Six New Personal Essays, and Plans to Bring You Much More...
Welcome to Memoir Monday—a weekly newsletter and a quarterly reading series, brought to you by Narratively, The Rumpus, Catapult, Granta, Guernica, Oldster Magazine, and Literary Hub —soon to expand to include additional publications, and in the next few months, original work as well! 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.
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So What Is It About Writers and Emotional Masochism?
by Bonnie Friedman
"Sometimes as I covered the pages of my yellow legal pad a hint of the novel form’s great promise flashed, and there were moments when the very loops of the alphabet seemed to clasp a taut iridescence. It was in an elated and sometimes even ecstatic mood that I crossed the avenue and rode the escalator up toward the bookstore, whose entrance seemed to frame the question hidden within me: am I justified in feeling good about myself, considering what I’ve just written?"
Matthew Shepard Bought an Engagement Ring
by Hay Rose (Photograph by Melissa Solini Photography)
"I first encountered a photo of Matthew Shepard’s wedding band in an online Smithsonian exhibit called “Illegal to Be You: Gay History Beyond Stonewall.” I scrolled through the exhibit’s images: colorful Pride buttons spanning the decades, faded covers of queer publications, old, worn matchbooks from Los Angeles gay bars. And then, on the last page, an image of a gold ring propped inside a ring box with the caption: “Wedding ring, around 1996. Purchased by Matt Shepard while in college in anticipation of a future marriage.” Matt’s name stopped me mid-scroll, my fingertip shaky on the mouse, an inhale that felt like it would never release.”
Pine Street
by Amanda Oliver (Art by Cassandra Osvatics)
"I thought about animals, who do not despair. Who do not want to be human, who make their sounds freely. // I thought about birds, who have their routines, their small joys; lapis sky come again, new nest, soft ground. // This is not what was in your hand."
Confessions of an Angry Middle Aged Lady
by Chelsea G. Summers (Photo from the Unnamed Press Instagram account)
"Dorothy Daniels, the novel’s protagonist, is some things I’m not: a murderer, for one, and a James Beard award winner, for another. She is also many things I am or have been: a massive slut of a certain age, a smart writer, and a funny bitch. In creating Dorothy, I channeled my anger at the publishing industry, at societal ageism, at people who had rebuffed me because of my age, and at a faceless reading public who considered their mom to be the kindler, gentler, most easily dismissed face of female aging. I often wrote in a kind of possessed state, imagining Dorothy standing gloriously akimbo before me, demanding to be heard, demanding to be seen, demanding not merely to be recognized but to be exalted."
Notes from an Island
by Tove Jansson (Artwork © Tuulikki Pietilä 1996)
"The sea was chalk white in every direction as far as the eye could see. It was only then that we noticed the absolute silence. And that we had started whispering. Now came the long wait. I was seized by a new feeling of detachment that was utterly unlike isolation, merely a sense of being an outsider, with no worry or guilt about anything at all. I don’t know how it happened, but life became very simple and I just let myself be happy. Tooti cut a hole in the ice for our garbage. We grew quieter and quieter and went about our daily chores as if we’d each been there alone. It felt very relaxed."
She Ain’t Gonna Last Very Long, Is She?
by Kayla Rae Whitaker (Photo: Old Kentucky State Capitol, by Brent Moore via Flickr)
"Years later, I would realize that mere invisibility wouldn’t have given me much leverage in this situation. Women in these spaces often find themselves an accessory to someone else’s achievement or feeling — an emotional custodian, of sorts. This man wasn’t asking for acquiescence. He wanted me to break, for his gratification, and he wanted it to be a production."
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