memoirs

Snakes, Arm Wrestling, and Childhood Adventures in Padgett Powell’s ‘Indigo’

Lee Polevoi

And now Powell’s fans get a different view of the stubbornly individualistic author. The essays in Indigo encompass, among other things, a profile of Cleve Dean, a one-time arm-wrestling champion who has “ballooned to nearly seven hundred pounds”; memories of an eventful childhood in Florida; a quirky tour of the French Quarter in New Orleans; and insightful (though frustratingly brief) assessments of writers like Flannery O’Connor, Donald Barthelme, and William Trevor.

‘Watkins Glen’ Tells a Moving Story of the Remarkable Strength of Family Bonds

Eleanor Lerman

The gift shop where I worked was not near enough to the racetrack to be super busy, but during racing season we still brought in a steady crowd of visitors. We sold the usual  race-related memorabilia including hats, tee shirts, key chains and model race cars, but also kept  a few shelves stocked with homey items like scented soaps and car-themed potholders for the  people who owned or rented summer houses along the lake.

Joseph Pilates’ Lasting Legacy in the World of Fitness

John Howard Steel

Some people, dancers mostly, knew him as a savior—the person who kept them dancing, or stopped their back pain, or put a zip in their step, or some other career enhancing or enabling therapy. He helped professional golfers eliminate pain in their swing; he helped hairdressers and barbers work pain-free all day with their arms raised. He improved singers’ breath control. As the person who worked his obscure magic to solve a physical problem that ofttimes doctors, chiropractors, or massage therapists couldn’t, he was a medicine man.

‘Black Lotus’: One Woman’s Search for Racial Identity in a Racist World

Hope Wabuke

But for Abrams, born to a Chinese immigrant mother and a white American father, passing was a result not of choice but of ignorance. All her life she had been told that the reason her skin was darker than the rest of her family’s was that she was born in Hawaii. And then, when she was 14, the man she thought of as her father told Abrams that her actual biological father was black.

Messages in a Bottle: Listening to an Old Answering Machine

Andrew Lam

I bought my first apple computer at 20 when it was available at Cal for a steep discount, and because I was disenchanted with biochmestry, started writing, and I haven't stopped. In my box of college things, there are dozens of floppy disks whose contents contain amateurish writing of a broken hearted young man, but that, as they say, is another story. The answering machine was a novelty when I went to college in the mid 80's but has now become a relic, an oral journal of sort, going on history's shelf next to old postcards and the handwritten letters.

All About Me: How Memoirs Became the Literature of Choice

Veronica Giannotta

Memoirs are the great equalizer of writing. In a genre utterly non-denominational, there is room for any story in any pattern of prose. The Christian Science Monitor reports that memoirs have seen sales increase from $170 million to $270 million since 1999. Most nonfiction MFA writing programs are geared substantially towards the genre; Hunter College even requires prospective students to submit a memoir proposal as part of their application. 

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