The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Contreras Rojas

Contreras’s memoir is one woman’s reckoning with her family’s turbulent past and how it intersects with her country’s colonial legacy.

Ingrid is almost a clone of her mother. As it turns out the two share more than just their looks. Ingrid and her mother have both suffered from head injuries that have resulted in temporary amnesia that opens up mystical doorways.

The amnesia forces Ingrid, who grew up in Bogota, Columbia to re-examine what she knew about her life.

Her grandfather, Nono, is a curandero–a traditional healer who uses herbs and mysticism. Though he is not literate in the traditional sense, he is able to heal the sick and develops a following. Even after his death, his followers slip requests for miracles into his coffin.

The Contreras family migrates to the U.S. for safety after both sisters experience a a botched kidnapping. They suffer from trauma yet they deal with it in different ways. Ingrid is drawn to the supernatural, like her mother and grandfather while Ximena is a skeptic.

When Ingrid’s mami and the tias, and even Ingrid herself, have the same dream about Nono, they realize he wants rest. They return to Columbia to disinter his body and distribute his ashes in a river.

This memoir about family secrets and South American legends is an enjoyable read, especially if read with an open mind.

Memoir writing

What should you reveal in a memoir?

Shanita Hubbard, author of the impactful memoir, Ride or Die: A Feminist Manifesto For The Well-Being of Black Women, follows this rule.

“I only show my scars, not my wounds. So I only show the pieces of myself that are healed.” Hubbard said in a 2023 NPR Life Kit interview by Felice Leon.

Writing a memoir can become a healing process for individuals and others going through trauma but there is no reason to overshare and reveal unprocessed pain.

Hubbard states that she does not “owe” her readers that.

Memoir authors only need share what they are comfortable sharing. Usually, this only occurs with the benefit of time and distance.

Read the NPR Life Kit article:

https://www.npr.org/2023/07/11/1186984114/how-to-tell-your-own-story

Inheritance by Dani Shapiro

Inheritance: a Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love by Dani Shapiro

Inheritance by Dani Shapiro

This memoir, which is in four parts, is Dani Shapiro’s most intimate memoir to date. Shapiro who has always considered herself her father’s daughter is devastated to learn that he is not her biological father.

Despite clues along the way, nothing clicks until she takes a DNA test. She expected to find that she is 100% Jewish but the test reveals something else altogether. She is biologically related to her mother but not to her father. 

Gradually, more details come to light. Before Shapiro was born, her parents had visited an infertility clinic known to mix sperm. Though she hopes her parents had not concealed anything from her, it becomes obvious they knew she was donor-conceived. 

Shapiro claims she had always known something was amiss. For Shapiro, who was devoted to her father, but always felt at odds with her family, the DNA results answer many troubling questions. The DNA results opens old wounds, leaving Shaprio completely unmoored. 

She describes how lost she feels in poetic language:

“I am the black box, discovered years–many years–after the crash. The pilots, the crew, the passengers have long been committed to the sea. Nothing is left of them. Fathoms deep, I have spent my life transmitting the faintest signal…I am also the diver who has discovered the black box…I had been looking for it all my life without knowing it existed.”

Eventually, she has a meeting with her biological father whom she strongly resembles. They are brought together through the magic of social media.
Shapiro digs deeper, investigating the way cryobanks currently operate. She interviews dozens of donor-conceived individual who feel just as exiled and lost as she does.

As she forges deeper relationships with her biological family, however, Shapiro begins to see everything in a new light: as a blessing.  

Shapiro, who was raised as an orthodox Jew, is peppered with Jewish phrases and expressions. Her identity is still firmly Jewish, even if she is half Christian.

She puts all of her previous writings in perspective, realizing nearly all of her works were about family secrets.

Though she gives her social father “kol hakavod” (all the honor), she comes to cherish her biological one as well.

Shapiro’s story is so important in this age when DNA kits are becoming more and more recreational. As more and more individuals have genetic testing done, more connections will be made. The likelihood of family secrets becoming accidently unearthed–as Shapiro’s had–will increase over time.