Because personal narrative is what flows from me when I sit to write I knew I wanted, even needed, to read Fobes's offering when a friend recommended it. It is thoughtful, original, encouraging, honest and a whole lot more. So glad I own a copy of my own.

Sentences and whole paragraphs underlined—many. Here are a few gems:

Navel-gazing is not for the faint of heart. The risk of honest self-appraisal requires bravery. To place our flawed selves in the context of this magnificent, broken world is the opposition of narcissism, which is building a self-image that pleases you.

Listen to me: It is not gauche to write about trauma. It is subversive. The stigma of victimhood is a timeworn tool of oppressive powers to gaslight the people they subjugate into relieving that by naming their disempowerment tye are being dramatic, whining, attention-grabbing, or els beating a dead horse. By convincing us to police our own and one another’s stories, they have enlisted us in the project of our own continued disempowerment.

…the more we believe we ought to be something that we are not, the more money we will spend in that mission. … The genius of social conditioning is that it is vital and can adapt to any situation a human might enter.

Whereas writing was once an exercise in transcription, it has become an exercise in transformation.

An analytical part of me takes over when I write and creates a distance between me and the subject, and in that space I have always been able to breathe. Like a cracked door the cold seems trough, so did the truth begin to seep into me.

…a way to make my suffering useful. Beautiful, even. ( )

This is all about memoir in that the author basically gives advice about writing memoir while reminiscing about how she’s written her own memoirs. It’s possible I would have enjoyed it more if I’d read those books, but since I haven’t I’m pretty ambivalent about this. ( )

In this slender volume, author and professor Melissa Febos shares her thoughts on memoir writing. She addresses the necessity and value of writing about painful things, even when telling the truth might hurt family members or former partners. She also discusses the writing of sex scenes, and the divine nature of confessing on the page.

This is the first book I have read by Melissa Febos, and, since she refers often to her own work, it would probably have been better if I had read at least one of her own memoirs first. Still, reluctant writers with stories to tell may find themselves liberated by Febos’s radical honesty. ( )