Life Story Links: February 6, 2024

“Sometimes it feels like each poem I write is a draft of The Poem I’m trying to write—that singular, golden, impossibly definitive poem. The one poem I’m trying to live. Or the one life I’m trying to write.”
—Maggie Smith

Vintage poster with original artwork by Richard Halls produced by the Work Projects Administration circa 1938; image courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Digital Collection. The posters were designed to publicize exhibits, community activities, theatrical productions, and health and educational programs in seventeen states and the District of Columbia between 1936 to 1943.

On writing our lives

LIFE STORY INNOVATIONS & PRACTICE
The current issue of The International Journal of Reminiscence and Life Review contains a number of interesting papers, including a special section, “The Healing Power of Storytelling.” Two worth checking out:

KICKSTARTING YOUR WRITING LIFE
“It was such a loss for me, to know that I had the opportunity to ask questions and I didn’t,” Patricia Charpentier says in this video introduction to writing about your life.

IT’S ALL MATERIAL
“In a certain sense it goes to the heart of who we are as writers: why she is a novelist and I a memoirist. Now that I find interesting.” Vivian Gornick on Lore Segal.

CRAFTING A LOVING TRIBUTE
After a prospective client asked if I had a series of memory prompts specifically geared to help him write about his wife, I crafted these questions to help anyone honor their partner and tell the story of their relationship.

TOP GHOSTS DISH
Joel Stein sat down with six of the top ghostwriters in the celebrity memoir business to learn “about the curious craft of ghostwriting and the types of personalities drawn to help famous people tell their life stories.”

In search of the past

MISSING PERSONS
“The most representative thing about my family was not the small farm, the nightly saying of the Rosary, or the close community of neighbours … but the fact that most of its members lived elsewhere.” On a grandmother’s secrets and a search for broader truths.

ADOPTION, ACCESS, AND IDENTITY
“Late at night, in my childhood room, questions haunted me: Where did I come from? Why was I adopted? Who was my original family?” This writer says she could have gone to prison for what she did to find her birth parents.

TASTES OF THE PAST
Many “cultures live in the diaspora, in cracks and crevices of oral histories, of old folded scraps of paper, of recipes. I’ve found that food has the best clues.” Historians on bringing “dead recipes” back to life.

LOST STORIES
“I mean, you go to any antique shop and you are going to find family photographs… It’s amazing the stuff that families don’t want.” How once meaningful keepsakes end up in estate sales.

“AN INTRICATE MOSAIC”
“Holding a handwritten letter from a grandparent, reading their words, and feeling the texture of the paper can be a profoundly emotional experience. Personal archives bring the past into the present.” Margot Note on preserving history and memory in archives.

IDENTITIES BUILT ON SHIFTING SAND
“Our memories form the bedrock of who we are. Those recollections, in turn, are built on one very simple assumption: This happened. But things are not quite so simple.” A leading memory researcher explains how to make precious moments last.

For your listening pleasure

INSIGHTS FROM A TOP MEMOIRIST
In this wide-ranging discussion, award-winning author Dani Shapiro discusses striving towards the universal in memoir, writing a book without an outline, and how she had to slow down the rush of storytelling in her bestselling memoir Inheritance because she was living the tale as she was writing it:

A COUNTRY BOY AT HEART
Fans of Finding Your Roots will recognize Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s smarts and sense of humor, but I am willing to bet you haven’t heard his storytelling skills shine like they do in this interview with Dax Shepard:

LEGACY IN THE FACE OF DEATH
On this episode of Inside Photo Organizing podcast, professional photo manager Sharon Wunder talks about how her cancer diagnosis shifted her thinking about the idea of legacy, and about how she approaches preserving memories that are not accompanied by photos; I recommend starting at the 7:13 mark:

PROMPTING POWERFUL STORYTELLING
“This is not about ego, about being big and great, but rather, about being of service, and of understanding your place in the larger story. Trained interviewers draw people out of their shells and get people talking in story,” Jamie Yuenger, founder of StoryKeep, says in this video, which is part of a larger series called Legacy Lens: