100 memoirs

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memoir, read 100 memoirs, writing a memoir

I was looking at this big stack of books in my home office, books I’m dying to read, and rhetorically asking myself how to make time for them. I thought, I need someone to hold me accountable.

Book club? Omg if I schedule one more thing to have to go to…

Some kind of email book club? Still probably a deadline, and I want this to be fun and loose so I actually do it.

Goodreads? No more social media.

So I’m gonna use this space to hold myself accountable. I’m going to read memoirs and blog about them. Not really reviews, just informal responses, maybe with a little real life splashed in. No rules. Some of the memoirs I read will be second or third reads. Sometimes I will link to posts I’ve done on these books elsewhere. Sometimes I will write a lot, sometimes only a little. I might read three in a month and then none for three months.

But I’m going to read 100 of them.

Writing, talking, teaching, and living nonfiction

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abuse, advice, CNF, community, creative nonfiction, domestic violence, essays, first person narrative, graduate creative nonfiction class, gratitude, guest lecture, humbling experiences, lecture, memoir, Skype, speak out, speak up, support system

Speaking up and out > silence. Photo by Flickr user Tom Woodward (Creative Commons license).

Last night, I Skyped with a graduate creative nonfiction class that I sort of feel I should be taking instead of guest-lecturing to. That “Who let me adult? I can’t adult!” meme comes to mind.

My friend Jen, an awesome writer and teacher, invited me to talk to her class “about CNF.” That’s it. No other parameters. I put on my grateful face and accepted, but I will admit now to having been scared about how little nonfiction I’ve published. Jen and I talked about how I would focus on switching back and forth between the genres of poetry and nonfiction prose, but also about two of my essays on domestic violence—one published, one unpublished. I thought we could compare the two and talk about risk, victim-blaming, community-building and support systems, and how, you know, haters gonna hate no matter what you do.

Market, memoir, and magic: Take nothing for granted

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choice, Damien Echols, Eddie Vedder, farmer's market, food, inspiration, Life After Death, magic, memoir, take nothing for granted, West Memphis Three

I’ve finally read Damien Echols’ Life After Death. I’ve seen exactly none of the documentaries about the West Memphis Three (yet), though I’ve poured over wm3.org and followed the case in the later years of Echols’ (and Baldwin’s, and Misskelley’s) incarceration with interest and empathy.

I’ve considered what it must be like to suffer though you’ve done nothing wrong, and to have few people believe you.

So I read the 400-page memoir over two days last week and then, with no time to sit and reflect, closed the book and jumped up to make the farmer’s market before it closed.

I did not expect to find chanterelle mushrooms. I bought them.

This past weekend, I fried them up and ate them and Echols’ words flashed back into my brain as I chewed.