Category: Transitions
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Two-Memoir Series about Youth, Midlife, and Responsibility
Within the container of the road trip, Berner is able to ponder the rebelliousness of his youth, and place those youthful impulses within the context of his mid-life crisis. With each passing mile, he moves farther and farther into his commitment to his children. Instead of renewing his commitment to self-indulgence, the way mid-life crises…
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Two Midlife Memoirs: A Sequel Shows Command of Structure
Jack Kerouac’s book, On the Road, published in 1957, foreshadowed the counterculture of the 1960s and inspired many young men to hit the road and find their truths somewhere other than home. In Any Road Will Take You There, David Berner tries to pass this literary inspiration to his sons. So the outer story is…
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Writing Your Messy Teen Memories Could Save the World
Her book is much more than the story of one couple trying to hold back the chaos that was enveloping their daughter. It is also the courageous attempt to share that situation with others. By sharing what ordinarily would be a very private story, Pruchno is challenging us to develop wisdom about the teen years.
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How Boys Become Men – or – Can Memoirs Stop the Violence?
aggression, anger, assertiveness, Boys, development, essay, gender, idealism, Islam, males, Memoirs, men, Muslims, rebellion, thumosEven though Husain’s ideology was light-years away from mine, our hearts followed similar paths. Both of us believed that our political beliefs were righteous and important. Both of us felt responsible to take any action necessary to change the world to conform to our beliefs. This sense of righteous urgency caused both of us to…
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Memoir About A Crazy Artist Helps me Understand the World!
I’m not suggesting that to read Slash Coleman’s book you need to read Lewis Hyde’s. On the contrary, Bohemian Love Diaries is a fun, easy, seditious romp through one troubled young man’s search for meaning. I love it on its own. I just love it more because of the way in one fell swoop, the…
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In Memoirs, Misery is Simply a Step toward Hope
So I inched my way into Here I Stand, ready to bolt if it didn’t feel authentic or if I felt strangled by helplessness or despair. The deeper into the story I traveled, the more I trusted this author to maintain authorial control, guiding me through difficulties and then back out to safety. She achieves…
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Ten Things to Learn from a Combat Memoir, Part 2
I did not blame Bellavia for failing to resolve the problems of war. Instead, I accepted that he needed to find his own inner peace. Like William Manchester’s Pacific War memoir, “Goodbye Darkness,” the lesson seemed to be that he survived, that he was brave, and that somehow, someday, he would be able to get…
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More Reasons Veterans Should Write Memoirs
In combat, soldiers earn respect by becoming experts at violence. When they return, this very skill sets them apart from the society they defended and our respect mingles with fear. After the Vietnam war, returning veterans were stigmatized by the violence of that war, adding a terrible psychological burden to the trauma they already suffered.…
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Cultural Crossroads: Memoir of An American Princess In Japan
Each time I turned the page, I learned more about how people must learn about and get along with each other. In each contrast, whether between sexy single and married adult, Japanese and American, charismatic and ordinary individuals, husbands and wives, I feel like I am peering into the heart of the human condition.
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