Stories about Stories. Life Story Collecting as Commemoration and Social Activism

Brown said it was true that Dean was keen on Ramona, who had visited him in East Berlin. Ramona wanted to make Dean's life story as a Hollywood movie. I saw a snapshot once of Dean's children, Ramona, Natasha, and Sasha, and they were an oddly assorted bunch. Ramona was a healthy, pretty, self-possessed American teenager; Sasha, the only boy, wore his privilege as uneasily as he wore his skinny black leather pants; Natasha, the pale little girl he'd had by Wiebke, seemed somehow isolated. Dean had really put his back into getting the hard currency he needed to send some regular support money to Patty and Ramona. According to Dixie, Ramona didn't want anything to do with Dean around the time of the trip to Los Angeles and it nearly broke his heart. In the spring of 1986, he sent Dixie a copy of a letter he wrote to Ramona to commemorate her eighteenth birthday. He called her his "Dearest Daughter" and told her of his sorrow that he was often not there when she needed him. He told her life was not black and white ...»