“Love is listening.”
—Titus Kaphar

Personal stories, family history explored

WRITE THE WAY YOU TALK
“Any life story book passed down to the next generation is a gift—but it's an even better gift if it sounds like the real you.” Last week I wrote about how to write with your authentic voice and why it’s so powerful.

UNLOCKING THE PAST
“The power of understanding our own personal history, and then how that connects to a larger story of who we are, I think that gets to why [the Virginia Untold initiative] is so important.”

WHERE ARE THE WOMEN?
“Most women on the family trees of the wealthiest families are reduced to little more than vital statistics.” Here’s how to elevate female role models in your family story.

LISTEN IN
As part of a season nine initiative, the Finding Your Roots team has been holding free national conversation events online. The most recent one, below, centered on how important it is to speak with older generations, and work with younger generations, to record and preserve family history. Register for upcoming events and see archived talks here.

Notable memoirs, diaries & biographies

FROM HER ISOLATION JOURNALS
Suleika Jaouad on living in the layers of our memories, “cracking the spine of a new journal to fill with very nascent inklings for a new book,” and inspiring love.

A RETURN TO HIS ORIGINAL LANGUAGE
“A record of his abortive attempts to transfer to the page what he called ‘the tremendous world I have in my head,’ [Kafka’s diaries] contain much that is fragmentary and disjointed, stumbling and stuttering.”

MEDITATIONS ON LIVING
“There is value in reading death memoirs, if we can take them on their own terms,” Kristen Martin writes in this review of Your Hearts, Your Scars by Adina Talve-Goodman, stacking the title up against other notable memoirs by the dying.

“A SCRAPBOOK OF IMPERFECT PEOPLE LIVING IMPERFECT LIVES”
Pamela Anderson, a celebrity whose image was all about her looks, takes control of her own narrative in a memoir and documentary that are complementary, “curated artifacts of a life lived.”

A TREASURE
This interview with author Angie Cruz is a delight, so if you’d like to listen, rewind the below audio to the beginning. Otherwise, pop in at the 37:30 mark to hear co-host Kate Gibson talk briefly about ““the most meaningful book [she’s] read in the last year.”

Another episode of The Book Case that may interest you: “Anna Quindlen Wants You to Write” from last year.

...and a few more links

• Viola Davis confronts two Americas in Finding Your Roots episode.

• Fun list of 20 popular songs about memories

• “Seung-hwan and Seon-bu,” a beautiful, short first-person piece by Elliott Pak

• “The top ten sins of a genealogist”

• Appeals to save Trove, a major digital archive of Australian history

• Up for auction: a collection of Princess Diana’s personal letters to two of her closest friends

• In Pursuance of Meanings: a memoir masquerading as a monograph

• The reason why humans started using tombstones?

• Details about the family history app Storied

Short takes