Post #60 – Women’s Memoirs, Book Raves – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
Tracy Kauffman Wood, Reviewer
A Memoir Writer’s Job
In conversation with Terry Gross of National Public Radio’s Fresh Air, Alice Sebold emphatically states that therapeutic writing is not for publishing. Turn it into something the reader can use. This is important advice for the memoir writer. Your published work may be informed by your therapy/therapeutic journaling. It certainly can be an outgrowth of the inner work that you do, but keep the therapy separate. A writer’s job is to embark on the personal, and bring back the universal.
Recovery Through Writing
Alice Sebold’s memoir, Lucky is an honest, in-your-face recollection of the brutal rape that changed her life as a college freshman in 1981. However it’s the aftermath and her crisp, journalistic description that allows the reader to rejoice in triumph and empowered resolution. The strength and candor of her words reveal the stages of her rage and recovery. In fact this recovery began with a poem that the poet, Tess Gallagher encouraged Alice to write. It’s raw, last line, ”Come die and lie, beside me” gave Sebold permission to hate and heal. “In my mind, the rapist had murdered me on the day of the rape. Now I was going to murder him back. Make my hate large and whole.”
“You save yourself…”
Despite her trauma, Alice goes to trial, recounts the countless indignities in required, unrelenting detail and upon her recommendation, sees the rapist receive the maximum sentence for rape and sodomy. But Sebold’s recovery is drawn from the experience of trauma victims everywhere and Sebold’s words are shaped by their hard-won wisdom, “You save yourself or you remain unsaved.” This is the journey taken in Lucky.
Memoir and Fiction: Two Views of One Event
Also of interest to the memoir writer is that Alice Sebold later penned the popular novel, The Lovely Bones. What an amazing contrast of these two genres handling similar subject matter. It seems to me that the memoirist reveals a searing, inner journey to places unimagined when begun, while the novelist takes the unimaginable journey to its realistic and believable conclusion.
Whatever you think, Alice Sebold is worth a read for the power and resolve of her words.
If you are Kindle reader, here’s the link to Sebold’s memoir.
Here’s the book trailer for Lucky.
