Memoir-palooza

I may have mentioned before that I am not usually an avid reader of fiction.  I usually find myself so bogged down in professional literature and research that just getting through the weekly New Yorker that's delivered to my mailbox seems like an arduous task.  (I skip the fiction issues and the fiction stories in the back unless they are super interesting after the first two paragraphs.  I'm a slow reader and constantly have piles of half-read New Yorkers on the coffee table and night stand.  It's embarrassing.)  I would, generally, just prefer to read things that are real.  

This summer I read a few books: a small stack of amazing memoirs that I've really really enjoyed.  I think you should give me some memoir recommendations, as I am obviously obsessed with the genre.  And I think you should read some or all of these books.  Here's the rundown.  

 

Geography of the Heart by Fenton Johnson

I heard about this story in February when Maureen Corrigan, the NPR book critic, gave it a rave review.  I must say, that lady never ever steers me wrong.  If you catch her making a recommendation, immediately purchase that book and prepare to love it.  Geography of the Heart is a sad but beautiful love story.  The writer falls in love with a teacher named Larry.  Larry has AIDS and we know from the beginning that he will die.  Johnson paints such a lovely and reverent picture not just of their three year long romance but of their individual and collective history.  Maureen said in her review that this book would have a lot to teach its readers about love and for me that was surely true.  I dreaded the end of Larry's life from the very first page, but when it came, I dreaded even more the end of the book, the end of Johnson's eulogy, the end of that permeating sense of love and gratitude that you are left with throughout the entirety of story.  It also didn't hurt that Johnson is a simply brilliant writer - the book is just chock full of elegant and gorgeous prose.  

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Travelogues are certainly my most favorite of the genres in literature.  Wild was really popular this summer and for good reason.  This book is what would happen if Liz Gilbert's Eat Pray Love and Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods got together and had a baby.  Being that I adored both the aforementioned books, it's no surprise that I became thoroughly enamored their love child as well.  Strayed writes of how she found her sense of self worth and grieved the end of her marriage and the loss of her mother while hiking solo along the Pacific Crest Trail in the summer of 1995.  I had never heard of the PCT, but Strayed describes it as the less traveled Western version of the Appalachian Trail.  This book single-handedly got me re-interested in camping and (mildly interested in) backpacking.  

A Good Man by Mark Shriver

This is a book that every Catholic ought to read.  It would also do well as required reading for any parent and anyone who has parents.  It's just good stuff, people.  "Markie" Shriver, nephew of Jack Kennedy, shares remembrances of his father, Sargent Shriver, with grace and gratitude.  The book's main premise rests on the idea that it's much harder to be a good man (/person) than it is to be a great one.  Great men aspire to new heights and accomplish big things in their professional lives.  According to Mark, Sargent Shriver was much more than your everyday great man.  Mark describes the accomplishments of his father's work (the founding of the Peace Corps, the expansion of the Special Olympics) but insists that Sarge's enduring legacy is that of a loving dad, husband, and grandpa.  Throughout the book, Mark refers to Sarge as Dad and Daddy instead of "my dad" or "my father," and this has a profound impact on how the reader comes to know the Shriver family.  The lessons Mark learned from his dad are laid out in a semi-chronological and slightly repetitive manner that explicitly highlights what Sarge thought of as most important: faith and family.  

The Road of Lost Innocence by Somaly Mam 

I must admit that I am still finishing this searingly matter-of-fact account of a former child prostitute from Cambodia. It's been hard to get through.  Not because it's poorly written or because it's boring but because it's a horrifying picture of how mean-spirited and heartless human beings can be.  Mam was orphaned before she could ever develop memories of her parent, then she was bounced around in make-shift foster care for most of her childhood until she was sold by her supposed grandfather to a brothel in the city.  She talks of the horrors of her early life without a hint of self-pity and says things like "that is just how things were" a lot.  For us privileged barangs (westerners/white people as we're known in Cambodia) this resignation can be incredibly difficult to comprehend.  I am just now getting to the point in the story where things turn around in favor of Somaly.  In her late teens, she becomes a sort of Harriet Tubman and begins to rescue girls from the brothels and help them start a new life.  Today she risks her life regularly to continue this crusade against human trafficking (which she regularly refers to simply as slavery).  In the foreword, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof says "more women and girls are now trafficking into slavery annually than slaves were transported to the New World at the peak of the transatlantic slave trade." I am astonished on every page as Somaly discusses the scars on her physical and emotional person in the same breath that she talks of how she learned French and English and how, only a few months out of the system herself, she rescued the first of so many girls and paid for her sewing lessons. (Somaly's foundation today has trained and employed hundreds of survivors of sexual slavery.  You can buy beautiful and affordable gifts made by some of these women here.)  Somaly is haunted by her past but refuses to have her life defined by it.  She is fundamentally humble and unassuming, but anyone who reads her account will know instantly that she is a hero if ever there was one.  

Next on my list is this book, which I'll listen to via audible.  

Have Mother, Will Travel by Claire and Mia Fontaine 

I think I like memoirs so much not just because they're real, but because they remind me that no matter what's happening in my life, my own struggles, experiences, and accomplishments have been so beautifully and terribly tiny.  I am very grateful for that reminder.