Week in Reading

Including some of my favorites to teach

This week I’ve been in Moraga, CA, at Saint Mary’s College, teaching at a weeklong residency. It’s called Storyboard, and is spearheaded by my friend Lauren Markham (author of several books, her most recent being Immemorial, a truly great read you should pick up) and Chris Feliciano Arnold. It has been a fun time, but if you’ve ever done such a residency you know it’s also been a busy time; I haven’t done much outside reading this week. So most of what I’m sharing here is from my curriculum—I’ve taught these essays a dozen times over at this point, and if there’s more teaching in my future they’ll show up again. Perhaps cliché, but nonetheless true, that reading is rereading. Not just take in the content, but the writerly moves; not only the why but the how. Anyway, here’s stuff:

• The Little Man at Chehaw Station (my favorite essay, I wrote about it for Paris Review some years ago)

• Against Catharsis: Writing is Not Therapy (a thing I like to make sure I get in front of anyone writing memoir, a bonafide classic from T Kira Māhealani Madden)

• Such Perfection (Chloé Cooper Jones at her absolute best)

• Michael Jordan: A history of flight (I like teaching this way as a way of looking at how you can find new ways to write about something/someone who has had millions of words already written about it/them)

• ‘You Must Play Basketball’ (an excerpt from Brian Broome’s memoir, Punch Me Up to the Gods, which won the Kirkus Prize for nonfiction the year after I did, and an essay I like to teach as an example of form matching content)

Drop some links in the comments to things you’ve been reading this week!