Poser: My Life in Twenty-three Yoga Poses

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Poser: My Life in Twenty-three Yoga Poses

3.51 of 5 stars 3.51 · rating details · 2,998 ratings · 698 reviews

The studio was decorated in the style of Don’t Be Afraid, We’re Not a Cult. All was white and blond and clean, as though the room had been designed for surgery, or Swedish people. The only spot of color came from the Tibetan prayer flags strung over the doorway into the studio. In flagrant defiance of my longtime policy of never entering a structure adorned with Tibetan pr...more

Hardcover, 352 pages

Published December 21st 2010 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (first published December 1st 2010)

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May 01, 2012 Tina Hamilton rated it 4 of 5 stars

When I saw the title of this book, it turned me off, to be honest. Those of you who know me, know that I practice yoga. So, let's just say I had my doubts. However, the book was a good read. The nonfiction narrative takes place over many years while she is working, raising a family, bucking up a sometimes depressed husband, and so on. They are both writers. She started yoga after injuring her back while breastfeeding/carrying around her first child. From that first yoga class, she started a yoga...more

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Mar 18, 2011 Kate Woods Walker rated it 3 of 5 stars

Claire Dederer, with her supple mommy memoir Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses, has delivered an accessible, fresh look at feminism, liberalism, family life and literary coupledom, lightly sprinkled with enough yogic information to warrant its title and give the book some structure.

Dederer transcends whatever mean-spiritedness she might have entertained toward imperfect but well-meaning parents, dodges every cliché she might have used to describe her leftist Seattle environs, and arrives...more

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Aug 21, 2011 Kate rated it 4 of 5 stars

I like the authors skepticism of yoga and all the things she learned from different teachers over the years. The way she correlates different yoga poses to phases in her life is beautiful and metaphorical. The way she orchestrates the story from present to past from chapter to chapter is entertaining and well written. I grew to really like Claire Dederer, her family and the way she looked at her life.

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Feb 06, 2013 Stacy rated it 2 of 5 stars

I suppose I was hoping for something deeper, such as more connection between the yogic philosophy and the reality of life. There were times when I thought the author made these connections of the practice on the mat to that off the mat, but additional yogic wisdom integrated into the book would have interested me more.

On the other hand, if you are looking for a fairly light read that broaches the topics of divorce (and the effect of it on children/society), the women's liberation movement of th...more

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Nov 09, 2012 Laura rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was a really tough book to slog through. The concept is unique and makes sense (relating events from her life through yoga poses). And the author is a good writer - if I saw her byline in a newspaper or magazine I'd head straight for the article. But this book took way too long to read - I found myself just not caring about the author (though she is likeable). Part of this is that I felt she created some of her own stress - I also live in a pretty liberal area, but she could have opted out...more

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Oct 28, 2012 Diane Kistner rated it 4 of 5 stars

I am fifteen years older than Claire Dederer, the author of this book, so women in my cohort and our mothers' cohort had a different experience of marriage and family and place than the author and her mother did. That said, my own mother was ahead of her time (divorcing in the fifties) and we were both caught up in the seventies (when I was just out of high school and on my own) with the self-exploratory fads and experimentations that Claire's mother (and, in her own way, Claire herself) was. I...more I am fifteen years older than Claire Dederer, the author of this book, so women in my cohort and our mothers' cohort had a different experience of marriage and family and place than the author and her mother did. That said, my own mother was ahead of her time (divorcing in the fifties) and we were both caught up in the seventies (when I was just out of high school and on my own) with the self-exploratory fads and experimentations that Claire's mother (and, in her own way, Claire herself) was. I identified with so much in this book.

I have never tried yoga, so I was surprised at how easily I could visualize the depth of Claire's involvement in the poses as evolving states of being and knowing. (My advance review copy does not yet credit the artist who drew the fantastic iconographic drawings of the yoga postures that precede each chapter, but the drawings definitely add an important dimension to the book.) I found the whole process to be very interesting, with a lot of my own experiences peeking out at me from between Claire's lines. The author uses similies and metaphors in freshly surprising ways, sometimes smacking me awake and delighting me as much as when I first encountered T. S. Eliot's "patient etherised on a table" in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." I enjoyed the quality of the writing in and of itself; but the slow release (as in Claire's yoga) of what this book taught me, the wisdom gleaned for myself, is what I found most striking about Poser. I simply understand so much more—about myself, about my own family, about our development over our lifetimes—than I did before I read the book.

Ironically, the book bogged down a bit for me when Claire found her own answers, but once I closed the book and put it on my shelf, I found myself pulled to consider the unfolding of my own life and strivings in the crucible of the world into which I was born. This, to me, has been the greatest value of reading this book: I came away with greater insight into my own poses and the way they have changed me and with me. 4.5 stars for Poser.(less)

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Jul 29, 2012 Emily H. rated it 4 of 5 stars

The book is about a woman in her thirties who is a Seattle townie. She is an excellent writer and describes her personal experience growing up with hippies in the 1970s and how the pendulum swung the other way in the 1990s when all her friends were raising children and were judging each other for how long they breastfed, what their children ate, which daycare they chose, etc. I really appreciated her candor. If anyone else had written this it would have come across as a WASPy woman writing about...more

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May 24, 2012 Liz Rosenblum rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: didn-t-couldn-t-finish

I had such high hopes for Poser. True, I was at a very different place in my life than Claire Dederer - she being married with kids, me being totally single and kid-less - but I still felt like I was going to be able to relate to her. After all, I was about to go through yoga teacher training. I was excited about yoga as a new found love, a friend who would be there on bad days and a friend who would challenge me and push me to be a better person. Based on the description, I won't say Claire and...more

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May 19, 2012 Mahala Helf rated it 1 of 5 stars

Sketchy oversimplifications of people, places and things exacerbated by the superficially clever format. At first I loved the conceit of self-contained explorations of life linked to a pose, but the connections weren't there, and the historical/social/emotional interpretations were unconvincing.
Even with the short attention span magazine piece length, it seemed repetitious & belabored. in part because no character besides the author was well-developed or seemed believable/fleshed out. Iron...more Sketchy oversimplifications of people, places and things exacerbated by the superficially clever format. At first I loved the conceit of self-contained explorations of life linked to a pose, but the connections weren't there, and the historical/social/emotional interpretations were unconvincing.
Even with the short attention span magazine piece length, it seemed repetitious & belabored. in part because no character besides the author was well-developed or seemed believable/fleshed out. Ironically, she emphasizes her affinity for the emotional truth of novels and I would def read a novel that allowed for other motives & more development of some of the characters--whether as she she sees them and/or how they see themselves.
For example, she swells ad nauseum in every chapter on how her Catholic parents separated but didn't divorce in the 60s & never once considers if their cultural background might have had anything to do with that. In fact, despite detailing her journalistic credits, she never includes any trace of their voices or rationales, as if she'd never asked them. Yet she forces their actions into representing the feminist revolution w/o considering any other factors.
She repeats how her grown brother avoids her because he"a private person," which would work if she were an unreliable narrator in a novel but doesn't here because he is a very well known public person/spokesperson with a long PR career who does interviews.
Dubious attribution is most disturbing when the author uses "We" to mean americans doing yoga, as in her discussion of Rodney Yee(p. 123):
" Emblematic of this inchoate desire for yogic spirituality was the puzzling dominance of Rodney Yee, the only true celebrity that yoga culture had managed to produce....We picked Rodney Yee as an icon because we could project our not-knowing onto him. He was a comfortable, vaguely Eastern, very handsome stand-in for that vast unknown quality that was Indian spirituality." This was not the reality I observed or lived in before or after I started yoga, and, like many of her other claims about what other's thoughts and motivations, lacks any evidence(or even a manufactured anecdote).
Btw there's no chronological, imaginative, alliterative, esoteric, satiric, rhythmic, educational, or allusive reason for having 23 chapters. Not sound, not significance, not years covered in the book, not levels, phases, people, places, tradition--not even poses(some repeat).

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Feb 03, 2012 Nancy Kennedy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Claire Dederer's community is as familiar to me as my own, filled as it is with power moms, glam moms, green moms and uber moms. Through the lens of yoga, she has written about life among this highly educated and super motivated tribe. And it's not always pretty. "I just loved the way my feet looked, folded into lotus," she writes. "It looked like virtue. Never mind that it hurt."

Ms. Dederer's whole life hurt. She was anxious, stressed, angry and alienated, yet she tried ever harder to be the pe...more Claire Dederer's community is as familiar to me as my own, filled as it is with power moms, glam moms, green moms and uber moms. Through the lens of yoga, she has written about life among this highly educated and super motivated tribe. And it's not always pretty. "I just loved the way my feet looked, folded into lotus," she writes. "It looked like virtue. Never mind that it hurt."

Ms. Dederer's whole life hurt. She was anxious, stressed, angry and alienated, yet she tried ever harder to be the perfect wife and mother. She breastfed, cooked organic foods, drank organic milk, eschewed plastic toys, volunteered at the co-op preschool, arranged date nights with her husband and kept working. "We were a generation of hollow-eyed women, chasing virtue," she observes.

One day, her back goes out and she takes up yoga. It serves as an escape from the pressures of parenthood and the disappointments of her strained marriage. But it also becomes a way for her to parse her life. In chapters devoted to various yoga poses, Ms. Dederer comes to terms with her current situation, and with a childhood that was fractured when her mother left her father for a much younger man, a free spirit of the 1970s. Though her parents didn't divorce, she and her brother were shuttled between homes, stranded in bleak island settings and cut off from their friends.

This is a terrific book for anyone struggling with parenting models that call for relentless sacrifice and ridiculous amounts of energy. I had total sympathy for Ms. Dederer when one night it snows in Seattle -- a rare event -- and she declines to wake her children to take them out into the winter wonderland. No need to beat yourself up, Claire! You were tired! It would have been a hassle! I would have made the same decision. They were too young to remember it anyway.

Though yoga provided a way of escape and a means of examining her life, I sensed that it was the family's temporary move to Colorado, away from the expectations of her social group and the couple's families, that really brought healing to Ms. Dederer. She brims with enthusiasm for the hiking she takes up while there, using words like thrilling, liberating and euphoric.

I hope the move back to Seattle hasn't brought back all of the demons. While in Colorado, Ms. Dederer recounts cuddling her teary-eyed daughter after she suffered her first day in -- gasp! -- public school: "I was big and solid for her, and I held her until she had recovered from school." That "virtuous mom" thinking is always in there, waiting to take the reins again! (less)

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Jan 16, 2012 David rated it 2 of 5 stars

eventful life story - her parents were Pacific Northwest hippies who remained married through an extremely long separation while the Mom lived with much younger boyfriend; author herself has an up-and-down marriage to fellow freelance writer with whom she has a couple kids, one of whom was born after serious complications.

The other plus is that she's intermittently funny in describing day to day events. Not "funny enough to make most writers swoon with envy" as claimed by one of the blurb-ers, b...more

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Oct 31, 2011 Kristin rated it 4 of 5 stars

I rarely read memoirs, but really enjoyed this one. Witty and insightful, I related to her experience with motherhood and marriage - and especially would have enjoyed reading this when Maya was a baby. The review below says it all, and... I really do love my Dansko clogs!

Claire Dederer manages to pack everything into this personal memoir: childbirth, money, schools, social class, career anxiety, parenting, sex, friendship, marriage, and yes, yoga. And don’t forget Dansko clogs—‘always, always, [...more

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Jul 30, 2011 Noreen O'connor rated it 3 of 5 stars

Dederer is a good writer, and in this work tries to accomplish a number of ambitious things--compare the lives of her mother with her own life and think about the changes wrought by second wave feminists for women today, discuss the anxieties of motherhood among a set of highly educated, privileged-yet-progressive Seattle women, examine her own childhood among hippies and other loving but rather alternative and self involved adults, describe her process of coming to terms with some of her own pe...more Dederer is a good writer, and in this work tries to accomplish a number of ambitious things--compare the lives of her mother with her own life and think about the changes wrought by second wave feminists for women today, discuss the anxieties of motherhood among a set of highly educated, privileged-yet-progressive Seattle women, examine her own childhood among hippies and other loving but rather alternative and self involved adults, describe her process of coming to terms with some of her own perfectionist anxieties through yoga classes, and more--yet the book was a quick read. I read it in a day, and found much to admire in her beautiful descriptive scenes. There are a few places--one description of an afternoon piloting a tugboat in Puget Sound as a young teen--where the writing is transcendent.

Snarky and hypercritical at times, it is often quite funny too. Yoga did save her life, but let's be serious. There was not too much despair here; in fact her life has been really good so far--healthy kids, loving parents, an intact marriage to a caring if sometimes depressive man, friends with great taste in alternative rock, and no major traumas to report beyond the separation of her parents in childhood (not much of a trauma in the cultural context--more than 50% of us in her generation have divorced parents). This is not _Running With Scissors_ and sometimes her despairing complaints about her mentally stable, accepting and loving parents who drop in too much to admire their grandkids made me roll my eyes. I could only wish for such parents.

It does capture, critique, and also inhabit, a certain self-involved "stuff white people like" vibe that feels real. That said, that stands in opposition to any idea of enlightenment and acceptance you might expect to find here even as she discusses yoga practice, buddhists, and other means of self knowledge. This is a memoir with some fairly painful blind spots (family "money troubles" here mean shopping at Trader Joe's instead of Whole Foods Market), but it is an interesting rumination on our times.(less)

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Jul 21, 2011 Jen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Dederer writes, "I had a sudden thought: What if the opposite of good wasn't bad? What if the opposite of good was real?"

I almost didn't read this book. By the time my turn came on the library waiting list, I was already bogged down with other reads and thought about cancelling my hold. The description sounded intriguing, but yoga books usually annoyed me. Actually, a lot of westernized yoga culture bothers me. Especially little rhinestone tank tops emblazoned with decapitalized slogans like "br...more

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Jul 10, 2011 K2 ----- rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read this in almost in one day. I was brought to it by an article she had in the local paper about Betty MacDonald, the author of "The Egg and I" where she wrote about bringing humor into her writing. I had recalled reading a positive review of it in Booklist so I gave it a go. A fun read for a cloudy cool summer day in the PNW.

I enjoyed her writing style and particularly the local settings and commentary about my home town through her experiences. I did find her to be whiny at turns but I al...more

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Apr 24, 2011 Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: happiness, health, moving-and-starting-over, learning

“We didn’t want to look good. We wanted to be good.”

Claire is a new mom, a wife, and a writer and she is so close to having a nervous breakdown that you can see her shaking hand on every page of this typewritten manuscript. She takes up yoga in the midst of her crazy life and somehow yoga saves her.

“I had a sudden thought: What if the opposite of good wasn’t bad? What if the opposite of good was real?”

“I had started going to yoga because I wanted other people to admire my goodness. I came to yo...more

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Apr 22, 2011 Alex Templeton rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As all over the place as this memoir often was, and as much as I think the yoga-organizing structure didn't always consistently work, I ended up being a fan of this memoir. Coincidentally, I started reading it the week I began taking care of some friends' five month old baby during the week, which brought up all kinds of thoughts about that scary future day when I will have a child I won't be giving back at 4:30 PM. A lot of what Dederer thinks about in this book is the relationship between pare...more

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Apr 20, 2011 katykins rated it 3 of 5 stars

I’ve always wondered what prompts people to write memoirs. It’s one thing to be a celebrity riding the wave of success, but quite another to be a regular Jane baring it all for the judgment of strangers. As a critic for publications as prestigious as The New York Times, Claire Dederer is no stranger to criticism; nor does she seem to fear it. In her first book, Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses, she bravely opens the cloak of privacy to reveal herself to the world. I suppose she is a wri...more I’ve always wondered what prompts people to write memoirs. It’s one thing to be a celebrity riding the wave of success, but quite another to be a regular Jane baring it all for the judgment of strangers. As a critic for publications as prestigious as The New York Times, Claire Dederer is no stranger to criticism; nor does she seem to fear it. In her first book, Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses, she bravely opens the cloak of privacy to reveal herself to the world. I suppose she is a writer who was ready to tell her own story for once, as opposed to reviewing those of others. Full of sincerity and love, this book is a cleverly written homage to her family, her friends, her marriage, and of course, her yoga.

Those of you turned off by “yoga” in the title should reconsider, as this is nothing like the New Age self-indulgence that has given the ancient tradition a bad reputation. Instead, Dederer loosely ties her yoga practice to the peaks and valleys of her life. In each chapter she recalls anecdotes and tells them in the context of a different yoga pose. This structural device offers comic relief and surprising tangents like this: “Back in college, we used to have a silly rubric: Never have sex with anyone who doesn’t like Van Morrison…based on the fact that [he] is embarrassing, and sex is embarrassing.” Then onto the next paragraph: “And Lion was embarrassing. It made you feel like Van Morrison, all uncontrollable noises and strange eruptions.” These are also moments for the reader to self-reflect, and this is where her writing is most profound and relatable.

Apart from being an extremely talented writer, she is a poster child for the ultimate alternative generation. In typical Northwest grunge fashion, Dederer is admirably cool without trying. Her book is packed with dry wit, self-deprecation, and cultural references that I only understand because of my older, Gen-X sister. After enough time self-reflecting in Seattle, a city known for its constant self-perfecting, Dederer and her husband move to the mountains of Boulder. This is when she dives into the implications of her childhood, the fine line between selfishness and personal happiness, and the pros and cons of moving back home.

These universal and common issues make for a fascinating memoir that only a serious writer could pull off successfully. From beginning to end, this book carries the mantra that life can be as bizarre as putting your feet behind your head, and also as rewarding. Paraphrasing Patanjali in one of his Yoga Sutras: Yoga becomes firmly grounded when it is practiced for a long time, without a break, and with sincere devotion. I’d say that’s true of most good things in life, and why Dederer would choose yoga as the unifying theme for a book as dear to her heart as this. At one point she reflects, “What happens when a generation of children grows up with all these comings and goings; when a generation of children grows up with parents who want to be free, and who think that freedom is movement?” Well, Claire Dederer has personally shown us just exactly what happens, and why she chose to dig her heels in and never give up on her practice.(less)

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Apr 20, 2011 Tiffani rated it 2 of 5 stars

Wow! Am i the only person who didn't like this book? I was so excited to read it, as I live in Seattle and enjoy yoga and know the instructors she talks about. After reading the first 3 chapters I became disappointed. This is the first book that I actually skipped through entire passages out of boredom. Usually the eloquence of a writer will keep me reading, even if I find the subject boring, but with this book I couldn't stay connected.

I really enjoyed the parts about yoga, but then the author...more

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Apr 17, 2011 Kim rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography-memoire

I loved this book! This is due in large part because it was about yoga, which I do, in North Seattle, where I live. In this book Claire Dederer tells the story of her adult life in Seattle in the mid to late 90s. She's ten years older than me, and thus was into yoga 10 years before me. She had her children in North Seattle at the same time I was going to college while living in North Seattle and nannying in Issaquah (a suburb 17 miles east of Seattle filled with Microsoft money). The families I...more

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Mar 03, 2011 Karen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: memoir

I wasn't drawn to the cover at all, but I was drawn to the topic she was writing about did draw me (yoga, as well as the subtitle: My Life in Twenty-three Yoga poses), so I jumped in with both feet. An endorsement from Elizabeth Gilbert didn’t hurt either. What kept me reading though was the writing. I love the way Claire writes, the way she morphs words into something new; the way she uses language. . . her, um, languaging. Some examples: effortful, forking, efforting, jollity, constellated…
Als...more I wasn't drawn to the cover at all, but I was drawn to the topic she was writing about did draw me (yoga, as well as the subtitle: My Life in Twenty-three Yoga poses), so I jumped in with both feet. An endorsement from Elizabeth Gilbert didn’t hurt either. What kept me reading though was the writing. I love the way Claire writes, the way she morphs words into something new; the way she uses language. . . her, um, languaging. Some examples: effortful, forking, efforting, jollity, constellated…
Also her descriptions: “He poured himself the grimmest bowl of cereal ever poured.” (pg. 127). I loved her description of Rodney Yee (pg 123): “…a very buff, eternally youthful Chinese American man with a long ponytail and a serene gaze…”…Yep, that’s Rod the Bod.
I also, for the first time in quite a while, came across words in my novel reading that were not immediately familiar to me, that I had to stop and ponder. This is good! Exciting! It’s been a while since that happened. Claire’s previous experience as a book editor and critic and free-lance writer prior to her writing this book come through loud and clear.
Her book is part memoir with some history of yoga mashed in. The way she talks about her 20’s as being “spent exploring” reminded me of how Amy Wood talks about modern young adult hood in her book Life Your Way(previously reviewed book #60).
Claire hides from her family by going to yoga. She hides from her emotions by going to yoga, as well, but when she gets into a pose…bam! There they are, just waiting for her to face and embrace them (sometimes this results in tears falling). She escapes through yoga as a young wife and mother the way she escaped through books as a young girl in a complicated family-of-origin situation. “A book was a terrific place for me. I went there as often as I could.” (pg.144). This was me.
Oh, and she vomits. A lot.
Sometimes you need to back away from something to gain a little perspective on it, whether it’s your kids, your marriage, your career, your yoga…or yourself. Finally, probably the best message I got from this book is this (and I’m paraphrasing her quote from pg. 297): Act like the person you want to be, when and if you can.
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Feb 16, 2011 Ciara rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: autobio-memoir, feminist-y-books, read-in-2011

guys. oh my god. i LOVE this book. this is the best book i have read in YEARS. i would give it fifteen stars if i could. i have never written fan mail to an author before, but i want to write fan mail to this author. i want to buy fifty copies & just dispense them to people in my life like candy (but i sadly am not made of money). i most certainly intend to buy my own copy (i got this one from the library) so i can re-read it over & over & loan it to friends.

it's kind of weird that i...more guys. oh my god. i LOVE this book. this is the best book i have read in YEARS. i would give it fifteen stars if i could. i have never written fan mail to an author before, but i want to write fan mail to this author. i want to buy fifty copies & just dispense them to people in my life like candy (but i sadly am not made of money). i most certainly intend to buy my own copy (i got this one from the library) so i can re-read it over & over & loan it to friends.

it's kind of weird that i love this book so much, because it appears to be about a woman who started doing yoga & had some life epiphanies that she shares by connecting them to various yoga poses. i admit i do a tiny amount of yoga--for about fifteen minutes every other day. i do relaxation poses & a few very basic poses aimed at building strength & flexibility through my back & core. it's pain management for whatever the fuck is wrong with my back (arthritis, spina bifida, scoliosis, who knows). but i don't do yoga in terms of enrolling in a class, seeking out a teacher, having special yoga pants i wear.

but the book is about way more than yoga. what i took away from it: claire is about ten years older than me & seemed to come of age in the same kind of sub-culture as me. there are numerous references to punk bands & a misfit, misspent youth. she finally settled down in her late 20s, got married, & had a baby. when her baby was ten months old, claire threw her back out while breastfeeding. everyone told her to do yoga to deal with her back pain. she was reluctant because she kind of thought yoga was a weird hippie thing or for people far younger & fitter & more comfortable appropriating eastern philosophy. but she tried & was surprised to find that she liked it.

but it did play into her issues with perfectionism. as a new mom, a lot of her perfectionism involved being a perfect mom, & for a lefty weirdo, being a perfect mom meant attachment parenting--breastfeeding, babywearing, co-sleeping, co-op nursery schools. she writes about hating the moms who seemed to do attachment parenting with ease, & feeling contemptuous of the moms who struggled, or didn't bother at all, while also feeling constantly judged herself, like she was neglecting her baby if she stopped breastfeeding after ten months. she writes about how we always hate the people who are the most like ourselves, but doing things just a little differently. i related to that ENORMOUSLY. it's one of my biggest struggles.

she connects her perfectionist tendencies with having a rootless kind of weirdo childhood after her mother left her father for a youthful hippie who drove a tugboat. her parents never legally divorced & remained very involved in the lives of their children, but...you know. still. i personally wouldn't know much about this because my parents stayed together until the day my dad died. their relationship was fucked up though & they talked about divorce everyday for like 25 years, so i guess i kind of relate, sort of. not that it's about me. or that a person would need to relate to every aspect of claire's story in order to get something out of her book.

the book spans ten years of claire's life, from when she started yoga in 1999 (the WTO protests get their own chapter, as claire lived in seattle at the time & watched the riots on TV, wondering when she had become a person that would choose not to be out participating in them) to the present day (more or less). she touches on her husband's struggles with depression, deciding to have a second baby, deciding not to have a third, choosing the perfect school for her daughter, struggling to balance the desire for a bohemian writer life against the emotional upheaval of constant financial instability, feeling smothered by but drawn to family, etc. ultimately, she comes to realize that her adulthood has been all about doing what is perfect & good & right, as opposed to what is real. she writes about learning how to let herself fail, or just not be the best.

i don't know. maybe i am making it sound really self-help-y. maybe it is self-help-y. but i love it. i am obsessed with this book. the only other books i have ever read that made me feel this connected & deliriously happy to have read them are all over creation by ruth ozeki (my all-time favorite novel) & growing up underground by jane alpert (& my fervor for that book has certainly been dulled a bit by reading some of jane's later writing on crazy feminist biological essentialism). i want all of my friends to read this book & then call me so we can talk about it. even if they hate it, i want to know why.

man. if you could marry a book, i would totally marry this book. i honestly feel like it has changed my life at least a little bit.(less)

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Feb 14, 2011 Jessica rated it 2 of 5 stars

I loved this book - until I hated it. As a matter of fact, I'll willingly admit that this book brought tears to my eyes at one point, from the shock of simple recognition. We share a parenting philosophy, Claire and I - the "I'll be the most hawk-eyed, careful parent ever and God will reward me by making sure my children are healthy" approach. And the kicker is that I didn't even know it was a parenting style, much less one held by me, until I found a passage about it in this book and had to rem...more I loved this book - until I hated it. As a matter of fact, I'll willingly admit that this book brought tears to my eyes at one point, from the shock of simple recognition. We share a parenting philosophy, Claire and I - the "I'll be the most hawk-eyed, careful parent ever and God will reward me by making sure my children are healthy" approach. And the kicker is that I didn't even know it was a parenting style, much less one held by me, until I found a passage about it in this book and had to remove myself from the elliptical machine and cry.

After that, I was more than prepared to award Dederer 5 stars, with the caveat that the stars would only be for my experience and not necessarily suggestive of your own, dear reader, because this book, really, would appeal only to a very small group of people - relatively well-off, liberal, married, intellectually-minded, part-time working mothers who regularly practice yoga. I mean, that probably seems like a huge swath of the population when you live in Portland, Oregon (or was it Seattle? I'm sorry, I confuse the two - and why wouldn't I?), like the author does, but really, it's not. Anyway, the book starts off very well. It's lucid, well-organized, insightful. It really seems like Dederer has both a good story to tell (about parenthood, about marriage, about family) and that there will be plenty of personal growth, redemption, and illumination (and maybe some humor, too) along the way. She had me cheering as she researched the history of yoga at a dusty bookshop and had an internal argument over whether the asanas ought really be recognized as "authentic" yoga, and comes to the conclusion that insight, however you find it, is worth pursuing. I'm totally on board.

But then. Oh, then the book falls apart. Or rather, it never really comes together at a deeper level, sort of like Claire's handstand practice. There's no "there" there, even though she goes all over town - and eventually, across the Rocky Mountains, to that equally insular liberal, white, bubble of Boulder, Colorado - to find deeper meaning and renewal in her life. Instead of focusing on how yoga (or parenthood, or marriage, or her childhood experiences, for that matter) opened her up and made her aware of her many, many blessings, she spends a whole lot of time shutting down everyone and anything that doesn't live up to her expectations. It's a long list that starts with her parents and in-laws (who keep coming over to help with the kids and give them treats - the nerve!), moves through her husband (who is far too interested in making money to keep the roof over everyone's heads - and Claire on her yoga mat - to be happy), her dear friends (beautiful Lisa, who had four gorgeous babies and then took to yoga herself with alarming alacrity, which brought nothing but trouble, as Claire would have us think), and, of course, the yoga studios she frequents. She has a nasty word for most of them, especially ones in strip malls, but saves her biggest diss for the "chain" studio she encounters in Boulder, where, according to her, the instructor was blonde, slim, and clueless; the students were just a bunch of bubble-headed Boulder co-eds intent on staring at themselves all class long, and the management was so worried about liabilities that, according to her, no one ever was allowed to do inversions, which was why she went to the studio in the first place - she was afraid of inversions. But then she is directed to try a handstand at said pathetic studio, and disaster (well, not really) ensues. Now, I have worked in Boulder for over a decade and we all know there's only one "chain" studio there. I know it well, because I've practiced (and taught) there for years and years. And I can you this: it's not "Ashtanga, done carelessly" - it's power yoga, and it's very well done, as leading power yoga advocates such as Baron Baptiste or Rolf Gates would tell you, since they've visited the studios on a number of occasions. Furthermore, the management encourages inversions for students who are capable, which anyone who has taken an intermediate or advanced class at this studio - or any of the dozens of workshops offered there - can tell you. Finally, no teacher at this "chain" would tell a student to "kick up" into a freaking headstand, as one of Claire's teachers supposedly told her to do! (That's a ticket to a neck injury, for sure!) Sure, maybe I'm a little sore that she was nasty about my beloved studio. But really, it's just a great example of how this book fails to take it to the next level. After all the time she spent laying out her arguments for hatha yoga, which I mentioned earlier, she turns around and proclaims a practice that she's not quite up for to be sub-par? It's the ultimate irony, and illustrates the author's egocentrism.

The final nail in the coffin is the last quarter of the book, which just turns, plain and simple, into almost laughable navelgazing. After referring repeatedly to the troubles her mother caused the family by (sort of) leaving Claire's father when Claire was about 8 for a much younger man, she finally decides that this was an act of courage, and that she and all the other women who left their husbands (well, almost left them) between 1973 and 1979 (she's weirdly specific on this) shaped a generation of women (their children), to whom the book is, in the end, apparently addressed. But how many people out there are the children of (at least quasi-) divorce (who have loving relationships with their mom, dad, and stepfather) between 1973 and 1979, and are also relatively well off, liberal, married, intellectually-minded, part-time working mothers who regularly practice yoga? Not a whole hell of a lot, I'm willing to bet. In fact, maybe only Claire Dederer herself, which forced me to conclude that this book was really just written to her, from her. Boo.

Namaste, Claire Dederer. May the next ten years of your yoga practice bring you more self-awareness than the first. (less)

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Feb 09, 2011 Mbarkle rated it 4 of 5 stars

I don't usually like the memoir genre, but had heard good things about this book, so gave it a chance.

Don't be afraid when you hear it's about yoga -- this book is the ANTI-Eat,Pray, Love. The author is so funny, smart, self-deprecating, you fall under her spell right away. It helps that she is about the same age as I am and is in the same stage of life and motherhood.

There were some parts that I found boring, where she goes into a lot of detail about the history of yoga, but part of that is h...more

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Jan 06, 2013 Meg Allison rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult-fiction-non-fiction, 5-starred-reviews

This is Claire Dederer's memoir of her life and her childhood told through metaphors of yoga asanas (or poses). Her journey resonates with me: I have a lot in common (but certainly not everything) with Dederer. It is for women like her that her memoir will appeal most - women born and coming of age in the 1960s and 70s, well-educated, trying to be the perfect prototype of mother, wife, and woman, all the while embracing the spiritual and physical journey of yoga. A child of alternative, free-hee...more

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Sep 06, 2012 sendann rated it 2 of 5 stars

I think enjoying a memoir comes down to your feelings about the story telling voice. I feel like there are a lot of them, this one among them, that I like because I kind of can't stand the person. The story is told in the voice of a writerly ironic slightly sarcastic self deprecating urban mom. And those things all make me kind of want to go somewhere else like now. But it isn't that bad here, and we all have those characteristics sometimes. Also, about halfway through I started skipping the cha...more

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Jun 05, 2012 Minyoung Lee rated it 5 of 5 stars

The author really does use the metaphor of yoga with her view on life pretty well. What I loved about this book is that, as the title Poser implies, the author is completely aware of her adhering to the stereotypical role of "liberal white hipster mother" and kind of has fun with it. She consciously and subconsciously strives to conform to a certain type of stereotype, and feels comfortable doing so. Kind of like yoga, where you follow a set of rules to relax into a pose and somehow find liberat...more

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Sep 07, 2011 Ula rated it 3 of 5 stars

I don't remember the last time I vacillated between love and intense annoyance so much in a book. I was initially weary to read a book about yoga by a white north Seattle uber-yuppie mother but in the first few chapters I was won over. The author was funny, self-deprecating and discussed so many issues in approaching yoga (like, is this real yoga, just a workout, white people finding faux-spiritualism through eastern cultures, stinky hippies who think they're better than everyone?) that at least...more

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Oct 04, 2012 Shin Yu rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book consistently surprised me in the author's ability to reflect upon her life as impacted by her family history and her use of asanas as an organizing structural device to move the narrative into deeper places. Going into the book, I wondered whether or not the memoir would seem cliched and was delighted by Dederer's voice and critical eye and mind.

"Poser" tells the story of Seattlite Claire Dederer's yoga journey through chapters named after yoga poses - capitalizing on popular mainstrea...more

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May 09, 2011 Jennifer rated it 4 of 5 stars

I loved this book - before I had gotten out of the first few chapters I had marked pages here and there with bits of paper so I could go back and enjoy again the parts that really got to me. The author is funny and I liked the description of yoga, but more than that I loved her take on being a "good" mom in this day and age - no exceptions to breastfeeding for at least a year, attachment parenting, etc etc etc - and the feelings of conflict and guilt this can engender. But as she progresses thru...more I loved this book - before I had gotten out of the first few chapters I had marked pages here and there with bits of paper so I could go back and enjoy again the parts that really got to me. The author is funny and I liked the description of yoga, but more than that I loved her take on being a "good" mom in this day and age - no exceptions to breastfeeding for at least a year, attachment parenting, etc etc etc - and the feelings of conflict and guilt this can engender. But as she progresses thru yoga class and life, she comes to the conclusion that maybe the "opposite of good isn't bad, but real". Just a wonderful commentary on life and how, altho I make it sound corny, how to appreciate it. Very recommended.

*When I was a kid, and a wish came my way, by means of an early star or a white horse or a ringed rock, I always wished for the same thing. I wished that I might have the power to enter any book I liked and live there.*

*...Contentment would have a shelf life. And then Bruce would be telling the kids to go in before they were ready, and then I would be anxious that he was ruining their magical moment, and we would all be getting cold anyway.
And the children would have snuggled under the blankets, their hair damp and their cheeks hard and shiny with cold.
But they didn't do any of those things because I didn't tell them about the snow. I didn't want to deal with their joy.*

*These rules, this idea that things should be a certain way, were sucking the day-to-day joy out of life. My idea of how things ought to be was eating up our family. I was so worried about the children missing their sleep that I couldn't wake them up to see the snow.*

*"Anyway. I think of yoga as a kind of counterweight to the way I behave in the rest of my life. No matter how hunched I am the rest of the time, I know that for at least an hour or so every day, I'll have beautiful, open shoulders. I've given up on having them in the rest of life. I just enjoy them while I have them."
A counterweight. This seemed to me the pithiest description of transformation I had ever heard. You didn't lead up to it or analyze it or try to apply it in different situations. You just created optimal situations for being different, adn then you were different. You didn't have to worry about changing everything about yourself, or fixing the fear, or being someone new. You just acted like the person you wanted to be, when and if you could.* (less)

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About Claire Dederer

Claire’s first book, Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses, will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in January, 2011. It will be published simultaneously in the UK by Bloomsbury.

Claire is a longtime contributor to The New York Times. Her articles have appeared in Vogue, Real Simple, The Nation, New York, Yoga Journal, on Slate and Salon, and in newspapers across the country. Her writing...more

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“I had discovered something; there was a pleasure in becoming something new. You could will yourself into a fresh shape. Now all I had to do was figure out how to do it out there, in my life.” — 10 people liked it

“What if the opposite of good wasn't bad? What if the opposite of good was real?” — 4 people liked it

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Poser: My Life in Twenty-three Yoga Poses

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