Ex marks the plot, becoming troublesome, transported by laughter, memoirializing los muertos, and somniphobia...
Welcome back to Memoir Monday—a weekly newsletter and a quarterly reading series, brought to you by Narratively, The Rumpus, Catapult, Granta, Guernica, and Literary Hub. Each personal 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.
We’re considering ways to expand aspects of this newsletter in the near future. Subscribe and follow us on Twitter at @memoirmonday for updates!
My Shadow Book: On Consciously—or Unconsciously—Immortalizing Ex-Partners in Literary Fiction
by Andrew Palmer
"Did a part of me want her to be outraged? I don’t think so. But I did want more than this brief and elliptical and possibly somewhat testy note. What did I want? No more than what I imagine every writer wants: to be privy to every last thought and feeling of every reader of my work as they read it.”
The Sum of Life’s Troubles Makes a Whole Damn Dish
by Nuraliah Norasid (Image © Marco Verch)
"Now that my mother is older, and her medical conditions have begun to take a toll on her, I have become the muscle of the operation, folding butter and egg yolks into the flour and kneading all two kilograms of dough until the sides of the banged-up metal basin my mother has had since I was seven or eight are completely clean. But the role of who shapes, decorates and bakes remains much the same. As does how warm the kitchen gets, given that the only source of reprieve is the desktop fan my father bought from a tiny ‘kaki lima’ home goods shop."
My Grandfather's Laugh Is Like Thread
by Wendie Yeung (Art by Eva Azenaro Acero.)
"My grandfather passed years ago, but the memories I have of him and Taiwan still bridge the distance between my identity and my family’s history; they bring me back to that feeling of home and belonging. It comes sometimes when I walk through San Francisco’s Chinatown or into a mom-and-pop, no-frills dim sum joint where the wonderfully disjointed cacophony of banging pots and pans and my mother tongue wafts through the air. For a moment, I’m jolted out of my life of hustling in and out of tall corporate buildings and am instead transported back to the Kaohsiung apartment."
It’s About Altares
by M. Vázquez Vasquez (Photo by Tania Victoria / Secretariat of Culture of Mexico City via Flickr)
"I would look at the stars and the moon. All the while, they watched. They listened. They inhaled. Their images, wheat-pasted on photo boards that leaned on the structure, watched all. All their faces forward. All their eyes gazed upon you."
My Year of Nocturnal Panic
by Bethany Marcel (Photograph by Annie Spratt/Unsplash)
"After my first panic attack, my ability to deal with my insomnia changed. I stood staring at my bed. You're not scary, I thought. You're a bed. Sleep is good and I need rest. Feeling calm and in control, I slid beneath the covers and rolled over, closing my eyes. Within seconds my body flooded with adrenaline. My heart began to pound like I'd run a marathon."
Thanks for reading! If you enjoy Memoir Monday, please consider making a one-time or recurring contribution (if even a fraction of subscribers signed up to contribute $1 per month, Memoir Monday could be self-sustaining!) by clicking here.
You can also support Memoir Monday—and indie bookstores!—by browsing this Bookshop.org list of every book that’s been featured at the Memoir Monday reading series. It’s a great place to find some new titles to add to your TBR list!
If you received this email from a friend or found it on social media, sign up below to get Memoir Monday in your inbox every week! You can also follow us on Twitter at @memoirmonday.