From a very early age, I was interested in both magical stories (untrue) and life writing (true). As a writer, I love combining the two. In both fairy tales and memoirs, somebody goes into the woods and comes out wiser. At both Harvard and Oxford, I teach writing courses on Mythic Memoir. I tell my two children as many fairy tales as I know, and then I make up more. In 2022 I published my first collection of personal essays, Awake with Asashoryu, eleven short memoirs from my life, each with a myth or fairy tale at the heart.
The author, who visited one of my classes this past spring (a thrill for us all!), writes about an abusive love affair in a series of short prose-poem-style vignettes about what happens when a relationship falls short of our romantic fantasies. I love she draws in creepy fairy tales such as “Bluebeard,” among other made-up stories with true emotional cores.
'Ravishingly beautiful' Observer 'Excruciatingly honest and yet vibrantly creative' Irish Times 'Provocative and rich' Economist 'Daring, chilling, and unlike anything else you've ever read' Esquire 'An absolute must-read' Stylist
WINNER OF THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2021
In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado's engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing experience with a charismatic but volatile woman, this is a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse.
Each chapter views the relationship through a different lens, as Machado holds events up to the light and…
A list like this cannot be complete without Kingston, who uses in her book a literary technique called “perhapsing”—defined by Lisa Knopp as “the use of speculation in creative nonfiction”—in which Kingston uses myth and the question “what if” to imagine what might’ve happened in the stories she half-knows about her family.
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • With this book, the acclaimed author created an entirely new form—an exhilarating blend of autobiography and mythology, of world and self, of hot rage and cool analysis. First published in 1976, it has become a classic in its innovative portrayal of multiple and intersecting identities—immigrant, female, Chinese, American.
“A classic, for a reason” – Celeste Ng via Twitter
As a girl, Kingston lives in two confounding worlds: the California to which her parents have immigrated and the China of her mother’s “talk stories.” The fierce and wily women warriors of…
Technically a novel, but rooted so specifically in the details of Zelda’s life that her family members all recognized themselves and their town in her writing. A surrealist and poetic coming-of-age story written by the wife of Jazz Age writer F. Scott Fitzgerald during an eight-week period when she was living in a mental hospital. An imperfect and fascinating way to narrate a life.
I only just learned about this book, and I am currently deep in it. It is a magical story about history and family through the lens of trying to piece together the story of a collection of objects. In fairy tales, objects carry enchantments, and de Waal nods to that tradition. This memoir is part detective story, part history tour, and fully a beautiful memoir filled with its own magic.
264 wood and ivory carvings, none of them bigger than a matchbox: Edmund de Waal was entranced when he first encountered the collection in his great uncle Iggie's Tokyo apartment. When he later inherited the 'netsuke', they unlocked a story far larger and more dramatic than he could ever have imagined.
From a burgeoning empire in Odessa to fin de siecle Paris, from occupied Vienna to Tokyo, Edmund de Waal traces the netsuke's journey through generations of his remarkable family against the backdrop of a tumultuous century.
A slender, lovely book about a difficult childhood, told across eight chapters that are named after books in the Bible. Winterson is always first a poet, and she brings old stories into the light in wholly new ways. A gorgeous coming-of-age story about the uphill journey to becoming oneself.
Study methods Introduction to the text Summaries with critical notes Themes and techniques Textual analysis of key passages Author biography Historical and literary background Modern and historical critical approaches Chronology Glossary of literary terms
In the words of one of my reviewers and former teachers, Kyoko Mori, “Awake with Asashoryu is a lyrical book about learning to live in kindness and beauty.”
Each of these essays tells a story from my life as a way to think about the question of how we grow up without losing ourselves. Whether loving and ultimately having to put down a badly-behaved corgi, or misbehaving during a family vacation, or staying up late watching sumo wrestling with my dad, the core question of the essays is the same: how we become.
