R.I.F.: Reading (Personal Narrative) Is Fundamental
Welcome to Memoir Monday—a weekly newsletter featuring the best personal essays from around the web, and a quarterly reading series, brought to you by Narratively, The Rumpus, Catapult, Granta, Guernica, Oldster Magazine, Literary Hub, and Orion Magazine — plus 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 latest original essay, published in the First Person Singular series in November, is “I Want to Be Approached by a Psychic Medium” by Caitlin Bitzegaio . The next original essay is coming next week. Submissions are open. You can find submissions guidelines and more on the “About” page.
***Later this week, for paying subscribers, there will be an interview with Some of My Best Friends author and Catapult editor-in-chief Tajja Isen, about the realities of publishing an essay collection.
Essays from partner publications…
Fake Plastic Trees
by Jennifer Gersten
“The trees bear the conspicuous mark of some director, a ringmaster whose crop commands the pines into knots, contorts the birches, makes two spruces smooch.”
A Migrant’s Fashion Manifesto
by Ucheoma Onwutuebe
“I refuse to look like my bank account. I will wake up every day and don well-thought-out attire. I will take pictures and send them home to my mother. I will spin the color wheel and land on the brightest hue. I will not be annihilated. I will be seen. I love being looked at, and I have made peace with that. I love being photographed, and I am fine with that too. I choose to curate my life on social media, and never would it be said of me, 'Here comes the poor immigrant in her worn clothes.' It is a sin against myself to be anonymous.”
In the Driver’s Seat
by Maya Gottfried
“My learning to drive was nearly as important to my father as my graduation from a good college. One of his first jobs had been driving someone’s car across the United States. He held the freedom, independence, and power that a license brought as sacred.”
Beneath the Ice
by David Gessner
“It is strange how we distance ourselves from our grief. Strange but necessary, for some of us. My mother doesn’t really believe she is living in the assisted living wing of the Senior Care Facility in Winston-Salem, and who can blame her? Meanwhile no one is talking about the massive chunk of ice that broke off Antarctica. And I get it. It’s just too depressing. We have our lives to live after all.”
When Your Book Tour is Interrupted by a Near-Death Experience
by M Dressler
“I was halfway through my book tour when the pain started. Sharp, but strangely light; like the nub of a feather lodged in my right side. Must be all that signing with my right hand, I joked to my husband, who was traveling with me, along with our two dogs. A six-week book tour of three coasts—East, Gulf, then West—can be lonely. This time, I wanted my family with me. And it might be, who knew, my very last long book tour. No one does big tours anymore. Especially since the pandemic. Writers chirp now from little cages on computer screens. Whistle coo, whistle chee, here I am in my naked tree. Will you buy a book from me?”
I Want to Be Approached by a Psychic Medium
by Caitlin Bitzegaio
“The truth is I really don’t believe in psychic mediums. I try to. I would like to. I just don’t. Grief would be easier with an escape hatch. It’s impossible not to consider that there might be ways out of the finality of all this, but also equally impossible for me to not conclude: there’s really no way out of this.”
Essays from Around the Web…
Human_Fallback
by Laura Preston
“My first few weeks of employment brought rapid additions to my lexicon: amenities, townhomes, move-in fees—words and phrases that had previously floated on the periphery of my consciousness. Never before had I uttered the construction off-site leasing specialist, but this was what Brenda called herself, and now it rolled off my tongue with ease. The most important new word, however, was prospect. Prospect was shorthand for a prospective tenant.”
I’m a Stay-at-Home Dad. It Took Me a While to Feel Confident Saying That
by Jay Deitcher
“There are many things American society deems valuable for men. We are supposed to be providers, making the bulk of the family income. Supposed to take charge, dominating others in the workplaces, the sports field, the gym. Modern American mythology reveres men who pull themselves up by their bootstraps, creating something from nothing, not men who nurture their families. Not men who spend nights pumping their baby’s legs back and forth to relieve gas. Not men whose backs hurt from babywearing their kids. Those are the tasks normally left to people who rarely receive credit, the people our entire economic system depends on to do the work men don’t want to do: women.”
Steel
by Anita Gill
“He nearly killed us just after our eleventh anniversary. Glossy pages of the wedding gift guides call it the steel year. A shiny alloy of carbon and iron, strong yet malleable, what makes the bones of buildings, supports bridges, and for many years, served as the exoskeleton of automobiles. My partner and I had orbited the Chevy Malibu in the summer heat of the cracked Hertz parking lot that morning, inspecting for the slightest dent in the reflection of the overcast sky. The pen scraped the contract we confidently signed. The vehicle would shuttle us from Maryland to California. Neither of us noticed the balding tires caused by uneven pavement, surprise potholes, and dirt roads.”
I Actually Love Flying Solo with My 5-Year-Old son…
by Christy Tending
“Thoreau had no barrels or scales, nor a camera for seasonally appropriate photo shoots. “Let the most beautiful or the swiftest have it. That should be the 'going' price of apples,” he said. And while his experience with apples was so different from my own, I related to his romance with apples—and also his sadness. “The era of the Wild Apple will soon be past,” he said. “It is a fruit which will probably become extinct in New England.” I wondered if the same would happen with organic orchards. In the meantime, I decided to follow Thoreau’s lead, seeing apple picking as both a utility and something to become immersed in.”
Grief, Joy, and my Intense and Fickle Love
by Zoe Weil
“If the extent of grief is in direct proportion to the level of love, loving so much is dangerous indeed. Why love so deeply at all when the loss can be so debilitating? Why not love them all more manageably with warm, gentle, abiding, but not utterly overwhelming love?
Two Fishing women
by Ryan Odinak
“Holding my pole loosely, I daydream in the steamy heat. I want to take a swim, but it’s not that kind of pond. There are cows in the distance that might be cooling off here later. The water is muddy, and reeds are growing along the shore. I think of the Sunday school story about Moses floating in a basket that his mother hid in the reeds of the Nile River. I wish I had brought my dolly, her blanket, and a little basket so I could float her next to me as I fish.”
Where Does Writing Come From?
by Stephanie Golden
“The source is a mystery, one that isn’t meant to be solved. But pursuing it leads to insight. The important thing is not to get a swelled head, but rather to respect the mystery. Some things haven’t changed in forty-five millennia: that ultimate source isn’t yourself and isn’t under your control. So your job is not to dissect or analyze but just to get out of the way, because then there’s a chance it will speak to you again.”
I Finally Had My Bat Mitzvah — 43 Years Later
by Judy Haveson
“In the summer of 1977, I turned 13 with a mouth full of braces and feathered hair. Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumors’ and The Eagles’ ‘Hotel California’ ruled the radio, and I was a ‘Dancing Queen.’ Most of my Jewish friends had already celebrated or prepared for their bar and bat mitzvahs. Not me. My mother, raised Orthodox, didn’t have a bat mitzvah, so neither did I. Instead, I sat on the sidelines as a guest at many country clubs and roller rink parties. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t mind not going to Hebrew school, but I did feel a little left out. And while I’m sure my friends thought I was lucky not to have to endure it, the grass is always greener. But I still wondered what could have been. Fast forward 43 years.”
🚨Announcements:
📢 New Orleans Review is seeking writing (prose, poetry) and art by Iranian women (trans and non-binary inclusive) for a special issue of the journal, inspired by the current women's revolution, guest edited by writer and filmmaker Naz Riahi.Please submit your work by January 15 and help spread the word.
📢 Attention Publications and writers interested in having published essays considered for inclusion in our weekly curation:
By Thursday of each week, please send to memoirmonday@gmail.com:
The title of the essay and a link to it.
The name of the author, and 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.
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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