The Library
Where the Memoir Project comes together
The Library is where the Memoir Project comes together. Think of this page as its portal.
It is the long-form home of the Memoir Project, organized for continuity, context, and sustained reading. While Substack hosts current writing and reflections, the memoir itself lives here, shaped with the long view in mind.
Substack is where individual memoir entries are published as they are written. That format helps to keep a publication’s content fresh and dynamic, but it does not easily support a linear or composed narrative. The Library exists to do that work: to bring individual pieces together into a coherent whole and to make decisions about structure, sequence, and emphasis as the memoir takes shape.
Each memoir vignette seeks to blend the personal – memories, oral history, family stories, genealogical records – with vivid snapshots of the vast American canvas on which our lives played out. If it comes together, it will benefit my children, grandchildren, and my family yet to be born. It could also be one miniscule contribution to the great collection of works that may some day be reference points for the rebuilding of our democracy.
A distinctive feature of this project is AI Field Notes, which run concurrently with the memoir entries on Substack. These notes document how I am using AI as a thinking, research, and writing resource—what I am keeping, discarding, struggling with, and learning along the way. They are written in parallel with the memoir itself and are linked to the entries they accompany, for readers interested in the human–nonhuman collaboration behind the scenes.
The Library is also where earlier writing has been “shelved.” Columns originally published between 2017 and 2021 that I consider still salient are archived here at the URL where they first appeared.
What you’ll find here, above all, is composition in progress: decisions about whether the narrative should be chronological or thematic, or some blend of the two; how individual stories speak to one another; and whether this experiment will produce a finished memoir. Readers are welcome to follow along, perhaps even participate, as this story unfolds.
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