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Quote by Lidia Yuknavitch

“To a certain extent that happens with all kinds of successful writers and artists and celebrities, but there is also something about the form of memoir that creates an eerie reader space of intimacy that is only "real" in the space of the text.”

Quote by Lidia Yuknavitch

Author

Lidia Yuknavitch

Lidia Yuknavitch is an American author born in 1963. Her works are known for their profound emotional depth and unique narrative style, exploring themes of identity, gender, and human experience. more

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“The memoir as a somewhat indistinct form is absolutely true. So many of the memoirs I've read, and the ones I have gravitated toward most, somehow upend what I expect from memoir and the project seems greater than just the exposition of a life.”

Seems Form Greater Projects Memoir

Author:Lidia Yuknavitch

“When someone says something dunderheaded to me about the material, it's usually a big neon sign revealing their own damage or ignorance, so my compassion kicks in.”

Bigs Compassion Ignorance Materials Damage Kicks Revealing Neon Neon Sign

Author:Lidia Yuknavitch

“As far as being territorial about one's own life, that's a mistake for ANY writer. All writers everywhere, in every genre, are drawing from their life and the lives of those around them for "material." Memoirs just make transparent and even amplify that activity.”

Mistake Materials Activity Drawing Memoir Genre Transparent Amplify Territorial

Author:Lidia Yuknavitch

“The best memoirs - like This Boy's Life, or Crazy Brave [by Joy Harjo], for instance - bring you through a private river of storytelling that joins a major ocean of human struggle and joy. The act of enunciation - the forms and strategies of storytelling - are every bit as literarily serious as they are in poetry or other prose forms.”

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Author:Lidia Yuknavitch

“I look for the moment(s) in the story where the writer risked abandoning the glory of the self in favor of the possible relationship with an other. I don't ever let the market tell me what a memoir is. The first best memoir I ever read was Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman.”

Firsts Looks Self Moments Stories Glory Favors Memoir Grass Walt Leaves Of Grass

Author:Lidia Yuknavitch

“I get kind of tired of the "But it's your life!" attitude about memoir. I wrote. I engaged in artistic production. I made a piece of art. Why the preciousness or mystical unicorns around "memoir"? I'm curious how you feel about it just now.”

Feels Kind Art Made Attitude Pieces Tired Productions Memoir Curious Artistic Engaged Mystical How You Feel Unicorn Life Attitude

Author:Lidia Yuknavitch

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

Source: Motivating Thoughts of Steve Jobs

“Most of my formal choices are a combination of everything I learned about form - semiotics, linguistics, and the history of style experimentations tethered to literary movements (formalism, deconstruction, modernism, and postmodernism), and the basic principal of breaking every rule I ever learned from a patriarchal writing tradition that never included my body or experience, and thus has nothing to offer me in terms of representation.”

Writing Body Form Choices Term Style Movement Offers Tradition Combination Principal Representation Formal Modernism Experimentation Linguistics Postmodernism Deconstruction Semiotics

Author:Lidia Yuknavitch

“I work from the body - I try to develop a language of the body. I've invented a term I call "corporeal writing" around that idea. I love teaching and collaborating around this idea, because no new breakthrough in literature ever happened because everyone was doing what was already there.”

Writing Trying Ideas Body Literature Language Term Happened Teaching Breakthrough Collaborating Love Teaching

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.”

Ifs Writing Wells Doe Form Opportunity Interest Cracks Junkie Love To Read

Author:Lidia Yuknavitch