Lucia Berlin (1936–2004)
Author of A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories
About the Author
Lucia Berlin (1936-2004) worked brilliantly but sporadically throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Her stories are inspired by her early childhood in various Western mining towns; her glamorous teenage years in Santiago, Chile; three failed marriages; a lifelong problem with alcoholism; her years show more spent in Berkeley, New Mexico, and Mexico City; and the various jobs she later held to support her writing and her four sons. Sober and writing steadily by the 1990s, she took a visiting writer's post at the University of Colorado Boulder in 1994 and was soon promoted to associate professor. In 2001, in failing health, she moved to Southern California to be near her sons. She died in 2004 in Marina del Rey. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: luciaberlin.com
Works by Lucia Berlin
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Berlin, Lucia
- Birthdate
- 1936-11-12
- Date of death
- 2004-11-12
- Gender
- female
- Occupations
- short story writer
creative writing teacher
switchboard operator
cleaner - Organizations
- University of Colorado, Boulder
- Relationships
- Sender, Ramon J. (teacher)
- Short biography
- Lucia Berlin was born in Juneau, Alaska, and grew up in mining camps in Idaho, Montana, and Arizona, following her father's career as a mining engineer; then in Santiago, Chile, where she led a wealthy and privileged life as a teenager. She began publishing stories at age 24 in national magazines, but her first collection, Angel's Laundromat, did not appear until 1981. Most of her work can be found in three volumes: Homesick: New and Selected Stories (1990), So Long: Stories 1987-92 (1993) and Where I Live Now: Stories 1993-98 (1999). She received an American Book Award in 1991 for Homesick, and was awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2015, nearly 10 years after her death, she finally achieved fame with the publication of her bestselling collection A Manual for Cleaning Women: Short Stories. She had held a variety of blue-collar jobs to support herself, including switchboard operator and cleaning woman, reflected in the titles of some of her stories. She also taught creative writing in a diverse places, including the San Francisco County Jail and the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. In 1994-1995, she was a Visiting Writer at the University of Colorado, Boulder. At the end of her term, she was named associate professor, and continued teaching at UC Boulder until 2000.
She was married three times and had four children. - Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Juneau, Alaska, USA
- Places of residence
- Boulder, Colorado, USA
Mexico
Santiago, Chile
Idaho, USA
Montana, USA
Arizona, USA (show all 8)
California, USA
New Mexico, USA - Place of death
- Marina del Rey, California, USA
- Burial location
- Green Mountain Cemetery, Boulder, Colorado, USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- USA
Members
Reviews
A MANUAL FOR CLEANING WOMEN is hands down one of the best short story collections I have read in years. It's hard to believe that the author, Lucia Berlin, was virtually unknown during her lifetime. She died fifteen years ago. She'd finally gotten sober after suffering from alcoholism for most of her adult life. And yes, she did work as a cleaning woman, even while still drinking, and was writing all the time too. A lot of the stories here are about her life as an alcoholic, and there is a show more surprising amount of humor in them. Berlin's stories have been compared to Denis Johnson's JESUS' SON stories, and yeah, I can see that, but Johnson's stories never made me laugh like Berlin's do. Her stories have also been called "autofiction," or highly autobiographical, and she has acknowledged that too, although she also admitted mixing fact and fiction quite easily. Married a few times, and the mother of four sons, Berlin was pretty philosophical about it all, noting in her story, "So Long," -
"So what is marriage anyway? I never figured it out. And now it is death i don't understand. My country after Rodney King and the riots. All over the world, rage and despair."
Hmm … Still pretty relevant, huh? And there are several stories here about death, as her narrator sits with her younger sister, who is dying slowly and painfully of cancer, in Mexico City. The sisters become closer, remembering their horrible childhoods, neglected by their alcoholic mother, molested by their grandfather. Their mother, who attempted suicide a couple times, always leaving the narrator notes, one signed Bloody Mary, another said, "No noose … couldn't get the hang of it." See? Very dark humor, perhaps inherited.
There is another hilarious story about Lu's friendship with four old winos who sit in a junked Corvair and drink all day. And how Lu is NOT arrested for DWI, because her car was empty when it hit their junker. Sorry, you have to READ the story. It's funny! And there are heartbreaking stories here too, like the teenage mother illegal immigrant and her baby in "Mijito."
There are a lot of stories here, every one a gem. When FS&G collected all these stories from earlier small press editions, the book became a bestseller and the New York Times picked it as one of the 10 best books of 2015. My hat is off to that book's editor and collaborators. Because I loved this book. My highest recommendation. R.I.P., Lucia. You MATTERED! You were a WRITER!
- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER show less
"So what is marriage anyway? I never figured it out. And now it is death i don't understand. My country after Rodney King and the riots. All over the world, rage and despair."
Hmm … Still pretty relevant, huh? And there are several stories here about death, as her narrator sits with her younger sister, who is dying slowly and painfully of cancer, in Mexico City. The sisters become closer, remembering their horrible childhoods, neglected by their alcoholic mother, molested by their grandfather. Their mother, who attempted suicide a couple times, always leaving the narrator notes, one signed Bloody Mary, another said, "No noose … couldn't get the hang of it." See? Very dark humor, perhaps inherited.
There is another hilarious story about Lu's friendship with four old winos who sit in a junked Corvair and drink all day. And how Lu is NOT arrested for DWI, because her car was empty when it hit their junker. Sorry, you have to READ the story. It's funny! And there are heartbreaking stories here too, like the teenage mother illegal immigrant and her baby in "Mijito."
There are a lot of stories here, every one a gem. When FS&G collected all these stories from earlier small press editions, the book became a bestseller and the New York Times picked it as one of the 10 best books of 2015. My hat is off to that book's editor and collaborators. Because I loved this book. My highest recommendation. R.I.P., Lucia. You MATTERED! You were a WRITER!
- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER show less
Otobüs duraklarından acil servislere, çamaşırhanelere ve sınıfın arka sıralarına uzanan öyküler; bekar anneler, yalnız kadınlar, kırık hayaller… Lucia Berlin’in ölümünden on bir yıl sonra yayımlanan ve uluslararası bir üne kavuşan bu kitap, Berlin’in Çehov ve Carver gibi ustalarla beraber anılmasını sağladı. İroni ve melankoliyi birleştiren, yazarın kendi yaşamından da beslenerek parçalı bir bütün oluşturan bu öyküler, acımasız denecek kadar show more dürüst, mahrem denecek kadar gerçekçi, dahiyane bir biçimde esprili ve iç burkacak denli hüzünlüler. Var olmanın dayanılmaz sefaleti ve vazgeçilmezliği, ancak bu kadar doğrudan bir biçimde anlatılabilirdi.
Çağdaş yazının en iyi saklanmış sırrı diyorlar Lucia Berlin için, biz, sadece, Lucia Berlin mucizesiyle tanışın diyoruz. show less
Çağdaş yazının en iyi saklanmış sırrı diyorlar Lucia Berlin için, biz, sadece, Lucia Berlin mucizesiyle tanışın diyoruz. show less
I like her writing so much—a great and significant voice, some really transcendent attention to detail, and I'm glad to see she's getting the attention she deserves, even if it's posthumous. I do wish this collection had been pared down a bit, though—a lot of her work is taken from autobiographical sources, and while she lived a hell of a life it's still one life spread out over 40-something stories, and some of the later ones felt repetitious, like they were covering ground that had show more been mined better earlier in the collection. But still, I'd rather have them all than none, and this is a great body of work. Recommended to all the usual suspects. show less
The introduction was spot on when it described Berlin's writing as electric.
How it crackles in its detached economy and clarity, to create an incredibly palpable sense of love and alcoholism and waiting rooms and abuse and poverty and families, the vibrancy and brutality and gentleness, the beauty underlying the sadness, and ugliness neath the joy.
Her jazzy, syncopated cadence beguiles; those extra phrases she adds onto the ends of sentences, almost like an afterthought, but deliberate, and show more ever so effective.
Just like with Munro, my favourite stories are the ones where Berlin is clearly revisiting her own life (arguably all of them then!) There's just something about their autofiction that - although not necessarily truthful - feels more truthful than real life.
Now I want to hunt down the Berlin stories that weren't included in this collection. show less
How it crackles in its detached economy and clarity, to create an incredibly palpable sense of love and alcoholism and waiting rooms and abuse and poverty and families, the vibrancy and brutality and gentleness, the beauty underlying the sadness, and ugliness neath the joy.
Her jazzy, syncopated cadence beguiles; those extra phrases she adds onto the ends of sentences, almost like an afterthought, but deliberate, and show more ever so effective.
Just like with Munro, my favourite stories are the ones where Berlin is clearly revisiting her own life (arguably all of them then!) There's just something about their autofiction that - although not necessarily truthful - feels more truthful than real life.
Now I want to hunt down the Berlin stories that weren't included in this collection. show less
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