Unpacking Secrets: How Classic Storytelling Reveals Hidden Truths in Suburban Memoirs
That student idea brought me a revelation — all this time, I was teaching this book as an academic exercise, but it turned out I was the one who desperately needed what it had to offer. My own book had been living within me, dormant but clawing its way out. The boundary between “teacher” and “writer” collapsed when I realized that the tools I had been giving teenagers were actually the ones I needed to write about my own “war” in suburbia.
I’ve always known that I have to tell my story. Part of the trauma that comes from the specific abuse I experienced as a child, and really, through my 30s, leaves me feeling unheard, unseen and unimportant. But how do you write about that?
