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River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize
Mine: Essays
This is a book about ownership. It begins with an essay about being given a man's furniture while he's on trial for murder and follows with essays that question corporeal, familial, and intellectual forms of ownership. What does it mean to believe that a hand, or a child, or a country, or a story belongs to you? What happens if you realize you're wrong? Mining her own life and those of others, Sarah Viren considers the contingencies of ownership alongside the realities of loss in this debut essay collection.
"With wonderfully precise and evocative prose, Sarah Viren takes us deeply into her search for her very self. . . . MINE is not only moving, it is instructive and nourishing in a way that only art can deliver. This book is a gem."--Andre Dubus III, author of House of Sand and Fog
"Sarah Viren is a writer of extraordinary wisdom and grace. . . . I am always taken aback, in the end, when her essays--cunningly, imperceptibly--gather within themselves such stunning emotional power."--Kerry Howley, author of Thrown
"Ultimately a book about belonging, this nimble, beautiful collection helps us better understand 'what we call ours but is never really ours to begin with.'"--Ryan Van Meter, author of If You Knew Then What I Know Now
"With wonderfully precise and evocative prose, Sarah Viren takes us deeply into her search for her very self. . . . MINE is not only moving, it is instructive and nourishing in a way that only art can deliver. This book is a gem."--Andre Dubus III, author of House of Sand and Fog
"Sarah Viren is a writer of extraordinary wisdom and grace. . . . I am always taken aback, in the end, when her essays--cunningly, imperceptibly--gather within themselves such stunning emotional power."--Kerry Howley, author of Thrown
"Ultimately a book about belonging, this nimble, beautiful collection helps us better understand 'what we call ours but is never really ours to begin with.'"--Ryan Van Meter, author of If You Knew Then What I Know Now
176 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2018
6 people are currently reading
255 people want to read
About the author
Sarah Viren
9 books72 followersSarah Viren is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and author of two books of narrative nonfiction. Her essay collection Mine won the River Teeth Nonfiction Book Prize and the Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award, was a silver winner for essays in Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards, was longlisted for the Pen Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award (as well as being named one of LitHub’s favorite books of 2018). Her second book, To Name the Bigger Lie: A Memoir in Two Stories, is out on June 13 from Scribner. Sarah is a finalist for a National Magazine Award in Feature Writing and the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Fulbright Student Grant to Colombia. In her work as a literary translator, Sarah has translated stories by the Latin American authors Pilar Quintana and Federico Falco along with Falco’s novella, Cordoba Skies. She teaches in the creative writing program at Arizona State University and lives in Tempe with her partner, two kids, and rescue dog Oki.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
July 12, 2022
"Ours. Mine. How long will it take until I give up and admit that nothing I want so badly to own belongs to me..."
• MINE: Essays by Sarah Viren, 2018 from University of New Mexico Press.
I picked this book up at a cozy indie bookshop in Salt Lake City a few years ago when I was in town for a work conference.
I didn't know much about it or the author at the time, but was intrigued by the overall theme and personal essays are a favorite genre of mine.
It sat on the shelf for a few years, and when I picked it up again a few weeks ago, I realized that while it had been sitting on my shelf, I had read this author two times: as the translator for an Argentinian novella AND for a knock-your-socks off personal essay I read in the New York Times Magazine in 2020 (not part of this book, but hoping there will be another collection that includes it someday?)
MINE explores possession and lack there of, and all permutations.
Something you possesses for a short time - furniture you borrow that once belonged to an infamous murderer (that opening essay is great!);
The acquisition and possession of knowledge - full immersion language study in a different country;
Possessing a right to your viewpoint and/or side of the story - the challenging "My Story" essay that was unsettling but intriguingly told;
The possession of a marriage license in one state, and then the "dissolution" of that marriage in another - before US federal law changed in 2013, her same-sex marriage is recognized in one state, and not the new place they move.
There's plenty more, Viren sharing her story of being a small town reporter, her coming out story, grad school life, supporting her wife during pregnancy, and being pregnant herself during the final essays...
Immersive and strong collection - if you have enjoyed the works of Maggie Nelson or Leslie Jamison, definitely give Viren a try.
• MINE: Essays by Sarah Viren, 2018 from University of New Mexico Press.
I picked this book up at a cozy indie bookshop in Salt Lake City a few years ago when I was in town for a work conference.
I didn't know much about it or the author at the time, but was intrigued by the overall theme and personal essays are a favorite genre of mine.
It sat on the shelf for a few years, and when I picked it up again a few weeks ago, I realized that while it had been sitting on my shelf, I had read this author two times: as the translator for an Argentinian novella AND for a knock-your-socks off personal essay I read in the New York Times Magazine in 2020 (not part of this book, but hoping there will be another collection that includes it someday?)
MINE explores possession and lack there of, and all permutations.
Something you possesses for a short time - furniture you borrow that once belonged to an infamous murderer (that opening essay is great!);
The acquisition and possession of knowledge - full immersion language study in a different country;
Possessing a right to your viewpoint and/or side of the story - the challenging "My Story" essay that was unsettling but intriguingly told;
The possession of a marriage license in one state, and then the "dissolution" of that marriage in another - before US federal law changed in 2013, her same-sex marriage is recognized in one state, and not the new place they move.
There's plenty more, Viren sharing her story of being a small town reporter, her coming out story, grad school life, supporting her wife during pregnancy, and being pregnant herself during the final essays...
Immersive and strong collection - if you have enjoyed the works of Maggie Nelson or Leslie Jamison, definitely give Viren a try.
September 9, 2019
Words so selectively thought and brought to life as it was my own experience, made me have existential thoughts that all this might be a simulation of a life we were meant to live... a life that isn’t really our own.
August 13, 2023
the last one won me over － combining the idea of a split between the american political nation and the splitting of the uterus during birth was cleverly done!
March 12, 2018
In this stunning collection of personal essays, former newspaper reporter Sarah Viren explores the concept of ownership--what we're born with, what we're given, what we choose, what gets taken away. Viren has the ability to look inside herself and at the outer world with equal intelligence and depth. Two of the essays were so compelling that when I finished, I instantly reread them to try to figure out how they worked so well. My favorites were "My Murderer's Futon," about sleeping on the mattress of an alleged murderer, "My Catch," about tarpon fishing, "My Narrative Transformation," about a summer spent learning Spanish (and so much more) in Guatemala, "My Possum," about (what else?) a dead possum, and "My Child," about a famous case of maternal filicide that occurred in Tampa a few years ago. MINE was winner of the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize; contest judge Andre Dubus III summed it up when he said, "This book is a gem."
March 21, 2018
I had the privilege of booking Sarah for my monthly reading series when she was the writer in residence at the Kerouac House in Orlando and she became one of my favorites after hearing her essay about going to Disney, not because it was Disney because I dislike theme parks, but because of the humanity and lyric writing in the essay.
This is a wonderful book of essays exploring various themes and events the author’s life and culture. If you are a fan of good non-fiction, it’s worth adding this book to your collection.
This is a wonderful book of essays exploring various themes and events the author’s life and culture. If you are a fan of good non-fiction, it’s worth adding this book to your collection.
July 27, 2020
I'd encountered a couple of these essays before in places they were originally published, which made my introduction to the book feel a little familiar. The latter essays upended some of what made me feel (comfortable? complacent?), and I was caught by surprise with tears. "My Child" and "My Return" are stellar, stellar essays that I can't wait to teach!
January 2, 2019
I HEARD SARAH VIREN READ "MY CHILD" AT A READING IN TAMPA AND LEGIT HAD TO EXCUSE MYSELF TO THE BATHROOM THREE TIMES BECAUSE I COULDN'T STOP CRYING AFTERWARD
March 22, 2019
Beautifully, carefully, upends the mine-field to revel in the ways that we belong to each other.
September 18, 2021
I was immediately caught up in these essays by Sarah Viren and wanted to read more. There’s a great mix of stories, about her past job as a reporter, about coming of age as a queer person, about relationships, moving, and motherhood. I loved how she shows her thoughts and allows us to see the unexpected directions her mind goes in when she is reflecting on these people, places, songs, murders, her hands, etc. There are lots of profound moments that made me see things in a new way or feel something deeply. I think anyone reading this will find points of connection they can relate to.
October 7, 2018
Book Review | Mine: Essays by Sarah Viren.
University of New Mexico Press, 2018.
Paperback, 167 pages.
Reviewed by Christine Newton Bush.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
In Daemon Voices (Knopf, 2018), a collection of essays about stories and storytelling, Philip Pullman addresses a writer’s responsibility to be emotionally honest. “We should never try to draw on emotional credit to which our story is not entitled. . . .Stories should earn their own tears and not pilfer them from elsewhere.” Sarah Viren’s Mine is a collection of fourteen essays that draws from the author’s own ledger of experience and yields its riches in intimate, often poignant, prose that evoke heartache and wonder. Viren fearlessly interrogates her life with honesty and verve in an exploration of the joys and risks of believing that we can or should claim something as our own and the corresponding sense of loss when we are mistaken.
Mine discloses selfhood by examining different aspects of its construction. In “My Murderer’s Futon” Viren begins with a meditation on how our own material possessions may themselves have haunting histories imbued with personal struggles that resonate with our own. In subsequent essays she unpacks the intersection of identity with relationships, vocation, sexuality, embodiment, names, culture, family, and nationality. Each of these essays is written with a directness that penetrates beyond the analytical. In “My Catch” the Floridian obsession with tarpon fishing becomes an allegory for falling in love. “My Ballad For You” is in turn a love song for the author’s infant daughter in the dark tradition of the lullaby that explores the story behind a beloved tune about Tom Dula. In “My Hands” Viren peels back the layers of body focused repetitive behavior to reveal insights into lesbian intimacy, palm reading, teleological proofs for the existence of God, the theory of evolution, and stillness.
In an assembly of interviews grouped as “The Genre of Resistance” in Poets & Writers (Sept.-Oct. 2018) Viren discusses how she has come to embrace essay more as a verb than a noun. For Viren, to essay is an individual act of defiance. This is perhaps one of the superpowers of her collection. “My Wife” is a quiet, devastating accounting of the inherent discrimination and moral outrage experienced by same sex couples. “It doesn’t make any sense that so many of us were routinely unmarried when we crossed state lines,” Viren writes. “But it is a fact that six months after we were married, Marta and I got unmarried just by getting in a Penske truck and starting to drive.”
The essays in Mine, winner of the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize, are smart, evocative, and difficult to shake. These inquiries of self-exploration transmute into possessions, and ultimately one isn’t quite sure whether they have become yours or you have become theirs. “Putting yourself in charge of uncovering the truth can also feel like an unraveling,” Viren writes of her time as a journalist. As an essayist, she has unearthed a gold mine of truth and staked a claim.
University of New Mexico Press, 2018.
Paperback, 167 pages.
Reviewed by Christine Newton Bush.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
In Daemon Voices (Knopf, 2018), a collection of essays about stories and storytelling, Philip Pullman addresses a writer’s responsibility to be emotionally honest. “We should never try to draw on emotional credit to which our story is not entitled. . . .Stories should earn their own tears and not pilfer them from elsewhere.” Sarah Viren’s Mine is a collection of fourteen essays that draws from the author’s own ledger of experience and yields its riches in intimate, often poignant, prose that evoke heartache and wonder. Viren fearlessly interrogates her life with honesty and verve in an exploration of the joys and risks of believing that we can or should claim something as our own and the corresponding sense of loss when we are mistaken.
Mine discloses selfhood by examining different aspects of its construction. In “My Murderer’s Futon” Viren begins with a meditation on how our own material possessions may themselves have haunting histories imbued with personal struggles that resonate with our own. In subsequent essays she unpacks the intersection of identity with relationships, vocation, sexuality, embodiment, names, culture, family, and nationality. Each of these essays is written with a directness that penetrates beyond the analytical. In “My Catch” the Floridian obsession with tarpon fishing becomes an allegory for falling in love. “My Ballad For You” is in turn a love song for the author’s infant daughter in the dark tradition of the lullaby that explores the story behind a beloved tune about Tom Dula. In “My Hands” Viren peels back the layers of body focused repetitive behavior to reveal insights into lesbian intimacy, palm reading, teleological proofs for the existence of God, the theory of evolution, and stillness.
In an assembly of interviews grouped as “The Genre of Resistance” in Poets & Writers (Sept.-Oct. 2018) Viren discusses how she has come to embrace essay more as a verb than a noun. For Viren, to essay is an individual act of defiance. This is perhaps one of the superpowers of her collection. “My Wife” is a quiet, devastating accounting of the inherent discrimination and moral outrage experienced by same sex couples. “It doesn’t make any sense that so many of us were routinely unmarried when we crossed state lines,” Viren writes. “But it is a fact that six months after we were married, Marta and I got unmarried just by getting in a Penske truck and starting to drive.”
The essays in Mine, winner of the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize, are smart, evocative, and difficult to shake. These inquiries of self-exploration transmute into possessions, and ultimately one isn’t quite sure whether they have become yours or you have become theirs. “Putting yourself in charge of uncovering the truth can also feel like an unraveling,” Viren writes of her time as a journalist. As an essayist, she has unearthed a gold mine of truth and staked a claim.
March 23, 2018
Twice I've read this book. Twice it's moved me to tears.
One of the best essay collections I've seen in a very, very long time.
One of the best essay collections I've seen in a very, very long time.
March 23, 2018
Probably my first essay-book read. Maybe not. But one I will remember, hopefully forever. Sarah Viren has a wonderful writer's voice and her essays are so enlightening.
March 29, 2018
A very good author. Her essays have remarkable prose.
April 25, 2018
A collection of essays exploring ownership and possession.
July 29, 2018
Great collection of essays!
August 27, 2020
I love this book so much. Lyrical and smart, yet also fun and adventurous.
September 18, 2021
Wonderful collection of memoir-y essays selected by my friend Kayla for our book club! Like Kayla, the author is a professor at ASU, and they’re actually friends!
The essays have incredibly diverse subjects – from a serial killer’s futon to birthing a child to marriage equality to a potentially dead possum – but they all center on the theme of ownership and possession. When are things truly ours, and when are they not? Great writing and innovative thinking from Viren.
I also loved that she lived for a time in Lubbock, Matt’s hometown, and worked for Texas Tech (see the student Tech art Matt’s sister gifted him long ago in the background on our shelf). I take a rosier view of it than she and Matt do (“It’s a great place to be FROM,” he always says), but it was still cool to be able to visualize the places she wrote about because I go there regularly to visit Matt’s family.
The essays have incredibly diverse subjects – from a serial killer’s futon to birthing a child to marriage equality to a potentially dead possum – but they all center on the theme of ownership and possession. When are things truly ours, and when are they not? Great writing and innovative thinking from Viren.
I also loved that she lived for a time in Lubbock, Matt’s hometown, and worked for Texas Tech (see the student Tech art Matt’s sister gifted him long ago in the background on our shelf). I take a rosier view of it than she and Matt do (“It’s a great place to be FROM,” he always says), but it was still cool to be able to visualize the places she wrote about because I go there regularly to visit Matt’s family.
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October 20, 2020read half of this. want to return.
May 15, 2021
Wonderful.
Autobiographical essays—superbly written and woven together. I would recommend this book to anyone with a milligram of empathy. The end.
Autobiographical essays—superbly written and woven together. I would recommend this book to anyone with a milligram of empathy. The end.
August 3, 2024
Love reading personal essays and thought these were exceptional
December 14, 2018
The dog dies. he wasn't even a big part of the book - more like a shadow or accessory but i didn't expect the second to last story to be about his death. this book is very... literary. that isn't a compliment from me. i wanted to like it - especially since the author was gay.....but i couldn't make myself care about most of it. i had read a review of it in a writing magazine that made me think i would like it more than i did. it also was had a surprising number of stories about motherhood - not my favorite theme for a memoir
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August 7, 2020A very nice collection. I'd like to have more time -and willpower- to make a better review but still, I want to mention a few things. My favourite essays were My Namesake (I think it's also a bit dense but I totally share that obsession with one's name); My Story (the most shocking, creative and problematic in many aspects); and My Child. I also liked the Coda, in general, but especially for thanking Eve for causing pain to women when giving birth. That has resonated on me for weeks! Gracias.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews