The Decade of Letting Things Go: A Postmenopause Memoir

by Cris Mazza

272 pages, Paperback

Published October 15, 2024

About the author

Cris Mazza is the author of a dozen books of fiction, mostly recently Waterbaby (Soft Skull Press 2007). Her other titles include the critically acclaimed Is It Sexual Harassment Yet?, and the PEN Nelson Algren Award winning How to Leave a Country. She also has a collection of personal essays, Indigenous: Growing Up Californian. Mazza has been the recipient of an NEA Fellowship and three Illinois Arts Council literary awards. A native of Southern California, Mazza grew up in San Diego County. Currently she lives 50 miles west of Chicago. She is a professor in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago "

Reviews

[Summer Brenner · Rating 5 out of 5]

One thing I tend to do in reading, in part to inform my own writing, is perceive what problem a writer has conceived for herself—and what solutions she has forged. When the problem and solution resonate, the result is a very good book. Such is the case with Cris Mazza’s The Decade of Letting Things Go, a series of theme-driven essays that are often thorny, consistently interesting, and thorough in their exploration of a thought, a word, an image. Anything can be a thread for Mazza, leading the reader around and about like Ariadne’s ball of string that guided Theseus into the Labyrinth and guided him out. As her honesty about herself is absolute, so is her perception of others trustworthy. These essays include frank and probing revelations about sexuality, lost-and-found love, neighbors, dogs, wilderness, the death of parents, sibling rivalries, et al. She lays out her life as a map to explore. Obviously, a life is unique, its circumstances particular, its proclivities specific. However, in this book you’ll experience the wide range of Mazza’s explorations and the opportunity to discover more of your own. --- Summer Brenner, author of DUST, A Memoir