Reading the Waves: A Memoir [Hardcover]

The frank and revealing memoir of a writer who draws from her own creativity to heal.

I believe our bodies are carriers of experience, Lidia Yuknavitch writes in her provocative memoir Reading the Waves. I mean to ask if there is a way to read my own past differently, using what I have learned from literature: how stories repeat and reverberate and release us from the tyranny of our mistakes, our traumas, and our confusions.

Drawing on her background -- her father's abuse, her complicated dynamic with her disabled mother, the death of her child, her sexual relationships with men and women -- and her creative life as an author and teacher, Yuknavitch has come to understand that by using the power of literature and storytelling to reframe her memories, she can loosen the bonds that have enslaved her emotional growth. Armed with this insight, she allows herself to look with the eye of an artist at the wounds she suffered and come to understand the transformational power this has to restore her soul. 

By turns candid and lyrical, stoic and forgiving, blunt and evocative, Reading the Waves reframes memory to show how crucial this process  can be to gaining a deeper understanding of ourselves.Praise for Reading the Waves

“[A] quicksilver, expansive exploration of grief and hauntings.” —Vanity Fair

Provocative and expansive. . . Joy, sorrow, rage, fear, guilt, lust, adoration — it’s all there in equal parts. The book empowers us to consider: When we look back at our pasts, how comfortable are we with seeing who we really were and embracing that version of ourself, however flawed? Perhaps more important, how do we shed the parts of us we no longer finl“Y