I've Had to Think Up a Way to Survive de Lynn Melnick

I've Had to Think Up a Way to Survive

Lynn Melnick

en Limba Engleză Paperback – 14 sep 2023

¿An ode to storytelling itself¿. A gorgeous and heart-rending story of survival.¿¿Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood
A moving and essential exploration of what it takes to find your voice as a woman, a survivor, an artist, and an icon.
The first time Lynn Melnick listened to a Dolly Parton song in full, she was 14 years old, in the triage room of a Los Angeles hospital, waiting to be admitted to a drug rehab program. Already in her young life as a Jewish teen in the 1980s, she had been the victim of rape, abuse, and trauma, and her path to healing would be long. But in Parton¿s words and music, she recognized a fellow survivor.
In this powerful, incisive work of social- and self-exploration, Melnick blends personal essay with cultural criticism to explore Parton¿s dual identities as feminist icon and objectified sex symbol, identities that reflect the author¿s own fraught history with rape culture and the arduous work of reclaiming her voice. Each chapter engages with the artistry and impact of one of Parton¿s songs, as Melnick reckons with violence, misogyny, creativity, parenting, friendship, sex, love, and the consolations and cruelties of religion. Bold and inventive, I¿ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive gives us an accessible and memorable framework for understanding our times and a revelatory account of survival, persistence, and self-discovery.

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Notă biografică

Lynn Melnick is the author of three books of poetry and a contributor to Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture. Her poems have appeared in the New Republic, the New Yorker, and the Paris Review; her essays have appeared in Jewish Currents, LA Review of Books, and Poetry Daily. Born in Indianapolis, she grew up in Los Angeles and currently lives in Brooklyn.

Cuprins

Introduction: Seven Bridges Road
Chapter One: Why’d You Come in Here Lookin’ Like That
Chapter Two: Steady as the Rain
Chapter Three: The Seeker
Chapter Four: Here You Come Again
Chapter Five: Jolene
Chapter Six: The Grass Is Blue
Chapter Seven: Coat of Many Colors
Chapter Eight: Islands in the Stream
Chapter Nine: Do I Ever Cross Your Mind
Chapter Ten: Will He Be Waiting for Me
Chapter Eleven: Down from Dover
Chapter Twelve: Silver Dagger
Chapter Thirteen: Don’t Think Twice
Chapter Fourteen: I Don’t Believe You’ve Met My Baby
Chapter Fifteen: Little Sparrow
Chapter Sixteen: 9 to 5
Chapter Seventeen: Two Doors Down
Chapter Eighteen: Put a Little Love in Your Heart
Chapter Nineteen: Blue Smoke
Chapter Twenty: Bargain Store
Chapter Twenty-One: The Story
Acknowledgments: I Will Always Love You
References and Resources

Recenzii

[Melnick] writes with remarkable vulnerability and candor yet ensures that the often-painful memories she relates don’t cloud her critical gaze. She moves gracefully between confessional and analytical registers, her prose both sharp and full of heart.

A riveting blend of cultural criticism and memoir...In her quest to 'be more Dollylike, rising again and again from the embers of expectation,' Melnick offers a gorgeous story of survival and self-discovery. Die-hard Dolly fans won’t want to miss this.

I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive is more than an artful memoir; it is thought-provoking cultural analysis of a beloved icon whose relevance endures.

Discarding the societal demand to keep quiet about her own trauma, Melnick structures the book as an inquiry into the music of Dolly Parton that 'unmired' her when she first found herself in a drug rehab program as a teenager in the 1980s. It’s Dolly Parton’s music that offers transcendence in Melnick’s life from then on, and she scrutinizes Dolly’s songs and their personal and cultural impact in a mixture of biography, critical investigation, music journalism, social history, and invocation. 'It’s a refusal of secrets,' Melnick writes in the final chapter about a song that Dolly is singing, but this is also a perfect summation of her book.

This book revels unabashedly in the turmoil of both women’s lives. Like Dolly’s voice, Melnick’s tone is casual and joyous, yet still defiant, cogently seeking commonality between its two subjects and showing how she and Parton have each performed their womanliness—and all its concomitant mess...Carefully researched and at times uncomfortably honest, I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive also avoids hagiography and handles the problematic aspects of Dolly better than most...I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive is, at core, about the Appalachian skill of 'always being aware of the terrible' while steadfastly and laughingly avoiding its grip.

Melnick lovingly chronicles how Parton’s expansive songwriting catalog and her six decades as a household icon have been inextricable from Melnick’s own journey from a Jewish teenage addict to an accomplished artist.

There is rich texture in the details Melnick shares of her life, which she weaves into Parton’s history and the backstory of each song, with Parton’s hardships and struggles as much an inspiration to Melnick as the star’s thrilling success...This is absolutely the book for any Dolly Parton fan, full of anecdotes and intricate history of The Leading Lady of Country. It was empowering and inspiring to read the stories of these women (Parton and Melnick) and to know they have made something of the ashes left when others lit a match.

Each chapter in [I've Had to Think Up a Way to Survive] glances at the author's life through a different song penned by Parton. [Melnick] deals with past trauma by analogizing her own life to the country legend's. Although Melnick and Parton didn't seem to have much more in common on the surface, discovering their similarities is at the center of this moving journey.

Melnick’s book is about the author’s vicarious, identity-forming relationship with a cultural figure. Each of its 21 chapters is organized around a particular song, so we learn everything she was able to find out about how Dolly...wrote or recorded that song, what the press said about it, and what the artist herself said about it in interviews and talk show appearances. Moreover, each chapter delves into what the title song means in Melnick’s life and what it says about related cultural issues. In that way, it’s a blend of memoir and cultural criticism, as well as a wealth of information.

A fierce resistance to that which could destroy us or destroy our spirits (patriarchy, capitalism, drugs) drives this potent work of music criticism forward, with deft prose that breathtakingly weaves biography and personal narrative.

[This] brilliant critical memoir...[is] a lyrical, moving, and exacting meditation on Dolly Parton's music and her influence on Melnick’s life.

I've Had to Think Up a Way to Survive

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I've Had to Think Up a Way to Survive

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