Before 22
Stories and Poetry Composed Before the Age of Twenty Two
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As I write this, I have a milestone birthday looming just months before me. I am on the precipice of thirty. At times such as this, when it feels one chapter is closing and another beginning, humans tend to wax nostalgic. Who did I want to be? What did I think I would be doing? How close did I come in my efforts so far to accomplishing what I have set out to do? We tend to weigh our accomplishments by this measure. All that I know looking back is that I am not who I was and that this current incarnation as well is only a temporary manifestation of me. I’m not nearly finished yet.
Combing through stacks of papers in an effort at “collection maintenance,” I happened upon some scribblings written by another version of me; the me that took up residence starting in my teen years through about the age of 22. Twenty two was a big year for me. It was the year when my youth definitively ended. It was the year I got married and moved into my own home with my new husband and suddenly I became responsible for his life as well as my own. I was finishing college and that required all of my creativity to be funneled into composing papers and presentations in pursuit of the ultimate goal, my degree. I went into a sort of shock, the newness of adulthood bearing down on me. The crucible of that year and the life challenges and changes that followed in the years just after it altered me in many fundamental ways. I couldn’t write with the same voice from that day onward.
I’ve grown and changed much since then as I will continue to do, but I’m not ashamed of the girl I was with big ideas and a big voice, who may not have known everything but felt sure about what she did know. I look back on her now, with concerns that were a mere shadow of the challenges to come. I read her work, her voice with a passion and a freshness and an innocence of the world that in many ways I no longer share, so divided by responsibilities and the realities of adulthood are my energies. I am proud of her for who she was even if my ideals are different from hers now for contained within her writings is the essence of who I have become and who I always will be.
As you read this, the tender musings of a young, hopeful adolescent, I hope you can be as proud of her as I am.
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About the Book
Before 22 is a collection of short stories and poetry that bring together sentiments of youth and hope and innocence, reminding us of a time within all of us when the world was new and bursting with possibility. In An American Tradition, the struggles of an immigrant family at the turn of the last century are viewed through the lens of a single day, Thanksgiving Day. In Winter’s End, an orphaned little girl stumbles on a new friend, a long buried secret, and grows to fulfill her life’s purpose while aiding others in the resolution of a tragedy. The volume is filled out with samples of poetry grappling with such complexities as time and change and what it means to exist. Touching and inspirational, Before 22 presents a young but by no means feeble voice.
About the Author
For Amanda Ashley Herman, the ability to form intelligible words was always a formality as a storyteller, her passion for a well told story and creative expression having begun as play-pen babbles. Now holding degrees in Creative Writing and Humanities, she has compiled her early writings into the volume you now hold in your hands. She lives surrounded by her loving and ever supportive family in Tucson, Az.