Nanette and Nature of Storytelling

I have finally watched Nanette, Hannah Gadsby's wonderful live comedy show.

Ilana and I haven't watched many comedy performances in the last ten years or so. We find stand up to be formulaic and disappointing, generally. We both loved Chappelle's Show because of the meta aspect, as well as the incredible way humor was used as a direct tool against white anti-blackness. We also both love absurdist comedy sketch shows - Monty Python, Kids in the Hall, et al.

But people just kept telling us to watch Nanette, often without explanation. I don't want to give you much of one here, except to say that what Gadsby has to say about owning our own stories: how we tell them, who we tell them to, and with what tone - is all crucial and critical to memoir.

Comedy routines generally don't have much to do with memoir. But the direction Gadsby takes will help you re-think your own story/ies and how to present them on your own terms, without diminishing them, or denigrating yourself. Check it out and let me know what you think.

The Possibility of Repair

It's been a hell of a few weeks. There have been incredibly difficult times in the Shambhala community (read all about it here), and just recently, someone posted an article I found related more for me to memoir than to our current situation in Shambhala.

It's here.

In the article, memoirist Wendy C. Ortiz discusses her own memoir, Excavation, as well as numerous novels and her own experience as a psychotherapist. A lot of what she says resonates with my own process of telling about my childhood sexual abuse, and with the complexity of books I have discussed here, such as Zoe Zolbrod's The Telling as well as Claire Dederer's memoir and my discussion of it here in On Victimhood.

Because things are so difficult and full at my end, I am not going to say more than this for now. I am giving myself permission to simply post things I find interesting, without much commentary, and link them to other writing I have done at depth. I look forward to what reading Ortiz's memoir will do in terms of affecting my own telling about abuse, as well as conversations I have with clients I work with in terms of how to tell about their own experiences of abuse.