what I'm reading (fall 2023)

It’s been awhile since my last reading update. And I’m still devouring memoir like donuts fresh out of the fryer.

I just finished journalist Prachi Gupta’s They Called Us Exceptional, and while I found the POV jarring (it’s told as though to Gupta’s mother), the story of being othered as an immigrant, the tension of mental illness in a demanding father, unreliable sibling and subservient mother, is compelling.

Two other memoirs blew me away with their vivid, immediate, funny and honest prose: Strong Female Character by Fern Brady, about a Scottish woman discovering her own autism after years of blindly muddling through life, not knowing why she was (is) as she is (was).

And Leg, by Greg Marshall. He’s devastatingly honest and compassionate about his own physical limitations and his vibrant family and ultimate losses. Hashtag-writing-goals for this writer.

I also want to mention Joan Wickersham’s The Suicide Index, incisively and delicately written within what could be a hokey framework, but manages to iteratively tell of a father’s suicide and a family’s unraveling.

I also had the wonderful experience of reading 3 novels quickly, fast because I adored Jen Beagin’s writing, but with the dread of finishing such wonderfully-written prose: Pretend I’m Dead, Big Swiss (a sex therapist’s transcriptionist falls in love with a client) and Vacuum in the Dark.

That’s it for now. I’ve got 6 more books going on Libby. Happy reading!

memoir seeking agent update 4

While bsp was on hiatus, two more agent declines came in.
Both were quite nice but ultimately form letter rejections, which is for me a measure of where I might be in the process (I started publishing short stories more quickly when the rejections became more detailed and personal).
So it's probably time to revisit and hard-edit my proposal.

I'm re-reading a biography of Sylvia Plath, which I won't name because I find the author treats Plath with unnecessary harshness. Reading about Plath's agony over publications, rejections and general literary frustrations is heartening, and terrifying, because if this literary icon struggled, what fate awaits lesser lights like me?
*
Meanwhile, the world is on fire and Arizonans are in burn units after falling on hot concrete.

memoir seeking agent update 3

This week's memoir seeking agent update is: no update.
I sent off two more queries last weekend and right now it's cricket chirps.
I know the odds are steep. Last night I browsed a few "best books of 2023" articles and added probably twenty books to my Libby queue. There is a LOT of good writing out there, I mean dazzlingly good.
I'm reading as fast as I can -- including a bio of George Michael and his nearly fanatical belief in his own success -- and also wrote two new story drafts this week.
*
I also think about Lil Nas X and his confidence.
Yeah, I'm gonna take my horse to the old town road
I'm gonna ride 'til I can't no more
I'm gonna take my horse to the old town road
I'm gonna ride (Kio, Kio) 'til I can't no more
---
Can't nobody tell me nothing
You can't tell me nothing
Can't nobody tell me nothing
You can't tell me nothing

how often do you feel joy?

I'm continuing to read memoirs that stun and dazzle.

Charles M. Blow's Fire Shut Up in my Bones, about growing up Black and bisexual in the American South. He writes directly and powerfully about being abused by a family member, not minimizing the horror, finding the grace and truth within himself. His realization of his skills as a writer is also beautifully and humbly written. 

"These were things that I had to learn to fold tight so that no one could read them. Even now it seemed to me that the world was full of boys like Chester and men like Paul--the ones who looked at me and saw a chance, not a child."

"I had to resort to the most useful and dangerous lesson a damaged child ever learns--how to lie to himself."

"There is nowhere to hide in a small house. I had to make a room within rooms, a safe place midway in the mind, behind seeing and before knowing. There I could resurrect memories and bury secrets."

I'm also about finished with Erika Krouse's Tell Me Everything, which combines true crime, an amateur p.i, a dirty football program and a complicated mom-daughter-abuser triangle. This one hits so close to home that I can only read a chapter at a time. Krouse references psychiatrist Daniel Siegel who writes about making sense of one's past, and people who tell the same trauma story over and over. I'm going to read Siegel and see if it can bring some thoughtfulness to one of my support groups. 

Anyway, to the question: how often do you feel joy? For me, infrequently. But I'm hoping a weekend of music and friends and nature might bring me some.

in the dream house...wisdom

I read Carmen Maria Machado's memoir, "In the Dream House" in June.

I must have snapshotted a half-dozen pages. She wisely structured this painful story of abuse into snackable short chapters, constructing a narrative that builds a story with plenty of cracked windows and ajar doors to peek through. 

Here are a few passages I want to keep here and in my heart.

Anyone who knows your name can break you in two

the necessary sacredness of private space

memoir is an act of resurrection