Life Story Links: May 23, 2023

“To speak incessantly about the wounds or triumphs of I and My Family can get pretty tiresome; the trick is to project one’s experience on the page in such an enhanced, objectified way that it acquires, or merges with, a larger significance.”
—Phillip Lopate

Poster showing a dog wearing a blue ribbon, flanked by cats — Vintage poster depicting an illustration by Arlington Gregg produced by the Work Projects Administration circa late 1930s; image courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Digital Collection. The posters were designed to publicize exhibits, community activities, theatrical productions, and health and educational programs in seventeen states and the District of Columbia between 1936 to 1943.

Memories, memoir & myth

ON WRITING THE SELF
“If you write a memoir that ends where you thought it would, you’re probably doing something wrong,” Abigail Thomas says in this Q&A about her latest memoir, Still Life at Eighty.

DIPPING INTO THE PAST
Of her early work as a biographer, Anne Berest says, “Listening to the answers [of the people I was interviewing], I learned that every life is a novel for those who are curious enough to look into it.”

SECOND GENERATION SURVIVORS
Jill Sarkozi, a fellow member of The Biographers Guild of Greater New York, wrote this insightful, actionable post about how to preserve your parent’s story if they are a Holocaust survivor.

BUT WAS IT TRUE?
“When I started to rework these [family] stories in my writing, I called what I was doing fiction, but I wasn’t actively trying to make anything up, I was trying to uncover what the humor had kept hidden.” Luis Jaramillo on the unlikely discovery of an old family recipe.

STARS—THEY’RE JUST LIKE US!
“Creating a personal myth allows celebrities to create just that—a myth.” Landon Y. Jones traces the evolution of celebrity memoirs, from Charles Lindbergh to Will Smith.

PUTTING HERSELF IN PERSPECTIVE
“I’m old enough to feel deeply just how universal vulnerabilities tend to be—and to trust that my editors will save me from myself by cutting confessions that venture too far.” Susan Dominus on using first-person narration in her reporting.

ON BEDS AND MEMORIES
Tamzin Merivale recounts all the beds she can remember—including “the bed where [she] woke to the sound of a church choir in Slovenia, holding beauty and mourning together in [her] heart”—and in doing so, traces a life’s trajectory.

INHERITANCE & INTERGENERATIONAL HEALING
How memoirist Dionne Ford (read a review of her memoir here) found healing in the story of her enslaved ancestors and created “space to name and celebrate and mourn members of [her] family”:

REMEMBERING HIS MOTHER
In the new memoir Irma, Terry McDonnell “writes that what passes between a mother and a son is not defined by her love in the moment, but later by the echoes of her motherhood.”

THE FRAGILITY OF OUR DIGITAL “ARCHIVES”
On May 16, Google announced that starting in December 2023, it would delete personal accounts that haven’t been active in over two years. Photos, emails, and docs attached to inactive accounts will all be eradicated as part of the policy.