Belle Burden on her memoir 'Strangers'
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I'm Beth Golay, and this is Marginalia. Belle Burden works pro bono as an immigration attorney in New York City. Her new book, Strangers, A Memoir of Marriage, begins in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when her husband announced he's leaving her and their kids, an unexpected and abrupt end to a 20-year marriage. This memoir first appeared as an essay in the New York Times Modern Love section. Through Burden's account, we learn about the beginning and end of her partnership. But we also learn about her well-connected family and its impact on her life. Burden's father descends from the Vanderbilt dynasty, and her grandmother is Babe Paley, a magazine editor and socialite who ran in crowds with Truman Capote.
I recently spoke with Burden about how she transformed her initial article into a full book, despite roadblocks she first encountered decades ago. Here's our conversation.
What is Belle Burden's memoir 'Strangers' about?
So this memoir began as an essay published in the New York Times Modern Love section. For any listeners who haven't read the essay, could you give us a description of Strangers? Could you set it up for us?
Sure. During the first week of the pandemic, I was with my husband and my two daughters, and we were having a very cozy, wonderful time during a very scary time in the world. I believed I was happily married. to a wonderful man, a great father and great husband. And then one day he told me he wanted a divorce. He gave me no explanation and he walked out. And then he shared our entire life together, including custody of our children. Modern Love started there and went a little bit farther. And then my book really explores what happened afterwards.
So after your story was published in The Times, how then did it become a book?
So it was published in The Times on June 30th of 2023, which was very exciting for me. I had submitted it to the general email box and never imagined it would get published. And once it was published, I did not really imagine anything after that. I had always wanted to be a writer when I was a teenager, but I was told when I was in college that I could not write by another classmate. And I stopped writing for 30 years and became a lawyer. So this is published and I got emails from two different editors at two different publishing houses who said, this should be a book and you need a literary agent. And I thought about that and was felt very flattered. And a friend sent to me, but this is the end, right?
You're not going to write a book. And I had a full body feeling. Yes, I am going to write a book. I have a lot more to say. And so I got an agent and then we did a proposal and went out to editors and my book was sold a few months later.
So the book has the subtitle, The Memoir of a Marriage, and that's certainly an accurate description. But I also found, you know, the aspects of your family history intriguing. This background was not a part of the modern love piece. So structurally, how did you weave these sections in with the narrative of your marriage?
Actually, when I first met with the woman who became my editor, she envisioned the structure and it clicked for me too, which was to start in the present and then go backwards to explore both my family of origin and meeting and falling in love with my husband and then to return to the present again. and go from there. It felt really critical to me for two reasons to go backwards into my own history and into my relationship. When marriages end like this, Everything that came before gets erased, including all the good things. And I did not want that for myself or for my kids. So I really reconstructed our love story. I reconstructed our life as a family, which was very happy for a long time.
How did Belle Burden transform her essay into a memoir?
So I wanted to do that. And then the other thing that I really wrestled with in this book is the fact that both my mother and my grandmother were were with men who were unfaithful. And I thought I had reversed that legacy by marrying someone who was very stable, not a public presence, never yelled, but I repeated it in a spectacular fashion.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–1:01
2
What is Belle Burden's memoir 'Strangers' about?
1:01–4:20
3
How did Belle Burden transform her essay into a memoir?
4:20–16:24
4
What family history does Belle Burden explore in her memoir?
16:24–22:21
5
What patterns does Belle Burden identify in her family dynamics?
22:21–26:22
6
How does Belle Burden address the impact of her marriage's end?
26:22–28:57