More Personal Narrative Than You Can Shake a Stick At (Whatever That Expression Means)
Welcome to Memoir Monday—a weekly newsletter and a quarterly reading series, brought to you by Narratively, The Rumpus, Catapult, Granta, Guernica, Oldster Magazine, Literary Hub — and now many additional publications.
In addition to the weekly curation, there are now original personal essays under the heading of First Person Singular, for paying subscribers.
The seventh original essay, published in the First Person Singular series in August, is “The Sandwich,” by Yi Xue. The eighth original essay is coming in September. Submissions are open. You can find submissions guidelines and more on the “About” page.
Essays from partner publications…
On Erosion
by Abi Newhouse
“Smith Island is eroding due to rising sea levels due to climate change. Due to, due to—always something bigger affecting something smaller. The Chesapeake Bay pushes against the jetties and seawalls set up to protect the shorelines, and worn out shacks and broken docks surround the island’s perimeter. Their appearance seemed a constant reminder of outside forces pushing in, in, in, shrinking the inhabitable land. In the last 150 years, Smith Island lost over 3,300 acres of wetlands. At this rate, the 4.83-square-mile island will be completely submerged by 2100.”
What Was Desired Before You Were Born: Remica Bingham-Risher on the Weight of Names
by Remica Bingham-Risher
“What wasn’t said between myself and my daughter—who turned thirteen two days before I married her father—but what I’ve come to know for sure is: thank God for Beyoncé (a sentence many have uttered in these decades she’s graced us). If it weren’t for Beyoncé, another girl like us with an untraceable name, we wouldn’t have had much in common. What my daughter doesn’t say is plenty, so I must listen to the in-between. ”
Talk America
by George Prochnik
Artwork © Adam Cvijanovic, Surrender at Appomattox, 2021
“I know the call sounds exaggerated, but I swear I received death threats in language almost identical to what I’ve just transcribed. And even short of people saying they would kill me, which did happen – twice – the rage and despair I listened to each day was monumental. I never questioned people’s right to a refund. I never said much beyond vowing that I would do everything I could to expedite their refund, trying to calm them down, and then taking off my headset, leaving my desk, and begging my superiors to help the worst victims. Far more upsetting than the murderous dupes were the people who just broke down sobbing at the failure of their Talk America product, as seen on TV, to have redeemed one single aspect of their tragic existence.”
Wolf Peach
by Hillery Stone
“Now, when my sister and I arrive at each other—her house, my house, our mother’s Vermont clapboard with no proper heat—we’re blanched from confinement, needing fellowship and solitude. ‘Can you watch her for just—an hour?’ my sister will say, handing me a snack pouch and hurrying away with her paints or her poems. I must report failure, I sometimes think, hearing Glück, hearing my own distant dreams like plants under the gorging aphids.”
My Cell-Cluster "Sibling" was Aborted. I’m Here Instead.
by Lisa Williamson Rosenberg
“Physically, Mom remembered little about the abortion by the time I was old enough to question her about it. “Maybe like bad cramps,” was the best she could do. What made a bigger impression on my mother was what happened the day after she’d safely ended her pregnancy….There had been a raid on the office. The doctor was arrested along with all the young women present that day, either on the table or in the waiting area.”
The Two Sides of American Healthcare
by Jodie Noel Vinson
“My elation over a broken humerus may have seemed strange to those crowded around the X-ray, but I was simply relieved to know what was wrong and what had to be done. For the past year, I’d sought just such a decisive prognosis for ongoing symptoms that followed a Covid infection, only to be dismissed by doctors. Back then, chest pains sent my stomach plummeting to the floor, shocks shooting through my arms with a sensation of slipping on ice: an involuntary, internal reaction telling my body to right itself, to find help. Something was broken. We still don’t understand what.”
Essays from around the web…
Whiskey Days
by Meg Ringler
“How does an atheist forgive herself? What penance will ever be enough? I consider rituals. Writing the sins on paper and burning them. Deploying crystals to the cause. Investing in sages or colored taper candles. Perhaps a cleansing spell. Does it still work if I don’t believe in it? I know guilt and shame do him no good. I know my past-self was doing the best she could. She got us here, now.”
The Broken-In World
by Meghan Daum
“About a year ago, I found myself in the surprisingly unsurprising situation of filing for divorce. To be accurate, I was the respondent in this filing, a decision based solely upon the fact that my husband was remaining in our home state of California while I was taking one of our two giant dogs and driving to New York City in order to ‘restart my life.’ (A somewhat ironic notion, since many years earlier I’d attempted to restart my life by making the same move in the opposite direction. But what is the human condition if not a perpetually indecisive toggle switch?)”
Someday, You’ll Forget It All
by Leah Rosenzweig
“In the mirror, my scar is deep blue-red, splotchy, and unevenly ribbed like an amateur weaving. A small welt forms about a third of the way in on the left side—the short side—while the other side remains seamless. Reluctantly, I’ve begun to touch the snaking series of purples. In the shower and elsewhere, I’ve caved to its obtrusiveness, inclined to treat our relationship like an arranged marriage, like something to which I must succumb or embrace. For many weeks now, I have chosen to do neither, only to run and not look down, to shield my own reflection.”
For the Birds
by Abby Manzella
“We’ll leave your hair for the birds, she’d say, so they’ll build their nests to keep themselves and their babies protected…Now, all these years later when quarantine brings us together and yet separate from so much else, I ask if she’ll cut my hair, now tinged red with less gold from so much time indoors…I am lucky to be home under her hovering gaze, as she inspects me and the job at hand. Her hair, though graying, is a lot like mine; she has long been my mirror. I want to keep her safe—all of us safe—but I sit there letting her baby me under the canopy of the trees.”
The Marble
by Claire Salinda
“When I went to pay for my small galaxy of crystals, I noticed a bowl full of deliciously glossy marbles next to the register. Like a child encountering a gumball machine, I salivated. Even now, the better half of a decade later, typing the word marble over and over again brings a pleasant fullness to my tongue. As bizarre as it sounds, it makes sense, considering that I was desiring, with every cell in my body, to understand my own life at that time, and desire is just another form of hunger. I wanted to consume the knowledge because if I did, it would no longer be apart from me. I would have control over my life. I would know.”
How a Century of Turmoil in Russia and Ukraine Shaped My Family
By Bogdan Pospielovsky
“When I woke up on the morning of February 24 to the news that Russia was invading Ukraine, my first thought was about my brother. He had been in Lviv on a business trip. He managed to evacuate overland, through Poland. As a nine-year-old boy in 1944, my father had fled a region of what is now Western Ukraine ahead of the Soviet Red Army’s offensive. Before him, my grandmother had fled Russia in 1917. My family's history is marked with flights and homecomings in Russia and Ukraine. Will Putin’s war stop us from ever going back?”
🚨Announcements:
📢 Veteran book publicist Lauren Cerand and Sari Botton present “Publicity 101 For Writers,” a 90-minute seminar/interview on October 8th at 2pm EDT. $25. Only 12 spots of 100 left!
Are you a writer struggling to effectively publicize your work? Are you looking to grow the reach and visibility of your published writing, and find more publishing opportunities? Do you shy away from putting yourself out there because you’re not sure of the best ways to do so—and because you’ve been persuaded to believe self-promotion is shameful?
This 90-minute virtual seminar is for you!
For the first hour, Sari Botton will interview Lauren Cerand about some straight-forward ways writers can improve their online image, and get the message out about their books and their other work. In the final half-hour, Lauren will respond to some questions in the chat.
📢 Attention Publications and writers interested in having published essays considered for inclusion in our weekly curation:
By Thursday of each week, please send to memoi the author’s Twitter handle.
A paragraph or a few lines from the piece that will most entice readers.
Because of data limits for many email platforms, going forward we will only include artwork from our partner publications. No need to send art.
*Please be advised, however, 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.
Memoir Monday is a reader-supported publication that pays contributors to its First Person Singular series of original essays. To support this work, become a paid subscriber.
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!
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