“Unveiling the Hidden Truths: How Nicole Graev Lipson’s Memoir Transforms Fictional Characters into Real-Life Revelations”
Lipson had first read Chopin’s book in her freshman year of college — the same year her mother’s infidelity came to light. A third thread about the adult Lipson’s attraction to another student in a writing workshop provides a revelatory moment about her mother’s affair that comes to her later during her daughter’s birthday party: I’m startled by how easy it would abe to move my hand one inch farther, setting everything that matters to me on fire.
Perhaps the essay I most admire is “As They Like It.” It stands out, not just for Lipson’s engaging prose but for the insight and sensitivity she brings to a topic now part of societal debate. The author leverages a literary classic — Shakespeare’s As You Like It–to examine gender identification and gender roles. Rosalind, the play’s leading character, spends most of the play masquerading as a boy. The essay is organized into Acts, like a play. It begins with Lipson’s recollection of enthusiastically teaching As You Like It in a high school English class, writing, “But my true goal — the goal that keeps me awake at night tinkering with lesson plans, the goal that makes me feel the work I’ve chosen matters — is to use the play to convince these future custodians of the world they must all be feminists.”
