Post #47 – Women’s Memoirs, News – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
You may know by now that poet, performer, author Patti Smith’s memoir Just Kids won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. Her memoir of life in New York City–both the hip and the horrid of the sixties and seventies–and of her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe beat out 435 other nonfiction titles for this prize. I love seeing a memoir win, a fact I savor as doubly sweet considering Publishers Weekly couldn’t find a single book by a woman that merited inclusion last year in their Best Books 2009 list.
Yesterday, Lanie Tankard gave us an excellent review of Smith’s book. If you missed it here’s a link to her review of Just Kids. Liz Mak of KQED spotted the review here on Women’s Memoirs and let us know about a reading from Just Kids that Patti Smith had done for The Writer’s Block back in February. She invited us to share it with all of you. So here it is below, and you can follow this link back to KQED for the full article.
Memoir Helps Keep the Dust From Settling on the Family Tree
From Guide to Online Schools
Also yesterday, Matilda and I received an email from the Guide to Online Schools announcing that Women’s Memoirs is included in their list of the 50 Best Genealogy Blogs. Not only are we among the 50, we’re in the top five. Needless to say, we are quite surprised, both for the fact that we had placed so high in their list and that we are part of a genealogy resource. They cited Promptly Portland’s Writing Prompt, “Childhood Routines,” as one of their favorite posts.
Matilda and I were talking on the phone yesterday…one of our rare conversations of late. Matilda and I must talk an average of two hours every day, but as she and Bill cope with the final days of packing, paperwork and moving, we haven’t had much time for our marathon phone calls. But we did talk briefly about his honor and noted that we hadn’t really thought about the connection between memoir and genealogy. But, of course, that’s silly. It’s an obvious link.
We so often work with women who have never thought of themselves as writers, but who reach a point in life where they feel compelled to tell their story. Often these stories will go no farther than copies given to children and grandchildren. But other women want to share publicly a powerful experience, a slice of their life that will be lost if they don’t tell us. This surely is the stuff of genealogy. More accurately, it’s what brings family trees to life. The names, when connected to stories, are no long names on a chart. That’s an important contribution.
Matilda and I thank Guide to Online Schools for this honor.
