The Horror and the Humor in Liz Phair's 'Horror Stories'
In her music industry memoir, Horror Stories, Liz Phair has a knack for imbuing the ordinary with a weighty and relatable significance.
14 Nov 2019
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'In the Dream House' Nothing Will Change -- Until Something Erupts
Folk tales, fantasy, pop culture and family weave gracefully throughout Carmen Maria Machado's harrowing yet graceful memoir of domestic abuse, In the Dream House.
25 Oct 2019
The "Unrequited Love" of An Accidental (Gay) Activist
In the '70s Dennis Altman was a founding figure of gay liberation. Now more restrained than radical, the Australian author and activist recounts the past and present of sexual politics in his new book, Unrequited Love.
17 Oct 2019
Harrowing with a Purpose: Jaquira Diaz's 'Ordinary Girls'
Jaquira Diaz's memoir, Ordinary Girls, provides an extraordinary guide to becoming fierce, strong, and loving in a world of monsters.
08 Oct 2019
On Jennine Capó Crucet's Course in Continuing Education, 'My Time Among the Whites'
In her memoir My Time Among the Whites, Jennine Capó Crucet demonstrates that making your home among strangers is harder than it seems.
03 Sep 2019
On Difficulties with Acculturation in 'From Chernobyl with Love'
Journalist Katya Cengel's memoir, From Chernobyl with Love, is more illuminating of the American mindset than it is of Latvia and Ukraine.
20 Aug 2019
Mieke Eerkens 'All Ships Follow Me'Â Is a Harrowing Family Memoir Scarred by the Horrors of War
Against the backdrop of Dutch East Indies colonialism and Nazi sympathizers, two families come together amidst the ashes of World War II in Mieke Eerkens' moving family history, All Ships Follow Me.
18 Jul 2019
Chris Schwartz's Memoir on Founding Ruffhouse Records Gleans but Doesn't Illuminate
Chris Schwartz's memoir on founding Ruffhouse Records attempts to be many things but doesn't fully deliver on any of them, making for a conventionally-structured memoir that often reads as slapdash and dry.
15 Jul 2019
'I Am, I Am, I Am' Is a Celebration of Life in the Midst of (Near) Death
Maggie O'Farrell's I Am, I Am, I Am is a unique twist on the memoir, framed by 17 stories of harrowing near-misses.
04 Jun 2019
Does Amber Tamblyn's 'Era of Ignition' Ignite Your Flame?
Actor Amber Tamblyn is aspiring to something deeper than just the chronicle of herself as a young ingénue who came of age as a TV star in her memoir, Era of Ignition. In our politically tumultuous times, does she succeed?
30 May 2019
A Translator Between Worlds: On Behrouz Boochani's Work from the Manus Island Prison Camp
His intellectual and journalistic training, coupled with an eloquent capacity for literary expression, enables Behrouz Boochani to bridge the lived experience of refugees with non-refugee audiences and to express it in the context of the critical social and political theory which shapes intellectual elites' understanding of the refugee crisis.
26 Apr 2019
'The Barefoot Woman' and Writing Against Genocide
As political partisanship grows more fierce let us realize what happens when such bluster and rage escape the realm of the abstract. Scholastique Mukasonga's The Barefoot Woman is a thoughtful tribute to her mother, who was murdered in the Rwandan genocide.
11 Mar 2019
'All the Lives We Ever Lived' Finds Comfort in Mourning with Virginia Woolf
These days, when personal grief becomes a public performance on social media, it's heartening to have a book such as Katharine Smyth's All the Lives We Ever Lived, wherein deep introspection is given space and literature provides both solace and inspiration.
28 Feb 2019
Jessica Hopper's 'Night Moves': Prose Poetry for the Punk Rock Masses
Jessica Hopper's Night Moves is a dozen thorny roses for the city that keeps blowing its windy-ness beneath her darkly comic wings.
22 Feb 2019
Irony Triumphs in Theodor Kallifatides's 'Another Life'
In writing about the inability to write, Theodor Kallifatides has produced a book, Another Life, which aches with its own quiet beauties and inspires with its resilient creativity.
24 Jan 2019
So Long to All That: Jeff Tweedy Tells His Story
Wilco founder Jeff Tweedy creates a frank, plain-spoken tale of love, perseverance, and recovery in his memoir, Let's Go (So We Can Get Back).
28 Nov 2018
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