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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. It may be the start of a new work week, but at least we have this great new writing to get us through it.
The High Notes and Hard Knocks of My Traveling Karaoke Family
by Dina Peone
I didn’t know who was right or wrong, what was true or false. I only knew that I wasn’t yet woman enough to understand. I cried myself to sleep each night and rode into school late, sleep-deprived and shaken. I pressed my cheek to the cold desk and heard the echo of slamming doors instead of history lessons. My teacher stood above my desk and said, Looks like Dina-Karaoke had another late night of fun and dancing. That’s no excuse for not doing your homework.
Why Do We Read Plague Stories?
by Gabrielle Bellot
Why do we read plague stories? We turn to them for both horror and comfort. The ones with happy endings suggest that we can get through adversity, and in times of non-disease-related disaster, they show that things could always be worse. And sometimes, the best of these stories are genuinely full of love. This is partly why a wondrous wedding in Manhattan in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak used passages from Love in the Time of Cholera, which an officiant shouted from the social distance of an apartment window to the two women getting married in a street—in a time of horror, here was a moment of wild, silly, lovely beauty, literal love in the time of coronavirus.
The Danger of Desire
by Faylita Hicks
When I was younger, I lived under the radar, aching for language that could accurately describe what it feels like to live in this body I love, even though it doesn’t adequately depict my ability to carry more than one identity. At 11, I was already thick and grown-looking for my age, easily passing for a 15- or 16-year-old. By the time I was actually 16 and my breasts had reached their first DD-cup phase, people started asking if my youngest sisters were my children.
On Anger, Autism, and Blackness
by Kat Lewis
Whenever I sleep in the same house as my sister, I have these dreams about her. In the better dreams, I start awake to find Remi standing over me, wearing a white sheet like a crude ghost costume with holes punched out where her eyes should be. In worse dreams, she’s standing there—ghost costume and all—but this time she has a pillow in her hands and smothers me with it. In the worst dreams, she stands over me with a knife, dragging the dull edge along her wrists before plunging the blade into my chest. I have dreams about my sister killing me because my sister makes me fear for my own safety. Over the years, she has beaten black eyes into my face and splayed hand-shaped bruises across my back. I have dreams about Remi killing me because I once thought about killing her, too.
Notes From a Hypochondriac
by Matthew Lansburgh
Soon enough, I wasn’t just worried about getting enough sleep. I was also worried about germs. I began to wash my hands obsessively, I pleaded with my mom not to let the dog lick our dinner plates clean, and I refused to let anyone take a sip of my Coke or my Dr. Pepper or orange juice. I refused to let my mother take bites of my apple or sandwich or ice cream cone. The smallest thing—a hair on my plate or a utensil dropped on the floor—could cause me, did cause me, to self-destruct.
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