Don't miss our reading tonight!
Join us tonight at 8pm EST for an evening of readings and discussion with Candace Jane Opper, Marcos Gonsalez, Jeannine Ouellette, and Randa Jarrar! Register here.
And don’t forget to order these brilliant authors’ books through our Memoir Monday Book List at Bookshop.org!
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.
Kindness Makes Us Neighbors
by Shruti Swamy
When the library closes, Meng, Rhea, and I make each other into libraries, sharing the books we’ve bought from the local bookstore. Debbie gives us a bag of balloons to blow up for the baby, Shelly cuttings from her garden to plant in the yard. We grow chard and basil, and the rose plant I transplanted doesn’t die. An orchid I rescued from the trash starts opening, one by one, its wolf-faced blossoms.
Dowry
by Mo Daviau
The blue Maserati that almost hit me on my evening walk around the neighborhood had an Om symbol stuck to its rear fender. What a way to have gone, I thought in the aftermath. Mowed down by a totally Zen millionaire.
The Life and Death of Antonio Sajvín Cúmes
by Emily Kaplan
No te preocupes, Antonio had assured her: if he got worse, he’d go. But he was trying to avoid that. Antonio had heard that ICE patrolled hospitals, and he suspected that the pandemic would lead to a record number of deportations. He was determined to stay in New York for another year, to finally pay off his debt and finish building the house for María.
Writing the What-If: The Aftermath of a Daughter’s Grief
by Rebecca Handler
I don't know why I decided to serenade my father in his last hour. With the exception of singing in the car during family road trips, and watching my brother perform in the San Francisco Boys Chorus, we weren’t a particularly sing-songy family. My dad was an opera buff, so if I had planned ahead, the Tosca score would have been more his style. At the time, though, sitting at his bedside with my mother and brother, You Are My Sunshine just popped into my head. If it annoyed them, they didn’t say anything, which I find generous.
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