Lynn Melnick "I've Had to Think Up a Way to Survive" Book (2022)
Details: "I've Had To Think Up A Way To Survive: On Trauma, Persistence, and Dolly Parton," by Lynn Melnick (University of Texas Press, American Music Series, 264 pages, 5.50 x 8.50 x 1.10 in). "A moving memoir exploring how a poet found support and revival through Dolly Parton's music and story." New stock, hardcover edition.
Description: "When everything fell apart for Lynn Melnick, she went to Dollywood. It was perhaps an unusual refuge. The theme park, partly owned by and wholly named for Dolly Parton, celebrates a country music legend who grew up in church and in poverty in rural Tennessee. Yet Dollywood is exactly where Melnick—a poet, urbanite, and daughter of a middle-class Jewish family—needed to be. Because Melnick, like the musician she adores, is a survivor.
In this bracing memoir, Melnick explores Parton's dual identities as a feminist icon and objectified sex symbol—identities that reflect the author's own fraught history with rape culture and the grueling effort to reclaim her voice in the wake of loss and trauma. Each chapter engages with the artistry and cultural impact of one of Parton's songs, as Melnick reckons with violence, creativity, parenting, abortion, sex work, love, and the consolations and cruelties of religion. Guided by Parton's music, Melnick walks the slow path to recovery in the company of those who came before her and stand with her, as trauma is an experience both unique and universal. Candid and discerning, I've Had to Think Up a Way to Survive is at once a memoir and a love song—a story about one life and about an artist who has brought life to millions."
Grade: M (new stock)
Press: "Melnick delivers a riveting blend of cultural criticism and memoir in this paean to Dolly Parton...a gorgeous story of survival and self-discovery." —Publishers Weekly *starred review*
"The author 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." —The Atlantic
"I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive is more than an artful memoir; it is a thought-provoking cultural analysis of a beloved icon whose relevance endures." — Book Page
Nylon Magazine's "Must-Read Book Release" for October 2022!
One of Book Riot's "Best New Nonfiction Releases" for October 2022!
“It is a mighty task to write generously, robustly, and imaginatively about Dolly Parton, who already exists so broadly at the intersection of many American imaginations, all of them flourishing and fluorescent. But what Lynn Melnick has managed is beyond mere tribute, and beyond biography—it is a rich, close reading of multiple lives, that sometimes find themselves touching. The narratives in this book are masterfully presented and do justice not only to the life of its central subject but also the life of its writer.”—Hanif Abdurraqib
"Lynn Melnick's new book is an ode to storytelling itself, how it keeps us alive and makes our lives more worth living, whether in music, poems, or even a biographical memoir that winds two stories together to make something stronger and more beautiful than either alone. A gorgeous and heartrending story of survival. "—Melissa Febos
Author: "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."