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Reviews tagging 'Terminal illness'
How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays by Alexander Chee
11 reviews
kennim's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Terminal illness, Sexual assault, and Homophobia
Moderate: Police brutality
The terminal illness tag specifically refers to the AIDS epidemic in the 80s.annotatewithsara's review against another edition
5.0
Moderate: Child abuse, Terminal illness, Violence, Suicidal thoughts, Pedophilia, War, and Bullying
criticalgayze's review against another edition
5.0
As a teacher of writing, I think this is the question all good writers, teachers, and students must ask. What's the point? Because, if a point does not exist, then the exercise is a waste of your time. (Trust me, students will be quick to let you know that, too.)
The thing that has stuck with me as I reflect on this collection is that Chee makes the point so beautifully here. The point is that the wrestling with it is all we have. And when we stop wrestling is when we lose the point.
So why wrestle? For your past self and for your future self, for those you've loved and for those you will love, for those that loved you and for those that will, for what you have done and what you will do, for what you had and what you will have. All of which Chee reflects on so beautifully here.
Quotes:
I think of this as one of the most important parts of my writer's education - that when left alone with nothing else to read, I began to tell myself the stories I wanted to read. (Page 13)
In the cutting and cutting and move this here, put that at the beginning, this belongs on page six, I learned that the first three pages of a draft are usually where you clear your throat, that most times, the place your draft begins is around page four. (Page 51)
Without work, talent is only talent - promise, not product. (Page 53)
I am, as I've said, a minor character, out of place in this narrative, but the major characters of all these stories from the first ten years of the epidemic have left. The men I wanted to follow into the future are dead. Finding them had made me want to live, and I did. I do. I feel I owe them my survival. (Page 79)
Deborah drew lines around what was invented, and what was not, with a delicate pencil, and patiently explained to me how what we invent, we control, and how what we don't, we don't - and that it shows. That what we borrow from life tends to be the most problematic, and the the problem stems from the way we've already invented so much of what we think we know about ourselves without admitting it. (Page 111 - 112)
You can have talent, but if you cannot endure, if you cannot learn to work, and learn to work against your own worst tendencies and prejudices, if you cannot take the criticism of strangers, or the uncertainty, then you will not become a writer. (Page 118)
I knew civilized people were supposed to read the ideas of people who disagreed with them and at least think about them. In this way I was not so civilized. (Page 121)
23. There is not punishing a novel in these circumstances either, because hunger has its own intelligence, and should be trusted. It is dangerous to be a new novel around another new novel in the years they are each being written, but they know this. (Page 157)
The lesson for me at least - and this I think of as the gift of the garden, learned every year I lived in that apartment: you can lose more than you thought possible and still grow back, stronger than you imagined. (Page 170)
The story of your life, described, will not describe how you came to think about your life or yourself, nor describe any of what you learned. This is what fiction can do - I even think it is what fiction is for. (Page 200)
But the one I finished, I finished because I asked myself a question./What will you let yourself know? What will you allow yourself to know? (Page 202)
A single grand action unifies a story more than a single person, the characters memorable for the parts they play inside it. (Page 214)
Why does the talented student of writing stop? It is usually the imagination, turned to creating a story in which you are a failure, and all you have done has failed, and you are made out to be the fraud you feared you are. (Page 257)
There is no other world. There is only the world we are in. This revisable country, so difficult to change, so easily changed. (Page 276)
Graphic: Terminal illness
Moderate: Police brutality, Death, Pedophilia, Car accident, Sexual assault, Death of parent, and Homophobia
Minor: Suicide attempt and Suicidal thoughts
margaretrose's review against another edition
4.5
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Death, Death of parent, and Terminal illness
Moderate: Homophobia, Suicidal thoughts, and Racism
greenteadragon's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Sexual violence, Terminal illness, Police brutality, and Adult/minor relationship
Moderate: Bullying, Cancer, Death of parent, Death, and Racism
Minor: Alcohol, Cultural appropriation, and Racial slurs
internationalreads's review against another edition
3.5
Graphic: Alcohol, Body shaming, Bullying, Car accident, Child abuse, Death, Death of parent, Grief, Homophobia, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Sexual assault, and Terminal illness
bildungswalton's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Child abuse, Sexual violence, and Racial slurs
Moderate: Chronic illness and Terminal illness
Minor: Car accident
questingnotcoasting's review
3.0
Graphic: Sexual assault, Child abuse, Death, Terminal illness, and Police brutality
Moderate: Death of parent, Grief, Racism, and Homophobia
nibs's review against another edition
5.0
What is your sense of self? What are you constructing as a self? How does your present shape your present self?
I am recommending this to so many people.
Graphic: Death of parent
Moderate: Pedophilia, Police brutality, Suicidal thoughts, Homophobia, Racism, Terminal illness, and Mental illness
manarnia's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Death of parent, Death, Grief, Homophobia, Pedophilia, Police brutality, Racism, Sexual assault, and Terminal illness
Moderate: Car accident, Suicidal thoughts, and Xenophobia