Recollections of My Nonexistence by Rebecca Solnit

“The threat of violence takes up residence in your mind. Solnit’s memoir provides multiple examples of moments when she was quelled by personal pain. As Soraya Roberts wrote recently in an essay about the controversial novel “ American Dirt,” too often the message of trauma narratives is one of individual triumph, rather than collective responsibility. But as Solnit makes clear, power structures operate on a much broader level.

Undoubtedly, such memoirs have also brought some measure of healing to their writers and helped to remove stigmas. She is especially eloquent on the mechanisms of what we’ve come to call gaslighting:Ī strong rationale for reading memoirs (beyond bald curiosity) is that by learning of individual horrors, the reader can expand her empathy and understanding. In examining the intersections where power meets race, gender and sexuality, she obtains a clearer view of misogyny. Much of her most recent work has focused specifically on the structural - and more insidious - ways that power mutes women (and not just women).

As a white, cisgender, heterosexual woman, she is cognizant of the ways that our identities and the facts of our bodies affect the messages we hear and do or don’t respond to. Her topics have included studies of specific artists, such as Eadweard Muybridge environmental concerns language and gender a history of walking how communities recover from disaster and the impact of urban geography on creativity and quality of life.Īnd now Solnit puts herself under the microscope, tracing her ideas through her lived experiences and testing them too. In 23 monographs (some of them co-authored) and essay collections, she has demonstrated a sharp intellect and a wide-ranging curiosity. She has become one of America’s most prominent political essayists and a keen observer of modern culture. Solnit grew up in Marin County and moved to San Francisco as a teenager in the late 1970s. Rebecca Solnit’s new memoir, “Recollections of My Nonexistence,” strives to do the same, putting her most compelling observations about cultural and political power in a personal context. The great intellectual autobiographies - “ Leon Modena’s Life of Judah,” both Augustine’s and Rousseau’s “Confessions” - charted the interplay of each man’s learning and ideas and reflected on how life experiences strengthened or challenged their understandings.

Recollections of My Nonexistence by Rebecca Solnit