This week choose a book that reflects a journey for its author or for the reader or both. This can be a physical journey, an emotional, psychological or spiritual journey or a combination of these. Any nonfiction title that leaves it’s author/protagonist and/or reader in a different place at the end from the start point is good for this challenge.
This prompt automatically started me thinking of memoirs. All memoirs are a journey. I decided to limit myself to the books I read this year or I’d be writing forever. Here are a few with journeys that have stuck with me.
This book is about the later part of a journey. What happens after you get famous for a tragedy? How do you become just a college student?
It covers a lot of mental health work when trauma that you’ve repressed suddenly slams down on you. It is especially problematic when you come from a culture that doesn’t believe in discussing these issues.
This is the story of working her way through these issues while trying to graduate from Oxford while running a global activist organization. It is no wonder she found herself having breakdowns and having to find her way through to a better way of healing.
Ke Huy Quan’s family started trying to escape from Vietnam when he was seven. That’s when he went to jail for the first time.
After much hardship they ended up in California where he almost accidentally became a child movie star. But in the 1980s there weren’t many roles for former Asian child stars. He worked behind the scenes in Asia for decades before deciding to try acting again. His first audition lead to his Oscar-winning role in Everything Everywhere All At Once.
Paula Stone Williams always knew that she should have been born a girl. But in her traditional Evangelical world, there was nothing to do about that. She married, had children, and became an influential Christian leader until deciding to transition late in life.
As the previous protections of white male privilege were stripped away, jobs were lost. Respect eroded. Friendships ended.
Now she talks about the difference between living life as a white male-presenting Christian in a world where that was everything that was important and her life in those circles now.
