Some Memoirs of Transformation

Take YWR #98 from dark to light

Alt title: Some “Hopey-Changey” Memoirs. (Too soon for more political references? Still have a midterm hangover? Still anxiously refreshing your browser to see if the tabulations have changed in Arizona? NO ME NEITHER, LOL, OBVIOUSLY NOT, I am an adult with SELF CONTROL.)

This week’s theme is admittedly a bit tautological, like: Books with Words! Mysteries with Mysterious People! 300 Page Business Books that Really Shoulda Been an HBR Abstract! Because the very act of a memoir - retelling a pivotal moment or history with the benefit of distance and wisdom - means that most memoirs drive the transformative thematic freeway, right? Otherwise they’d just be, like, hard tales of woe without any eventual evolution. (And fine, if that’s your happy place, you’re not alone - my stepmother’s preferred book summary is “terrible things happen and then everyone dies, underpinned by biblical and literary references.”)

Yes, there are notable exceptions to the typically transformative memoir, from When Breath Becomes Air to Crying in H Mart to maybe most of Joan Didion I’m told? - but even these reveal inspiration and light, even just through the jagged, painful cracks in the glass. It’s why your friendly neighborhood anthropology major (yes, that’s me, and yes, my parents were nonplussed) loves the memoir genre - when it’s good, it’s such a glimpse into the many ways we’re so messily, painfully, gloriously human and how we’re constantly re-creating ourselves. How circumstances both in and out of our control create our realities, and how, finally, we can change the narrative to create a different, not easier-but-truer, path. Enjoy this week’s selections.

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This Body I Wore is a lovely, poignant, and painfully honest memoir about a woman’s late-in-life gender transition. (Yes, I know this is on the thematic nose but it’s a good book, okay?) It’s not surprising that a memoir by a poet would be so lyrical and would eschew a straight plot retelling for something that feels more experiential. It’s like a history of the trans community in New York as much as it is her own story. And, of course, it’s really about grappling with what our families tell us, what our society tells us, and ultimately, what our souls whisper to us about who we are, and the risks of actually living authentically.

If you’re new around these parts, these Gentle Lamb ratings are not about book quality, but about how they will hit your precious heart. Find out more here.

Corrections in Ink follows the author from the seemingly brilliant potential of youth, through a brutal rock bottom, to somewhere wiser and hopeful. As a child, the author is a gifted student and athlete, but quickly turns to substances, eating disorders, and self-harm to try to quiet her internal anguish. As a Cornell student, she’s arrested with heroin and serves two years in prison before being released and finding a new path as a journalist covering incarceration.

Listen, a lot of this is … pretty harsh to read. She is flintily unsparing and unconcerned with painting herself in a good light as she recounts drug use, sex work, suicide attempts. But it’s a powerful and often beautiful memoir about our choices, and where they come from, and second chances for people we often want to write off.

I’m sorry! Memoirs aren’t the lambiest of genres! I don’t make the rules!

Ignore the cute but kind of cheesy cover, please - Bringing in Finn is actually a thoughtful, beautifully written memoir of fertility, surrogacy, and how we are transformed over and over by trauma in terrible and wonderful ways. It’s also a story of becoming a mother by having her own 61-year-old mother carry her child, and the remarkable journey this becomes. There’s deep loss but also bellows of hope and plenty of witty dashes. I read it many years ago and still think about it a lot.

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In the “memoirs you can probably skip but hey! do what feels right to you” category: welcome to Whistleblower and Scarred. Whistleblower is written by Susan Fowler, who wrote about being sexually harassed while working at Uber. Listen, Fowler seems like an extraordinarily impressive human (from profound poverty and home/no school to Ivy League degrees in physics to being an impressive autodidact in languages, philosophy, and music). And I’m grateful she exposed Uber. But this is very much a plodding narrative, with the kind of elementary “I burst into tears” and “worked day and night” phrasing that I never need to see again in published works. Not great. Read Educated instead.

Scarred, by a woman who left the NXIVM cult, is even worse, and I say this as someone who has watched all the shows and listens to her podcast about cults. Nothing new, nothing particularly revelatory that we don’t know, nothing notable with the actual writing. It brings me no joy to say this but you can skip these both.

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All Over But the Shouting

• If these memoirs didn’t tickle your ivories, check out the archive for lots of other options, from audiobooks to a delightful five-lamber to non-fussy historical fiction. And if they did tickle your ivories, there are plenty of other memoirs from past weeks, including Celebrity Memoirs that Don’t Suck and more.

• All links, as per ush, go to bookshop.org which supports independent bookstores. You can also see most of my past suggestions there except when I forget to add them. If you buy through these links I theoretically get a smalllllll commission. It almost never happens, but I have a need to walk the straight and narrow so I’m telling you.

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