Shadow writer, Billie Jean King, fuzzy memory, a grieving heart, border-crossing, back to school...
Welcome back to Memoir Monday—a weekly newsletter and a quarterly reading series, brought to you by Narratively, The Rumpus, Catapult, Granta, Guernica, and Literary Hub. Each personal 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.
We’re considering ways to expand aspects of this newsletter in the near future. Subscribe and follow us on Twitter at @memoirmonday for updates!
Tick Tock Write
by Laraine Herring (Art by Clare Nauman )
"Shadow-you leaves the office, credit card in hand, to pay for services rendered in codes. You don’t know the language of codes yet, of billing and declining and remanding, but you will. Shadow-you has a string tied to her wrist that reminds you of the friendship bracelets you would make in the backyard of your North Carolina home before your father got sick, before you moved to Arizona, before he died, before you shattered and the abuser got in, before cancer, but upon closer look, the shimmering string stretches, a connective thread from her body to you in your strange velvet box, and Shadow-you is pulling you and your new house behind her like a carnival balloon.”
How the Great Billie Jean King Challenged the Patriarchy
by Billie Jean King
"I asked Gloria why she didn’t use more athletes to promote equality. She said, “Billie, this is about politics.” I told her, “Gloria, we are politics. You’re not using us right! We can sell this movement! We’re on TV, we sweat, we’re real! We’re out here doing and proving all these things that so many feminists are only talking about!” I maintained that the women on the Slims circuit were the embodiment of independence and empowerment. We challenged the male-dominated system to demand a living, and we were out there every day making it on our own."
I Woke Up From a Coma and Couldn’t Escape the Guy Pretending to Be My Boyfriend
by Brooke Knisley (Illustration by Jackie Ferrentino)
"I fell 20 feet out of a redwood tree and when I came to, my memory was shattered and a man I’d broken things off with was telling everyone we were together. Then I found out why."
Chase Scene
by Dodie Bellamy (Image © Shang-Ya Lin)
"When I return home my heart opens. This happens frequently, erratically. Imagine a time-lapse film of a bud twirling open into full bloom. My open heart feels floppy; gladly would it brush against anything, anybody. When I told Peter Gizzi that grieving had been good for his writing, he said it gave him a soul. Why did you have to go? It’s intolerable you left and with such a brutal end."
Best of Guernica: Aliyeh Ataei’s The Border Merchant
by Aliyeh Ataei (Photo by Aliyeh Ataei)
"For Mohammad Osman, who has spent his entire adult life hauling humans back and forth, there’s never a question of why things are done, only the question of how. On the other side of the border there are no jobs, and a war, and there are men and women trying, somehow, to get to this side. But crossing the line comes with a cost."
Going Back to School as a Grieving Teacher
by Erin Crosby-Eckstine (Photograph by Marco Fileccia/Unsplash)
"This fall, students and I will be back in the school building for the first time in nearly eighteen months. I imagine in many ways the first day of school will be like those I’ve taught before ... But this will be the first year where I don’t recognize many of the faces of students I was teaching only a few months ago, who hid behind black Zoom screens. It’s the first where I won’t be able to hug students I haven’t seen in nearly two years. It’s the first where I might be more nervous than my ninth graders. It’s the first I walk into in mourning, not just for my grandparents, but for my trust in a profession I was silly enough to believe loved me back."
Thanks for reading! If you enjoy Memoir Monday, please consider making a one-time or recurring contribution (if even a fraction of subscribers signed up to contribute $1 per month, Memoir Monday could be self-sustaining!) by clicking here.
You can also support Memoir Monday—and indie bookstores!—by browsing this Bookshop.org list of every book that’s been featured at the Memoir Monday reading series. It’s a great place to find some new titles to add to your TBR list!
If you received this email from a friend or found it on social media, sign up below to get Memoir Monday in your inbox every week! You can also follow us on Twitter at @memoirmonday.