Post #62 – Women’s Memoirs, Book Raves – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
Diana Raab, nurse and writer, is a well-published author. Her first memoir, Regina’s Closet: Finding My Grandmother’s Secret Journal
Since many of her earlier books have won awards, I was eager to read her new memoir Healing With Words: A writer’s cancer journey
As someone who has studied and written extensively about memoir openings, I was struck by Diana Raab’s Introduction. She writes:
During my breast cancer journey, my lifeline was three-fold: immediate health care, an extremely supportive family, and the creative arts as a source of strength. For a long time, the arts have been associated with relieving tension and fears. Creative expression is a healthier alternative to keeping emotions bottled up inside or reaching for medications. Author Virginia Woolf confessed that she wrote in her diary “to bring order to the chaos in her life. Those of us who have been afflicted by cancer know there are no magic wands to take the cancer away, but we can try to cope with our situation and reduce stress by finding our passions, whether it is writing stories, crafting poems, journaling, drawing, painting or sculpting.” (p. ix)
From the moment the reader begins this memoir, she knows the theme (a life-threatening health crisis) and message (writing is healing) and can settle in to travel with the author on her journey. And appropriately, Raab concludes the Introduction with a quote that may help us when we face our own difficult life journeys:
I once had a writer friend who said, “When it hurts, write harder.”
Those words remain on a Post-it above my computer. (p. xi)
Kendra and I were planning our interview with Diana and I wanted to take a quick look at her memoir before we spoke. I thought that later, when I had more time, I would read the entire book in preparation for this review. Instead, I stayed up well-past midnight reading her story that first night. I couldn’t put it down.
What makes a book a page turner? I don’t know the full answer. In Healing with Words, Raab has a strong story line and constantly moves the story forward. The book’s organization takes the reader from the abnormal results from her annual mammogram to the diagnosis of multiple myeloma eight years later. Chapter 1: Mammograms and More Mammograms begins:
There is no breast cancer in my family. No cancer of any kind. Except for mine, that is. (p.1)
The memoir is powerfully written and makes Raab’s health journey accessible for anyone who is facing a life-turning health situation. And although I could mention many excellent writing examples and discuss how she effectively integrates lines from her journal entries and a few of her poems, I’d like to focus instead of the way that the author has turned this into a self-help memoir.
Kendra and I are sometimes asked if it is possible to have a successful multi-genre memoir. I feel that Diana Raab has done just that. She tells her own story but she has crafted insightful writing prompts that are at the end of each chapter. These prompts parallel the various stages of diagnosis, treatment, and healing. If you have been diagnosed with cancer or have a friend who has been, I think Raab’s combination of story and prompts that help the reader to tell her own story is an important book to own or to give. However, Raab has told of her journey in such a universal way that any woman will find this a compelling read.
Memoir Video
Want to know more about Diana Raab’s memoir? I think you’ll enjoy this brief video.
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