Anthologies Focus On Baby Boomer Women
“I Am Becoming the Woman I’ve Wanted” By Sandra Haldeman Martz (Papier-Mache Press).
Sandra Haldeman Martz has a voice and manner that make you want to share secrets with her. Thousands of poets, photographers and short story writers have, and now more than a million readers do, too.
Not bad for a woman who entered the business world with a 10th-grade education, but not surprising either. Because Martz, who turned 50 last September and who laughingly acknowledges that her earliest role models were Loretta Young and Donna Reed, has kept moving from safe and traditional choices toward risk and reward.
Martz is not a writer, but her most successful books - “When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple,” “If I Had My Life to Live Over I Would Pick More Daisies” and the newest, “I Am Becoming the Woman I’ve Wanted” have sold close to 2 million copies.
Her niche? Anthologies targeted mostly toward aging female baby boomers. Although the people who contribute stories, poems and photographs to Martz’s books live all around, most of the work has a California sensibility. Her publisher, Papier-Mache Press, seems to be to literature as Windham Hill is to music: pleasant, soft-edged - New Age.
Published in October, “I Am Becoming the Woman I’ve Wanted” is headed for its fourth printing, which will bring copies to 200,000. “Daisies” focused on women’s choices and has sold about half a million copies. “Purple,” her 1987 anthology about aging, jumped from an initial printing of 9,000 to more than 1.2 million sold.
So what is so appealing about these books?
“The topics are those that are really important to women,” Martz said by phone from California. “They give us strength, inspiration and courage to deal with our lives.
“Women are hungry to see their experience validated and acknowledged. These books say, ‘I don’t have to look 18, or hide so I don’t offend you by looking that way.”’
The mix of subjects in “Woman” runs from childbirth to death, from anorexia to fat pride, from PMS to menopause. The photographs represent myriad types, including an ethereal blond girl and an ample African-American nude.
“Women that I meet at book signings tell me that the work has inspired them to keep a journal or meet with a writers’ group,” Martz says. “Some have said that there is a particular aspect of a book that helps them get through a difficult time, such as the loss of a mother.”
Martz, working now on an anthology about the aging of women and men, was a wife at 17 and mother of two boys by 19. Divorced young, she raised her sons while building a management career and earning an MBA. It wasn’t enough. She chucked a career in the high-stress aerospace industry of Los Angeles to move north to rural Watsonville, running up $40,000 to $50,000 in debt to start Papier-Mache Press.
“I wanted to do something I felt better about, to contribute to society.”
Today, Martz heads a 17-person staff that includes her new husband, Daniel Martz Haldeman and one son. Has she become the woman she’s wanted?
Martz laughs. “I feel very comfortable with myself, with the gray in my hair, the roll around my middle. But being a business owner, I worked 14 hours yesterday and the day before. As I get older I’m more concerned about making space for more introspective and creative things.”