logos are no guarantee of safe passage any more.

And where is le Carré ? When he is not researching a new book, he lives quietly on the Cornish coast with his wife. His children are grown. He has written his memoir, “The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories From My Life,” and finally agreed to an interview on 60 minutes. Shy, retiring, modest, a disciplined writer dedicated to illuminating in his fictions the unending hypocrisies and tragedies of governments. He cannot and will not stop, he has said.

And so I have started reading more of le Carré and, finally, appreciate him as a storyteller as well as a humanitarian. This week—because I found it on a giveaway shelf in my neighborhood—“The Russia House.” An epigraph from Dwight D. Eisenhower begins the book:

“Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of their way and let them have it.”

Two pages in and I was riveted.  Read More 

Ai Weiwei, who lived in New York in the 80’s and 90’s, is back in a city he loves creating art. It’s a small miracle. Last I heard, his passport had been confiscated, he’d been in jail for 81 days without charge and emerged with a brain hemorrhage requiring surgery, his studio in Shanghai was shuttered, one of his assistants was still missing, and he’d been charged with alleged “tax evasion.”

Is an artist or a writer, by definition, a dissident in a still despotic China? It depends on the artist or the writer. Tow the line, if you can figure out what that line is, and you’ll be okay. Ai is bold, he would not be silenced. He wrote a blog and when that was shut down, he went on to Twitter. A 2000 exhibition in Shanghai was called the “Fuck Off Art Exhibition.”

At times Ai reminds me of a punk Michael Moore—part prankster, part provocateur, part performance artist. I will never forget a scene in “Never Sorry,” Alison Klayman’s 2012 documentary about him. In the midst of a “citizens' investigation” of the earthquake in Yunnan Province in which thousands of children died in poorly constructed “tofu-dreg” school buildings (government corruption revealed), Ai sat down to dinner in the local village. The police were all around standing at attention, surveying, reporting, intimidating. Ai began to talk with them directly and invited them to share his meal. I was smitten; irreverence is powerful, especially when it is knowledgeable irreverence. Ai in the film: “We will seek out the names of each departed child, and we will remember them.”

Once upon a time, Ai was in favor. Trained as an architect, he worked on the Beijing National Stadium. But having grown up in labor camps during the Cultural Revolution with his out- of- favor father, Ai Qing, a famous poet, he also knew the travails of dis-favor and exile. And might have been expecting the same for himself, or worse.

It is unclear why Ai’s passport was returned in 2015. He is now based in Berlin and traveling everywhere to mount exhibitions. He can walk his small son to school every morning and return home to a peaceful, undisturbed working day. He can create art without censorship. China’s loss, the world’s gain.

Now Ai is in New York at the invitation of the Public Art Fund creating installations throughout the city in celebration of the 65 million refugees wandering the world, or living in tents, or trying to breach the walls of sovereign nations that don’t want them to enter, including our own. As a refugee who has himself found refuge, Ai is giving back with this exhibition and a companion film called “Human Flow.” He traveled—freely—to more than twelve countries to get the story.  Read More 

I’ve just had a long conversation with MacKay Wolff, one of the relief workers who wrote a story for my book, “Another Day in Paradise,” about his gig as a human rights’ observer during the First Intifada in Palestine. After an earthquake in Turkey, he designed “Child Friendly Spaces,” which could easily be transported by UNICEF, who run the program, to get the kids in Puerto Rico into safe spaces where they can have a bit of schooling, food, and play time, as their families and the island recover.

“Women and children first. Relief at the most elemental level,” says MacKay. “They will certainly be using local clinics and schools in the communities as they get them up and running."

Usually, the basics for human life—food, water, health care, tents for shelter, and control of sewerage—are brought in within 72 hours of a natural disaster by UN agencies and various NGOs. But Puerto Rico is an American Territory so FEMA and the US Military is in charge. President Trump would have to request UN support to augment FEMA’s efforts. This is a major disaster and it’s surprising that he hasn’t. Future preparedness, and a return to participation in the the Paris Climate Agreement, should also be considered, given that this disaster is firmly linked to climate change.

I was pleased to hear that President Trump has temporarily waived the Jones Act, albeit very late, so that ships other than American ships can land on the island with supplies. The French and the British are also working hard on their respective hard-hit islands. In pre-Trump times, collaboration would have been possible. But our allies are wary these days.

PR, our lovely island in the sun. The American Virgin Islands are suffering, too, perhaps even more so. What can we do?

“Often the problems are just logistics,” says MacKay. “The supplies arrive and there are no trucks or truck drivers, no tires for the trucks, no fuel, to deliver them. This island is very dependent on fossil fuel. The roads may be impassable. Air drops are very expensive and not that efficient.”

The military, on the other hand, is very efficient, and essential in such a disaster zone. Aid workers rely on soldiers to--literally--move mountains. Mackay is certain they are working 24-7.

But for the suffering people, the long view, is difficult. No water, no food, sewerage everywhere, and the danger of a cholera epidemic. Hospitals have been shut down because there is no fuel for their generators.

Yesterday, an email arrived from Rebeca Garcia Gonzalez, a long time friend of my friend, Carol Tateishi, the former Director of the Berkeley Writing Project. Rebeca is a native Puerto Rican, teacher and artist, whose information Carol trusts:

Here is an abridged version of her email:

"It has been one of the worst weeks of my life. I didn't know about my dad or other family for 8 days. Finally through social media I found someone who could walk to his house and check on him. I have not yet been able to talk with him to tell him I have a ticket for him to come to CA. My cousins are flooded and isolated even though they live just minutes from the metro area. My other cousins from my mom's village saw all the crops flattened. There was a scary flood that reached their home and brought corpses with it. They are completely isolated. No one is delivering goods to the island. Emergency supplies have arrived but they are not being distributed. There is no signal for planes to use... "

Donations are important, of course, but so are the calls we make to our representatives to keep the pressure up. Since the election, I have had their numbers post-it on my computer.

If you have a chance today, please make just one call. And discuss the logistics of getting supplies distributed. Is it happening? Are the roads still impassable? Suggest that the President request that the UN agencies—such as UNICEF— amplify FEMA’s relief efforts. Ask for details about the children, about the elderly, about the hospitals.

I have just talked to the aides in Senator Gillibrand's and Congressman Espaillat's office. I couldn't get through to Senator Schumer.  Read More