Crystals, French rolls, and J-school
Welcome back to Memoir Monday—a weekly newsletter and quarterly reading series, brought to you by Narratively, The Rumpus, Catapult, Granta, Guernica, and Literary Hub. Each essay in this newsletter has been selected by the editors at the above publications as the best of the week, delivered to you all in one place.
Rumpus Exclusive: “Mnemonics”
by Suzanne Koven
In the middle of the night, a week before a physiology midterm during my first year, I became extremely anxious and woke my husband. “What’s wrong?” he asked. We’d met at Yale as English majors and he, like me, had completed his pre-medical requirements after college. He was now two years ahead of me in medical school and I frequently looked to him for reassurance. “Tell me,” he said, wrapping his arms around me. “The pancreas!” I cried. “I don’t understand the pancreas!”
Crystals
by Kate Lebo
My mother has always used diet to treat her health problems, so much so that diet, for me, connotes a way to ease headaches and gastrointestinal distress even more than it means ‘Let’s get skinny.’ As she ages, she gets more serious about her diet books, and they get more serious about her. Alkalize or Die is a favorite.
How to Hide Your Grief in a French Roll
by Katiy Heath
The narrative is simple: Hair is a symbol of a woman’s strength. You can scrub your way to clear skin, but a full head of hair is much more difficult to achieve, let alone keep. Good hair takes stamina, resilience. Hair is everything—it can prop us up, hide our vulnerabilities, and propel our confidence to new heights. When our hair begins to fall, what are we really losing? What are we left with when we can no longer hide in our hair?
Misadventures in J-School: When Grad School is the Wrong Thing
by Lilly Dancyger
In a local reporting class, someone whose assigned beat was Williamsburg pitched a story about how all the artists were being forced out of the neighborhood by gentrification. I couldn’t take it anymore and blurted out, “Sorry but you’re at least fifteen years late to that story.” I hadn’t meant it to come out so harsh, but pitching a story about the gentrification of Williamsburg years after Williamsburg had become synonymous with hipsters and with the very idea of gentrification itself was just too perfect an encapsulation of how out of touch the whole program felt. Like we were going through the motions of journalism but not connected to the real world in any way; not connecting with people or uncovering anything new or exciting, or literally any of the things I was there to do. I didn’t look up to see the surprised faces of my classmates, but the teacher thanked me for the local perspective and asked if I could elaborate. I regretted saying anything.
Writers’ Resources
Read this great interview with memoirist Gina Frangello in Guernica!
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