In this episode, meet Meredith Talusan, author of Fairest, Susan Burton, author of Empty, and Gail Caldwell, author of Bright Precious Thing. These writers have each written nuanced and highly personal memoirs about the experiences that continue to shape their lives. Listen in to hear what it was like for them to record their audiobooks. Plus, find out how mispronouncing a word during recording led one author to examine her relationship to the very word itself.
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Listen to clips from the audiobooks mentioned in this episode:
A singular, beautifully written and narrated coming-of-age memoir of a Filipino boy with albinism whose story travels from an immigrant childhood to Harvard to a gender transition and illuminates the illusions of race, disability, and gender.
“Talusan sails past the conventions of trans and immigrant memoirs.”—The New York Times Book Review
An editor at This American Life reveals the secret binge-eating that dominated her adolescence and shapes her still. For almost thirty years, Susan Burton hid her obsession with food and the secret life of compulsive eating and starving that dominated her adolescence. This is the relentlessly honest, fiercely intelligent story of living with both anorexia and binge-eating disorder and moving past shame.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Let’s Take the Long Way Home comes a moving memoir about how the women’s movement revolutionized and saved her life.
“A glistening reflection on how the women’s movement profoundly influenced the Pulitzer Prize winner’s life…Caldwell’s fourth memoir sings. It’s a song for the ages, but it sounds especially resonant in the #MeToo era.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
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