Messy girls and venomous fish
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 Blacker the Berry, the Quicker They Shoot
by Shamecca Harris
When I saw her again, she couldn’t speak. This is where Joy’s story ends in my mother’s rendering of the tale. It is one of many myths and parables I have heard her recite again and again throughout my life, each with its own grip on my conscience. I am unaware of when her memories become my own, and yet, inevitably, they do. With each retelling, I invent details that bring me closer to a truth that brings some form of meaning to mayhem. In my version of Joy’s story, I imagine that her cheeks sting from smiling when she sees her baby for the first time.
How the World’s Most Venomous Fish Convinced Me to Stop Working Myself to Death
by Ali Francis
I was furious at myself for all the wasted years I’d spent barely looking up from my computer. Here I was, a grown-ass woman in a neon rash vest, doing exactly what I wanted. All along there’d been nothing to worry about, no one standing by ready to judge my senseless impulses. I was certain that I had just had the revelation that would change the rest of my life.
To All the Messy Girls I've Loved Before
by Brittany K. Allen
A-Little-Bit-Over-the-Top Girl first appeared to me on screens, in the swath of prime time daylight when all good Millennial latchkey children were poised on their papasan chairs, eating cereal out of cups. I’m talking about the peak years of UPN, MTV, and The N. I’m talking about Winonas, as opposed to Gwyneths. A-Little-Bit-Over-the-Top Girl was sex-positive, spontaneous, and rocked an audacious, careless fashion sense that mimicked her audacious, careless heart. She had a skinless quality that tended to attract the worst men and the best stories. The protagonist’s mother always thought she was a bad influence.
Mi querida Sanaë
by Sanaë Lemoine
I read the journal quickly and tucked it away as though it were a hot coal. That summer, when she gave me the journal, my mother and I did not get along. We were angry at each other and our family was splitting in half. How to take in the intimacy of her pain when I felt consumed by my own?
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