MELANCHOLAI by Tomislav Silepeter
I am here, but I'm not just like you I am not home.
Category: Survival
Healing/Asian American Pacific Islander/10 Minute Read/ACEs/Adversity/Loss/Memoir/morality/Society/Survival/trauma/war
Years in a Pigsty by Sue Tong
As a child, I witnessed the brutal torture and beatings that my mother, a teacher, endured at the hands of a gang of violent students, the Red Guards. The image...
7 Minute Read/Featured/Girls & Women/Loss/men/nonfiction/Rape Culture/Relationships/#SAAM/Sexism/Society/Storytelling/Survival
Hon by Laurie Harriton
*Featured Art: A TEAR by Carolyn Schlam, Ink and Watercolor, 14″ x 11″, 2020 I am lying on the Murphy bed in Herb’s dark living room, having finall...
The War is Over by Deborah Adelman
...at least when you are not lying awake at night in your bed in the living room, feeling the enormity of the world’s violence and wondering how your family mig...
Trigger warning/Make Me Cry/7 Minute Read/ACEs/Addiction/Adversity/Escape/Featured/Family/Fathers/Literature/Loss/Memoir/Mental Illness/nonfiction/Relationships/Survival/trauma
Drowning by Natasha Williams
He was disheveled and smelled like cooked grease and cigarettes. It was an odor I associated with his being poor and hemmed in. There was so much about our life...
Asian American Pacific Islander/7 Minute Read/Adversity/Childhood/Featured/Family/Food/Identity/Immigrants/Incarceration/Inspirational/Literature/Loss/nonfiction/Race Matters/Survival
Strawberry Mud by Shizue Seigel
My grandparents raised peas, lettuce, and cantaloupe on a 140-acre seaside ranch since 1915, but they could not buy the land, only lease it. Unlike European imm...
SHOT-GUN SUCKS by Nicole M. Wolverton
My mother drove a blue Volkswagen bug that sounded like a dying jet engine filled with marbles. My childhood is marked by a long succession of clunker cars that...
3 Minute Read/Food/Immigrants/Justice/Literature/Man in The Mirror/morality/Race Matters/Refugees/Society/Survival
Cost of Strawberries by Kimberly Peterson
How do we treat agricultural workers severed from their families? We crush them together in trucks. Pack them in houses containing twenty men. Fail to supply pr...
15 Minute Read/ACEs/Adversity/Craft Essays/Featured/Family/Girls & Women/Identity/Immigrants/Inspirational/Literature/Love/Man in The Mirror/Memoir/Memory/Mommy Dearest/Mothers/Mothers and Daughters/nonfiction/On Writing/On Memory/Parenting/personal essay/Race Matters/Regret/Relationships/Sexism/Society/Survival/trauma
How 90 Day Fiancé Helped Me Tell My Story as the Child of a Mail Order Bride by Katya Suvorova
I don’t have a mom who fell in love how I was able to fall in love. My mother is a survivor in a way most Americans won’t ever understand. I am honored to be th...
Dementia/12 minute read/Adversity/Aging/Alzheimer's/Art/Being Body/Family/Food/Grief/Health/Identity/Inspirational/Literature/Loss/Memory/nonfiction/Sexism/Society/Survival
“Iris on My Mind” by Odeta Xheka
Most days, I manage to distract myself from the horror of losing my bearing and blurring the lines in the fog of forgetfulness. I carry the markers for Alzheime...
15 Minute Read/Adversity/Escape/Featured/Incarceration/Inspirational/Loss/nonfiction/Refugees/Survival/trauma
From Mauthausen to Freedom: A Story of Resolve and Assimilation, chronicled by Louis Arthur Norton
This is how the Holocaust ended for me, a solitary Polish-Jew liberated by American soldiers from the infamous death camp Mauthausen. I was at the time an emaci...
Dancing with the Darkness of My Soul by Susan Moore
This is why people do it. This is why they cut.
10 Minute Read/ACEs/Adversity/Books/Black Memoirs Matter/Childhood/Contests and Prizes/Featured/Family/Funny/Memoir/Mommy Dearest/Mothers/nonfiction/Race Matters/Society/Survival/The Memoir Prize for Books
Our Family Walks by Nick R. Robinson
An Excerpt from The Memoir Prize 2021 Honorable Mention: Our Family Walks by Nick R. Robinson; unpublished manuscript.
15 Minute Read/ACEs/Childhood/Escape/Family/Fathers/Girls & Women/Love/men/Mommy Dearest/Mothers/Mothers and Daughters/nonfiction/Relationships/Society/Survival/trauma
I Am My Longing by Susan Ostrov Weisser
There were my mother’s stories, and there were my books. Books were imaginary but some books could be true; Betty’s stories were neither true nor not-true, they...
10 Minute Read/ACEs/Aging/Childhood/Featured/Family/Girls & Women/Grief/Loss/Mothers/Mothers and Daughters/nonfiction/Relationships/Secrets/Sexism/Society/Survival
My Mother’s Back by Mary Zelinka
Her admission that her diagnosis was terrible news showed a vulnerability in her I had never before witnessed. I had believed that nothing ever weighed on her,...
10 Minute Read/Adversity/Art/Escape/Featured/Family/Fathers/Identity/Justice/Loss/nonfiction/Refugees/Society/Survival
KGB search, Chop Train Station, The Promised Land By Ella Reznikova
My father and mother are trapped in this country, waiting for many years for permission to immigrate. Every six months he patiently goes alone to the Soviet Vis...
Bombardment by Julie Benesh
I am over 50, feeling 70 and used to being semi-invisible in big, sexy Chicago and currently dressed for something as far from clubbing or prostitution as anyon...
10 Minute Read/ACEs/Childhood/Escape/Family/Fathers/Institutions/nonfiction/Refugees/Society/Survival/war
Passages by Rebecca Jung
My mother pressed her cheek to Leslie’s cold face and cried. She rocked back and forth, holding my sister’s limp body close to hers. And those Congolese women r...
Ned by Author Madison Welborne
An audio memoir exploring anorexia. Madison is not gaining weight and must be subjected to the tube.
1 minute Read/Addiction/Art/Audible/Audio Visual/Black Memoirs Matter/Incarceration/Institutions/nonfiction/Society/Survival/trauma
A Poem in Prison: A film by Daniel Cantagallo (and Etheridge Knight)
Sometimes a voice stops you in your tracks. For me, such was the case with Etheridge Knight. During the past few years, I have been remixing old footage and aud...