Reading the Waves

A Memoir

By: Lidia Yuknavitch

Narrated by: Lidia Yuknavitch

The frank and revealing memoir of a writer who draws from her own creativity to heal.

"I believe our bodies are carriers of experience," Lidia Yuknavitch writes in her provocative memoir Reading the Waves. "I mean to ask if there is a way to read my own past differently, using what I have learned from literature: how stories repeat and reverberate and release us from the tyranny of our mistakes, our traumas, and our confusions."

Drawing on her background -- her father's abuse, her complicated dynamic with her disabled mother, the death of her child, her sexual relationships with men and women -- and her creative life as an author and teacher, Yuknavitch has come to understand that by using the power of literature and storytelling to reframe her memories, she can loosen the bonds that have enslaved her emotional growth. Armed with this insight, she allows herself to look with the eye of an artist at the wounds she suffered and come to understand the transformational power this has to restore her soul.

By turns candid and lyrical, stoic and forgiving, blunt and evocative, Reading the Waves reframes memory to show how crucial this process can be to gaining a deeper understanding of ourselves.

Lyrical prose that stirs and startles.

Thank you for telling us your stories. Some of us needed to hear them to stay here.

Reading Reading

Confessional, inspirational, devotional, direct.
Could be called The Book of Devin though it shouldn't.
All in all, it is all Lidia and all transcendent.

Excruciating Honesty

Lidia’s stories grab ahold of my heart and squeeze, paradoxically expanding the open space of understanding. Her way of calling back to trauma is excruciatingly honest and also balm for my soul. She takes us on an unforgettable journey after which her stories lodge themselves as a new kind of context for my own, as yet untold stories. Remarkable writing.