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kjboldon 's review for:
I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home
by Jami Attenberg
I'd read some of the pieces of this book previously and it was a delight to find them all together in this wonderful book that combines travel narratives, writing advice and memoir. The theme.of.bones and the many ossuaries she visits are a powerful through line as she ages and subtly changes over time. The book squarely falls into the kunstlerroman tradition, the coming of age story of an artist. Attenberg takes us from her beginnings as a writer at an east coast college (Johns Hopkins, I think) to her rootless youth crashing on couches as she wrote book after book, worked day job after day job, got fired from one publisher only to end up with a bestseller with her very next book (The Middlesteins, I think.) Here perseverance is exhausting and impressive to read about.
More recently, and not mentioned much except in the acks, Attenberg founded an online community with #1000WordsOfSummer where she herself writes and sends out newsletters and tweets encouraging thousands of followers (including me) to do the same. In this arena, she has an enormous reach and influence as a writer and teacher and example to just keep writing.
This book, with her story and her art intertwined, is a good example of the model she sets: self aware, rueful, curious, dogged, and encouraging. It is like hanging out with a good art friend.
More recently, and not mentioned much except in the acks, Attenberg founded an online community with #1000WordsOfSummer where she herself writes and sends out newsletters and tweets encouraging thousands of followers (including me) to do the same. In this arena, she has an enormous reach and influence as a writer and teacher and example to just keep writing.
This book, with her story and her art intertwined, is a good example of the model she sets: self aware, rueful, curious, dogged, and encouraging. It is like hanging out with a good art friend.