“Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.” (Salman Rushdie, “One Thousand Days in a Balloon,” New York Times, December 12, 1991)
This was the opening quote to a book entitled The Story of Your Life by Mandy Aftel. I chose this book to read on the craft of memoir for a course I took years ago entitled Women’s Lives. I really had no idea what it was about. I knew it would involve writing and women and a well-loved teacher named Polly Glover. That was enough for my nineteen-year-old self but I still reap the benefits of this course over ten years later.
Reading Mary Karr’s memoirs has been the perfect excuse to delve back into this world. I had always heard of Karr and Liars’ Club, but I kind of shy away from stuff everybody’s reading and wait until the hullabaloo passes. How lucky was I when I learned that Mary Karr was coming to Lemuria and I could read all three of her memoirs? . . . a course in one woman’s life. So I began to wonder why memoirs appeal to so many people. What was it about Karr that caused such a strong response from readers? Was it just another rough childhood story or was it something more, something that would endure?
The 10th anniversary edition of The Liars’ Club includes an introduction by Karr, a reflection on the response to Liars’ Club over the past ten years. Karr writes:
“If The Liars’ Club began as a love letter to my less-than-perfect clan, it spawned (on its own terms) love letters from around the world. Its publication constructed for me–in midlife, unexpectedly–what I hankered for so desperately for as a dreamy kid comforted only by reading: that mythic village of like-minded souls who bloom together by sharing old tales–the kind that fire you up and set you loose, the true kind.” (xvi)
I wish I had more time write on this subject matter for there are so many women writers who have shared, who have bared all, blazed new trails, who have opened the door to discussion on many taboo topics, who have created community through their words. Maya Angelo, Anaïs Nin, Simone de Beauvoir, Virgina Woolf, Anne Moody, Alice Walker . . . and Mary Karr. They are mothers and sisters and friends and mentors when there is a space to be filled, their words wait for the open door.
Sometimes, when I have something tough to do and when space allows (no, a Kindle won’t do), I put the only thing I have tangible from these women in my bag, Maya Angelou’s Letter to my Daughter, Simone de Beauvoir’s The Prime of Life, Alice Walker’s The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart and In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens. Like Karr writes, it is some sort of mini-village I carry with me, a group of women who feed a confidence and bravery to move forward. The essayist Kennedy Fraser expresses a similar need:
“I felt very lonely then, self-absorbed, shut off. I needed all this murmured chorus, this continuum of true-life stories, to pull me through. They were like mothers and sisters to me, these literary women, many of them already dead; more than my own family, they seemed to stretch out a hand.”
You are invited to meet Mary Karr this coming Wednesday for a signing and reading at 5:00 and 5:30 respectively. Her third memoir, Lit, is now out in paperback.
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