Craigslist Confessional

Download or read book Craigslist Confessional written by Helena Dea Bala and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Touching.” —The New York Times For fans of Humans of New York and PostSecret, a collection of raw, urgent, and heartfelt stories, shared anonymously. Helena Dea Bala was an exhausted and isolated DC lobbyist, suffocating under the weight of her student loan debt, when she decided to split her lunch with a man who often panhandled near her office. They chatted effortlessly as they ate; there were no half-truths or white lies, and no fear of judgment. Helena felt connected and unburdened in a way she hadn’t in years. Inspired, she posted an ad on Craigslist promising to listen, anonymously and for free, to whatever the speaker felt he or she couldn’t tell anyone else. Emails from people desperate to connect flooded her inbox, and she listened. Within months, Helena quit her job, deferred her loans, and dove into listening full time. The forty first-person confessions in this book are vivid, intimate, and real; they range from devastating traumas, to lost loves, to reflections on hard choices. Some accounts are quotidian, like that of one increasingly estranged husband: “I want to feel that we’re not just roommates—that we’re not just waiting for the kids to grow up so that we can move on.” Others are deeply disconcerting, like that of a sex addict employed by a religious organization and several are heartening, like that of a mother who dares to hope that her daughter, born with life-threatening heart defects, will one day walk down the aisle: “Sometimes you need to have the audacity to believe that it will all be okay, that it is okay to have the same kinds of dreams as everyone else.” In its complex portrayal of the common human experience, Craigslist Confessional challenges us to explore the depths of our vulnerability and expand the borders of our empathy.

Download or read book I'll Tell You in Person written by Chloe Caldwell and published by Coffee House Press. This book was released on 2016-09-12 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Praise for Chloe Caldwell: "I read it a couple of months ago in one can't-put-it-down-even-though-it's-the-middle-of-the-night sitting. It's as intense and interesting and clear-hearted as they come."—Cheryl Strayed "I'll read anything Chloe Caldwell writes. She's a rare bird: fearless, dark, prolific, unpretentious, and truly honest."—Elisa Albert "Nothing's sexier than first love and first intimacies, and Caldwell's brave autobiographical tale twists the trope into a powerful story about unexpectedly falling in love with a woman and the discoveries, sexual and otherwise, that ensue."—Time Out New York "The essays in this collection are as exuberant as they are sad. Her storytelling is as vulnerable as it is bombastic. These essays roll in gangsta, but wear freshly picked daisies in their hair."—Rookie Magazine Flailing in jobs, failing at love, getting addicted and un-addicted to people, food, and drugs—I'll Tell You in Person is a disarmingly frank account of attempts at adulthood and all the less than perfect ways we get there. Caldwell has an unsparing knack for looking within and reporting back what's really there, rather than what she'd like you to see. Chloe Caldwell is the author of the novella Women, and the essay collection Legs Get Led Astray. Her work has appeared in the Sun, Salon, VICE, Hobart, Nylon, the Rumpus, Men's Health, and LENNY, among others. She teaches personal essay and memoir writing in New York City and lives in Hudson.

Download or read book Say Everything written by Scott Rosenberg and published by Three Rivers Press (CA). This book was released on 2009 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the complex network of blogging and provides insights into the new medium with discussions on privacy, self-expression, authority, and community, and includes close-ups of blogging innovators, including Evan Williams of Blogger.

Download or read book The Ramen King and I written by Andy Raskin and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-05-07 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Mankind is Noodlekind" For three days in January 2007,the most e-mailed article in The New York Times was "appreciations: Mr. noodle," an editorial noting the passing, at age ninety-six, of Momofuku Ando, the inventor of instant ramen. Ando's existence came as a shock to many, but not to Andy Raskin, who had spent three years trying to meet the noodle pioneer. The Ramen King and I is Raskin's funny and, at times, painfully honest memoir about confronting the truth of his dating life-with Ando as his spiritual guide. Can instant ramen lead one to a committed relationship? And is sushi the secret to self-acceptance? A true tale of hunger in its many forms, The Ramen King and I is about becoming slaves to our desires and learning to break free.

Download or read book Running the Books written by Avi Steinberg and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2011-10-04 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Avi Steinberg is stumped. After defecting from yeshiva to attend Harvard, he has nothing but a senior thesis on Bugs Bunny to show for himself. While his friends and classmates advance in the world, Steinberg remains stuck at a crossroads, his “romantic” existence as a freelance obituary writer no longer cutting it. Seeking direction (and dental insurance) Steinberg takes a job running the library counter at a Boston prison. He is quickly drawn into the community of outcasts that forms among his bookshelves—an assortment of quirky regulars, including con men, pimps, minor prophets, even ghosts—all searching for the perfect book and a connection to the outside world. Steinberg recounts their daily dramas with heartbreak and humor in this one-of-a-kind memoir—a piercing exploration of prison culture and an entertaining tale of one young man’s earnest attempt to find his place in the world.

Download or read book The Laws of the Skies written by Grégoire Courtois and published by Coach House Books. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winnie-the-Pooh meets The Blair Witch Project in this very grown-up tale of a camping trip gone horribly awry. Twelve six-year-olds and their three adult chaperones head into the woods on a camping trip. None of them make it out alive. The Laws of the Skies tells the harrowing story of those days in the woods, of illness and accidents, and a murderous child. Part fairy tale, part horror film, this macabre fable takes us through the minds of all the members of this doomed party, murderers and murdered alike. “Excellent...crystalline." —New York Times, Summer Reads

Download or read book The End of San Francisco written by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore and published by City Lights Books. This book was released on 2013-03-08 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The End of San Francisco breaks apart the conventions of memoir to reveal the passions and perils of a life that refuses to conform to the rules of straight or gay normalcy. A budding queer activist escapes to San Francisco, in search of a world more politically charged, sexually saturated, and ethically consistent—this is the person who evolves into Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, infamous radical queer troublemaker, organizer and agitator, community builder and anti-assimilationist commentator. Here is the tender, provocative and exuberant story of the formation of one of the contemporary queer movement's most savvy and outrageous writers and spokespersons. Using an unrestrained associative style to move kaleidoscopically between past, present and future, Sycamore conjures the untidy push and pull of memory, exposing the tensions between idealism and critical engagement, trauma and self-actualization, inspiration and loss. Part memoir, part social history and part elegy, The End of San Francisco explores and explodes the dream of a radical queer community and the mythical city that was supposed to nurture it. "Mattilda is a dazzling writer of uncommon truths, a challenging writer who refuses to conform to conventionality. Her agitation is an inspiration."—Justin Torres, author of We the Animals “Author Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the artistic love child of John Genet and David Wojnarowicz, deconstructing language swathed in unbridled sensuality, while flinging readers into a disrupted, chaotic life of queer anarchy.”—Gay and Lesbian Review "Bring on The End of San Francisco! And Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, whose new book has reinvented memoir without the predictable gloss of passive resolution. This book is undeniably brave and new, and the internal energy churning at its core is like nothing you've seen, heard or read before. I swear."—T. Cooper, author of Real Man Adventures "We hear so much about coming-of-age narratives that we seldom think about going-of-age—the shutting down and closure, the making sense of where we've been. Written with grace, reserve and the honest tremblings that come when things matter, Mattilda shows us that The End of San Francisco is really the beginning of joy."—Daphne Gottlieb, author of 15 Ways to Stay Alive "It would be easy to describe The End of San Francisco as a Joycean 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Queer' (although the book's intense stream of consciousness is reminiscent of the later, more experimental, Joyce) . . . but this is misleading. This journey of a life that begins in the professional upper-middle class (both parents are therapists) and the Ivy League and moves to hustling, drugs, activism—Sycamore was active in ACT UP and Queer Nation—and queer bohemian grunge, is profoundly American. At heart, Sycamore is writing about the need to escape control through flight or obliteration."—Michael Bronski, San Francisco Chronicle