Dan Johnson interview Chana Wilson, author of "Riding Fury Home" inspiring memoir of suicide, despair, and redemption. When Wilson was seven, her mother attempted suicide with a rifle and was sent to a mental hospital; when she returned, Wilson became her solo caretaker. It was only years later that Wilson came to understand that her mother had been institutionalized not just for attempting suicide, but for having an affair with a woman—and it was not until many years after that both mother and daughter came out as lesbians.
Chana Wilson is a psychotherapist and a former radio producer and television engineer. She began her career in broadcast journalism as a radio programmer with KPFA in Berkeley, California. Her work hosting the KPFA program A World Wind—in which she interviewed poets, musicians, writers and activists—sparked her desire to work with people on a deeper level. Now a psychotherapist for twenty-four years, she credits the extraordinary courage of her clients for inspiring her to write.
Wilson's writing has appeared in the print journals The Sun and Sinister Wisdom, the online journals Roadwork and Aunt Lute, and in several anthologies.
Since the mid-eighties, Wilson has been playing percussion with the women’s samba band Sistah Boom.
Now a psychotherapist living in Berkley, California, Chana, pronounced Hanna is able to open herself up to tell this gripping story.
This interview includes clips of conversations between Chana and her mother in 1974, when both mother and daughter come out as lesbians.
- KBOO