Memoirous

A Green Glow on the Horizon Dawn Burns Cornerstone Press, 2026 Green Glow is a collection of linked stories supposedly compiled by an editor and written by survivors of tourist traps. The subtitle is: Tales from the National Association of Tourist Attraction Survivors. NATAS. It seems legit—but what is this book, the stories, really about? What are they really fighting against? I know Dawn Burns and her background and I have a good guess. The last story is about finding paradise in Hell. That is, Hell, Michigan—another made-up place?! I’ve actually been there. To the restaurant, the billboard, and putt-putt golf venue. It exists—but is it real? But I’m getting ahead of myself with existential questions. One may as well ask if Las Vegas is real or Heaven/heaven or any number of places that may or may not exist. And who gets to decide. I guess that’s what the book is about/asking. Let me pose my own question in the form of an anecdote. All across campuses, institutional sit...

The Things We Never Say Elizabeth Strout Viking, 2026 Elizabeth Strout’s new book is out, The Things We Never Say , and I read it over one week. Am I an Elizabeth Strout fan? I don’t know, but I’ve read everything. Why? Because they hold my attention. The writing is such that I can easily enter the heads of the characters while at the same time nothing is spelled out. We are allowed to interpret: Was that conversation a bit off? Did she just dismiss him? Now what are they supposed to do? Basically, they are basic. The stuff we humans endure. Secrets, inner pain, frustration with relationships. Laundry. Jobs that do not satisfy. Unfulfilled dreams. Why? Because they are dreams, destined to stay that way. The order of things. I was struck while reading The Things We Never Say how similar this book is to the writing of Kent Haruf*, a novelist who wrote about a fictious town on the eastern plains of Colorado. An area called the Front Range. In the town of Holt where nothing much happ...

  Girl, 1983 Linn Ullmann, translated from Norwegian by Martin Aitken W.W, Norton & Company, 2024, original 2021   “A masterpiece. It pushes the fused power of memoir and story to a new dimension.” Ali Smith I’ve read Ali Smith—along with a whole slew of other authors that blurbed the book: Deborah Levy, Rachel Cusk, Roxana Robinson, Claire Messud. This is a power field of influencers, all praising Girl, 1983. But, it is the Smith endorsement that caught my attention. You see, memoir and story are the cornerstones of my Freeze Frame: Micro-Memoir workshop. Also, the 1980s is hot right now. There’s been a flashback to that era of glam, neons, and discothèques. Raving all night long before AIDS, the pandemic, before fractious politics. Maybe not AIDS—it’s at the door, knocking. The memories and vignettes are built around tension, a secret, a blurry photograph that keeps the narrator awake at night, from enjoying life, caught in a confluence of guilt and questions...

Evangelina Everyday by Dawn Burns Cornerstone Press, Stevens Point, WI, 2022 Evangelina is the kind of book you want to curl up with. It is a small collection of flash stories—indeed reads like flash memoir, of a Midwestern wife who hails from Indiana—a state that I saw in my feed, the latest to institute posting the Ten Commandments in schools—who has a vivid thought life and not so much a vivid life. She wants to go along with the flow, but has a hard time getting into the flow. She is intelligent in the way a Renaissance thinker may have been, but, being a woman, may have also been judged a witch and drowned. At the wrong place at the wrong time, if she had tried to tell her whole story she would have been outcast. The “stories” features her looped thoughts and ponderings. All she really wants to be is accepted and walk in the fields—not the wind-whipped ones full of trash and plastic bags sticking to straw grass, but the ones just waking up from night and enveloped in dew, gli...

The Vaster Wilds Lauren Groff Riverhead Books, September 2023 In the Distance Hernan Diaz Riverhead Books, March 2024 I wanted to slip out a quick review of these titles. My Christmas vacation was spent reading. I think in one week I read four books. It was lovely— You know, with all the snow and cold, hot tea and chocolate, cozy slippers, warm blankets, putting my feet up in my Tiny House. I was blessed. I’ve been a fan of Groff for a while. I love her Florida stories and the novel Matrix , not so much her highly-acclaimed Fates and Furies . In fact, that novel put me off so much, I thought I might not return to her work. But every time I hear of a Florida hurricane (which is frequent) I think about her short story collection, Florida . Also, I think I might have been at the Sewanee Writers Conference in a critique group with her. She looks so familiar in her author pic. It seems that Groff’s interests are varied and far-ranging. All her books are different, coming from, I’m sur...

At work our DEI person was moderating a book study using The Good Ally by Nova Reid. From the cover: A guided anti-racism journey from bystander to changemaker. As if social media is not fraught enough—it drove me crazy during the pandemic and the George Floyd protests all the grandstanding by white people. I get it, I wanted to see things change too, yes, it was all so horrible and senseless—but I didn’t feel the need to put everything out there online. I was busy holding doors for people. Sort of a lie. I was busy riding my bike through Iowa on my cross-country bike trip. Politics and the politics of living/dying had compelled me to hop on my bike and embark on a 43-day, 2,400-mile bike trip. I needed to excise the pain out of my body and head. When Kamala lost I had the same sensation. The need to get n my bike. I rode to a bridge on the Lansing River trail where I met Lillian, where we cried and ate stale cookies. Back to being an ally. I’m not even sure what this word mean...

Rodham Curtis Sittenfeld Random House, 2020 My first introduction to Curtis Sittenfeld and their work was at the Festival of Faith & Writing at Calvin University in April. There are times I wish I could turn back the clock—before this year’s election. Sittenfeld’s novel does just that—providing a parallel universe in which to dwell, if only in our dreams. Again, in this sideways/circular moment in history, Rodham can perhaps be read as satire, a mesmerizing what-if. The premise of the book is that Hillary Rodham never marries Bill Clinton. The first third of the novel is devoted to Hillary meeting Bill Clinton at Yale Law School and their early courtship and sex life. A bit of this reads rather cringey—but I think that might have been intentional. I filed it under Too Much Information—at the same time trying to keep in mind this is all a made up story. But it’s hard to separate fact from fiction in this first part. Then comes their break up. Bill eventually marries, divo...

The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism Tim Alberta Harper, 2023 Tim Alberta is a native son of Michigan and adept observer of the Evangelical and post-Evangelical world as the son of a born again pastor who built up a successful church down the road from me in Brighton. We’re all floundering right now in a netherland between polarities, in a nation more divided than ever. Some assert on the verge of a civil war, Into this dire fractured battlefield stepped Tim Alberta.   After his father died, the author decided to assess the health of Evangelical Christianity from a number of perspectives, knowing that not everyone would agree on even what it means to be an Evangelical Christian. What he found was that the Church was in trouble, I began reading this book in the aftermath of a decision by Chicago’s City Zoning Committee to deny CCO (Cornerstone Community Outreach, the homeless shelter I used to work at) a Special Use Permit to exte...

In preparation for the upcoming Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin University April 11-13, I’ve been a mad woman putting books on hold at the library and checking titles off my Reading List. There are far tooooo many workshop leaders to read all the books, so I’ve concentrated on the main ones, the plenary speakers. This past week I read Yaa Gyasi’s Transcendent Kingdom . Several things put me off at first. If you judge a book by its cover—which WE ALL DO (it’s the relevance behind that axiom)—I hated it. There was a sticker Read with Jenna (not a fan), the colors—sort of a putty puke contrasted against a charcoal not quite black with the figure of a woman awkwardly praying. Nevertheless, I opened up to page one. I was reminded of Daniel Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon , there is an experiment using mice that will ultimately impact the story, the scientist doing the research, and hold parallels for the universal reader. I would also critique the first sentence—“Whenever I think of my ...

The Vulnerables Sigrid Nunez Riverhead Books, New York 2023 I realized I was a title or two behind some of my favorite authors and have been putting down holds at the local library at a furious pace. I was first introduced, literally, to Sigrid Nunez at Breadloaf and have since really enjoyed her work. She is not your stereotypical memoirist or novelist—but has cunningly combined the two. She blurs the line between fiction and nonfiction by writing what some has termed the autobiographical novel or autofiction—a kind of hybrid. In a hybrid there are liberal doses of the “real” and invented parts. Poetic license. Where we as readers assume she is writing about herself, while she is aware of constructing a story that makes sense, which means playing with the facts. Often “real life” is too strange and convoluted to appear real. Subtext gives it a little more credibility. Often in her “novels” the narrator is herself a writer. She often writes about writing, and in The Vulnerables, which ...

Review Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief Victoria Chang Milkweed Editions, 2021   “. . . one memory certainly hides another, that being what memory is all about . . .” Kenneth Koch, One Train May Hide Another Inside this volume are trails, threads, snippets, snails. One leading to another, down corridors, alcoves under eaves. Chang works with memory from an archival perspective mixed with contemporary flashes. Like in Koch’s poem where train cars can be stand-ins for just about anything in life where we are blindsided, caught up in a cosmic chessboard of ever-moving pieces, memory is a cautionary tale. One memory leads to another to another, foregoing, preceeding, succumbing. She allows each to wash over her in a series of “letters,” which reveals to readers the nature of her relationship to individuals/family, to reality, to past and present. Chang’s memories intertwine with those of her mother, reflections of her father, snapshots of time spent in poetry ...

All This Thinking: The Correspondence of Bernadette Mayer and Clark Coolidge Edited by Stephanie Anderson and Kristen Tapson University of New Mexico Press, 2022 I’m loosely connected to the Network for New York School Studies. I was part of a panel discussion last April where my focus was the intersection of flash in several New York School Poet’s work. I would have loved for the panel to have had more interaction—it was Zoom and we basically delivered remarks—but was happy for the chance to sit and hear others talk about a subject I love delving into: the New York School poetry scene. Recently, through an email update, I learned about All This Thinking: The Correspondence of Bernadette Mayer and Clark Coolidge , edited by Stephanie Anderson and Kristen Tapson. At the Network’s YouTube channel I listened in on a conversation between the two editors led by Rona Cran and Yasmine Shamma. Reading books of letters or published journals/diaries can be an incredible revelation into someone...

Also a Poet Ada Calhoun Grove Press, 2022 I’d recently been doing internet research into a quote I love: I’m out on a limb, and it is the arm of God. Frank O’Hara. This quote perfectly expresses how I feel when I begin a bike tour. It’s crazy to think frumpy me on my little bike crossing the country will actually make it. Soooo many things can end such a trip, like getting struck and killed by a car—or killed period by psychopaths, alligators, bears—you see where this road leads, down a hole of NO. It’s why most people don’t go or seek adventure; there are too many things to be afraid of. Out on a limb—check. The hand of God—yes. We are putting ourselves into the hands of destiny, seeing where it leads. Into the hands of a God who loves, who cares, where even I matter. It is an attitude of vulnerability, but also openness. Which describes Frank O’Hara and his attitude toward life. Thus, in my research of the quote, I discovered an article by Ada Calhoun (https://www.nytimes...

From Shade to Shine Jill Peláez Baumgaertner Paraclete Press, Iron Pen Imprint, 2022 Many of the poems in this book are not new; they appeared previously in journals or were read or performed for tributes, retirements, dedications—with that being said they are new . Assembled and arranged during a pandemic, in light of mortality, toward the end of a highly productive academic career. So the title seems somewhat indicative, from shade to shine, of that feeling of walking on a day of clouds, where racing shadows envelope the reader, and, just as fleetingly, they disappear and we are surrounded by brilliant sun. Within this volume we travel from the Orkneys, to the warm environs of Cuba, to the forests of Poland and a concentration camp, to the terrace patio of a Chicago highrise. Baumgaertner takes us there, into the shadows and subterranean Neolithic mounds scattered across the Orkney Islands, then into the bright day as we follow the sun and calendar into Lent, Easter, and summer solst...

Good Works by Keith Wasserman and Christine D. Pohl Eerdmans Publishing, 2021 This book has been out for 9 months now and I apologize it has taken so long. It was a labor of love. You see, I have been friends with the author Keith Wasserman for nearly 50 years. There is so much in that sentence above that I love: using the words Keith Wasserman in tandem with author. When I first met Keith as a fifteen-year old sophomore at Centerville High School he was more the author of chaos. No one would have ever dreamed he’d write something let alone his own name. He was sort of an eesh guy. But, then   . . . . We got saved. He changed, my attitude changed. We belonged to the same church. Keith baptized me in a dammed up gully behind his house, Me and my friends sent him cassette tapes when he went off to England to assist an evangelize one summer. He’s helped me through MANY crisis of faith and personal struggles. And never once have we stopped being friends. But this is a...

Miles From Motown Lisa Sukenic Fitzroy Books, 2021 I remember moving in the middle of 4th grade—it’s the main reason I still stumble in multiplication. We were somewhere in the times table at one school and near the end at the next school. Thus, a gap. Making friends was always hard for me, much easier to find books to read—so I usually ended up in the school library. Where I discovered a book that helped bridge the gap in my heart between old and new: The Wonderful Year by Nancy Barnes For many of us who value story as a way to understand the world, there is such a book. I believe Lisa’s book will be just that. Miles From Motown is an ode to Detroit, the Motor City—and more, it is an ode to a certain time: where the Vietnam War is waging, the Blue Flu is infecting the police department, where “White Flight” is taking place as minorities exercise their right to move into the suburbs. We get the sense that Detroit and Georgia Johnson are on the cusp. Of painful decisions, of facing life...

 A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself by Peter Ho Davies Was a very interesting and heartbreaking book. A simple story really—it’s about life, love, and children—particularly your child and how impossible it is to feel in control. Those of us who are parents are tapping our chest and saying, I feel ya. It is a small book and a quick read—though I guess it took ages to write. In fact the little I’ve gleaned from a topical search online about Peter Ho Davies and a masterclass I had with him via Zoom a couple of months ago through Story Studio  inform me that he is self-deprecating and transparent about feeling guilty about not writing. Funny, I‘ve been doing much the same. Not writing, and feeling bad about it. Not true. I have been writing, not just the stuff I meant to get around to. I’ve been busy with these blog posts or what I like to tell folks: the personal essay. Seinfeld would label it writing about nothing. Ho Davies seemingly writes about nothing. There was n...

For All Who Hunger Emily M.D. Scott Convergent, New York, 2020 In an earlier post I mentioned that we’re being allowed back into the library to browse the stacks. Since I’m unfamiliar with the library, as I moved here during the pandemic and it was closed, I had no idea where to start. Luckily on the first floor is a NEW section. Of course, there was the torrid romances with their covers ALL IN THE SAME COLOR PALETTE. Sheesh! There was also some exciting new non-fiction and then a little tiny section for religion or self-help/improvement. And, since this is Eugene OR, the section included several titles dedicated to goddess and witches/worship. So it was a broad swath of everything. Nestled in here was a title that caught my eye: For All Who Hunger: Searching for Communion in a Shattered World by Emily M.D. Scott. I liked her back profile picture. Rev. Scott founded what came to be called Dinner Church. Based essentially on congregants sharing a meal together. She began with a small id...

Everything Sad is Untrue Daniel Nayeri Levine Querido, 2020 In Daniel Nayeri’s Everything Sad is Untrue, winner of the ALA Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in literature written for young adults, takes the reader on a wild ride much like the Tornado at the amusement park or like Scheherazade in 1,001 Nights, spinning yarns/memories in order to save his life. This is not just hyperbole. In the face of trauma, he was unloading, taking heavy burdens off his heart and mind. At the same time he was lightening he was enlightening us, the reader, giving us insight into the life of a refugee. A timely story. Doing research for my book Cloud of Witnesses for the character Hassan I read many first-hand accounts of life in Iran pre and post the Revolution. Nayeri describes his family, homes, and life in a beautiful and complex country. We are given a picture of a home full of the sound of birds and the smell of jasmine—and at the same time an open sewage trench and running from the morality...

Nomadland: a book review Jessica Bruder W.W. Norton & Co., 2017 In one of the opening scenes of the film, Nomadland, we are given a close-up of Fern, yet are unable to “read” her face. There is a slew of emotions to sort through. Intensity, concentration, fear—then the camera backs up and we realize—oh, she’s having a pee—backs up further—beside a lonesome highway. She quickly finishes up and pulls up her pants and jumps into her white van. Upon reading the book, we gain a much BROADER understanding of that close up. It is a woman’s face, someone who has worked and suffered sudden unemployment, who is grieving not only the end of her life but the life of her husband=everything she has ever known. Gone. And now, she is starting out, without a house, her stuff in storage, on a journey, a new life, called vanlife. Living in her van The raw emotion that is unreadable is unknowable. Where does she start, where is she going, where will she end up? So many questions. She is terrified. Out...