The reading series returns!
Welcome back to Memoir Monday—a partnership between Narratively, The Rumpus, Catapult, Longreads, Tin House, Granta, and Guernica. Summer isn’t over yet, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
The Real Community Guidelines: How to Be a True Ally
by Marisa Crane (art by Lea Wells)
I was lying in bed, naked except for my boxer briefs, preparing to post my chapbook cover reveal on my personal Instagram when the Assistant Editor of Animal Heart Press messaged me to tell me that my cover had been flagged by Instagram and removed from the press’s account due to their community standards. I hopped out of bed and ran into the bathroom where my wife, Ashley, was brushing her teeth. I furiously told her what Instagram had done.
On Silence (or, Speak Again)
by Elissa Bassist
He knew I’d write this. He said so years ago. He was a well-known author and editor — at least in certain major cities — and I was an unpaid volunteer for his literary magazine.
I remember we were at a mutual friend’s book party when he told me what I’d do: that I would, one day, “take him down.” Six thoughts banged into my mind: 1. He thinks the worst of me. 2. So he admits he’s done something to me and to others worthy of a public takedown. 3. He knows I am so desperately hurt that I would expose him. 4. How much dirt does he think I have? 5. This is why I shouldn’t go to parties. 6. I won’t be the one to take him down; he’ll take himself down, eventually.
“I’ll show you!” began the imaginary one-sided conversation I had with him later that night when I was alone in my apartment. “I’ll never say one word! To anyone! About anything!”
It was an effective silencing technique.
A Woman Screaming
by Saskia Vogel
I realized that neither revenge nor compulsive storytelling would release me from this pain. I sat with my story, spoke of it only when it felt relevant, like when the PTSD would come for me, teeth bared, at inopportune moments. My behavior would become so odd the only reasonable thing to do was to be open, within reason, about why. Once I ran away from a vendor at a market because he wouldn’t take no for an answer, and I had failed at finding a polite way to end the interaction. As soon as I see a red flag, even in a low-stakes situation, I heed it. This means that sometimes I am no fun, sometimes I have zero chill, sometimes I am quick to judge the person you are dating, and that I am always braced. A basic trust was broken, the one that breaks when your bodily integrity is violated, when you are left to contend with the horror that someone you loved and who said they loved you has in fact been manipulating you all along.
The Long and Forevering Now
by Kate Petersen
That’s how it works, with people and places. You don’t stay somewhere because of what the somewhere represents; you stay because your car gets a flat and out of nowhere the person at the fill station looks at you and says: Here, in this sunshine, we might last forever.
How Theme Parks Kept My Globetrotting Family Grounded
by Lacy Warner (art by Amy Matsushita-Beal)
Two weeks after getting to Bolivia, we would discover that the school system didn’t have the proper facilities for my brother’s educational needs, and he would have to go to boarding school. Eventually, my sister and I would go off to school as well, further distancing ourselves and creating more cracks in our fragile family unit. But, that day at Disney World, we didn’t understand yet that this year had caused permanent damage. We didn’t understand that it would always give us trouble, like a tiny piece of shrapnel left forever in a limb. All we knew for certain was we were going to ride Space Mountain, lights on or off.
Love, Peace, and Taco Grease: How I Left My Abusive Husband and Found Guy Fieri
by Rax King
But loving Guy Fieri was a safe, simple rebellion against the memory of my husband. My husband the preppy man-boy in Sperrys, who never saw a bleached blond man he didn’t sneer at, who pruned at my too-soft body like it was a troublesome topiary, who only believed in loudness when he was employing it against me. On the other hand, Guy Fieri, uncool and bold and tacky as hell, offered such generosity and praise to the restaurant owners on his show. He was uncouth for a cause. The timbre of his voice was the exact opposite of a disappointed murmur and a handful of my hair.
Writers’ Resources
Applications are open for the upcoming Slice Literary Writers’ Conference in New York City. Check it out here!
The Memoir Monday reading series is making its triumphant return in September, as an official Brooklyn Book Festival Bookend event! RSVP here.
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