A Fresh Batch of Mini-Memoirs to Read this Week...
Plus, a Kingston-based workshop from Electric Literature Executive Director Halimah Marcus, and classes from Narratively Academy, in the announcements at the bottom.
Welcome to Memoir Land—a newsletter edited by Sari Botton, now featuring four verticals:
Memoir Monday, a weekly curation of the best personal essays from around the web brought to you by Narratively, The Rumpus, Granta, Guernica, Oldster Magazine, Literary Hub, Orion Magazine, The Walrus, and Electric Literature. Below is this week’s curation.
First Person Singular, featuring original personal essays. Recently I published
“Chasing Drinks with Lies, and Lies with Drinks,” by Katie MacBride.
The Lit Lab, featuring interviews and essays on craft and publishing. There are also week writing prompts and other exercises from, ahem, a New York Times bestselling ghostwriter of memoirs (that’s me) for paid subscribers. Most recently I posted “The Prompt-O-Matic #30,” “The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #34: Elisa Albert,” and “The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #35: Shalom Auslander”
Goodbye to All That, where I’m continuing to explore my fascination with the most wonderful and terrible city in the world, something I began doing with two NYC-centric anthologies, Goodbye to All That, and Never Can Say Goodbye. Recently I reprinted “Minnesota Nice” by Cheryl Strayed, which appears in both editions of Goodbye to All That.
*Please note: I am no longer posting about these roundups on X/Twitter.*
Essays from partner publications…
Does Being Called “Timmy” Make Me Less Manly?
by Timothy Caulfield
“I looked at 1,000 posts on X over a one-year period that had my username and “Timmy.” The result: 999 were insults, and just one was neutral. In other words, if someone calls me Timmy on that platform, the post is almost always (99.9 percent of the time) connected to mockery, hate, and rage.”
The Knock at the Door
by Ben Lewellyn-Taylor
“Unlike some districts across the nation, and although we lived in gun-loving Texas, our school had not opted to arm teachers. I could tell these men would have preferred to train us with guns. I was sure they offered an alternate training for that very purpose, perhaps even advertised to schools and businesses via pamphlet, during which point Pete and his silent partner would likely have a more active role. We probably bored these men, armed only with student desks and filing cabinets we could tip in front of a door.”
A Study of Labor and Fire: On Being a Queer Educator in the Second Lavender Scare
by J. Bonanni
“In October of 2022, a math teacher arrived at my classroom door to tell me a group of boys had uncovered a reading of mine on YouTube in which I read poems that dealt specifically with Stonewall’s history. The boys, of course, were laughing. Karla, an educational assistant in the room, said, ‘Mr. Bonanni is a friend of mine. Do you even know what Stonewall was?’ She ensured they knew. The room went quiet. I was thankful for Karla’s support, though still, a part of me wishes that the math teacher just wouldn’t have told me anything.
Revenge of the Nerds
by Jay Blotcher
“I unveiled a secret society called the Fester Football Fan Club, intentionally employing the slur. Our mission, through a series of public events, was to undermine the jocks. Call it performance art, call it psychodrama, call it childish. It was a high schooler’s first attempt at social justice.”
Essays from around the web…
Transvestite Freak
by Brian Gresko
“Many confident, gorgeous men stare at me from the walls. They all seem to be wearing makeup. This is what a man can be too, I imagine them whispering. I’m nervous, but I want what they have. So I nod, and Jenny paints my lips red and succulent. I smile at myself in the mirror. Lipstick smears my front teeth. ‘You look pretty!’ she says.”
The Desirability of Being Half-Asian Chris in "Dìdi"
by Iris (Yi Youn) Kim
“‘I’m half Asian,’ 13-year-old Chris Wang (Izaac Wang) declares to his new skater friends in this summer’s buzzy coming-of-age film Didi. He’s not; he’s telling an absurd lie that he believes will impress his friends. They start chanting, ‘Half-Asian Chris! Half-Asian Chris!’…Later, when they meet Chris’ mother and discover both his parents are Taiwanese, they sulk as they leave the room. ‘This kid is whack,’ they mutter to themselves…Why would Chris make up such a ridiculous, blatant lie? If you’ve never been an Asian American teen in a majority-Asian American enclave in the San Francisco Bay Area, it’s a nuance that may be hard to understand.”
After My Abortion, My Next OB-GYN Called Pregnant Women 'Host Organisms.'
by Sarah Orman
“In a detail that sounded straight out of The Handmaid’s Tale, the Texas Freedom Network accused Dr. Love of calling pregnant women ‘host organisms.’ In the Texas Observer article that I found in my Google search, I learned that this quote came from Dr. Love’s expert testimony in a trial over Texas’s fetal burial law, in which he compared a fetus’s relationship to the pregnant person to a foreign exchange student’s relationship with their host family. The analogy was awful. And yet, Dr. Love’s words didn’t sting like they might have, if I couldn’t picture him in his office, diagramming my menstrual cycle on a sheet of paper. How ironic, I thought. I learned something essential about my body from a man who apparently thought its highest purpose was ‘host.’”
My Husband Told Me He Couldn't Be Married Anymore — So I Made A Decision I've Kept Secret For 12 Years
by Tamara MC, Ph.D.
“I used to joke with my husband that I was planning to have breast surgery when I finished nursing. We had laughed hysterically about my desire for surgery because we both knew I was terrified of hospitals and drugs. I was an au naturel granola girl who hadn’t even had caffeine until her mid-30s. I never smoked a cigarette or tried an illegal substance either. Only when I have a migraine do I hesitantly swallow an Advil.”
Me & Amy Pascal's Pubes
by Courtney Kocak
“I twirled for another minute as I tried to solve the riddle of the blonde-gray pube—it was my own personal version of the blue-gold dress viral meme and it was driving me crazy—and then it struck me how silly it was to care even if the whole bush was gray.”
That Time When
by Emily Brisse
“That time when, while your mother was shopping, you pressed yourself through the woven fabric and faux fur of the coats hanging on their carousel at JCPenney—the sudden muffled quiet of that secret inner circle a delight—until some long minutes later you emerged to no sign of her—your mother, her hair, the camel-color of her coat, gone—and as you looked and looked, increasingly hot, your skin itchy, some terrible feeling squeezed your chest, accompanied by the realization of what it meant to be your exact and only self in an unfamiliar, unprotected world.”
Hard to Love
by Lee Price
“These days, we have all been therapized. People think they know what to say. They name the framework of stages—deny, be angry, bargain, feel depressed, accept. "But grief isn't linear," you hear this acknowledged too, ad nauseam. These well-considered ideas aim for understanding, and mean nothing in the face of what's primal. There's no safety in this world when your father dies. There are no stages here. Just tectonic states of being that slam around. Paralysis, terror, anguish, disbelief, desperation. Begging. ‘Come back,’ I wail and press my face into the bed. "Come back, just come back.’”
On Believing
by Rachel Dlugatch
“‘Explain air. Convince a sceptic. Prove it’s there. Prove what can’t be seen,’ writes Natasha Brown about racial microaggressions in her debut novel, Assembly. Often, it’s the marginalized who are forced to prove their realities in ways that are visible, digestible, and understandable to the masses, masses who have no interest in evidence that could threaten their worldview or power, let alone who would take someone’s word as evidence anyway. To believe someone without proof, or rather, to take someone’s word as proof, goes against the adage, ‘seeing is believing.’ It is an act of compassion, of solidarity, of defiance, and ultimately, a radical act with transformative capabilities. In the doctor’s office, believing someone at their word can be the fine line between life and death.”
A Pipe Dram
by Miriam Sule
“Two years loving each other, I find that our love is as whimsical as it is real. It’s also why beyond our texts, spaces where we have created a bubble for ourselves, the fierceness of our love doesn’t do much to hold it together. The reality is that because we are neither friends nor lovers, the gap between us lives a life of its own.”
Bicycle Repair for Ladies and Revolutionaries
by Amelia Possanza
“I moved through partners as quickly as I moved through bicycles, too isolated to get much assistance with the repair. An entry from the register on the latest accident: After a year-and-a-half-long courtship filled with longing voice notes, the digital descendants of Daisy’s unanswered letters, I dated my best friend. They wanted two nights a week, preferably at a bar, and I wanted someone to cook dinner with, to slot into my routine and make my junior one bedroom apartment feel a little less cavernous. Heart, a bit bruised. Hands, itching to pick up my phone and call.”
🚨Announcements:
📢 Electric Literature is accepting applications for its first-ever writing workshop, led by Executive Director and Founding Editor of Recommended Reading Halimah Marcus.
This intimate six-week workshop will be held from 6 – 8 PM on Tuesdays beginning November 12 through December 17, 2024 in Kingston, NY. The cohort is limited to 12 participants, with two writers workshopped per class (each student will be workshopped once). The class will also discuss a selection of iconic and influential short stories, as time allows. Tuition: $625. (Electric Literature members receive a 5% discount.)
📢 New Writing Classes from Narratively Academy
Coming up at Narratively Academy: On Thursday, September 12, poet, activist and spoken word artist Nick Courmon leads A Pen for the People: Using Writing as a Tool for Action, a 90-minute seminar designed to help you develop tools to use your writing as a force for social justice. And on Sundays September 15 and 22, NEA and Fulbright Fellow Abeer Hoque leads The Insider's Guide to Writing Personal Statements and Applying for Grants & Residencies.
📢 Attention Publications and writers interested in having published essays considered for inclusion in our weekly curation:
By Thursday of each week, please send to memoirmonday@gmail.com:
The title of the essay and a link to it.
The name of the author, and the author’s Twitter handle.Nope…not doing Twitter anymore! Read and share the newsletter to find out/spread the word about whose pieces are featured.A paragraph or a few lines from the piece that will most entice readers.
Please be advised that we cannot accept all submissions, nor respond to the overwhelming number of emails received. Also, please note that we don’t accept author submissions from our partner publications.
What an honor to be featured here! Thank you so much 🙏🏻
What a lovely surprise to see my essay on your list! Can't wait to read the others.