🧵Thursday Thread: Which Book or Piece of Writing Changed Your Life?
🧵Thursday Thread: Which Book or Piece of Writing Changed Your Life?
Anna Quindlen said, "In books I have traveled not only to other worlds, but into my own. I learned who I was & what I might dare to dream about my world and myself." Which writers did this for you?
Hi, friends! I am hoooooome! And I got yesterday’s Writing Lab + Exercise posted by the skin of my teeth late last night—in case you missed it, we’re talking about the “Just Three Scraps” method of writing, and I share a detailed breakdown of how I use that process, with photos and flexible steps you can use yourself.
And this morning, I’m awash in gratitude for the writers (and their books, essays, stories, etc.) that have changed my life. I suppose I’m especially awash in this grateful feeling given the intensity of the time I spent writing these past eight weeks on Gulf—what if I had never encountered the writers whose work brought me not just into their worlds, but into my own? Who helped me see what language could do, and who I could be if I learned to do language, too? Who showed me that all stories, no matter how ugly, can also be beautiful?
This morning, I pay tribute to Dorothy Allison (pictured above with me at Tin House in 2016, workshopping the first chapter of The Part That Burns). Dorothy’s novel Bastard Out of Carolina changed my life starting from the very first lines of its epigraph, a Baldwin quote: “People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.”
Friends, I think of that quote every day.
Dorothy Allison’s Bastard is based on her life, and details her experience of sexual abuse by her stepfather, including the way in which her mother failed to protect her. It’s a gorgeous novel, and it was the first book that showed me at the tender, terrified age of 22, with a baby in my arms, that horrible stories, even ones like mine, could be made into art. If I knew that before Bastard, if I had encountered that particular truth before, and surely I had, it just didn’t stick. I needed it when I needed it, and Bastard delivered.
Bastard was published as fiction, but Allison was a truth teller beyond compare when she wrote, “Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.” These days, when I miss my mother, who has estranged herself from me for writing about my childhood, I can recall this passage: “My heart broke all over again. I wanted my life back, my mama, but I knew I would never have that. The child I had been was gone with the child she had been. We were new people, and we didn't know each other anymore. I shook my head desperately.”
And finally, this: “Books can offer a counter narrative—another story to the one we think we know.”
Yes, yes, and yes. Thank you, Dorothy Allison. I am in awe of you, and forever grateful.
Friends, which book/writer/story has changed your life, and why? Share in the comments below. Let’s pay tribute today to the work that opened the doors of our future, while also compiling a giant list of recommendations and resources!