Must a memoirist be an aspirational character?

Thoughts on the self-helpization of memoir

Phew! Wow. It’s been a week. There’s an excerpt of Touched Out at Elle Magazine (!) on how talking to my kids about consent taught me to value my own autonomy. I also wrote an essay for Time Magazine on why I hate the phrase “they’re only little once.” Oh, and Touched Out received a rave review in The Boston Globe!

It’s been an utter delight, as well, to do some interviews with

Substack

writers—a reminder of why I love this little corner of the internet, which has connected me with all of you, and also to so many fantastic thinkers.

I spoke with the unparalleled expert on all things momfluencer culture

Sara Petersen

at her newsletter

In Pursuit of Clean Countertops

and her intro really did me in:

How much of ourselves can we afford to efface?

I also spoke with my former student and friend

Cindy DiTiberio

at her emerging newsletter

The Mother Lode

:

The Assault of Motherhood

And

Tracy Clark-Flory

and I discussed how hookup culture primes women for the institution of motherhood. We’ll continue this conversion IRL this coming Tuesday, Sept 12 (pub day!) in San Francisco at Green Apple Books on the Park (the 9th street location). I would love to see some of you there. There will be CAKE.

Hookup culture is a training ground for the expectations of motherhood

You can find the full book tour lineup below, and more info about registering for events and getting tickets here:

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Despite all this buzz, I’ve really been missing this space! I admitted to myself several weeks ago that I would not be able to keep up with all the random to-dos of a book launch and create new content for this column once, much less several times, a week. But writing is how I make sense of the world. And while at times I’ve felt resistant to the pressure to publish on a regular schedule that comes with a space like this, I’ve also found that returning here to all of you, to write through whatever is happening in the world, and in life, has been such a gift. It’s taught me how to a be a better writer, thinker, and person.

So here are some preliminary thoughts toward a longer piece I will write when things are not so hectic, on what I’m noticing as I start to talk with people about Touched Out. Not just because it applies to me or my book, but because I’m learning what’s expected of authors, and especially authors of memoir— and perhaps especially authors of what we so loosely call a “mom book.”

Nonfiction has changed so much in the past few decades. In recent years, we’ve also seen an explosion of “narrative nonfiction” books and reportage on motherhood, some of which draw somewhat on the history of not just memoir, but literary journalism. As I’ve alluded to in this space before, I’m skeptical of what this (not the mom book, but all these shifts in nonfiction) has done to the genre of memoir and autobiography.