Thirteen Excellent Personal Essays to Read this Week...
Welcome to Memoir Land—a newsletter now featuring three verticals:
Memoir Monday, a weekly curation of the best personal essays from around the web brought to you by Narratively, The Rumpus, Granta, Guernica, Oldster Magazine, Literary Hub, Orion Magazine, The Walrus, and Electric Literature. (Plus an associated quarterly reading series hosted by Lilly Dancyger.)
First Person Singular, featuring original personal essays. Recently I published “The Sound of Grief” by
, edited by .A new essay is coming soon.
(***Submissions for First Person Singular are now PAUSED. An overwhelming number of new submissions have recently come in. There are more essays in my inbox than I could publish in two years. And I’m too overwhelmed to keep bringing in more to read before I go through all those already in there, even with help from recently appointed contributing editor Katie Kosma.
*Going forward, there will be specific limited submission periods, which I will announce here. You can find submissions guidelines and more on the “About” page, but, again, submissions are currently PAUSED.)
The Lit Lab, featuring interviews and essays on craft and publishing. It is primarily for paid subscribers. Recently I published, “From Memoir to Movie Script,” an interview with The Same River Twice author
.
Essays from partner publications…
Searching for “The One” in the Age of Social Media and Reality TV
by Grace Kennedy
“Reality TV as a medium has, in many ways, provided us with a legitimized form of gossip, a way to peek into the lives of others without the shame traditionally associated with prying. This gossip can feed into our proclivity for finger-pointing, separating the good from the bad, but I think it stems from something more innocent — a question: how are we to live our lives? Are they bad? Am I good? And though we may blush to earnestly ask it, does true love exist?”
Grieving a Lost Future in Sudan
by Nehal El-Hadi
“At dawn, the local mosque sounds the call to prayer, followed by syncopated echoes from other neighbourhoods. A dog barks. The happy magenta of bougainvillea interrupts the streetscape, poking over walls and gates. Women in bright colours contrast with the blue and white of men’s jalabiyas. Sunlight has a different quality here, shadows are harder to find, and the sounds of traffic, street vendors, animals, music, and neighbours travel farther in the air. The city smells of sweat, sandalwood, diesel, and frankincense. It sounds like livingness and worship. ”
The Ethics of Writing Hard Things in Family Memoir
by Kelly McMasters
“In nonfiction, the narrator is a version of you, but is not completely you—that would be impossible, even if one tried. The same is true when I write my children on the page. They are changing so quickly; one day, recently, my oldest son was simply taller than me. I understood this must have occurred gradually, centimeter by centimeter, but it still took me by complete surprise.”
Relearning How to Perform Family
by
“An actress can be replaced with an understudy. But losing the lead character in a drama leaves a hole in the storyline. And my mother wasn’t just the star of our family play. She was the director and choreographer as well…Which meant that once she was gone (my father had died 11 years earlier), it wasn’t clear how we could reconstruct any of this. Or, perhaps worse, if anybody really wanted to. Because underneath the numerous enactments of family togetherness lay something far less harmonious.”
Particulate Matter
by Amitava Kumar
“The last time I was in Delhi it was hot. So hot that there were reports of overheated birds falling from the sky. But now it was winter. It was foggy outside, the air smelling acrid. I had brought masks; they were no use. Very quickly I developed a sore throat and then a cough. When I complained about this to my publisher, he showed me a news item on his phone. ‘Weather trends show capital no longer gets benign fog.’ Delhi’s air was described as carrying ‘a large share of chlorides, sulphates and nitrates, and ions of calcium and ammonium’. I asked a friend of mine about the phrase ‘particulate matter’ – I had heard the term used to describe what gave the atmosphere its dark colour. My friend said it would be a good title for a Delhi painting.”
The Sound of Grief
by (edited by )
“Whenever I miss my father, I also miss my younger self, the girl in the video with the pigtails, the one who had the freedom to explore, and was unfamiliar with the responsibilities of adulthood. People say that grief is the response to the loss of a loved one but I think it is also the response to the loss of the past self. ”
Essays from around the web…
A Connection with a Stranger Reminded Me How to Play
by Ethan Gilsdorf
“There’s a leftover plastic lid of a paper to-go cup on the table, and I watch him as he fiddles with it. I meet his gaze for a moment and widen my eyes, showing interest in what he’s doing. He smiles back. No words exchanged. What he does next is unexpected, and fundamental, and primal: With his fingertips, he flicks the plastic lid towards me, skittering it across the ice-smooth tabletop like a hockey puck. The lid stays on the table and skids to a stop in front of me. Without thinking, without wondering what his response might be, I look at him, lock eyes, and zip the lid back across the table.”
Blue Hair and Deadname
by Birch Rosen
“‘Doctor’s offices, huh?’ a voice from behind me says….I don’t have casual conversations with strangers. I crave the ease of connection with the cashier, the barber, the person in front of me in line, but it’s rarely my experience. Most small talk I could make (what I do for work; what I’ve been up to, today or ever) is only one or two questions removed from my transness. It’s not that the topic is off limits, just that I’m selective about who I allow to engage with me about it….But I turn around in my chair, remembering for the first time the specifics I observed about the only other person left in the room with me. Blue Hair here has instantly become my new best friend, a witness who actually understands. With Kevin gone, this waiting room is a two-person trans space.”
The True Image of the Past Flits By: Walter Benjamin and the Brain on Alzheimer's
by Maya Bernstein-Schalet
“When telling the stories of her life, my grandma colors the past with the now, recounting a history that could never fit neatly into the mere linear nature of time…Memory rarely fits into a neat relation of history and now. Part of being human is the bending and shaping of our past to fit the narratives we craft about ourselves in our present moment. But Alzheimer’s patients live in a constant dialectical image, even more so than the rest of us. Alzheimer’s kills neurons bit by bit, erasing bits and pieces of memory networks but not all at once. As the brain shrinks, so does history, the story of life that shapes everything about who we are.”
Hair and Social Standards: Is Beauty Really in the Eye of the Beholder?
by Wendy Mages
“Is beauty truly in the eye of the beholder? Perhaps, the beholder’s perception of what is beautiful is, in reality, the internalization of a construct defined (or dictated) by the dominant culture, societal norms, and the beauty industry. This autoethnographic narrative, focusing on a single aspect of appearance, reflects my perceptions of the subtle and not so subtle ways societal and cultural definitions of beauty have influenced my life. It describes how ideas of what is and is not fashionable, as depicted in popular media, can indelibly affect one’s self-perception and identity. In addition, it details the pressures to conform to idealized notions of what is attractive and acceptable and the concomitant costs, both financial and emotional, of conforming to others’ aesthetic standards.”
My Daughter Wasn't Expected To Live Past 31. A New Drug Saved Her — But There's 1 Big Catch
by Abby Alten Schwartz
“Every age Sammie reaches that my friends’ girls never will is a blessing and a gut-punch. I shared my thoughts with a friend, referring to my conflicting emotions as a kind of survivor’s guilt. My friend pointed out that I haven’t survived anything. What is the term, then, for feeling simultaneously thankful my child has been granted the gift of a future and loath to celebrate too loudly?”
Finger Eleven
by Anna Rollins
“My mother’s love language was worry. She chanted 'be careful' like an incantation when we climbed trees or rode bikes around the block. Sometimes she said it multiple times, reflexively, like a plea or prayer. I think she believed that voicing her fears served as a sort of protection, an umbrella over our vulnerabilities.Maybe her worry did keep me safe – but it also infected me with anxiety.
Old Nights
by Anuradha Prasad
“If I unravel again, I hope to do it better. There’s a half-hearted, pitiful wretchedness to my unraveling. I could’ve been an icon, a patron saint, something cultish to lost youth instead of merely a has-been insomniac.
🚨Announcements:
📢 Looking to meet some writing goals and build your community this summer? Summer of Support is an 11-week, online group coaching program for writers of all genres and experiences, facilitated by Resort founder Catherine LaSota. This low cost program starts today, Monday, June 5, 2023 and includes new mini workshops every week, plus live group coaching and Q&As with this star-studded guest list: K-Ming Chang, Matt Ortile, Greg Mania, Tajja Isen, Denne Michele Norris, and Leigh Stein. All live programs are recorded, so you don't have to miss a thing, even if you've got a busy schedule! A payment plan is available for sign up by May 24. More information and sign up here.
📢 From Writing Class Radio: Join our First Draft writing groups Tuesdays 12-1 (ET) and/or Thursdays 8-9 p.m. (ET). Participants will write to a prompt and share (if you want) what you wrote. Sign up to get the Zoom link. First session is free.
📢 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.