100 memoirs project #14: Heating and Cooling, by Beth Ann Fennelly

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The subtitle of this book is 52 Micro Memoirs, which intrigued me as much as the fact that Beth Ann Fennelly is a poet.

A poet writing a memoir. As a poet writing memoir-like prosy things and calling them poems (ahem), I can relate.

100 memoirs project #13: No Walls and the Recurring Dream, by Ani DiFranco

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100 memoirs, 100 memoirs project, abortion rights, Ani DiFranco, feminism, memoir, music

YESSSSS. OMG YES. Ani’s memoir.

Sorry, all the other memoirs on my bedside table. I bookmarked all of you when I bought Ani’s book on its release day, because I have been FEELING lately, and returning to her music (and Tori’s, and Bikini Kill’s, and Sleater-Kinney’s, and 7 Year Bitch’s, and and and and) because it’s an angry-female world I live in and I need a soundtrack.

…Some guy designed this room I’m standing in,
and others built it with their own tools.
Who says I like right angles?
These are not my laws, these are not my rules!

The first Ani song I ever heard was “Dilate,” which a friend put on for me after a particularly bad breakup:

And when I say you sucked my brain out,
the English translation
is ‘I am in love with you,
and it is no fun.’

Hooked.

But this post isn’t about music per se. Well, maybe that’s untrue. It’s about a memoir by a consummate musician. Without music, there would be no memoir. There would be no Ani. There might be no Stacia.

100 memoirs project #12: Sick, by Porochista Khakpour

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100 memoirs, 100 memoirs project, illness memoir, illness narrative, Porochista Khakpour, Sick, survivor narrative

Finishing Porochista Khakpour’s Sick on Election Day 2018

My literary bestie gifted me Sick on last year, and it moved to a top position in my stacks and stacks of memoirs to read. I’ve been following this writer for some time and could hardly wait to dive in.

Election Day 2018 was a while ago, right? I’m only just sharing this post now because Khakpour’s book was so compelling and complicated that I read it again. I could go another round, too, but it’s been more than half a year since I did a memoir post, so here we go.

There’s something about an illness memoir. Memoir usually promises, for better or worse, redemption, so reading a memoir about illness, for which redemption would seem to be relief from illness, is further promising a cure, a balm, an antidote.

Khakpour says, I wish.

100 memoirs project #11: Kitchen Confidential, by Anthony Bourdain

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I’ve had this book for a while, but when the world lost Anthony Bourdain on June 8, I was devastated and forced myself to read it, finally, even though I knew it would hurt.

It definitely hurt. Tony’s first book, the one that made him famous, made me ache, made me belly-laugh, and made me hungry. Usually all at once.

I was on vacation, sweating in a kayak on Lake Erie, when I read about the author’s life-changing first slurp of oyster, the pre-adolescent moment that made him a foodie. “Everything was different now,” he wrote. “…I had had an adventure, tasted forbidden fruit, and everything that followed in my life…would all stem from this moment. I’d learned something. Viscerally, instinctively, spiritually—even in some small, precursive way, sexually—and there was no turning back.”

100 memoirs project #10: Goodbye, Sweet Girl, by Kelly Sundberg

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CW: brief mentions of domestic violence

Kelly Sundberg’s Goodbye, Sweet Girl is the memoir I’ve been both waiting and dreading to read.

If you are a survivor of domestic violence (or any kind of abuse), and especially if you aren’t silent about what you’ve endured, chances are you have at some point felt like your survivor status is consuming your entire identity. That it defines you now. That everything is about the abuse. Maybe you’ve been told, you sure talk about it a lot or why don’t you try focusing on the future instead of the past? Maybe you’ve been attacked, accused of being addicted to drama, to attention, to sympathy, to being a victim. Maybe you’ve internalized some of those accusations and, on your bad days, considered that they could be true. Maybe even on good days, you think, I’m so sick of being a survivor, then realize with an even more sick and sinking feeling that the alternative is to have not survived at all.

See, we didn’t choose any of this. Remember that. These identities were beaten or screamed into our skin and bones and synapses. We’re all doing our best to recover, in our own ways.

Speaking about them, writing about them, is a release valve for some of us.

For some of us, un-silencing is how we move from victim to survivor.

100 memoirs project #9: Whip Smart, by Melissa Febos

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People are going to pick up and want to buy Whip Smart because it sounds salacious, gratuitous, sexy. I picked it up because I thought, holy shit, how brave to admit this. I will learn something about how to write the stuff that most scares me to share about myself (spoiler: I’m not a dominatrix).

I was right and wrong. Febos is brave, and makes brave admissions—but not only in the way you think. Her entire tenure as a dominatrix was marked by her attempts at distancing herself from this work she did to put herself through college.

Whip Smart is an addiction narrative. And the addiction isn’t kink or sexual power trips, but every drug you can think of, most notably a serious heroin addiction.

What’s different about this particular addiction narrative is how well the narrator hid, while creating even more elements of her life to hide, all while hiding nothing from the reader.

100 memoirs project #8: Heart Berries, by Terese Marie Mailhot

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I’m behind, because life, but I’m reading!

I’m actually bumping a memoir I read two months ago to write this post because the book’s so good that I’ve been talking about it and now someone wants to borrow it. Must write this post before I lend the book away for who knows how long!

I recently visited Midtown Scholar, an acclaimed indie bookstore in Harrisburg, PA. It’s shameful that this was my first time—I, a native central Pennsylvanian—stepping foot into this space, but hey, now I’ve been there. And I’ll be going back.

In a 2010 Publisher’s Weekly review, Alison Morris described Midtown Scholar as “a cavernous space filled with some 100,000+ second-hand, out-of-print, and scholarly (…) books” that combines with an enormous warehouse inventory to make “the largest used book collection between New York City and Chicago.” The store also houses a coffee shop and its owners regularly host readings, workshops, and author events. It’s basically Disneyland for writers and readers.

I walked in, ordered a mocha and a chocolate peanut butter brownie, and immediately found a memoir to curl up with for the afternoon—one that had been on my Amazon nonfiction wish list for some time.

Roxane Gay calls Terese Marie Mailhot’s Heart Berries a “memoir in essays,” among other things.

100 memoirs project #7: Love and Trouble, by Claire Dederer

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I haven’t done a memoir post in a bit, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been reading memoir.

I’ve been reading a lot, actually. Since I finished Ta-Nehisi Coates’ two books, I’ve completed my fifth re-read of Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Chronology of Water (someday I will be courageous enough to write a post about what Lidia’s memoir means to me). Based on her recommendation, I then bought and blazed through Whip Smart, by Melissa Febos (another forthcoming post), almost immediately after I finished Dederer. I’m reading essays by Hanif Abdurraqib and poems by Danez Smith and Greek mythology by Robert Graves. I’m reading Carl Jung. I’m reading tarot and headlines.

There is so much to take in, so much to keep us up at night, that I might as well stay up late reading instead of worrying. Most days, this works out.

I worried a lot while reading Dederer. Love and Trouble comes with a subtitle: “A Midlife Reckoning.” At first I thought, I’m not going to relate to this. Silly me. I am almost 37. I’m unafraid of being 37, but it should be noted that while I am approaching what we think of as middle age, I don’t feel like I am. I am often mistaken for a college student on the campus where I work. I still get carded more often than not. I climb mountains and blast the same music I blasted 20 years ago—and I dress like it’s 20 years ago, too. I don’t feel 37.  Take that for what it’s worth to you, even hate me for it, if you will.

For so many women, being hated is nothing new.

100 memoirs project #6: The Beautiful Struggle, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

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Ta-Nehisi Coates is a writer I’ve followed for some time but who I am thoroughly intimidated to write about. He is superlatively intelligent when it comes to the violent racism of American history, a history I am glimpsing and uncovering more and more every day. I will never, can never, know a fraction of what Coates knows, but I swear I will read everything he writes from now on.

The Beautiful Struggle is a beautiful book. (Shit, see? I can barely write this.)

100 memoirs project #5: The Telling, by Zoe Zolbrod

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CW: molestation, incest, child abuse, domestic violence

About a month ago, I took a vacation day from work, checked into a hotel for seven hours, and wrote 6,000 words of truth that I’ve never told anyone before. At least, not in so many words.

I had just started reading Zoe Zolbrod’s memoir The Telling, and it was clearly affecting me. I have some stuff to tell. This entire undertaking of reading 100 memoirs is about informing how I will tell it.

But the telling itself is important. It is power reclaimed, transformation, revolution. It is survival.