What Good Are Memoirs?

Dear readers and writers,

I just returned from Allentown, PA where I keynoted the Pennsylvania Academy of Sciences conference for the year.  It was a lovely event, based at the women's college Cedar Crest.  So many young women planning confidently to go into science were there, and a lot of them talked with me about combining family and career, something I hope they will all feel free to do if they want that combination.  There's so much talk about how women can't do both these days, but it's just not true.

One thing I've learned about writing a memoir is that it has embedded within it the message you have received from the part of your life you feature.  Mine is, I chose along the way, each time selecting the choice that made it possible for me to have both family and science.  I know my way of putting together that combination isn't the only way to do it, in fact I"m now writing a dual biography of two women in the top flight of scientists who also married and had a child, and who feel that balance is both possible and important.  I'm having a lot of pleasure as I go around and speak at colleges, research institutes, marine laboratories, hospitals, bookstores and each time, I talk with women who feel that giving up family was not going to be worth it, that science is fascinating but not sufficient to build a life upon.  It's important to find your core message and enjoy spreading the word about it, via your memoir and also by speaking about it to as many people as you can.

cheers,
Laura
Image credit; Creative Commons, with thanks.

Glories of Memoir Writing

Last weekend in LAT book review section, Susan Salter Reynolds reviewed three books in short paragraphs, each stimulating my brain in different ways around the theme of memoirs. The first review was of Natalie Goldberg’s Old Friend from Far Away. From her book, the reviewer selected this line, “Writing is the act of reaching across the abyss of isolation to share and reflect.” Goldberg is not talking to me about where I am, but instead inspiring me to try to go where she is.

In the next section the review of Sven Birkerts’ book, The Art of Time in Memoir, shows him excoriating the navel-gazing of memoirists. He apparently feels that only the reflective insight, revealing “what Henry James called ‘the figure in the carpet’”, sets memoir above talk show chatter. I hate to be harangued and probably will not read this book, but Reynolds’ image from James is memorable and will stick in my mind. It’s so easy to walk over a carpet, even for years, without seeing the pattern. But if you describe the room for someone else, you look more carefully and it jumps out into view. How many times I’ve seen the pattern of what happened to me only when writing about it for the second or third time!

The final review was of Julia Cameron’s The Writing Diet. I wish that review matched my experience! It said creativity, as well as falling in love, takes the appetite for food away. Not so for everyone, more’s the pity.