My Weekly Book

We’re big fans of Alison Bechdel, here at MyWeeklyBook, both for her regular Dykes to Watch Out For comic strip and her wonderful-sounding autobiographical graphic novel Fun Home (which we have yet to read, but are confident will be in our hot little hands any time soon).

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Here’s a piece she wrote for Slate magazine on what it’s like telling your nearest and dearest that you are about to reveal family secrets in print for the world to read (it is doing rather a lot of this sort of thing as part of its Memoir Week):

What the Little Old Ladies Feel: How I told my mother about my memoir

The driving on this particular stretch of I-81 is always hairy, and all of a sudden a truck pulled into my lane just in front of me—I must have been in his blind spot. I had to swerve onto the median so I didn’t get clipped.

I was pissed off. After I recovered, I sped up to the truck to get its license number. That’s when I saw the logo on the side: It was a Stroehmann’s Sunbeam Bread truck. My father had died after being hit by—and probably intentionally jumping in front of—a Stroehmann’s Sunbeam Bread truck.

After that synchronistic little brush with death, the prospect of telling my mom about the book loomed rather smaller. Read on here…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 at 9:45 pm and is filed under 2007 news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.