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Life Story Links: August 22, 2023
In this week's curated roundup for family historians and memory-keepers: pieces on the craft of life writing, new memoir reviews, and ancestors’ artifacts.
“It’s the human imperative, this piecing together of a life. And so, word by word, we lay down our tracks.”
—Dani Shapiro
Vintage poster with original artwork by Earl Kerkam produced some time between 1941-1943 by the Work Projects Administration; image courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Digital Collection. The posters were designed to publicize exhibits, community activities, theatrical productions, and health and educational programs in seventeen states and the District of Columbia between 1936 to 1943.
Narrative framing
WRITING PAST PAIN
How do you share your story without hurting others? Megan February, a trauma-informed book coach, offers up eight important things to consider when writing about your life.
‘RE-STORYING INTERVENTION’
“The way that people tell their life story shapes how meaningful their lives feel.” New research finds that there are psychological benefits to reframing your life as a Hero’s Journey.
GREETINGS FROM…
Last week I shared the first in a two-part series about making memory books from family vacations—starting with the top three things to do during your travels to set you up for travelogue success later.
Things that last
ANCESTORS’ ARTIFACTS
“People don’t give native cultures much credit for their oral processes. When science goes in and verifies something we’ve been talking about for thousands of years, they’re shocked we’ve held onto that history.”
NOTE DISCOVERED IN WALL
“Her letter, a whisper from the past, became a symphony that harmonized generations, reminding us all that our words, even from the tender hands of a 14-year-old, can ripple across time to touch hearts we’ve never known.”
THINGS WE KEEP
“Sharing out loud with others keeps the memories alive, passes on the history, and enables people from all walks of life to build connections and consider their own part in our collective human story.” Meet Martie McNabb, the founder of Show & Tales story-sharing gatherings.
LOVE IN THE TIME OF ALZHEIMER’S
“I’m someone that has come here to help you remember who Augusto Góngora was,” Paulina Urrutia tells her husband in the Chilean documentery The Eternal Memory, called “loving, lyrical,” and “intimate” by reviewers. Read an interview with the film’s director here, and see a trailer below:
DIGITAL GHOSTS
“Estate lawyers have long encouraged clients to account for their digital property, but no one has come up with an emotional road map for the burden of inheriting these things.”
ANALOG TO DIGITAL
“Converting [family slides] into accessible digital media launched me on a journey back to my own childhood and the pasts of my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. That, in turn, is giving me a better understanding of how I became me.”
Writing…and reading…our lives
ON FIRST-PERSON WRITING
“And we all change. Stories need nothing else. All you have to add is paper.” For a droll take on the idea of writing about oneself, read this short piece by Rhik Samadder subtitled “What I learned teaching life-writing lessons.”
WRITING FROM AND INTO MEMORIES
“I would save almost everything, the Swedish death cleaners be damned, because these boxes were my inheritance, the stuff out of which my novels are made: old photographs and letters, unanswered questions, ticket stubs, report cards, the unremarkable detritus of ordinary human lives.”
‘A MEMOIR IN EIGHT ARGUMENTS’
“Although I’ve tried to own the fault entirely...I don’t think that take tells the whole story either.” In this excerpt from his new memoir, Chinese Prodigal, David Shih reflects on missing his father’s death.
‘FIRST AUTHORITATIVE BIOGRAPHY’ OF AUGUST WILSON
“If you were interviewing him, you would walk away thinking, ‘I’m the best interviewer in the world!’ Because all he did was talk and tell you these fabulous stories, with these great punchlines and lessons.”
REWRITING HER NARRATIVE
Listen in as successful ghostwriter Lara Love Hardin, author of the new memoir The Many Lives of Mama Love, talks about “her downward spiral from soccer mom to opioid addict to jailhouse shot-caller and her unlikely comeback”:
Short takes
Life Story Links: August 7, 2023
This week: interesting takes on how we interpret our memories, capturing the stories of our family heirlooms, and challenges of writing memoir and biography.
“Telling our stories to someone who is really listening offers us the experience of being seen, of being felt—as in, I feel you. I feel your heart. Can you feel mine? Can you feel the warmth of my caring?”
—Anne Lamott
Vintage poster produced in 1936 or 1937 by the Work Projects Administration; image courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Digital Collection. The posters were designed to publicize exhibits, community activities, theatrical productions, and health and educational programs in seventeen states and the District of Columbia between 1936 to 1943.
More stories of our stuff
GIVE VOICE TO YOUR HEIRLOOMS
Last week I wrote about how to capture and preserve the stories behind your family heirlooms, whether you’ve got just a few sentimental items or a house full of passed-down jewelry and valuable antiques.
12,795 POSSESSIONS!
“Now that there is the book, everything can catch fire and at least I will have this reminder that it existed, that it was there.” Meet the woman who photographed every single thing she owns.
Memoirists & biographers speak
ON WRITING, DISCOVERY & DREAMS
“Write to expand your understanding of, and connection to, the world we live in; write to expand your understanding of, and connection to, yourself.” A short but lovely interview with memoirist and memoir teacher Beth Kephart.
ONE BIOGRAPHER’S QUEST
On a recent episode of the podcast A Life in Biography, host Carl Rollyson (author of Biography: A User’s Guide) talks to fellow biographer Marsha Gordon about researching, writing, and publishing her new book. Listen here:
Memories and memoir
THE PAST THROUGH THE LENS OF THE PRESENT
“Memoir should not be subject to rigorous, journalistic lie-detecting. The stories may be true but rarely are they factual.” Darcey Gohring on telling the emotional truth in our life writing.
TIME AND MEMORY
“What we remember tends to be distinctive, emotionally loaded, and deemed worthy of processing and reflecting upon.... Our memories are centered on our life stories and what affected us personally the most.” What about pandemic memories?
EDITING FOR CLARITY & LONGEVITY
Three things every family historian should do during the editing process to ensure that their research and family stories are understood and appreciated by their readers—even 20 years from now.
LIFELONG GIFTS
Want to create a new family heirloom or tradition? The folks at Fatherly recommend checking out a Reddit thread of sentimental gifts to help level-up your gift-giving.
Historical riches
10 MILLION NAMES PROJECT
“All Americans, Black Americans and white Americans, have parts of the puzzle in their pockets or in their homes or in their attics or their closets. Bring those forth, whether they’re old letters or diaries or plantation ledgers.”
DUTCH HOLOCAUST AUTHOR DIES AT 103
“In many interviews [Marga Minco] gave over the years, she always said the reason that she wrote about her family was that she wanted them to be remembered for longer than they lived.”
Short takes
Life Story Links: July 11, 2023
This week’s curated roundup includes inspiring first-person stories, lots on documenting our histories (in letters, on fabric, in recorded conversations) & more.
“Words can resonate though generations for all of us. That's one reason why it’s important that we embrace them.”
—Anna Quindlen
Vintage poster produced by the Work Projects Administration; image courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Digital Collection. The posters were designed to publicize exhibits, community activities, theatrical productions, and health and educational programs in seventeen states and the District of Columbia between 1936 to 1943.
First person reads worth your time
‘MEMORY IS SLIPPERY’
“I am almost always the main character in my stories of my parents’ music,” Keziah Weir writes in this piece about why we become who we are, and how artistic callings shift across generations.
SLICE OF LIFE
If you’re looking for inspiration for well-crafted, compelling first person storytelling, the Modern Love column in the NYT delivers regularly. “How My Father and I Drew a New Life” is a personal essay in this vein.
MINI MONOLOGUE ON MOTHERHOOD
“The story and memory scattered down the hall, again. You lost it. Your urgent need to document paralyzes you, shames you. You want it so bad, you don’t do it.”
THE WOMAN BEHIND THE WORDS
“I was agonizing over the deep feeling that I had tried to write a very honest novel. Bracingly so…. All that honest work and I was about to be dishonest about what I looked like?”
Current books of interest
MEMOIR WITH A TWIST
Tom Brokaw’s new book, Never Give Up: A Prairie Family’s Story, “is a hybrid of memoir and history, a kind of love letter to his parents and to the hardworking people of the Plains who shared a ‘never give up’ outlook.”
TRUTH IN FICTION
Have you ever thought about using your life experiences to inform a novel rather than a memoir? Here’s a new book that can help you discover effective ways to craft fiction through personal memories.
Documenting our histories
STUNNING STITCHED MEMORIES
“Some people enjoy…[using] photography or a sketchbook to capture their travel memories. But embroidery artist Maria Zamyatina uses a needle and thread to make beautiful embroidered keepsakes of her trips.”
A FAMILY HISTORY IN LETTERS
“This is my proudest creation. An archived collection of my father’s letters to his mother during his time in the Marines. Over 100 pages of his words and his handwriting and I could not love it more.”
A STEP-BY-STEP PLAN
As a professional personal historian, I help a lot of people create tribute books to surprise loved ones. Recently I shared a primer on how people who want to go the DIY route can make their own milestone birthday tribute books.
JOURNEY THROUGH THEIR JOURNALS
“Alongside their duties as presidents, these forward-thinking leaders turned to their personal journals, recording their ideas, theories, and reflections.”
CARETAKER, VOLUNTEER ARCHIVIST
“They are our fragile, flammable legacy, and we can lay our hands on them only because of the work of people like Paul Fasana,” the librarian who was instrumental in preserving hundreds of thousands of artifacts of queer history.
IN CONVERSATION WITH A GENEALOGIST
“I have two children that we adopted at birth, and if their descendants ever put together their family trees, are they going to bypass me because I’m not a DNA relative? Or are they going to be more inclusive and do family history, not just DNA genealogy?” Listen in to this interesting conversation on LGBTQ family history:
Things we leave behind
A WAY THROUGH GRIEF
“The gift of these pictures and letters allows me to explore the memories she had but didn't think to share, and gives me the opportunity to keep learning more about her, even without her voice telling the tales.”
ROYAL DIARIES
“Tall Paul is the legacy man—the keeper of the Queen's secrets.” Could Queen Elizabeth II’s diaries ever be published?—and why her Page of the Backstairs gets to make that call.
...and a few more links
Memoir review: If This Were Fiction: A Love Story In Essays by Jill Christman
Curious about what a family history story by ChatGPT would look like?
Cool offering: The Boston Public Library loans oral history backpacks to its patrons.
A peek inside Artists in Residence: Downtown New York in the 1970s by Brett Sokol
Short takes
Life Story Links: June 20, 2023
This week's roundup for family historians and life writers includes oral history interview tips, thoughts on intergenerational trauma, recent memoir reviews.
“I believe that any experience, whatever its nature, has the inalienable right to be chronicled. There is no such thing as a lesser truth.”
—Annie Ernaux
Vintage poster produced by the Work Projects Administration in 1937 with artwork by Jack Rivolta; image courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Digital Collection. The posters were designed to publicize exhibits, community activities, theatrical productions, and health and educational programs in seventeen states and the District of Columbia between 1936 to 1943.
Our stories, our selves?
REMEMBERING—AND FORGETTING—THE HIJACKING
“My father told me often that he hoped to live long enough to read my memoir,” Martha Hodes explains before detailing why, in fact, she didn’t want him to read it.
PHILOSOPHIZING THE STORIES OF US
“What is the connection between the development of a sense of the self and a narrative of the self? How does the question of who you are or who I am become a question of storytelling? Is the self a story?”
INTERGENERATIONAL TRAUMA
Rachel Zimmerman investigates new research into how “the environmental wounds inflicted on one generation may be transmitted to the next” in experiences as diverse as childhood abuse, the Holocaust, and slavery.
Papers of the past
THE ART OF LETTER WRITING
“You may find your handwritten words on a piece of paper ordinary today, but that same piece of paper, three or four generations later, will become an emotional property,” Narendra Modi, prime minister of India, recently said.
JOURNALS: TO SAVE OR NOT TO SAVE?
I’ve often fallen off the journal-writing bandwagon because I get mired in thoughts about who will read my (vulnerable, extemporaneous) words when I am gone. Last week I deliberated the pros and cons of saving one’s diaries.
CELEBRATING GRANDMOTHERS
Cuban American women are sharing their abuelas’ cooking and life lessons in the digital sphere, helping these grandmothers fulfill the role of “keeper of the family legend.”
Pop annals
PHOTO STORY
“An excerpt from the new book White House by the Sea: A Century of the Kennedys at Hyannis Port offers a rare glimpse into Jackie Kennedy’s early years on Cape Cod.”
1964 TIME CAPSULE
When an archivist unearthed a stash of photos taken by Paul McCartney at the height of Beatlemania, he got to revisit memories blurred by the whirlwind of the time. Now, those photos and McCartney’s reflections are in a book:
HOW TO INTERVIEW MUSICIANS
“Designate a small number of must-ask questions—the quotes you have to get for your story—and promise yourself you’ll ask them at some point. With that established, treat your interview like a conversation.”
...and a few more links
Short takes
Life Story Links: June 6, 2023
Compelling reads from the past two weeks about uncovering family stories, preserving legacies, writing memoir, and creating meaningful personal history.
“Even the most random memory is retained as a kind of code for emotional information.”
—Pat Schneider
Vintage poster depicting the Old Swedes Church produced by the Work Projects Administration; image courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Digital Collection. The posters were designed to publicize exhibits, community activities, theatrical productions, and health and educational programs in seventeen states and the District of Columbia between 1936 to 1943.
Family legacies
BOXES OF MEMORIES
“Years from now, I will be sitting by a fire, looking through cherished photos I’ve saved, and fondly recalling unforgettable moments and loved ones from the past.” How one woman sorted 30 albums of print photos—and the relief she finally felt!
REUNION GOODIES
Last week I shared some fun and easy ideas for capturing family stories at your next family reunion gathering, including preservation and sharing tips as well as bonus memory-keeping activities.
UNCOVERING FAMILY STORIES
“It was the scene from that drawing, the one I had been thinking about for what felt like my entire childhood, of that little girl on the deck of a ship staring out over the water, that image of hope.” Kori Suzuki interviews his grandmother to shed light on her personal history as a Japanese American during World War II.
DELVING INTO HIS FAMILY HISTORY
The renowned playwright Tom Stoppard speaks about seeing himself in his play Leopoldstadt, about several generations of a Jewish family living in Vienna.
“MEMOIRS FOR EVERYONE”
“What is our legacy? What do we leave behind after we’re gone?” Jeffrey Brown asks in this PBS News Weekend clip on the increasing accessibility of life story books:
Memoirs, biographies, oral history
WHAT’S THE REAL STORY?
“Given that it is about a real person whose words apparently were never written down, can it be a biography, or does it illustrate a truth about biography, that its subjects can only ever offer the illusion of being known?” A new biography of Cleopatra’s daughter—and a Netflix docuseries about Cleopatra—raise questions.
CENTENARIAN WISDOM
“Charlie made an art of living,” David Von Drehle writes in The Book of Charlie, a personal history he wrote about the 102-year-old neighbor who was an engaging teller of tales—and who lived a lot of life across two centuries.
WRITING WHILE WOMAN
The female writers who are the subjects of chapter-length biographies in her memoir, A Life of One’s Own, “supplied [Joanna] Biggs a measure of clarity in mapping a new life for herself; their voices helped her, as a writer, to find a new voice.”
OBAMA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
“Researchers interviewed 470 Obama administration veterans, critics, activists, and others who were in the thick of major events back then, including Mr. Obama and the first lady, Michelle Obama, amassing a total of 1,100 hours of recordings. Transcripts of the interviews are being released in batches over the next three years.”
On the craft of life writing
ON THE MEMOIR-IN-PIECES
“Edges and joinery. Right-sized gaps. Isn’t that what lies at the heart of a true memoir-in-pieces?” Beth Kephart on the “meta interplay between the living of a life, on the one hand, and the writing of a life, on the other.”
REVEALING HARD TRUTHS
“At our best, memoirists hope it is silence we are breaking, and not another person. At our worst, we create anyway, knowing it will.” Kelly McMasters on the ethics of family memoir.
The stuff of memories
THE FACEBOOK GENERATION
“In the United States, parental authority supersedes a child’s right to privacy, and socially, we’ve normalized sharing information about and images of children that we never would of adults.” Beyond memory-keeping: How posting our children’s lives on social media impacts them.
HEIRLOOMS’ LONG LOST STORIES
“Every single artifact tells such a different story. I actually favor the letters and the diaries more than any other artifacts because they can tell you things that no record ever could.”
FINISHING YOUR FAMILY ARCHIVE
“When we talk about what to leave behind and what not to leave behind for the next generation, it seems wiser to spend the most time on curating your legacy. Your knick knacks go when you do, but your legacy?” Caroline Guntur on what Swedish death cleaning gets wrong.
PHOTOGRAPHIC EXPLORATION
Through her photography, Arin Yoon says she is able “to tap into my own forgotten memories, conjuring the past, creating new memories, all while exploring my connection to the natural landscape, to my children, and to our past and future selves.”
WHEATON, ILLINOIS EXHIBIT HIGHLIGHTS SOLDIERS’ STORIES
“The items in 65 Years represent the mundane and the momentous, from boots, helmets, and cigarette lighters to heroic patches, medals, and flags. They depict the everyday lives of soldiers while commemorating exceptional lives of service and sacrifice for our country.”
Short takes
Life Story Links: May 23, 2023
This week’s curated roundup is all about memoir, memories, and myth—from how to write (and where to end) your memoir to which new autobiographical work to read.
“To speak incessantly about the wounds or triumphs of I and My Family can get pretty tiresome; the trick is to project one’s experience on the page in such an enhanced, objectified way that it acquires, or merges with, a larger significance.”
—Phillip Lopate
Vintage poster depicting an illustration by Arlington Gregg produced by the Work Projects Administration circa late 1930s; image courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Digital Collection. The posters were designed to publicize exhibits, community activities, theatrical productions, and health and educational programs in seventeen states and the District of Columbia between 1936 to 1943.
Memories, memoir & myth
ON WRITING THE SELF
“If you write a memoir that ends where you thought it would, you’re probably doing something wrong,” Abigail Thomas says in this Q&A about her latest memoir, Still Life at Eighty.
DIPPING INTO THE PAST
Of her early work as a biographer, Anne Berest says, “Listening to the answers [of the people I was interviewing], I learned that every life is a novel for those who are curious enough to look into it.”
SECOND GENERATION SURVIVORS
Jill Sarkozi, a fellow member of The Biographers Guild of Greater New York, wrote this insightful, actionable post about how to preserve your parent’s story if they are a Holocaust survivor.
BUT WAS IT TRUE?
“When I started to rework these [family] stories in my writing, I called what I was doing fiction, but I wasn’t actively trying to make anything up, I was trying to uncover what the humor had kept hidden.” Luis Jaramillo on the unlikely discovery of an old family recipe.
STARS—THEY’RE JUST LIKE US!
“Creating a personal myth allows celebrities to create just that—a myth.” Landon Y. Jones traces the evolution of celebrity memoirs, from Charles Lindbergh to Will Smith.
PUTTING HERSELF IN PERSPECTIVE
“I’m old enough to feel deeply just how universal vulnerabilities tend to be—and to trust that my editors will save me from myself by cutting confessions that venture too far.” Susan Dominus on using first-person narration in her reporting.
ON BEDS AND MEMORIES
Tamzin Merivale recounts all the beds she can remember—including “the bed where [she] woke to the sound of a church choir in Slovenia, holding beauty and mourning together in [her] heart”—and in doing so, traces a life’s trajectory.
INHERITANCE & INTERGENERATIONAL HEALING
How memoirist Dionne Ford (read a review of her memoir here) found healing in the story of her enslaved ancestors and created “space to name and celebrate and mourn members of [her] family”:
REMEMBERING HIS MOTHER
In the new memoir Irma, Terry McDonnell “writes that what passes between a mother and a son is not defined by her love in the moment, but later by the echoes of her motherhood.”
THE FRAGILITY OF OUR DIGITAL “ARCHIVES”
On May 16, Google announced that starting in December 2023, it would delete personal accounts that haven’t been active in over two years. Photos, emails, and docs attached to inactive accounts will all be eradicated as part of the policy.
...and a few more links
New Yorker uses documentary photography to capture family life during the pandemic
nine people share the best life advice they ever got from their mom
Beth Kephart on designing the cover of her upcoming memoir, My Life in Paper: Adventures in Ephemera
an excerpt from A Renaissance of Our Own: A Memoir & Manifesto on Reimagining by Rachel E. Cargle
on succumbing to “ghostitis, that common illness of ghostwriters”
Short takes
Life Story Links: May 9, 2023
The allure of journals as a place to experiment; interviews with memoirists Maggie Smith and Ava Chin; the oral stories and digital scraps that make a legacy.
“It is a captivation like no other—to hear about the adventures of those that have come before, those whose legacies are entwined with ours.”
—Joy Callaway
Vintage poster produced by the Work Projects Administration; image courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Digital Collection. The posters were designed to publicize exhibits, community activities, theatrical productions, and health and educational programs in seventeen states and the District of Columbia between 1936 to 1943.
Writing our lives
“A NORMAL, TERRIFYING CHILDHOOD”
“I spent many nights in Cuba sitting on the porch with my family, listening to their stories, and likely learning from the way they told them. This book feels very much like the storytelling I experienced as a child.”
WORDS AND PICTURES
I write a lot about the big-picture aspects of preserving our personal histories, but last week I offered up some nitty-gritty advice about how to write the best captions for your memoir or life story book.
MINING THE DETAILS OF OUR LIVES
“So, which elements are more true, the ones penciled on notebook pages as a teen, or the ones whose impact set a course for my life, even if recalled inaccurately?” Amy White writes in this thoughtful piece about ways of remembering.
WORK, DIVORCE, WOMANHOOD
“I was angry at myself, and more than a little ashamed, that I allowed this to happen, and that I had unwittingly modeled to my children what women’s work was…. Caregiving.” Read an excerpt from Maggie Smith’s memoir, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, and read an interview with the author here.
FROM THE BACK CATALOG
Gregory Cowles is drawn to journals “for their conscious dance between private and public, for the freedom they grant writers to experiment with style and with self, and not least for their inherently fragmentary nature, each entry a new beginning.”
Honoring the past, one story at a time
HISTORIC SILHOUETTE PORTRAITS
“We just realized that [the digitized archive] will be of real interest to people who are descendants or who have relatives represented in this album, who have no other image of a great-great-grandfather, great-great-grandmother.”
FRAGILE YET ENDURING
“I really do believe that archives and collections are always telling us new stories,” a professor said of the exhibition Toni Morrison: Sites of Memory, at Princeton University through June 4, 2023.
POIGNANT GLIMPSES INTO THEIR LIVES
In this affecting piece NYT readers share “the digital scraps they found after a loved one passed away,” from a to-do list note (“remind Linda that I love her”) to a photo of the back of one dad’s head…each moving in its own way.
Form and function
BEFITTING THE OCCASION
Six staff at Shepherds, Sangorski & Sutcliffe, one of the oldest bookbinders in England, spent over 300 hours binding and finishing four bibles for His Majesty King Charles III’s Coronation.
AN EXPLORATION OF FORM
“How, I ask myself, do writers generate ghost narratives—a turn we didn’t see coming, an unexpected destination?” Leslie Jill Patterson explores the flash nonfiction ending that appears from nowhere.
THOUGHTS ON GHOSTWRITING
“That’s the mystic paradox of ghostwriting: You’re inherent and nowhere; vital and invisible. To borrow an image from William Gass, you’re the air in someone else’s trumpet.” J. R. Moehringer on collaborating on Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare.
...and a few more links
Short takes
Life Story Links: April 25, 2023
This week’s curated roundup for family historians and memory-keepers includes life writing lessons, memoir reviews, and thoughts on generational storytelling.
“When interviewing your elders, you’re the anthropologist who wants to understand the world from someone else’s point of view, and the key is getting details about ordinary life.”
—Elizabeth Keating, Ph.D.
Vintage Japanese print of Gotenyama cherry blossoms by Hiroshige Andō, circa 1846, courtesy of The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library Digital Collections.
Lessons in craft
KEEN SENSES
Last week I wrote about how smells (such as of Mom’s perfume or Grandpa’s grease-stained clothes) and sounds—especially music—can trigger long-buried memories helpful for writing memoir.
CLASS IS IN SESSION
This lesson from Storytelling School with The Moth focuses on the importance of conflict in storytelling, with a video story from Tig Notaro, suggested activities for your own compelling storytelling, as well as creative prompts.
ALL THE INGREDIENTS YOU NEED
Before you begin editing and designing your family cookbook, here are a few specific things you can do to elevate it from run-of-the-mill recipe guide to an essential family tool and heirloom.
DESIGN FORWARD
This limited-edition printed showpiece is an example of a unique way to treat family history (in this case, the entire British royal family!) through a graphic approach.
MEMOIRIST ABIGAIL THOMAS IN CONVERSATION
Memoir doesn’t consist of stacks of neat unalterable facts. Writing memoir is a fluid, messy process—there are rough patches, maybe a tsunami or two, and what you are writing might take you somewhere you hadn’t imagined.”
Writing our lives
DIARY AS MAP OF CREATIVE WORK
John Steinbeck had two requests for his diary: “that it wouldn’t be made public in his lifetime, and that it should be made available to his two sons so they could ‘look behind the myth and hearsay and flattery and slander a disappeared man becomes and to know to some extent what manner of man their father was.’”
THE SPIRIT OF AN ERA
“Unlike the inward-focused journal intime (a personal diary) the journal extime is outwardly focused, captures something of the times, of life as it is lived collectively, but of course, it also inevitably paints a portrait of the person who’s writing down the details of that outside world.” Annie Ernaux’s translator on the memoirist’s latest book.
LIVING & AGING JOYFULLY
“I could just hear his voice ringing through every page,” Rob Schwartz says of the manuscript he discovered years after his his father’s death, which he has now edited and released as The Wisdom of Morrie:
ONE FAMILY, THREE GENERATIONS
“Father and daughter never establish much of a connection, but the author begins to pull other threads of her family’s past and present. A lot of material comes loose” in the memoir Mott Street by Ava Chin.
The undeniable power of story
HIS HISTORY IN HIS WORDS
“Most of the time [my daughter] Debbie tells my story, because I have certain points where I start to cry, and I can’t go on,” Gerald Szames said. He finally told his own survival story 80 years after the Holocaust.
GENERATION STORYTELLING
In this recent podcast episode (listen below), StoryKeep’s Jamie Yuenger discusses the growing trend among multi-generational family offices and businesses to document their history professionally amidst a shifting media landscape:
PROBING KOREA’S HISTORY & ANCESTORS’ STORIES
“In memorializing, remembering, and holding onto pieces of stories which belong to parents and grandparents only a couple decades before, [Kyung-sook] Shin finds unity in the ‘things that went missing between her and her parents.’”
HEALING THROUGH NARRATIVE
“Storytelling can be a powerful skill to develop to help others understand their own narrative but also for you to better understand yourself.”
Always learning…
FREE PRESERVATION LECTURES
During Preservation Week, libraries across the U.S. hold events that highlight what we can do, individually and together, to care for our personal collections and to support broader public preservation efforts. This page from the Library of Congress compiles presentations from previous years in one place.
PASSWORDS, PHOTOS & MORE
From naming legacy contacts for online accounts (including those housing your precious photos) to safeguarding social media history, how to secure your digital life before you die.
...and a few more links
Steven Spielberg and Paul Thomas Anderson discuss film preservation as “the protection of memories.”
The U.K.’s Police Gazette: What it is and how to search it online
“The Making, Keeping, and Losing of Memory”: Ferrier Prize Lecture 2023 given by Professor Richard Morris
Broadway legend Chita Rivera dances through her life in a new memoir
Short takes