Pitt-Greensburg professor's latest book shares musings during breast cancer battle

Oct. 30—When Lori Jakiela saw a scanned image of the cancer growing in her breast, it looked like tiny grains of white rice.

"They were lining up in a particular way that made the doctor very concerned," she said.

That was four years ago. But, the rice association stuck in her mind and, connecting with memories of street fairs in New York City, provided the title for the award-­winning author and Pitt-Greensburg professor's latest book.

Now cancer-free, the Trafford

native will see the release of "They Write Your Name On A Grain Of Rice" on Tuesday , published by Atticus Books.

In part a selection of essays and in part a reflection on ideas including mortality and "the messiness of being human," the book features a stream-of-­consciousness style that strays from previous memoirs Jakiela has written.

"With this book, I gave myself permission to do something a little different," she said. "Some of my other books are more traditional — a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. This really isn't like that.

"I was less interested in writing about breast cancer or the cancer journey. I was really interested in the way my brain works, and maybe the way other people's brains work, when you're faced with a serious diagnosis."

The book title refers to street fair vendors who will write a patron's name in tiny script on a grain of rice.

"I always thought that was incredibly weird and wonderful," said Jakiela. "You have to use a magnifying glass to actually see your name.

"If you get it wet, the whole thing just sort of dissolves. It seemed like such a great metaphor for life — very temporary, very fragile."

As in most of her writing, Jakiela said, her relationships with family members and thoughts of her hometown — where she lives once more, after time spent in New York — run through her new book.

A child of the 1970s and '80s, she recalls playing in Turtle Creek with friends before any efforts to clean its polluted waters had begun.

"We'd find abandoned refrigerators near the creek and try to commandeer them into boats that would take us away," she writes. 'My friends and I always came out of the water, our refrigerator boats sunk, our skin stained orange."

As has been the case when filling out forms for any health care provider, Jakiela told the doctors treating her for cancer that she didn't know if there is any history of the disease in her family. Both her parents died of cancer, but they had adopted her.

In addition to her parents, Jakiela writes about her husband, fellow author Dave Newman, and their children, 19 and 22.

"As an adopted person, my interest in family might even be more pronounced than normal," she said.

Jakiela makes many side trips in her book to share topics that her mind unearthed during and after her successful battle with cancer.

"I love to find connections that seem kind of random," she said. "My brain will put them together somehow. Then I wonder, 'Why did I put those two things together?' I try to un-puzzle it and find some order there."

Favorite subjects include other creative types, such as Emily Dickinson, Ernest Hemingway and Pittsburgh-bred artist Andy Warhol. Noting Warhol's fascination with Elizabeth Taylor's opulent rings leads Jakiela to recall some of the things that defined the legendary screen star: her violet eyes and the equally beautiful gesture to auction her jewelry and posthumously donate the $156.8 million in proceeds to AIDS research.

"Imagine," Jakiela muses.

Some of the other topics she touches on: emotional-support peacocks, Lynyrd Skynyrd, her experiences as a pre-9/11 flight attendant and the sad fate of Herve Villechaize, the diminutive actor who came to fame as Ricardo Montalban's sidekick on the strange 1970s TV show "Fantasy Island."

She also reflects on the Oct. 27, 2018, mass shooting that killed 11 worshippers and wounded two at the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill.

"My daughter took music lessons in Squirrel Hill and was down the street when that was happening," Jakiela said. "How do we help our children to live in this world and explain this?

"I find myself telling my kids it's not a perfect system, but that's nowhere near the right language for our world. You want hope and you look for it everywhere, and hope you can find it."

Jakiela teaches English and creative writing at Pitt-Greensburg. Her previous published work includes the memoir "Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth Maybe," which won the Saroyan Prize from Stanford University in 2016 for Excellence in International Literature.

She'll launch "They Write Your Name on a Grain of Rice" at 7 p.m. Nov. 7 at Riverstone Bookstore, 5841 Forbes Ave. in Squirrel Hill.

Visit lorijakiela.net for more information about the author and her work.

Jeff Himler is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Jeff by email at jhimler@triblive.com or via Twitter .