[CW: Eating disorders. Cover removed due to concerns raised that it might be triggering itself.] Book #174 of 2020: Empty by Susan Burton Well-written but tough to face head-on, this is a fairly agonizing account of the author’s childhood and adult anorexia, bookending her arguably worse difficulty with binge-eating in high school and college. Susan …
Tag Archives: memoir
Book Review: The Salt Path by Raynor Winn
Book #171 of 2020: The Salt Path by Raynor Winn With their farmhouse and associated livelihood repossessed, 50-year-old Raynor Winn and her husband elect to pack up their few remaining possessions and hike a 630-mile trail around the coastline of southwest England. This resulting memoir is a good travelogue of that region, but I find …
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Book Review: I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown
Book #160 of 2020: I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown This 2018 racial injustice memoir is a little bit lacking in a clear throughline, and I personally haven’t gotten much out of the later sections that are specifically about problems internal to the Evangelical church community. …
Book Review: Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist by Judith Heumann with Kristen Joiner
Book #119 of 2020: Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist by Judith Heumann with Kristen Joiner At turns inspirational, eye-opening, and infuriating, activist Judith Heumann’s account of her lifelong fight to enshrine civil rights protections for people with disabilities deserves to be read widely. It’s easy to not think about matters …
Book Review: I Want You to Know We’re Still Here by Esther Safran Foer
Book #103 of 2020: I Want You to Know We’re Still Here by Esther Safran Foer There are many personal accounts of the Holocaust out there, but I think this new memoir may be the first I’ve read from the child of survivors, exploring what it’s like to grow up with that sort of household …
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Book Review: Something That May Shock and Discredit You by Daniel Mallory Ortberg
Book #54 of 2020: Something That May Shock and Discredit You by Daniel Mallory Ortberg Author Daniel Mallory Ortberg’s continual process of trying on and discarding various metaphors to describe his experience with gender dysphoria and transition reminds me of Carmen Maria Machado’s masterful In the Dream House, which adopts a similar approach to the …
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Book Review: In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
Book #12 of 2020: In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado It took me a little while to get on-board with this memoir’s disjointed style, but the quality of Carmen Maria Machado’s prose is well worth the effort. Although the work remains fragmentary, each successive glimpse at the author’s relationship with her abusive ex-girlfriend …
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Book Review: Permanent Record by Edward Snowden
Book #212 of 2019: Permanent Record by Edward Snowden This volume by infamous CIA/NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden reminds me somewhat of James Comey’s A Higher Loyalty, and not just because I read both of them for my local book club. Each is also half memoir and half political tract, finding a controversial public figure recounting …
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Book Review: Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love by Dani Shapiro
Book #152 of 2019: Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love by Dani Shapiro Dani Shapiro writes movingly of her sense of identity being upended by an unexpected DNA test result, but I struggle to truly comprehend her viewpoint. Even setting aside the author’s odd trust in mediums, meditation gurus, and personality tests, it …
Book Review: Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son by Michael Chabon
Book #78 of 2019: Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son by Michael Chabon This 2009 book from Michael Chabon is an excellent memoir, focused less on the novelist’s specific life history and more on his general musings about parenting and gender roles, as filtered through his own experiences. …
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