The accident slammed into 23-year-old Shapiro at a time when her life had veered dangerously off-course: She was a coke-snorting, heavy-drinking college dropout, the 'kept' mistress of a friend's stepfather. At its core is the mid-1980s car crash that killed her father and seriously shattered her mother. Twenty years ago, Dani Shapiro's first memoir, Slow Motion, fell into the we-shall-overcome group. Many literary memoirs involve surmounting hurdles or uncovering family secrets in pursuit of self-discovery. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Contributions for the charitable purposes of The Rumpus must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Inheritance Subtitle A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love Author Dani Shapiro The Rumpus is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. And join us by becoming a monthly or yearly Member.Įach of these subscription programs along with tax-deductible donations made to The Rumpus through our fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas, helps keep u s going and brings us closer to sustainability. Subscribe to the Rumpus Book Clubs (poetry, prose, or both) and Letters in the Mail from authors. We believe that literature builds community-and if reading The Rumpus makes you feel more connected, please show your support! Get your Rumpus merch in our online store. We lift up new voices alongside those of more established writers readers already know and love. Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to be a platform for risk-taking voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. It is the complicated, abiding pleasure, to paraphrase Ralph Waldo Emerson, of finding the universal thread that connects us to the rest of humanity, and, by doing so, turns our small, personal sorrows and individual tragedies into art.įounded in 2009, The Rumpus is one of the longest running independent online literary and culture magazines.

The gratification we memoirists do experience is infinitely deeper and more bittersweet.

We don’t experience the Pavlovian, addictive click and response of posting something that momentarily relieves the pressure inside of us, then being showered with emoticons. No great digital crowd is “liking” what we do. There is no immediate gratification in this. It is only with distance that we are able to turn our powers of observation on ourselves, thus fashioning stories in which we are characters. Writing a memoir requires introspection and distance. Status updates are immediate, instant acts of narcissism. In an era when people live tweet every aspect of their lives, the memoir might seem an antiquated notion.

Dani shapiro memoir