We are a connection-driven species with a natural desire to learn about our fellow humans. Many of us love when chance encounters at grocery stores or the park turn into chats with other people going about their day. Yet, these fleeting encounters just barely skim the surface of all there is to know about another human being. We wonder about the bigger story behind that open laugh, or that handshake so firm it felt like shaking a statue’s hand.
Enter one of the most deeply personal, intimate ways to get to know someone without exchanging a word: the memoir.
If someone’s lived it, there’s a memoir about it. Climbing Mount Everest, saving a family business, discovering a new faith; memoirs invite us to walk along someone else’s life path. If you’ve read any number of memoirs, you’ll know that a central struggle or quest lies at the heart of every author’s story. By the book’s end, you’ll have found the author’s why hidden in the pages.
Why bother to climb Mount Everest at all? Why spend thousands of dollars to save an estranged family member’s business? Why step with shaking hands and sweat rolling down your back into a house of faith you’ve never been in before?
Some struggles, and some whys are clearer than others. The hardest ones for us to understand can be those that aren’t obvious, or have shame attached to them. Memoirs invite us to understand the author’s struggle, their triumph, and their why.
The next author to visit SJCPL in our Culturally Speaking author talk series is Yvonne Castañeda, author of the memoir Pork Belly Tacos with a Side of Anxiety. Castañeda invites us as readers into the darkest moments of her decades-long fight against depression, bulimia, and addiction. As with any good memoir that explores a little-discussed topic, Pork Belly Tacos with a Side of Anxiety paints a vivid picture of Castañeda not just as a survivor of a battle against her own mind but as a daughter of Mexican and Cuban immigrants, a piano prodigy, and a woman finding her faith.
You can check the book out now. We invite you to join us for a conversation with Yvonne Castañeda on October 1st at 6pm at our Main Library.
