Public Libraries of Suffolk County, New York

The Chronology of Water, A Memoir

eng

non fiction

The Chronology of Water

electronic resource eBook

dictionaries

A Memoir

This is not your mother's memoir. In The Chronology of Water, Lidia Yuknavitch, a lifelong swimmer and Olympic hopeful escapes her raging father and alcoholic and suicidal mother when she accepts a swimming scholarship which drug and alcohol addiction eventually cause her to lose. What follows is promiscuous sex with both men and women, some of them famous, and some of it S&M, and Lidia discovers the power of her sexuality to help her forget her pain. The forgetting doesn't last, though, and it is her hard-earned career as a writer and a teacher, and the love of her husband and son, that ultimately create the life she needs to survive

Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- I. Holding Breath -- The Chronology of Water -- Metaphor -- On Sound and Speech -- The Best Friend -- Suitcase -- Deliverance -- Love Grenade I -- The Other Lubbock -- Zombie -- What It's Not -- Crooked Lovesong -- Family Drama -- This is Not About my Sister -- Ash -- II. Under Blue -- Baptismal -- Swimming with Amateurs -- Father -- How To Ride a Bike -- The Less Than Merry Pranksters -- III. The Wet -- A Happy Childhood -- Illness as Metaphor -- A Burning -- The Hairy Girls -- Nemesis -- Love Grenade II -- A Body in a Kayak -- Writing -- About Hair and Skin -- Harder -- My Mother Demonology -- IV. Resuscitations -- A Drowning Scene -- Distilled -- My Lover, Writing -- Short Story -- Gray Matter -- Secular Miracle -- Dreaming in Women -- V. The Other Side of Drowning -- Run On -- Collision as Metaphor -- How to Love Your MotherAfter She's Dead -- Your Tax Dollars At Work -- Conversion -- Ecstatic State -- The Scarlett Letter -- Sun -- In the Company of Men -- A Sanctuary -- Angina -- How to Hold Your Breath -- Water -- The Other Side of Drowning -- À La Recherché du Temps Perdu -- A Small Ocean -- Wisdom is a Motherfucker -- Interview with Lidia Yuknavitch