memoir - Honeysuckle Magazine

RETRO: Patricia Bosworth - Strictly on the Record

Patricia Bosworth as Laura in a 1956 production of The Glass Menagerie starring Helen Hayes. All photos (C) The Patricia Bosworth Archive. By M.J. Moore The Men in My Life: A Memoir of Love and Art in 1950s Manhattan. What a hell of a title! And it’s now

book review

Strung Out: One Last Hit and Other Lies that Almost Killed Me (Review)

Written by: Sarah Dowson At 28, after struggling with heroin addiction since she was a teenager, Erin Khar found the strength to give it up due to the love of her first child. Now, at age 46, she has been drug-free for 17 years. Strung Out (Harper Collin’

One Man's Learned Journey

For Aaron Rosenblatt Morris Dickstein’s memoir Why Not Say What Happened charts the course of a life that dovetailed with the monumental cultural shifts in the United States between the 1950s and 1960s. Although many other chronicles have reduced these decades to the cliched dichotomy of “conformist” vs. “radical”

A Tale of Two Stoners

The award-winning, NYC-based indie press Heliotrope Books has published two “marijuana memoirs” – Forty Years Stoned and Just Say Yes. These memoirs are both in sync with cultural and legal trends making cannabis not just decriminalized but also ubiquitous. From investment advisors to avid smokers, weed is thriving as we ring

One Woman’s Burning Memories

One cultural highlight of the past decade is the continuing renaissance regarding the legacy of Harlem-born author James Baldwin (1924-1987). For example, Raoul Peck’s 2016 documentary I Am Not Your Negro, and Barry Jenkins’ 2018 drama If Beale Street Could Talk, which is based on a Baldwin novel, have

MELODIES, HARMONIES & LIFE'S RHYTHMS

By M. J. Moore There’s a new play that’s hot on Broadway and it’s called The Great Society. The title speaks volumes. Immediately after President Kennedy’s murder in Dallas in 1963, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson assumed the presidency and completed

The Doctor Broad: A Mafia Love Story

No one other than Dr. Barbara H. Roberts, MD, could have told this story. It reads with the verve of a page-turner novel by Irwin Shaw, and has the texture and moral dilemmas of Flannery O’Connor’s best stories. At the same time, there is a delicious naughtiness to

A Dirty Word

A Dirty Word: An Interview with Author Steph Auteri

In her book A Dirty Word: How a Sex Writer Reclaimed Her Sexuality, Steph Auteri takes us through her experience of being sexually assaulted in a way that many women know all too well. Not the blatant, violent, felonious type we read and hear about at the top of the

1950

RETRO: The Time of Her Life

Let’s roll with the number 94. As in 94 years ago. That means the year 1924.In fact, let’s put a cinematic spin on things. In 1924, a mere 94 years ago, Charlie Chaplin was in pre-production on his 1925 silent classic: The Gold Rush.And two years

1st Person

Lighting Up (Excerpt)

Going cold-turkey isn’t for everybody. In this excerpt from her memoir Lighting Up: How I Stopped Smoking, Drinking, and Everything Else I Loved in Life Except Sex (now available as an e-book from Penguin Random House), Susan Shapiro shares in diary entries how she found smoking pot a

1st Person

Smoking With Sallie (Excerpt)

Girls just want to have fun – until they get caught. Dorin Schumacher knows from experience, as she relates in this excerpt from her forthcoming memoir Gatsby’s Child. By Dorin SchumacherIt was Sallie’s idea to smoke. We could not have picked a worse place – an old

books

Opus Dopus: The Travels Begin (Excerpt)

Travel writer Jon Horn ventures to Northern Africa in this new excerpt from his memoir Opus Dopus. (Previously we brought you his introduction.) Here the air is “scented with cannabis” because “it’s all open and above-board since they’ve quit cracking down on the

Addiction

Opus Dopus: Introduction (Excerpt)

What does getting high internationally look like? Travel writer Jon Horn can tell you, in this excerpt from his memoir Opus Dopus, that there are many names and many paths to the other side of the Green Rush. No matter where you get the goods, it’s an adventure.

Charles Manson

Charles Manson is Dead But There is Still More to Learn in a Riveting New Memoir

Charles Manson Family Murders Charles Manson is dead at age 83. The news release issued by the California Department of Corrections read “He died of natural causes in a hospital.” It was eerie to meet a member of his cult so soon after hearing of his death. Eerie

1970

RETRO: Thanksgiving 1970

Nobody else can host the whole tribe for such a dinner, so once again (and totally to my delight) it’s time to help Dad throughout another Thanksgiving gathering. Because it’s holiday time, there’s a truce all around with the Generation Gap. Mom’s got so

Bipolar

His Biggest Break: Memoirist Zack McDermott's Path to Gorilla and the Bird

When we first published Zack McDermott’s recount of his psychotic breakdown three years ago, we knew triumph would win out over trauma. Just a few weeks ago McDermott released his sensational book Gorilla and The Bird, and the latest development will be making headlines again in no time,

Antonia Crane

Spent: A Memoir by Antonia Crane (Excerpt)

Life’s Up and Down Time was a hurricane with Bianca: weeks and months of snorting and fucking; more former than latter. Then silence. She ignored me so I stripped more, moved on to a bigger and better strip club called Crazy Horse. We stopped talking. We grew chilly

books

Excerpt from "Looking for Kiss: A Chronicle of Downtown Heartbreak and Healing"

New Girl in Cybertown: June 2010by Kate WalterAfter the fiasco with Mariana, I decide to try online dating. As a new girl in Cybertown, I was attracting interest. I had been online for two weeks, exchanging e-mails and setting up meetings with women. Since I had no idea how to