Early in her warm, funny and occasionally furious new essay collection, "The Wrong Way to Save Your Life," Megan Stielstra maps essential questions about art and the self: questions about memory, assumption, love and fear.
In 17 essays, the native Michigander explores these themes and her commitment to the practices of teaching and art: connecting and making. If fear is the source of all theologies, longtime 2nd Story member Stielstra is an evangelist for story's power to transform lives.
Often set in bohemian Chicago, her essays are intimate narratives of personal history, reflections on what and whom she has loved and feared.
A few things she has feared: losing her father to heart disease, not making good art or teaching well or surviving homeownership; fear of losing perspective on the privilege she enjoys as a member of the white middle class.
Four extended essays, one for each decade of Stielstra's life, form a loose framework for a memoir about finding her voice as a writer, a teacher of writers and a mother.
"Here Is My Heart" traces her intense bond with her father, who taught her to hunt and jump from the high dive, a man awfully serious about the proper way to throw a baseball:
"Can you picture him, still in his suit and tie, slamming a fist in his glove and trying, through sheer force of will, to summon forth some sort of athletic ability from his awkward, acne-ridden, bookwormy dork of a daughter? In my memory, we were out there for hours. We were out there for years. Hell, we're out there today. 'Power doesn't work without aim,' he told me."
Later Dad moves to Alaska, where he tracks big game and sends her frozen deer hearts to dissect as part of a writing project.
