Sarah Einstein’s award-winning book Mot: A Memoir is about her unlikely friendship with a homeless veteran. It received a 2014 AWP prize, and John Phillip Santos, one of the judges, says Mot is a “stirring work of self-discovery that manages to be both profoundly vulnerable and emotionally ferreous... The language is frank, often austere, even haunting, and the author’s willingness to confront the proliferating uncertainties of her own life gradually attains a brave literary grace. ”
In this interview, Einstein discusses how her friendship with Mot impacted both their lives and why her approach to helping homeless people has changed.
From the publisher’s Web site:
At forty, Sarah Einstein is forced to face her own shortcomings. In the wake of an attempted sexual assault, she must come to terms with the facts that she is not tough enough for her job managing a local drop-in center for adults with mental illness and that her new marriage is already faltering. Just as she reaches her breaking point, she meets Mot, a homeless veteran who lives a life dictated by frightening delusion. She is drawn to the brilliant ways he has found to lead his own difficult life; traveling to Romania to get his teeth fixed because the United States doesn’t offer dental care to the indigent, teaching himself to use computers in public libraries, and even taking university classes while living out of doors. Mot: A Memoir is the story of their unlikely friendship and explores what we can, and cannot, do for a person we love. In unsparing prose and with a sharp eye for detail, Einstein brings the reader into the world of Mot’s delusions and illuminates a life that would otherwise be hidden from us.
Einstein teaches creative writing at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Her work has appeared in Fringe Magazine, Sixfold and Salon. Her memoir Mot is based on a Pushcart Prize-winning essay that appeared in Ninth Letter.