way of capturing imagery in writing that's so vivid, especially imagery of like being a young kid and these like really powerful moments. How do you as a writer like mind your own experiences, but also how does that change the way that you remember them? — You know, memoir for me is about what we remember at its core. It's about what does this individual person remember about their lives? how what is the lens that they filter that memory through? Um how do you choose to share that memory? How much do you trust your memory? All of those things, right? And my relationship with my memory has been one that is both a blessing and a curse. I remember colors. I remember details. I remember what people were wearing. I remember the pitch of their voices. the voices behind their voices. you know, all of those things. It's like being back in that moment. And there are a few reasons why I think that's the case. One of those reasons is my eyesight. Um, I have really, really terrible eyesight. And I do mean terrible, legally blind without my glasses eyesight. And I spent most of my life um up until around fourth grade uh not having glasses even though my eyesight was that bad. And I sort of dealt with that by memorizing where things were, memorizing details that could be seen in a fuzzy way and not necessarily clearly. So that's part of it. Another part of it is that I come from what I call the hook generation of kids. You know, I grew up on films that very much held on to the plot point that something happened in adulthood, something was lost in adulthood. They'd forgotten what it was like to be children. They'd forgotten what they knew when they were children in order to survive in the world. And that had caused them to become adults who hurt children. So yeah, when I'm writing memory, I'm writing from this very personal experience of memory that as I think about it, you know, more as I grow, I just I see all these moments that changed how I memorize things and how I share things. — I write for almost the exact opposite reason, which is like I write things down. I'm really like big into journaling and writing because if I don't they just disappear, right? Like the narratives that stay for me are the narratives that are like — ones that I tell or that other people around me tell over and over. And so I have this real sense that like my memory is a shifting sand and it is not necessarily reliable. — And I have written and talked very much about the fact that I remember deciding to make memories as a child. I remember having these moments and saying to myself, "This is one of those things you've got to hold on to because this is going to help you make sure you're the person that you want to be uh as you get older and that you're not just doing things because that's what other people are doing or because someone else says that that's what's right. If you remember this moment right now, then it will protect you from a future version of yourself who doesn't care. I also had this thing where I was convinced when I was a kid that I was supposed to be able to remember my father who had truly only been in my life for seven six or seven months before he went to prison. Um, but I felt guilty about not being able to remember him. I want to talk a little bit more about that like making memory as a way of shaping who you want to be because that strikes me as something that really we could all be doing. And I think I'm at least so rarely conscious of that, of being like, "This is something I want to remember because I want to be like this or not care for people who go through this. " — I knew I was going to grow up. get older. I didn't know what happened to make adults so different from kids, but I knew that I liked the kid version of me — and I desperately wanted to hold on to her even if other people didn't like her. The things I wanted to hold on to I could keep in my mind. And so I made a memory, I guess, the way a child thinks to make a memory, which is to sit quietly and close your eyes, be in the moment, replay the moment in your head, and feel everything around you. — We're talking about it in the context of you being a child. Have you done this as an adult, too? recently? This idea of intentionally making memories. — The stakes feel different as an adult. Uh, I trust myself a lot more as an adult to be able to remember my values more than a specific moment to fuel me. Um, and I find that I kind of like the surprise as an adult of remembering things that I did not expect to remember and that I didn't try to remember. I think sometimes when people have um written about uh tough experiences in their life, right, like having your father be incarcerated, experiencing sexual assault, having like people with in your life experience violence or you experiencing violence, people like only see you through the lens of like the very serious stuff. And you are also so funny and silly and joyful. So, how have you changed like the way you think about like humor and silliness and just goofiness? But I've always been, you know, the jokester. I've always sort of been the class clown. Um, the personality hire, if you will. — I did standup comedy for years when I was in college and really loved it and — stopped mostly because I didn't like comedians very much. Even though I loved doing comedy, it's been the thing that helped me form most of my relationships from the beginning. My friendships, um, it's the reason why my teachers and professors loved me even though I was not always doing great in their classes. It really greases a lot of wheels to be a person who, you know, makes people laugh in general. And since the book has come out, one of the trickiest things has been having conversations with people who really want to talk to me from a place of, you know, taking the issues that happened in my book seriously, which I do take seriously and I talk about and write about very seriously. But like most things in reality, it's complex. I get a lot of I loved your book. I didn't expect you to be so bright. — joyful. You know, my husband, he tells people all the time when they go to buy the book or are questioning, you know, whether or not they should get the book, he always says, you know, you want to read it and you want to think about it, but just remember she turns out okay. And this has been a great dichotomy in my life, you know, that I've always, I think, like I said, been the funny person, been the person who can make people joke, but I've also always pretty easily made people cry. And even though now I accept the reality that both of those things are true about me, for a long time, I couldn't believe that anybody thought I was funny enough to laugh. And I couldn't believe that anybody thought what I said mattered enough to cry over
