Conspiracy theories, break-up sex, and our next reading line-up

May 25, 2020

Welcome back to Memoir Monday—a weekly newsletter and quarterly reading series, brought to you by Narratively, The Rumpus, Catapult, Longreads, Granta, and Guernica. Each essay in this newsletter has been selected by the editors at the above publications as the best of the week, delivered to you all in one place.

The Mother of Reckoning

by Tracy O'Neill (art by Sirin Thada)

What my students would have seen in my house in March was the brick of fireplace façade and never-removed Christmas garlands. They might have seen that their professor’s provisional kemptness was ceding to distinct unkemptness. I considered whether the life of the woman who had given birth to me was a flagrant one, one whose disappearance would be in some way regarded. Might this wondering, I wondered, amount to the whole notice of her death?

My Father, the QAnon Conspiracy Theorist

by Reed Ryley Grable

It quickly became clear to us that our father’s interest in conspiracy theories had developed into an obsession. After we moved back in, he decided to purchase a new TV. Shortly afterward, the internet, which at the time was so slow it hardly existed, was upgraded to high speed. The fast internet and new features of the upgraded TV made the outside world much more available to him. But that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. The ability to search through endless amounts of information has not opened his eyes to different possibilities. It has closed them.

Bald-Headed Muthaf*cker

by Tahira Alexander Green

At the time I kept walking. Eyes ahead and face immobile as if sense and expression were lost to me. When a safe distance away, I muttered to my girlfriend, “Every time I leave the house I’m reminded I hate people.” Please don’t be offended by this; for some reason I don’t feel safe when men shout at me. Especially when my closest exit route is traffic. It’s better I go numb, swallow my tongue and glaze over my eyes. Play dead so the beast doesn’t eat me.

Trees, Disease

by Philip Marsden

In our household we were already home-schooling. By late January, both our teenage children were out of school. One because of illness, the other because it was stifling him. As soon as he left, he sprang back to life like a long-squashed plant, eager to stretch out, to learn and joke and bounce around like any lively fourteen-year-old. He and I tackled various subjects, and in history opted for the Cold War GCSE module. Within weeks we were planning a field trip. On the last day of February, rucksacks over our shoulders, we travelled from Cornwall to London and from there took the train to Berlin.

Betsy, Tacy, Sejal, Tib

by Sejal Shah

Nearly everything that happened in my life when I was twelve took place at home, or at some close distance from home. My mother would say to me, “Will you get the match-ing blouse from my drawer? It’s popti-colored. Parrot green.” In my head, this was the same color as kelly green, but I never found out. I never knew for sure. There were certain colors that bloomed normal on the palette of Indian saris, hanging in rows in the guest bedroom / youngest daughter’s closet. The way I’d seen in all of my friends’ houses, too—the saris couldn’t fit into the parents’ closets. Saris and American clothes would not coexist in the same shallow closet of these first homes.

The Lie of ‘One Last Time’ with My Ex

by Ella Dawson

Henry and I had break-up sex on at least four different occasions, maybe more. I wanted to believe it was because we loved each other that much, when really I was unwilling to read the writing on the wall. It took me years to pry my fingers from his pant-leg and let go of our relationship. In fits of pique I wondered if he was the one who got away, less of a daydream than a deep anxiety that I’d bump into him decades later and love him just as much as I did the day we decided it was the last time. And the next time we decided it was the last time. And the time after that.