Life Story Links: November 15, 2022
“So let us leave words for those we love in order that we may journey with them long after we are gone, and let it not take imminent death for us to find those words and craft a more meaningful legacy.”
—Rabbi Steve Leder
Vintage promotional photo for Automat coffee, courtesy of the Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library Digital Collections.
Memoir-ish media
FAMOUS DIRECTOR’S AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL FILM
“I started thinking, what’s the one story I haven’t told that I’d be really mad at myself if I don’t? It was always the same answer every time: the story of my formative years growing up between 7 and 18.” Steven Spielberg gets personal.
WALKING WITH GHOSTS
“It’s not even so much about my life. I put my life out there so you can think about yours.” Gabriel Byrne on the stage adaptation of his acclaimed 2020 memoir, Walking With Ghosts.
ACCUMULATED MEMORY
“Memory permits us all to have an authentic relationship to our national narrative. These discrete stories and moments, anecdotes and memories, become the building blocks of our collective experience alongside our individual identities.” Ken Burns on the intersection of individual intimacy and national narrative.
AN UNDOCUMENTED CHILDHOOD
“My biggest fear is that with my parents will die the last of my ties to my familial roots. And in response to that fear, to preempt the feelings that might emerge, I am tempted give up and let those ties fade now.” Read a memoir excerpt from Qian Julie Wang.
COMPLICATED FAMILY HISTORY
When Rachel Knight started looking into her family’s genealogy, she came across a history her grandmother had typed years before, and a shocking discovery. She and her brother share this part of their family legacy in Invented Before You Were Born, previewed here:
Lasting legacies
‘HERE AFTER” AI
Digital clones of the people we love could forever change how we grieve. Are we ready for such technology that lets us “speak” to our dead relatives?
IN LOVING MEMORY
Last week I wrote about how I’ve gotten to know more than 50 people I’ve never met this year by editing tributes in their honor—and why this is a worthy endeavor.
GLOBAL ACCESS TO TESTIMONIES
USC Shoah Foundation has completely overhauled its Visual History Archive.“The result is an incredible new resource that humanizes testimony in a way that has never before been possible.”
HER PERSONAL UNDERTAKING
New York teen author Suzette Sheft says, “My father’s death forced me to understand the importance of preserving the stories of our loved ones before it is too late. At 13, I learned that I could not let my family’s stories fade away, no matter the pain that comes with remembering.”
Writing our lives
OVERCOMING STORY-INERTIA
“It takes courage and commitment to begin and maintain the process of creating a written narrative of the past,” New Hampshire–based personal historian Peggy Rosen writes in this piece offering approaches from Guided Autobiography.
WRITING ABOUT THE HARD STUFF
“I always find that if you are hesitant to share something difficult but feel a nudge to do so, you should go for it. It’s probably because you need to share to help yourself or someone else,” writes Rachel Trotter of Evalogue Life.
THROUGH LIVES, THROUGH DEATHS
“I didn’t believe I was a writer yet, but I made a note of it,” Sorayya Khan says of learning her father had 10 years to live. “Writing renders our world and ourselves. It has saved me more than once.”
...and a few more links
How Taylor Swift and Joe Brainard led one writer on an exploration of writing in the present tense
The author of Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret recalls the confusion and joy around a female rite of passage.
A wonderful way to honor veterans’ stories in Ontario
Short takes
