"Some future spring, under the window in the house we’d spend our last five years in living together, she’d collect bits of moss each time we went out and built a bank of it where she would sit in bed and write. She could lay for hours like that, typing surrounded by books and snacks and pillows with the lights off. I never understood how she could write that way until after she was gone and I no longer had the will to sit up straight" (p. 57).
Butler, B. (2023). Molly. Archway Editions.
#memoir #mollybrodak #blakebutler
« The desert filled the windows on both sides of the Greyhound. Joshua trees and creosote stood in solidarity. I tried to focus on that and not dwell on the golf course sucking up fresh water, the solar mirrors incinerating birds, the waste from a mine sending radioactive material into giant swimming pools threatening the drinking water of Native Americans, the prescient words of a writer we should have paid more attention to. It was all there, all of it, curled up and huddled in the final lap of this trip like a sick dog » (p. 359).
Pocock, J. (2025). Greyhound : a memoir. Soft Skull.
#joannapocock #memoir #americanroadtrip
@softskullpress
“I look around – the pretty, old house with bungalows at the back, the safari company Land Rovers, the well-trained staff. I envy their success, but they do work hard for it. I haven’t worked hard enough – I realize that. My possessions are fragile – the objects; they break. My clothes are tattered, my shoes too, my sunglasses scratched, the tape heads in the tape recorder worn down, the records break. Is that normal for people? To be the things we possess? I am the turntable needle – if it doesn’t work, I don’t work. I have built my life on easily broken electronics. Perishable. And perishable relationships with other people, for whom I have become responsible. I look up. Stars start to appear on the black vault. Samantha - was this the life you didn’t. want – the one I have?” (p. 695)
Ejersbo, J. (2014). Liberty (M. Petersen, trans.). MacLehose Press. (Orignal work published 2009)
#jakobejersbo #danishliterature #tanzania #trilogy
« Devant le déséquilibre des forces, on n’a pas le choix. Il y a un temps où on doit se cacher, attendre dans l’ombre, fuir si on peut. Un jour vient le moment où on peut s’échapper. On s’échappe, on se met à l’abri. Mais c’est une sensation étrange que d’être à l’abri quand on sait que l’obscur ne cesse pas d’exister quand on le quitte. Un peu comme le dit Reinaldo Arenas quand il parle de l’exil: on a quitté une maison en flammes, on se sauve, on se retrouve sur une terre d’accueil, sain et sauf. Mais, pendant ce temps, la maison a continué à brûler » (p. 231).
Sinno, N. (2023). Triste tigre. P.O.L éditeur.
#neigesinno #essai #nonfiction #autobiographie
« I even learned to tolerate jazz, of the moody sort Ray liked so much, though it always bothered me that a nice little tune like ‘My Favourite Things’ out of The Sound Of Music could last half an hour, if it fell into the wrong hands.
And what did I give him in return? Well, I taught him not to take books for granted, the outsides of books as well as the insides, their bindings. It was his only real bit of untidiness, and I schooled him out of it, just by example, not by saying anything. When I met him he would leave books open and face down, but inside a couple of years he was a reformed character » (p. 61).
Mars-Jones, A. (2022). Box Hill: A Story of Low Self-esteem. Fitzcarraldo Editions. (Original work published 2020)
#adammarsjones #lgbtliterature #boxhill
En ce 8 mars, la parole aux femmes.
Journée internationale des droits des femmes | International Women’s Day
Alexis Wright (AUS; Waanyi) • Iris Murdoch (IRL) • Maryse Condé (GLP) • Casey Plett (CAN) • Raichō Hiratsuka (JPN) • Catherine Lalonde (CAN)
#journeeinternationaledesdroitsdesfemmes #journeedelafemme #internationalwomensday #womeninliterature
"Since where we lived and how we lived was almost hermetically sealed from everything and everybody else, fabrication became a way of life. Making up stories, it seems to me now, was not only a way for us to understand the way we lived but also a defense against it. It was no doubt the first step in a life devoted primarily to men and women and children who never lived anywhere but in my imagination. I have found in them infinitely more order and beauty and satisfaction than I ever have in the people who move about me in the real world" (p. 57).
Crews, H. (1978). A Childhood: The biography of a place. Harper & Row.
#gritlit #harrycrews #memoir #americanliterature
"Except death sits outside of experience. It cannot be comprehended with the materials of reality. The only way to broach it is in fact through other things, through a transference of energy that occurs between thought and speech:
Words are how we know something happened. We say what we saw and the experience appears.
It becomes observable" (p. 213).
McCalden, H. (2024). The Observable Universe. Fitzcarraldo Editions.
#heathermccalden #memoir #viral #aids
"The story of a family is more like a map than a novel, and an autobiography is the summation of all the geologic ages you’ve passed through. Writing yourself means remembering that you were born with rage, that you were thick, steady, flowing lava before your crust hardened and cracked and allowed some sort of love to emerge, or that useless power of forgiveness came and smoothed you over, leveling out all your hollows. Rereading yourself means inventing what you’ve gone through, identifying each layer you’re built upon: the crystals of joy or loneliness beneath, the result of some evaporated memory, everything that’s been carved out, then flooded, only for you to realize that time’s not healing after all: there’s a breach that can’t be filled" (p. 57).
Durastanti, C. (2022). Strangers I Know (E. Harris, trans.). Riverhead Books. (Original work published 2019)
#claudiadurastanti #italianliterature #bildungsroman
