Life Story Links: May 5, 2025
“This, perhaps, is the greatest gift of the diary—its capacity to stand as a living monument to our own fluidity, a reminder that our present selves are chronically unreliable predictors of our future values and that we change unrecognizably over the course of our lives.”
—Maria Popova
Vintage postmark and stamp on a Union prisoner envelope, dated Oct. 26, 1864; original public domain image courtesy of the Smithsonian.
Notes on the craft of life writing
THE POWER OF ASKING ‘WHAT IF?’
“I am watching and listening for what makes electricity in me, in the story. Somewhere in this list I always find the next doorway. And that’s all you need: one good detail to wake yourself up.” Ramona Ausubel’s favorite exercise for getting unstuck.
TEXTURE, CONTEXT, DETAILS
Last week I wrote about how to add historical context to your family history—and beyond the six diverse and rich resources I share, there is a wealth of inspiration and specific ideas to ensure your family’s stories are not only remembered, but felt.
ON WITNESSING HER OWN STORY
“Two months ago, I started EMDR therapy. That’s also when I happened to join an 8-week storytelling workshop. It turns out, both have a tendency to invite your past into the present. And when done at the same time, well, it’s a doozy.”
Recent memoirs
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
Leise Hook meditates on what her American and Chinese names reveal about herself in this excerpt from her graphic memoir, Names and Faces.
FAMESICK
“Oddly, from a writer who has been consistently ridiculed for TMI, I wanted to know more,” Kaitlyn Greenidge writes in this piece about what Lena Dunham’s memoir leaves out.
A WRITER’S MEMOIR IN ESSAYS
“Memory is research, because we forget so much, and one recovered detail leads to another. And there’s risk in remembering, deleting sentiment and hope and finding an inclusive truth that is bigger than specific lives and includes us all.”
‘KEEPER OF MY KIN’
“‘I know that at the very heart of our family is this original sin.’ She knew, too, that she would write about it, and she urged her parents to throw nothing out. They bequeathed her an invaluable family archive.” Ada Ferrer tells her family’s Cuba migration trauma story.
SAYING YES TO THE BOOK
“When I started writing a memoir,…sifting through the most devastating thing that had happened to me—my mother’s dementia and her eventual death on my son’s first birthday, the day I was hosting a zebra-themed party for him at our house—I knew I’d have to embrace weirdness in order to actually finish a draft of it.”
From the archives
NEWLY RELEASED JD SALINGER LETTERS
“This exchange provides the clearest primary-source documentation yet of Salinger’s resistance to biographical framing and his determination to control how his identity intersected with his work.”
OBJECTS OF AFFECTION
John Keats’s love letters to Fanny Brawne, dated between 1819 and 1820, have been returned to the owner after being stolen from a Long Island estate in the 1980s.
WHAT WAS YOUR LIFE LIKE?
Every once in a while a local TV segment or radio broadcast shines a light on a resident’s personal history, like this one below. I hope people view this clip not just as an introduction to a fascinating man, but as inspiration to pull out old photos and ask their own family elders for their stories—they’re ALL worth time in the spotlight.
Short takes
