Sylvia Plath, focus groups, and mixed blessings
Welcome back to Memoir Monday—a weekly newsletter and quarterly reading series, brought to you by Narratively, The Rumpus, Catapult, Granta, Guernica, and Literary Hub. 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.
Divestment
by Magin Lasov Gregg (art by L.T. Horowitz)
I used to be a person who didn’t drink, afraid the first sip would turn me into my absentee father. When I came to this university, two states away from my mother’s house in Maryland, I set aside my childhood fear for the message I’d been promised about the power of a woman with a drink in her hand. Such women emanated joie de vivre. They controlled their lives and destinies, the way mother had when she’d sat on our back patio and sipped wine coolers at the end of a workday, when she was still capable of working. As the setting sun blazed around her, she glimmered like a goddess. I worshipped her. Back then, I didn’t know this image of control was an illusion, no matter what we used to prop us up.
Mixed Blessings
by Michele Moses
This feeling of sacredness always comes back to me when I visit Sonoma. When Henri shows me where to pluck tiny, vivid-red strawberries from the garden, or how to find peaches so perfectly ripe that I don’t even have to pick them—they just fall, heavy and soft, into my palm. When I take a bite and the sweet juices are warm from the sun, religious language always pops into my mind. I think, “Ambrosia.” I think, “Eden.”
Sylvia Plath… Nature Writer?
by Marlena Williams
I think of the bears at Lassen taking over camp sites and the otters biting men for swimming too close to their young in waters that not so long ago were briefly and blissfully human free. I think of Sylvia Plath’s grizzly tearing into the jugular of the man who thought he was special. In “The Fifty-Ninth Bear,” Plath seems to be saying that nature will eventually revolt against humanity’s relentless incursion, and when it does, there will indeed be a cry of triumph, but it won’t be coming from human mouths.
How Years of Running Beauty Focus Groups Nearly Destroyed Me
by Katiy Heath
If I had chosen a different career path, if twenty-three-year-old me didn’t sign the non-disclosure agreement and leave my small town in exchange for full-time brand ambassadorship, perhaps I would find myself in one of these seats. I check all the right boxes: female, late twenties, subscribes to a six-step daily skincare regimen. Does not suffer from allergies or serious medical conditions (at least none relevant to this study). But if there is one thing I’ve learned in my decade of moderating, today isn’t about me.
Writers’ Resources
Check out this two-day intensive at Catapult, “Writing Your Family Members as Characters,” led by Alex Marzano-Lesnevich!
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!