57 Minutes
Sitting myself down and writing Margaret from the heart became a story about me too. Why me? Leave me out of this, I thought. But no, it was not to be. I was not allowed to write her story without writing my own because I had unburied two women.
– From The Light Above by Maria Dintino
Even though she discovered a dog-eared, post-it-filled copy of Women in the Nineteenth Century on her bookshelf, Maria Dintino hadn’t remembered much about Margaret Fuller from graduate school. She was certainly captured by Margaret’s New England peers Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ralph Waldo Emerson. But Margaret, the nineteenth century transcendentalist, women’s rights advocate and journalist, claimed Maria’s attention decades after graduate school.
Now, Margaret has all of her attention in the form of Maria’s new memoir, The Light Above.
It’s a powerful meeting of the souls, Margaret and Maria. Their stories, lived centuries apart, collide and are shared through the heart and voice of Maria. Margaret’s story ends in tragedy, but Maria’s retelling offers redemption. In return, Maria finds a life guide, a role model, and a companion for life.
In our podcast, Maria tells us why Margaret Fuller is relevant today. We also learn how writing this book has changed Maria’s life.
It is awesome to realize how much we can learn about ourselves via the lived experience of another. We are, after all, bound to one another through history. But what a gift of transformation is the literary imagination.
