Summer Reading for Memoirists
Sparked by request from my fantastic memoir students of VONA 2012 … What memoir and creative nonfiction books juice you?
Memoir about other people
Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid
My Brother by Jamaica Kincaid
Does Your House Have Lions by Sonia Sanchez — actually a poetry book of linked poetry centering around her brother’s death of complications of AIDS; weaves different family/ancestral voices
The Bishop’s Daughter by Honor Moore — a woman writes about being the bisexual daughter of a closeted gay bishop; silences in the family
Who She Was: My Search for My Mother’s Life by Sam Freedman — totally research-based with personal reflection only at the beginning and end; great model for the kinds of research you can do for memoir
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel — graphic novel format, memoir about her father
Memoir with landscape/location as a character
Volcano: A Memoir of Hawai’i by Garrett Hongo
Epitaph for a Peach by David Mas Masumoto
Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje
Talking to High Monks in the Snow: An Asian American Odyssey by Lydia Minatoya
Memoir with relevant content for some folks
Books of the other VONA teachers, obviously — especially Elmaz Abinader and Faith Adiele for political/international content
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion — on death and grief
The Long Journey by Natalie Goldberg — on grief, multiple losses of marriage/father/zen teacher
Lakota Woman by Mary Crow Dog — this is more in the older genre of autobiography rather than what we think of as a modern literary memoir — on surviving battle/genocide
Night by Elie Wiesel — sparse and fragmented narrative of a teenage boy caring for his father in Nazi concentration camps 1944-45
One! Hundred! Demons! by Lynda Barry — graphic memoir; monsters from childhood trauma
Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil — not a memoir, actually, but read for the mesmerizing passages of drug use/hallucination/disassociation
Outdated: Why Dating is Ruining Your Love Life by Samhita Mukhopadhyay — feminist deconstruction of dating, with some memoiristic content
Nonfiction with experimental/interesting structure
The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald — on the line between fiction and nonfiction, structured as 4 biographies but they add up to something amazing; impact of a historical trauma many decades afterward
A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War by Susan Griffin — stunning poetic political memoir/ feminist meditation that moves across many locations and timeframes
“Exterminate All the Brutes”: One Man’s Odyssey into the Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide by Sven Lindqvist — gorgeous first-person fragmented memoir/travel narrative/political critique/meditation on history
Calamities of Exile: Three Nonfiction Novellas by Lawrence Weschler — biographies of refugee-artists
Prose by poets
Soldier: A Poet’s Childhood by June Jordan
The Winged Seed: A Remembrance by Li-Young Lee
Bhanu Kapil — all of her books (prose/poetry) are beautiful models with interesting structures; she teaches at Naropa; her blog http://jackkerouacispunjabi.blogspot.com/ (also, for those interested in experimental and cross-genre writing, Naropa in Colorado is a good place to check out for summer workshops and MFA)
Old-school powerful biomythographies from women of color
Everyone, but especially any woman of color in America writing a memoir, should read these — they are our canon:
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston
Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldua
Other resources
Kristina Wong, one-woman show “Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” — comedic show about being Chinese-American and mental illness
Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky and Connie Burk — on working through & with trauma, one’s own or other people’s
Writing Down the Bones and Wild Mind by Natalie Goldberg — books by on freewriting and writing as a practice
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron — the best practical guide for writers and artists
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Gratuitous photo of my summer reading, taken with my new iPhone:
