Supremely Tiny Acts: A Memoir of a Day (21st Century Essays)

by Sonya Huber

Winner (Bronze, Autobiography & Memoir), 2021 Foreword Indies Awards

“I think we have to get to the real, to catch the facts we have, to hold on to what we see. . . .in this time where lies are currency,” Sonya Huber writes in her book-length essay Supremely Tiny A Memoir of a Day. On the theory that naming the truths of quotidian experience can counter the dangerous power of lies, she carefully recounts two anxiety-fueled days one fall. On the first, she is arrested as part of a climate protest in Times Square. On the other, she must make it to her court appearance while also finding time to take her son to get his learner's permit. Paying equal attention to minor details, passing thoughts, and larger political concerns around activism and parenting in the Trump-era United States, Huber How can one simultaneously be a good mother, a good worker, and a good citizen? As she reflects on the meaning of protest and on whiteness and other forms of privilege within political activism, Huber offers a wry, self-aware, and stirring testament to the everyday as a seedbed for meaningful change.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Essays

190 pages, Paperback

Published October 16, 2021

About the author

Sonya Huber is an associate professor of creative writing at Fairfield University. Her work has appeared in literary journals including Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, Topic, Passages North, Main Street Rag, Literary Mama, Kaleidoscope, Hotel Amerika, Sports Literate, and other; in anthologies including Learning to Glow (University of Arizona Press), Young Wives' Tales (Seal Press), Bare Your Soul (Seal Press), Reading for the Maternally Inclined: The Best of Literary Mama (Seal Press), Mama Ph.D. (Rutgers University Press), and Campus, Inc. (Prometheus Books); in periodicals including The Chronicle of Higher Education, Psychology Today, In These Times, Sojourner, and Earth Island Journal; and elsewhere.

Reviews

[el · Rating 5 out of 5]

My god. This moved me beyond most other things I’ve ever read. How does this woman write in a way that resonates with me so deeply? I feel such an affinity and kinship with her words, the way she thinks is the way I think, the way she flows through multiple tangents and flits from topic to topic feel all too familiar - yet it reads in such a completely engaging way.

The narrative is almost irrelevant, and secondary to the way this book makes me feel. There is no grand story here. It’s simply a day in the life. Noticing all the little idiosyncrasies and writing down these details we usually skim over. Noting the way these things make you feel, the visceral reactions of your body, the pockets of memories that we slide in and out of during the day. Essentially a running commentary

Sounds potentially boring and mundane ? But the impact is profound. I truly adore the way Sonyas mind works. This is a such a special little piece of writing that I will treasure and hold dear to me, forever. I’ve taken so much from it, as I did from pain woman. Couldn’t recommend more x

[Krista Varela Posell · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a writer, I found this to be a great lesson in crafting narrative. The main story takes place over the course of a single day and Huber masterfully weaves in between present action and flashbacks, tangents, and other asides. I read it in just a couple of sittings!

[Helen]

A deeply relatable voice and, in a sense, a chaotic mediation on modern womanhood. Thank you Sonya! :)))

[Sarah M. Wells · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember Cheryl Strayed explaining her approach to writing Wild, that as long as she always returned to the PCT in some way, shape, or form, she could go anywhere the writing took her. I love this about the essay form in particular - the mind can wander anywhere, as long as there's something that keeps us tethered. Sonya Huber achieves this through using a single day as the springboard for many different meditations and explorations of her life and the time in which we live. And isn't each day crowded with the memories and atoms of our past, intricately weaving themselves with our present? I would love to take on this same challenge, to choose for myself this day, or that, and see what complexities, tangents, and discoveries surface to help me see myself more clearly, and by seeing myself more clearly, finding a community of others who are also individual universes colliding.

[Penny Guisinger · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a delicious gem of a book. It concerns itself with both the minutiae and the grandness of everyday life and infuses it all with an openness and humility that is smart and compassionate. I loved it.

[Irena Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sonya Huber had me at this passage—

I'm taking your time with my real-life bullshit, and there's no excuse for it. So I should either apologize, or I should swing around my six-volume book-cock and assume my own brilliance, but there's no amount of coffee in the world that could get me to that level of confidence. So I'm going to assume I'm among friends.

—and from there, reading her extraordinary memoir felt exactly like falling into the best conversation ever with a friend. A friend who is snarky and wise and kind and tender and generous and gets that women writers don't get indulged in the same way that some men do and that our world is going to hell and that doing something, even if it feels small and insignificant, is better than doing nothing. A friend who has to be back from her court appearance after being arrested at a climate protest so she can take her teenage son to get his learner's permit. A friend who tells you about her amazing mom, about her younger self, "that girl [with] all her sweaty angular messy fervent hilarious chicory cornflower gravel disasters,"about teaching herself how to write, about teaching others how to write. There is so much compassion here, and so much candor and humor and sadness and sharp, sudden insight—all in a small, slim book—that I am still trying to figure out what crazy magic she used to do it. All I know is that even if she won't assume her own brilliance, I'll assume it for her. This book is just so, so good.

[Kelly Ferguson · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Supremely Tiny Acts, Sonya Huber quests for the meaning of life in the micro. Her memoir-in-a-day is a testimony to never forgetting. No single person can save the world, but we “can contribute grains of sand that might stop the engine of doom.”

Read the rest of my review about finding meaning in the micro in The Cleveland Review of Books.

https://www.clereviewofbooks.com/home...

[Glassworks Magazine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reviewed by Ellen Lewis on www.rowanglassworks.org.

How can you write a memoir about a day? Authors generally write memoirs about entire lifetimes, not twenty-four hours. And yet, author Sonya Huber set out to record a single day in her life and all that it stood for in her newly released memoir, Supremely Tiny Acts: A Memoir of a Day.
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Huber wears many hats—those of an activist, mother, wife, professor, and writer to name just a few. And in a perfect storm of sorts, Huber finds herself needing to balance all of these roles. Huber’s memoir is micro-focused on a single day. While participating in an environmental protest about climate change in Times Square, Huber is arrested. The main day chosen for the memoir, however, is Huber’s day in court following this arrest. On this same day, she finds herself grading her students’ papers (having necessarily canceled class), dealing with her rheumatoid arthritis, trying to calm her own nerves at needing to appear in court all before she is expected back to her hometown in Connecticut to take her teenage son for his driving test.

Huber’s day sounds exhausting to say the least. But it is not the mere chaos or numerous events of her day that draw the reader into this full-length book. Rather, it is the myriad rabbit trails Huber follows as she explores her own mental processes and personal history that led her to that day and will surely lead her past it. Huber’s writing style is rather rambling, filled with delightfully descriptive run-on sentences. However, much like the popular saying, “Not all who wander are lost,” Huber proves that there is such a thing as deliberate rabbit trails. Through her various stories woven together to create her larger points, you find snapshots of who Huber is and what she stands for. Even as she seems to get caught up in a brief, random section about checking her Twitter account, she pulls out beautiful observations, proving that such ramblings indeed belong.

Huber’s book is filled with strong, passionate opinions. And while many may expect a book filled with political, moral, environmental, and fiscal beliefs to be combative, Huber’s disarming manner made it approachable. Rather than fighting you, she humbly invites you to share in her passions, without offering judgments, as she recognizes that she herself is an imperfect human being. Despite her passions, she is also a person with real limits. She writes, “The impeachment hearings are going on right now but I can’t even watch them. I don’t watch any of the Dem candidates’ debates, I didn’t watch the political conventions in 2015, I just can’t. I start to yell and cry almost immediately. There’s a way in which I have to shield myself to function” (p. 35).

Huber, in a compelling admission of humanity, even goes as far as to say that her reasons for wanting to get arrested were rather selfish, illustrating an apparent journey of self as opposed to a self-righteous martyr for the environment. By page 39, she has already gone into many facets of her life, so that you feel the struggle in her words: “So getting arrested at a protest was different, a real act chosen by me, not something I felt I had to do for someone else to keep getting a paycheck or to avoid being yelled at or getting a snippy passive-aggressive email.”

Huber writes that her husband says she’s “a source of good chaos” (p. 29). And her book reflects this perfectly. While Huber is personal and human, relaying her insightful small talk and minor thoughts throughout the day, she is also a mighty force for change, taking on important environmental and social justice issues. And she somehow manages to do this with humor. (Her one line about needing to “pose with the arresting officer for a second picture, like the worst prom ever,” (p. 71) had me cracking up!) And yet her humor doesn’t get in the way of her messages, but rather showcases that there is, indeed, a person on the other side of this book.

I invite you to read Supremely Tiny Acts and get to know that person, as she is imperfectly, supremely fascinating.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Follow Sonya for a day as she has a court appearance for her arrest at a climate action, take her kid to the DMV, grade essays? yes, please, because she threads that all through with her smart reflections on class and gender, race and politics, activism and family, and wry observations about herself, our world, cabbage, and the pleasure of knowing your way around Grand Central Station. She's a great writer, and this is a pleasure to read.

Here are some snippets:
I’m taking your time with my real-life bullshit, and there’s no excuse for it. So I should either apologize, or I should swing around my six-volume book-cock and assume my own brilliance, but there’s no amount of coffee in the world that could get me to that level of confidence. So I’m going to assume I’m among friends.

The single thing I took away from [being in jail] was it was terrifying even though we were a load of middle-class mostly white women with the additional luxury of flexible time. And I could feel the massive strength of the police, the way the place was tense with potential like a fist, like if they wanted to be mean to you, to hurt you, they could do anything they wanted. I’ve never seen so clearly my privilege as a white woman, a dozen of us in the police wagon, how we’d crumble if the threat became serious.

… depression, having been there, is terrifying, like drowning in pig souse or gray gelatin. I’m always about ten paces away from it, and I recognize that I need to be less afraid of it because it’s a part of the place I live. Maybe admitting that will let me grasp something about myself and my life. Like yeah, my property does have a sinkhole, so just put a fence around it and plant things.

My spiritual insides look, I think, like an old hardware store in which a can of Cheez Whiz has exploded: just a fucking mess.

And finally this line, because my kids tease me that every walk we take, I say, "Look how pretty the light is right now" and so I feel seen:
Sometimes I think that a third of mothering is about pointing out how pretty the sky looks right now, with the light underneath.

[Gabi Coatsworth · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author has already won awards, and this book is likely to garner more. It's a book-length memoir essay whose framework takes place over an anxiety-inducing day, but covers a lifetime of other memories, expertly interwoven as one thought leads to another. It's written in a vivid and enveloping style that made me feel as though I were accompanying the author as she headed into court for being arrested on an Extinction Rebellion demonstration. It's an exhilarating read.