How can stories repeat and reverberate and release us from the tyranny of our mistakes, our traumas, and our confusions?
Having suffered through abuse in their youth, both Neige Sinno (Sad Tiger, tr. Natasha Lehrer) and Lidia Yuknavich (The Chronology of Water; Reading the Waves) came to understand how old memories can ambush us in the present. In their groundbreaking memoirs, each turns to literature (such as Virginia Woolf, Vladimir Nabokov, and Toni Morrison) to learn to read their own past.
In a discussion moderated by acclaimed poet and author Meghan O’Rourke, these writers explore how, in the midst of darkness, the acts of speaking up, asking questions, and telling new stories provide the power to reshape ourselves.
