Memories Matter
Featured blog Posts
READ THE LATEST POSTS
Life Story Links: April 9, 2023
This week’s curated roundup includes conversation with memoirists of note, life writing book recommendations, and recent family history reads and tips.
“And trust me when I say—again—that no one wants to read the story of your whole life, not even your sweet, forbearing mother who thinks everything you do is fascinating.”
—Rachael Herron
Vintage photo of women having a picnic on the beach in Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York, circa 1905. Photograph originally from the Detroit Publishing Company, courtesy of The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Digital Collection.
Memoirs and more
AN HOUR WITH MASTER MEMOIRISTS
This delightful conversation between Beth Kephart and Abigail Thomas about her latest memoir, Still Life at Eighty, includes thoughts on juxtaposition, chronology, being an intuitive writer, getting unstuck, and how the body remembers.
STORIES OF PERSEVERANCE AND TRIUMPH
Three debut memoirists chart paths of chaos and survival: reviews of Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton’s Black Chameleon, Laura Cathcart Robbins’s Stash, and Christine Barker’s Third Girl From the Left.
MAPPING HISTORY
“A lot of survivors want to tell their stories, and not everybody can write a book. Not everybody actually knows how to tell a story.” A look at an interactive mapping platform sharing stories of adoptees from the Sixties Scoop.
HIDING BEHIND PHOTOGRAPHY
“So much has to be added to still pictures, no matter how evocative, in order to tell a story,” Carl Rollyson writes in this thought-provoking review of Janet Malcolm’s “oblique” memoir, Still Pictures.
“OUR HOMES ON INDIGINEOUS LANDS”
Mali Bain’s new book uses family history to thoughtfully interrogate Canada’s settler past and ask: What stories are we passing on to our children?
A NEW DIMENSION
“Perhaps I am an invisible man lurking behind my father’s face, waiting to be born. And, eventually, to grow into my father’s face. Not exactly, but somewhat.” Viet Thanh Nguyen ruminates on the cover design of his new memoir.
Records of lives well lived
MEMORIES, ERASED
“I was the only historian of our short-lived universe and now it was lost for ever.” Our phones and computers have become hosts for our pasts. What happens when the backups fail?
NYC PHOTOG JAMEL SHABAZZ’S INSPIRATION
“When I would go to [my uncles’] homes, and my grandfather’s house, the first thing I would do was hit the photo album up, because it allowed me to time-travel and get a greater understanding of who they were.”
VINTAGE WEDDING ALBUM
Lest we think that only digital representations of our memories can get lost, I am sharing this heartwarming snippet of a lost wedding album being reunited with the family decades later—a scenario that plays out all too often:
Media recommendations
DEAR DIARY
Suleika Jaouad writes about how to develop a “sticky” journaling practice and shares some evergreen writing prompts to help you get in the flow.
FROM OBIT TO MINI-MEMOIR?
Last week I shared five life writing tips derived from the book Yours Truly: An Obituary Writer’s Guide to Telling Your Story by James R. Hagerty (which I recommend regardless of your writing level or experience).
EXPLORING INTERGENERATIONAL MEMORIES
In “The Memory Generation,” podcast host Rachael Cerrotti “sets an example of how the stories we inherit can initiate insightful conversations that help us not only reflect on the memories that define us but also build upon our capacity for empathy.”
Miscellaneous
THE LEGACY OF FOOD
“It happens gradually, the relinquishing of one’s past, and something that once felt so potent, one day simply stops being as important.” Finding memories of a distant home through milo toast in this excerpt from Rachel Heng’s The Great Reclamation (a novel that feels memoir-ish in the best possible way).
FOLLOWING THE CLUES
“Elvira and her brothers, Ricard and Ramón, were left at a train station in Barcelona aged two, four and five. As an adult, when Elvira decided to look for her parents, she discovered a family history wilder than anything she had imagined.” A mystery solved through childhood memories and DNA.
...and a few more links
Short takes
Life Story Links: March 28, 2023
Dawn Roode curates the best of what she’s read this week on the topics of family history, life stories, memoir writing (and reading), and leaving a legacy.
“The great stories are alive.”
—Ariel Burger
Vintage photo of a young girl, with other children in background, in a vacant lot behind tenement housing in East Harlem, New York City. Photograph by Rómulo Lachatañeré, courtesy of Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library Digital Collections.
Preserving our legacies
“BOOKS HAVE MY HEART”
Last week I answered a question I’m often asked: Why life story books, and why coffee table books in particular? Why not video? Why not audio?
PARTS UNSPOKEN
“It requires a certain level of trust for someone to be vulnerable and share their story. The person at the center of this exercise becomes the subject of their own life.” A look at educational biography.
MEMORIAL REFLECTIONS
How do you want to be remembered?, Patricia Charpentier, a Florida–based life writing teacher, asks in this short piece written after a funeral stirs questions of legacy.
NARRATING OUR LIVES
“Over the years, I have realized a parenting inversion: Just as we narrate our children's lives when they're quite young, our children eventually narrate our lives when we're quite old.”
First person reads worth your time
WHEN A ROAD ENDS
“I wrote the kernel of this piece over ten years ago, and still work to make sense of parts of this story,” Marjorie Turner Hollman writes in this piece on life-changing events in her own life, and lessons learned along the way.
UNLIKELY OASIS OF PEACE
“I am sometimes not sure which is the more remarkable: that life lives up to great paintings, or that great paintings live up to life.” This excerpt from Patrick Bringley’s memoir takes place at The Cloisters in upper Manhattan.
HOW WE SEE AGE
“The first person who portrayed old age for me was my grandmother, my father’s mother, Erma King Aldrich, the woman who bore my last name, the woman I called Nana, the only woman in my family who made me feel loved.”
Memoir notes
THE ‘FIRST JOB MEMOIR’
In this piece looking at the evolution of the “first job memoir,” one author “sees her job as simply a job, rather than as a crucible for forging her identity,” while others take different approaches to their work narratives.
SELF PORTRAIT
“For a writer so relentlessly suspicious of the accounts we give of ourselves, and so attuned to the meager defenses we muster against self-exposure, memoir is a risky medium.”
ON THE THEME OF AGING
“The mystery of what makes you and your childhood self the same person despite a lifetime of changes is, after all, one of the most interesting questions of philosophy.” Grace Paley on the art of growing older.
...and a few more links
“4 powerful reasons to write your family history even if no ane else cares”
An intriguing look at how an admired figure in the literary world essentially forged his identity
It’s never too late to solve your adoption mystery
Short takes
Life Story Links: March 14, 2023
This week's curated roundup includes a quick guide to RootsTech 2023, lots of conversation about reading and writing memoir, plus notes on legacy and research.
“What is writing but we put our heart on a piece of paper and then we hand those pages to somebody else?”
—Megan Stielstra
Vintage St. Patrick’s Day postcard
Reading memoir…
MORE THAN A LIFE ON THE PAGE
“Sometimes, a writer can use more than their own recollections to tell a personal story.” John Hendrickson, author of the reported memoir Life on Delay, offers up six memoirs that go beyond memories.
FORMATIVE FRIENDSHIP
“By the time I was a junior at college, I’d already met everyone I cared to know.” This short excerpt from Will Schwalbe’s new memoir, We Should Not Be Friends, is as irresistible as the unlikely friendship he chronicles.
“STILL LIFE AT 80”
“Sometimes the present is interrupted by a memory so vivid that I am in two places at once.... These are the moments in which past and present are fused. I like to imagine them as little paperweights, holding my life together before it all blows away,” Abigail Thomas writes in her new memoir. Read a review here.
…and writing memoir
A LITERARY QUADRANGLE
“Only you and I know who wrote this book,” Gloria Swanson said to Wayne Lawson at a launch party for her memoir, Swanson on Swanson, in 1980. The ghostwriter sets the record straight four decades later.
THE SELF, REVISED
“It’s the human imperative, this piecing together of a life. And so, word by word, we lay down our tracks.” Dani Shapiro on discovering that her family’s secret was embedded in her writing before even she knew the truth.
TO BETRAY OR NOT TO BETRAY?
“I had anchored myself in the why—not just why I’m writing the book, but also why I included certain details.” This story about the ethics of writing about others has a paywall, but you can get a free trial subscription if you’re interested. (I am a paid subscriber to The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad and highly recommend it both for her heartfelt, raw first person writing and her interviews and writing prompts.)
HISTORY AND IMAGINATION, CONVERGED
“A writer is interested only in his origins. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? A writer wants to know, at every level, where it is he comes from.” Chris McCormick on visiting the Armenia he had brought to the page via his imagination.
FICTION’S BLURRY BORDERS
“Now I think we all are...living our lives and making up stories at the same time, our brains running smoothly down both tracks.” Jesse Lee Kercheval tries to figure out where life ends and fiction begins.
Sending messages across time
BEQUEATH YOUR VALUES
Last week I shared recommendations for resources to help write your ethical will—including a nitty-gritty workbook and a book with 12 guiding questions and a wealth of inspirational examples.
LOVE LANGUAGE
After her father’s cancer diagnosis, Google Translate became Mium Gleeson’s tool for survival—and then, remembrance. Read her beautiful meditation on keeping her dad close.
Contextualizing research
“A WILD ARCHIVE”
Imagine being one of the researchers invited to sort though a centuries-old cache of undelivered mail, all seized from merchant ships during wars from the 1650s to the early 19th century? Here’s a fascinating look at what some of the letters reveal.
UNCOVERING AN 1860S NEIGHBORHOOD
As a visitor to NYC’s Tenement Museum, I have wondered at the wealth of research that goes into creating the stories of the everyday families they highlight. Listen in as a museum VP walks through some behind-the-scenes research into a new exhibit:
RootsTech recap
The world’s largest annual family history conference was held earlier this month and a flurry of posts around the interwebs chronicled the goings-on. Here are a few highlights:
“Making family history discoveries is one thing. Learning how to craft those discoveries into stories that will capture the attention of the next generation is another matter entirely.” Watch the hour-long presentation, “The Anatomy of a Story,” by Crista Cowen, here.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the organizers of RootsTech, share recent research that provides some empirical evidence that learning family history has a positive influence on adolescent identity development. Read the study abstract here.
Ancestry announced the launch of Storymaker Studio, a new suite of tools on the Ancestry app.
There is a rich back catalog of classes that you can watch on-demand at the RootsTech site.
You can also virtually browse the exhibitors that were in-person at the event this year.
...and a few more links
From The Atlantic: “20 Biopics That Are Actually Worth Watching”
A look at a new documentary, Film, the Living Record of Our Memory
iMemories named to Fast Company’s annual list of the world’s most innovative companies for 2023
“Stories my father told me shaped my life. Later, I learned they weren’t true.”
On this episode of Things That Matter with Martie McNabb: A pen, a purpose, and a passion
A publisher who was arrested while preparing to release an unauthorized biography of Xi Jinping has been freed after serving a 10-year sentence.
Boy recreates grandmother’s photos from 1955 to help her after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's
Vintage photos show what life was like in the White House during John F. Kennedy’s presidency.
Short takes
Life Story Links: February 28, 2023
This week's curated roundup has a focus on first-person narratives and how they inform history, plus stories on artifacts of memory, memoir, and family photos.
“I have always encouraged collecting memories—it helps people form a connection with something that makes their lives more meaningful.”
—Martha Stewart
Vintage illustration of diners at the Hotel St. Regis in New York City, circa 1905, courtesy of The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Picture Collection, The New York Public Library Digital Collections.
First person narratives, for the record
“AMERICA’S MISSING STORIES”
Julieanna Richardson has been preserving Black Americans’ first-person stories for decades. The digital archive she created “had grown so vast, the collection so significant, the Library of Congress agreed to become its permanent repository.” Explore The History Makers archive here, and learn about Richardson’s extraordinary journey here and below:
SCHOLARLY RESEARCH INTO FAMILY MEMORY
A new study “focuses on how memory is constructed, communicated, accomplished, negotiated, and hindered in the family context” in a changing media environment.
PANDEMIC PROJECT
“Most Americans think they know the story of the pandemic. But when I immersed myself in a Covid oral-history project, I realized how much we’re still missing.” One reporter delves into the stupefyingly large archive.
“IT IS MY JOB TO SHARE OUR STORIES”
“Lately, I’ve wondered how my son will view Black History Month. I don’t want him to feel like his history is an aside. I want him to know that his history is a part of who he is.”
Artifacts of collective memory
A NEW LIFE FOR HEIRLOOMS
Don’t let your family mementos sit in boxes collecting dust, advises Clémence Scouten. On the blog for The Biographers Guild of Greater New York, she shares tips to curate family artifacts and preserve their stories in a book.
LOST AND FOUND
The result of one man’s extraordinary efforts, the Museum of Lost Memories helps reunite misplaced family mementos with their owners. Listen in to “the Sherlock of TikTok” as he describes his why:
FOLLOWING THE VISUAL CLUES
A photo album found on the shrapnel-strewn beaches of Okinawa in 1945 made an incredible journey across decades and an ocean, with serendipitous help from a friend of a friend of a friend…
THE BIGGER PICTURE
Even photos with no context submitted by community members of Black Archives are “still filled with stories. I think it’s so beautiful when people recognize something in that photograph that resonates with them, and they think back to their childhood...”
REVEALING RESEARCH, RESPONSIBLE STORYTELLING
“To create the narrative, I had the mindset of ‘start chipping away at the archives.’ In the end, we wanted to display the truth being an equally painful and uplifting story because that is the history of the continuous battle for racial equality.”
Memoir through various lenses
ART APPRECIATION
“My heart is full, my heart is breaking, and I badly want to stand still a while,” Patrick Bringley writes in his memoir, All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me, reviewed here.
FOOD AS A PORTAL TO THE PAST
“There’s a cozy vibe, like a church supper cookbook (with famous congregants),” writes this reviewer of My First Popsicle: An Anthology of Food and Feelings edited by Zosia Mamet, a collection of personal essays that explore memories and identity through food.
A HOUSE WITH MEMORIES
On a recent meandering through the archives of The New Yorker, I encountered this wonderful piece by Jamaica Kincaid. “It is only now that I can think of the luxury of a man’s children choosing to dispose of the substantial things he might have left for them, choosing to keep only the recipes for pies and cuttings of old roses—choosing memories, as opposed to the real thing, the house.”
THE CHALLENGES OF PERSONAL NARRATIVE
“I’ve been writing about myself and my family for two decades, but masking it in fiction. And that made it easy. But now I’m putting myself out on Front Street. Who do I write about? Who don’t I write about?” After 15 books, Bernice McFadden says her first memoir is the most difficult thing she’s ever written.
Miscellaneous
RECIPE FOR SUCCESS
Last week I shared a detailed primer on how to create your own heritage cookbook, from recipe gathering and testing to editing, designing, and printing your family cookbook.
TWO JEWISH KIDS AND AN IDEA
“From time to time, Joe would pause and look in the mirror, striking a pose or screwing up his face he imagined a character would make, then go back to his paper and try to re-create it.” The bedroom origins of Superman.
AUTOMATED “MEMORIES”
“When your smartphone tosses up a photo memory, it’s a bit of a crapshoot. Sometimes you get to…enjoy a compilation of your children’s birthday parties over the years. Other times, it’s heartache.”
...and a few more links
March is Women’s History Month, and this year’s theme is “Celebrating Women Who Tell Our Stories.”
an interview with Annie Brewster, co-author of The Healing Power of Storytelling: Using Personal Narrative to Navigate Illness, Trauma, and Loss
Review: NYC Storefronts by Joel Holland, a book of colorful pencil drawings of well- and lesser-known mom and pop shops around greater New York.
Arthur Balfour’s parents’ love letters published by the National Records of Scotland
Read an excerpt from the new memoir Sink: A Memoir by Joseph Earl Thomas.
Short takes
Life Story Links: February 14, 2023
Insights from the diaries of two very different writers, new memoirs, and tips for writing your life stories in this week's curated roundup for memory-keepers.
“Love is listening.”
—Titus Kaphar
Vintage Valentine’s Day card
Personal stories, family history explored
WRITE THE WAY YOU TALK
“Any life story book passed down to the next generation is a gift—but it's an even better gift if it sounds like the real you.” Last week I wrote about how to write with your authentic voice and why it’s so powerful.
UNLOCKING THE PAST
“The power of understanding our own personal history, and then how that connects to a larger story of who we are, I think that gets to why [the Virginia Untold initiative] is so important.”
WHERE ARE THE WOMEN?
“Most women on the family trees of the wealthiest families are reduced to little more than vital statistics.” Here’s how to elevate female role models in your family story.
LISTEN IN
As part of a season nine initiative, the Finding Your Roots team has been holding free national conversation events online. The most recent one, below, centered on how important it is to speak with older generations, and work with younger generations, to record and preserve family history. Register for upcoming events and see archived talks here.
Notable memoirs, diaries & biographies
FROM HER ISOLATION JOURNALS
Suleika Jaouad on living in the layers of our memories, “cracking the spine of a new journal to fill with very nascent inklings for a new book,” and inspiring love.
A RETURN TO HIS ORIGINAL LANGUAGE
“A record of his abortive attempts to transfer to the page what he called ‘the tremendous world I have in my head,’ [Kafka’s diaries] contain much that is fragmentary and disjointed, stumbling and stuttering.”
MEDITATIONS ON LIVING
“There is value in reading death memoirs, if we can take them on their own terms,” Kristen Martin writes in this review of Your Hearts, Your Scars by Adina Talve-Goodman, stacking the title up against other notable memoirs by the dying.
“A SCRAPBOOK OF IMPERFECT PEOPLE LIVING IMPERFECT LIVES”
Pamela Anderson, a celebrity whose image was all about her looks, takes control of her own narrative in a memoir and documentary that are complementary, “curated artifacts of a life lived.”
A TREASURE
This interview with author Angie Cruz is a delight, so if you’d like to listen, rewind the below audio to the beginning. Otherwise, pop in at the 37:30 mark to hear co-host Kate Gibson talk briefly about ““the most meaningful book [she’s] read in the last year.”
Another episode of The Book Case that may interest you: “Anna Quindlen Wants You to Write” from last year.
...and a few more links
Viola Davis confronts two Americas in Finding Your Roots episode.
“Seung-hwan and Seon-bu,” a beautiful, short first-person piece by Elliott Pak
Appeals to save Trove, a major digital archive of Australian history
Up for auction: a collection of Princess Diana’s personal letters to two of her closest friends
In Pursuance of Meanings: a memoir masquerading as a monograph
Short takes
Life Story Links: January 31, 2023
This week's curated reading list has a host of recent articles of interest to family history lovers, memoir writers (and readers), and modern memory-keepers.
“We treasure the voices of our ancestors; we warm ourselves with the worn fragments that we have of the stories of their lives. We ourselves will be ancestors one day.”
—Pat Schneider
Vintage photo of children with a puppy in New York City circa mid-twentieth century. Photograph by Morris Huberland, courtesy of The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library Digital Collections.
Memoirs of note
HER OWN PERSONAL ARCHIVE
Janet Malcolm “knew better than most that the only thing scarier than writing about oneself is letting someone else wrest control of the narrative.”
“THE HAUNTING OF PRINCE HARRY”
“The unlettered Prince [Harry] has gained in life what Hamlet achieved only in death: his own story shaped on his own terms, thanks to the intervention of a skillful Horatio,” aka ghostwriter, J. R. Moehringer.
On permanence and legacy
AMASSING DIGITAL MEMORIES
“My intentions to document my life are pure, but as a millennial mother, if I can’t get a grip on photo organization and the sheer volume of images I snap, will all my efforts be for naught?”
HISTORY, ERASED
“To see her legacy in tatters at my feet was…a reminder of how vulnerable elderly people are when it comes to relying on successive generations to treasure what they have to pass down.”
Writing our lives
WRITING FOR THEME
“When we are our stories’ protagonists, we must project our first-person experience on that larger canvas of universal experience to show...how it connects with readers’ experience or lives.”
PRODUCTIVE PROCRASTINATION?
While researching your memoir is an intensive—and necessary—endeavor, getting caught up in a never-ending web of research will only delay your writing: Ideas for continuing (and walking away from) your personal research.
VALUE OF SELF REFLECTION
“Even if no one ever reads or listens to what you preserve, you gain from thinking about what you’re doing with your life. It isn’t too late to improve the narrative.”
WHICH MEMOIR FORMAT?
Marjorie Turner Hollman, a Massachusetts–based personal historian, shares her wisdom about how defining why you are writing a memoir will help you determine your memoir’s structure.
THE CRAFT OF MEMOIR
Award-winning memoirist and writing teacher Beth Kephart joins Ronit Plank in conversation about what distinguishes a memoir in essays, the ethics of telling other people’s stories, and much more in this episode of the Let’s Talk Memoir podcast:
Holocaust remembrance
LAST CHANCE TESTIMONY INITIATIVE
The USC Shoah Foundation plans to interview several Holocaust survivors a week at its first-ever in-person ‘memory studio’ in Los Angeles.
IN 3-D
“When we talk about millions, that’s a statistic. When we talk about one person, that’s a story.” A Miami Holocaust survivor records holographic testimony for the planned Boston Holocaust Museum.
...and a few more links
StoryTerrace’s Rutger Bruining on why it’s important to document your family history
New narrative-driven video game offering hinges on memory-keeping theme
“If You Heard What I Heard”: True stories of Holocaust survivors as told by their grandchildren
Nikole Hannah-Jones on infusing her family’s personal story into The 1619 Project docuseries
Short takes
Life Story Links: January 17, 2023
This week's roundup leans heavy into memoirs—including a bunch from well-known writers and editors—but includes plenty of wisdom for everyday memory-keepers, too.
“So what if your story of a small, unremarkable life is read only by you, in some quiet corner, or by one or two people you love and trust to understand? If those are people who can learn from and value it, isn’t that a notable achievement, a valuable audience?”
—Anna Quindlen
Vintage portrait of Dr. and Mrs. Martin Luther King Jr., by Herman Miller, originally appeared in the World Telegram & Sun, 1964, courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Going deep
CHANNELING SOMEONE ELSE’S VOICE
"Beyond doing the writing, a good ghostwriter also encourages subjects to go beyond what they might say on their own." A look at how ghostwriters craft books in someone else’s voice, without leaving fingerprints.
TO BE CONTINUED
There are a variety of reasons—including traumatic memories—when pausing a personal history interview is the best course of action. Last week I wrote about when it makes sense to honor the silence.
SILENCE—A BETTER OPTION?
Amidst the maelstrom of coverage of Prince Harry’s blockbuster memoir, Spare, this short op-ed by Patti Davis—daughter of Ronald Reagan and author of a book she says she wishes she hadn’t written—stands out.
This and that
PASSING ON INTANGIBLE ASSETS
An ethical will “can be a meaningful component of a comprehensive legacy plan.” Susan Turnbull, a personal legacy advisor in Massachusetts, writes about why estate planners should introduce their clients to such legacy letters.
DEAR READER…
In the latest blog for the Biographers Guild of Greater New York, Anna Brady Marcus offers up six ways to use letters in your memoir projects.
PHOTO ACCOUNTING
From how our photo taking was impacted during the pandemic to how many images the average smartphone user has on their device, these statistics, facts, and predictions around our picture-taking habits are a lot to take in.
The branches of our family trees
FAMILY LORE, NOW DOCUMENTED
On the season premiere of Finding Your Roots, actor Edward Norton learned that Pocahontas is his 12th great-grandmother. You can watch the full episode here.
STRANGER THAN FICTION
Ancestry released survey findings that half of Americans know more about families from their favorite TV shows than their own family tree—and 53% can’t name all four of their grandparents. Watch an episode of their entertaining YouTube series “2 Lies and a Leaf” featuring Modern Family’s Sarah Hyland:
Writers, editors, themselves
RECORDING IT ALL
Allen “Ginsberg’s auto poesy gives us his life not merely as a collection of facts, but as an imminent reality—there for you to judge, worship, reject, envy, study, or imitate as you will.” How the poet’s self-recording sessions informed his work.
“AN EXERCISE IN INTIMATE BIOGRAPHY”
Darryl Pinckney’s memoir of his writing teacher and friend Elizabeth Hardwick “braids together Pinckney’s memories of Hardwick and her circle of New York intellectuals with his own coming-of-age story.”
THE EDITOR WHO EDITED SALINGER
“Writing about this archive is like trying to push the whole career of Gus Lobrano into a day at the office. Have I even mentioned that he was descended from pirates in New Orleans?”
“STILL PICTURES: ON PHOTOGRAPHY AND MEMORY”
“The usually brazen journalist seems intimidated by her past; perhaps thinking it held the power to wound her.” In her new memoir, Janet Malcom “often dances right up to the line of major reckonings, but before she arrives, she shyly walks off the stage.”
KAFKA’S “TAGEBÜCHER”
A new English translation of Kafka’s diaries “illuminate a great deal about his world as a German-speaking Jewish writer in Prague...[but] they also go beyond our interest in the man and his time: On every page they reveal the writer at work.”
BETWEEN THE COVERS
Influential biographer Robert Caro and editor Robert Gottlieb have worked together for more than 50 years. Turn Every Page, a documenteray exploring their relationship, is “a great profile, filled with wit, affection and detailed stories.”
...and a few more links
Short takes
Life Story Links: January 3, 2023
A curated roundup overflowing with recent pieces about memoir writing, personal history preservation, food heritage & family stories—which will you read first?
“Love is listening.”
—Titus Kaphar
Vintage photo of kids on a cold New York City day, created by Morris Huberland between 1940-1979, courtesy of The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library Digital Collections.
Meditations on memoir
TURNING PERSONAL NARRATIVE INTO ART
Might we see memoir as a “collaborative inquiry, author and reader facing the same questions from inside their inevitably messy lives”?
NEW YORK MAG PICKS BEST MEMOIRS OF 2022
“Call it hybrid memoir, memoir-plus, researched memoir—the industry hasn’t quite decided—but the blending of personal history with careful analysis of the cultural forces and institutions that inform it has exploded the genre with possibility.”
SCARS TELL A STORY
“Let it play out on the page,” Patricia Charpentier, a Florida–based life writing coach, says of the prompt she discusses in this episode of her Life Writers Vlog: Write about a scar (physical or emotional).
Preserving personal stories
PERSONAL ACCOUNTING
Lamorna Ash’s 2022 diary ran to 52,000 words. “I’ve been toying with giving up my chronic chronicling, perhaps even deleting the evidence,” she writes, “but something always stops me.”
THE WAY YOU TELL YOUR LIFE STORY MATTERS
"Even if no one reads or listens to your tale, you haven’t wasted your time. Reviewing your life…might give you the inspiration to mend some of your ways. It isn’t too late to improve the narrative.”
LOST TO HISTORY, NO MORE
“Much of [animator Bessie Mae] Kelley's story and work was lost to the pages of her own journals and left undocumented—until now.”
Stories and substance
ANIMATED AGAIN
In rare home movies (now archived at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum), Harry Roher’s camera captured what life was like for people in a small community in then Poland, now Ukraine, in 1936.
YOUR MEMORIES, THEIR CLOUD
“As I grappled with all the gigabytes, my concern morphed from losing it all to figuring out what was actually worth saving.” A critical look at storing digital photos and other artifacts of your memories in the cloud.
CARRYING THE DREAMS OF HER FAMILY MEMBERS
“By collecting the images and storing them together in that suitcase, Brooks had created a kind of narrative. It fell to her granddaughter to place it within the larger history of humanity.” Poet Robin Coste Lewis’s family album.
SACRED KEEPSAKES
“When we share a story about another, we invite them back into life.... We ‘remember’ them in this way. Transitional objects provide the opportunity to speak the loved ones’ name, to tell a bit of their story once more.”
THINGS THEY KEEP
In this special episode of Things That Matter with Martie McNabb, six guests from The Quietus House (hosts of a healing grief retreat in February) share things they hold dear that remind them of lost loved ones:
Cook up some memories
PRESERVING RECIPES
“The weakest ink, it turns out, is in fact better than the strongest memory, which is why many people who value recipe preservation view their written-down recipes as family heirlooms.”
FAMILY HISTORY THROUGH FOOD
When her parents wrote essays for their Chinese heritage cookbook, “some of the stories that we had heard were more vividly on display than what we had ever heard around the dinner table...[as] the medium required that we kind of render it in a lot more detail.”
...and a few more links
The New Yorker asked the daughter of artist George Booth to “bring him back to life for us.”
An interesting discussion about copyright and personal storytelling
From the Archives: Newspaper offers glimpse of life in San Diego 125 years ago.
Dani Shapiro in conversation about how writing fiction can reveal more about ourselves than writing memoir
Short takes