“Memoirs have at their heart a content that "happened" to someone in real life. Is that what you are itching at in your question, so that if you are a reviewer or you are writing a critique you might feel as if you are stepping on someone's actual face?” IfsFeelsWritingHeartRealMightFacesLife IsHappenedReal LifeMemoirCritiqueReviewersItching Author:Lidia Yuknavitch
“On a spectrum of literary productions, memoir is just another form. If the person doing the reviewing or critiquing was ill-educated about literary forms, they could write something dunderheaded about the author or their life (I've seen these and barfed at them), but anyone who is well-practiced and educated in literature - why would they leave that at the door when entering memoir?” IfsWritingWellsPersonsFormLiteratureDoorsIllProductionsMemoirEducatedEnteringSpectrum Author:Lidia Yuknavitch
“The WRITER of memoir gets incoming weirdness in very odd ways. I was recently talking to a memoir writer whose work just went meteoric - but some of the comments and communications and gestures she gets in the wake of that success are stunningly and atrociously over-personal, as if suddenly people feel like they know her and her life intimately, and have permission to transgress all her "life" boundaries.” PeopleIfsKnowsWayFeelsTalkingCommunicationBoundariesMemoirOddCommentGesturesPermissionWeirdness Author:Lidia Yuknavitch
“I don't have much interest in writing if there are not opportunities to crack open the inherited forms. The writing I love to read most does this as well. I'm a form junkie.” IfsWritingWellsDoeFormOpportunityInterestCracksJunkieLove To Read Author:Lidia Yuknavitch
“Every once in a while a messy character who manifests a REAL body emerges, for instance, Lisbeth Salander - and certainly commercial genre fiction is full of examples of real bodied sexual encounters or violence encounters - but for the most part, and particularly if you are a woman or minority author, your characters' bodies have to fit a kind of norm inside a narrow set of narrative pre-ordained and sanctioned scripts.” IfsKindRealCharacterBodyFictionViolenceExampleFitScriptsInstanceNarrativeGenreEncountersMinoritiesNormMessyLisbeth Salander Author:Lidia Yuknavitch
“These words "accessible" and "emotionally available" get thrown at us from agents and editors and publishers - or the reverse - if it's not all goo-ey and sentimental we're told it's "cold" or "uncaring" or "emotionally vacant." In other words, responses to women's writing in particular continue to be "gendered."” IfsWritingParticularColdResponseAvailableAgentsThrownEditorsReverseSentimentalPublishersVacantUncaring Author:Lidia Yuknavitch
“If I hadn't spent a big chunk of time in academia I might not have the depth of consciousness I do about ideas like that. I might think, for instance, that Freud was no big deal in terms of the shape of social organization then or now. I might think that the discourses of politics and law are real and stable and fair.” IfsThinkingIdeasRealBigsMightLawSocialTermDealsConsciousnessShapesFairsOrganizationDepthInstanceStableDiscourseBig DealAcademiaChunksSocial Organization Author:Lidia Yuknavitch
“Birth is of course violent. Menstruation is violent. Trust me, if men's penises opened up once a month and shot blood, we'd be hearing about the violence of it.” IfsMenCoursesViolenceBloodMonthsBirthShotsHearingViolentTrust MeMenstruation Author:Lidia Yuknavitch
“This is something I know: damaged women? We don't think we deserve kindness. IN fact, when kindness happens to us, we go a little berserk. It's threatening. Deeply. Because if I have to admit how profoundly I need kindness? I have to admit that I hid the me who deserves it down in a sadness well.” IfsThinkingKnowsNeedsWellsLittlesFactsHappensKindnessSadnessDeserveThreateningBerserk Book:The Chronology of Water: A Memoir Source: The Chronology of Water: A Memoir
“Have endless patterns and repetitions accompanying your thoughtlessness, as if to say let go of that other more linear story, with its beginning, middle, and end, with its transcendent end, let go, we are the poem, we have come miles of life, we have survived this far to tell you, go on, go on.” IfsEndsStoriesMiddleGoes OnLetting GoPatternsMilesEndlessSurvivedRepetitionTranscendentLinearBeginning Middle And EndThoughtlessness Book:The Chronology of Water: A Memoir Source: The Chronology of Water: A Memoir
