Life Story Links: May 17, 2022

“…writing has become for me a primary means of digesting and integrating my experiences and thereby reducing the pains of living, or if not, at least making them useful to myself and to others. There is no pain in my life that has not been given value by the alchemy of creative attention.”
—Melissa Febos

young boys on tricycle on new york city street in 1950s — This vintage photo of boys on a tricycle in New York City was taken by Morris Huberland circa 1950. Photograph courtesy of The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints, and Photographs, New York Public Library Digital Collection.

Preserving our stories

OUT IN NOVEMBER
Bono reads an excerpt from his memoir Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, due to be published in November. An animation from Bono’s own drawings accompanies his words from the chapter titled “Out of Control,” which tells the story of how Bono began writing U2's first single on his 18th birthday, May 10, 1978:

THE DANCE OF MOTHERHOOD
Stories don’t always have to be told with words. In this gallery, photographers capture their own experiences as mothers through pictures—self-reflective, narratively engaging, and vibrant.

WHICH STORIES TO TELL?
From life story books to a family history collection, from travel journals to heritage cookbooks, last week I offered up 10 favorite heirloom book themes to inspire those who want to preserve their stories but have no idea which stories to focus on.

PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORIES
Head to “storytelling school” with The Moth: This lesson offers tips and exercises for telling a good story from a photograph, as well as a storytelling video to inspire.

HISTORIAN TURNS FOCUS ON HIMSELF
“An American Childhood…succeeds as memoir by carefully narrating the protagonists’ experiences as they perceived them as children and as teenagers, not filtered through subsequent informed and reasoned understanding. It succeeds as history by gently noting the faultiness of those perceptions.”

TASTY MEMORIES
“I feel like our kids know Nana still, because…they know when we make the chocolate chip cookies from her cookbook, those are Nana’s cookies.” Minneapolis–based company preserves food memories with personalized cookbooks.

Shadow play

GENEALOGY PROBLEMS
“We know that ‘race’ is a social construct. We need to acknowledge the ways in which ‘ancestry’ is, too.” The New Yorker looks at the “twisted roots” of our obsession with ancestry.

HOLDING THE PAIN
“I like to think it is the solemn duty of a writer to record stories that need to be heard, but it has occurred to me over the course of this work that listening and bearing witness to trauma is the duty of all citizens in a community. It’s what connects us.”

First-person stories that captured me

“DEAR MOM…”
“I’ve missed my mom every day, but suddenly the pain of not having her felt acute, a pain that I turned against myself for being a lousy daughter.” Twenty-four years after her mother's death, Liza Deyrmenjian writes a letter to her mom.

“THIEVES”
“I sit, I lie, and memory rises, memory merges. My marooned mother. My marooned self.” Beth Kephart sets up two parallel situations—seeking answers, sleuthing patterns, writing her way to truth

LESSONS FROM HER FATHER
“Growing up, my father took me to libraries the way other fathers took their kids to the park or the movies. It wasn’t just that he loved or appreciated them—he believed in them like some believe in churches, religions, God.”

Pieces of the past

A RECKONING WITH CLUTTER, GRIEF, AND MEMORIES
The New York Times has curated a selection of letters from readers recounting stories of dealing with a lifetime of possessions—their own or a loved one’s—and the memories and emotions attached to them.

THE URGE TO COLLECT
Enjoy this conversation about the urge to collect, the stories embedded in certain objects, and how some items can unearth stories from the person who covets them:

LOOKING BACK
On this episode of Canadian podcast Now or Never, the hosts explore how reading love letters from the 1920s is helping one woman deal with heartache; talk to three siblings digging through the contents of their childhood home; and talk about how pieces of the past can help shape your future. Listen in.

Miscellaneous

INTERESTING THEATER REVIEW
The main character of this Chicago stage production “considers memory to be a kind of photography.” The action of At the Vanishing Point hinges on an old photo discovered at a garage sale, linking characters across time and place.