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Identity, the idea of who we are and the forces that have shaped us, is something I am always interested in as a reader and as a writer. Unfortunately, identity is often weaponized by people who want us to forget who we are, where we come from, how the world sees or does not see us. This erasure is part of what makes writing about identity so necessary. Writing that explores identity is not merely asking the question, "What does it mean to be human?" Such writing asks, "What does it mean to live a specific and unique human experience?" It is often said that we are as alike as we are different. That is true, but we are also as different as we are alike. I am fascinated by the differences between us. I want to know more about these differences, to honor and celebrate them. When I am reading certain kinds of memoirs, I immerse myself completely. I crave everything I am allowed to know, that I can only know by opening myself to the lives of others.

" " — Lidia Yuknavitch

Bridget Watson Payne

In "The Chronology of Water," Lidia Yuknavitch begins with the stillbirth of her daughter, a moment of profound grief, rendered with incredible grace. And then, like water, the memoir takes on an unpredictable journey. Yuknavitch not only chronicles how this loss shaped her, she also offers up the whole of her life. This is a story grounded in womanhood and what it means to be a woman in this world where women are all too often victimized by those who are meant to care for us most. This is a memoir of surviving abuse, and unlike many abuse memoirs, Yuknavitch makes the bold, intriguing choice to write around the abuse rather than about it explicitly. And still, her suffering is palpable. There is no ambiguity about what she survived. And survive she did, architecting her own salvation through swimming, through writing, through living and love. As a whole, the book is entrancing and so very specific to Yuknavitch’s life while also offering so much wisdom and beauty.

" " — Terese Mailhot

Bridget Watson Payne

There is nothing expected or easy in "Heart Berries," by Terese Mailhot. This is an intense book, written in prose as poetry. Each chapter vibrates with the full force of the author’s passion, her pain, her staggering ferocity. Mailhot writes about her childhood on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation, what it means to be a First Nation woman, and what it means to survive things no one should be asked to survive. This is a violent and brutal book, but there is also softness and joy. The writer grapples with the tension of who she is and who she is becoming, with love and motherhood, with the challenges of mental illness and living in a human body. Mailhot writes so that her story, as well as the stories of women like her, can be known, because "Indian girls can be forgotten so well they forget themselves." There is no forgetting in Heart Berries — there is remembrance upon remembrance, and as readers, we bear witness. It is the least we can do when given such a powerful story.

" " — Morgan Jerkins

Bridget Watson Payne

Morgan Jerkins unapologetically writes to, for, and about black women in her debut essay collection "This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection ofBlack, Female, and Feminist in (White)America." In each essay, Jerkins weaves memoir and reportage, drawing from her own life while commenting on the world she has been shaped by and forced to live in. In the early essays, Jerkins writes about her middle class childhood in New Jersey, growing up in a deeply spiritual family, and the bullying she encountered in high school. When it is time for college, she chooses to attend Princeton University. There, she gains a more intimate, and at times painful, understanding of what it means to be a black woman in a white world. She has access to an unparalleled elite education, but is constantly reminded of both the class transition that comes with attending an Ivy League university and the costs borne of such a transition. In many ways, this collection is a coming-of-age memoir. From beginning to end, we see how Jerkins grows into the woman she is today. By the end of the book, we see Jerkins in adulthood, finding her place as a writer, learning how best to use her privilege — she is living in Harlem and embracing the power of living in a boldly black community. Throughout "This Will Be My Undoing," Jerkins is refreshingly honest and vulnerable and confident and flawed. This combination makes her book not only readable, but invaluable.

" " — Claudia Rankine

Bridget Watson Payne

Some works will always be timely, and Claudia Rankine’s "Citizen: An American Lyric" is one such book. Throughout this memoir, Rankine tackles race in America. She lays bare both micro and macro aggressions that are part and parcel of being the Other in the United States. She not only lays this reality bare, she also exposes the costs of carrying it in our blood and skin and bones. She demonstrates how fraught it is to never know who you can trust with your heart, your life, your very body in a racist world that has infected people who do not even realize they have been infected at all. She writes of how no amount of privilege provides sanctuary from racism. There is a moment where she reflects, "a friend once told you there exists the medical term­ — John Henryism ­— for people exposed to stresses stemming from racism. They achieve themselves to death trying to dodge the buildup of erasure." It is interesting that "Citizen" is written in the second person. You are being asked to embody the experiences Rankine writes through. You are being asked to face what centuries of unexamined racism have wrought. You are being forced to face the ugliness of this world. You. You. You.

" " — Aleksandar Hemon

Bridget Watson Payne

Every essay in "The Book of My Lives," a collection by Aleksandar Hemon, offers up something about the way Hemon has experienced and moved through this world. He writes, lovingly, of his childhood in Sarajevo and coming of age as war begins to tear it apart. He writes about his family fleeing the city, and what it means to be a refugee, all that comes with yearning for a home that will always be the place that made you but can be home no longer. Hemon writes about settling into Chicago, learning to love a new home, establishing new roots. In a particularly tender and wrenching essay, he writes of the grief of losing his daughter. Every single word is fiercely delicate. One of the collection’s most striking moments appears in the very first essay, "The Lives of Others." In it, he writes about the birth of his baby sister, and how her arrival changes the family dynamics and his access to his mother. During a moment of pique, he tries to kill his young sister, but stops when he realizes he loves her and that he’s hurting her, and that it is wrong to kill your sister. He writes, "Never again would I be alone in the world, never again would I have it exclusively for myself. Never again would my selfhood be a sovereign territory devoid of the presence of others."

Those of us who are lucky come to this realization sooner or later: that we are not alone in the world and are better off that way. Memoirs about identity, above all, serve as beautiful and necessary reminders of this truth.

Roxane Gay is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, associate professor at Purdue University, and the author of several best-selling books, including "Bad Feminist" and, most recently, "Hunger."

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