{"id":4582,"date":"2025-06-28T19:23:47","date_gmt":"2025-06-28T23:23:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/?p=4582"},"modified":"2025-06-30T09:12:26","modified_gmt":"2025-06-30T13:12:26","slug":"samis-rose-remembers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/blog\/2025\/06\/28\/samis-rose-remembers\/","title":{"rendered":"Samis Rose Remembers\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last week I received an email message from my friend Mark Williams with the following re message: \u201cAn excellent memoir for Pride Month!\u201d  He went on to tell me about Samis Rose\u2019s new memoir, Two of a Kind: A Love Story. <\/em>As Mark put it, he helped his \u201cfriend Samis Rose edit and format an eBook of her \u2018Thoughts\u2019 (actually brief bits of memoir) about her life and particularly her love with Billie Rose.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intrigued, I set out to learn more about Samis and her new memoir, but I knew that I needed to move quickly in order to get my post up by June 30, since that is the last day of Pride Month. I immediately contacted Samis and asked her for more information about Two of a Kind<\/em>. Here is what she sent to me:<\/p>\n\n\n

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I grew up in a small community in North Carolina. <\/em>In Two of a Kind,  I tell the story of growing up gay in the South, finding the love of my life, and then losing her all too soon to cancer. Told in a series of \u201cThoughts\u201d rather than in one continuous narration, my observations and opinions are woven into my  memories. Readers should expect empathy, humanity, and kindness among these pages, amid the challenges of living life as a Lesbian woman in a conservative society.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

These writings all began because I needed something to occupy my time now that I am retired and wheelchair bound.  I began to write about my memories and opinions. Having nowhere else to disseminate these little gems, I began sharing them with friends on Facebook as a sort of serial.  They were well received, so I set out to turn them into a book. I had help with this project. The one person I need to thank is Mark Williams. He formatted and edited the book and encouraged me far beyond what I thought possible.  <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not your conventional book. It doesn\u2019t have regular chapters. It doesn\u2019t have murders or car chases\u2026well, not many. The occurrences shared here are all from my life. Along the way, I became a skilled singer, juried craft show artist, Wimmin\u2019s Festival vendor, raised and rescued various animals and made an appearance on a major game show in New York. Most importantly I shared 22 years with Billie, my real-life love story. These writings are small, self-contained nuggets that can be read at anytime, anywhere. Like real life, there are good moments and bad.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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Charlotte has been my home for many years, and my writings draw deeply from that well\u2026.of wisdom, common courtesy and human empathy.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For readers who want to know more about Samis\u2019s memoir, please click of this link: https:\/\/a.co\/d\/hIQm0eO<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For readers who want see a slide show of the photos from Two of a Kind <\/em>accompanied by Samis\u2019s recording of a song from her album Dancin\u2019 Slow, <\/em>please click on the following link:  https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=lTzysMEMqUY<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For readers who are interested in the Billie and Samis Rose Papers at UNC Charlotte\u2019s  J. Murrey Atkins Library Special Collections and University Archives, please click on the following link:  https:\/\/findingaids.charlotte.edu\/repositories\/4\/resources\/1385<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While reading several of Samis\u2019s \u201cThoughts\u201d from\u00a0Two of a Kind,\u00a0<\/em>I had my own thoughts about these passages.\u00a0\u00a0They remind me of beads.\u00a0\u00a0Since Samis and Billie made jewelry together, I asked Samis the following question:\u00a0\u00a0\u201cWhen you create jewelry, do you use beads very much?\u00a0 It occurred\u00a0to me that your \u2018thoughts\u2019 are kind of like beads on a necklace.\u201d She responded by saying, \u201cYes, we did beaded things.\u00a0 What a lovely thought!\u201d\u00a0\u00a0All of us in Storied Charlotte and beyond are fortunate that Samis has strung together these memory beads to create this new beaded thing that she calls\u00a0Two of a Kind.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week I received an email message from my friend Mark Williams with the following re message: \u201cAn excellent memoir for Pride Month!\u201d  He went on to tell me about Samis Rose\u2019s new memoir, Two of a Kind: A Love Story. As Mark put it, he helped his \u201cfriend Samis Rose edit and format an eBook of her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":202,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[146,340],"class_list":["post-4582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-storied-charlotte","tag-memoir","tag-samis-rose"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4582"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4588,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4582\/revisions\/4588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}