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Poser: My Life in Twenty-three Yoga Poses
The studio was decorated in the style of Don’t Be Afraid, We’re Not a Cult. All was white and blond and clean, as though the room had been designed for surgery, or Swedish people. The only spot of color came from the Tibetan prayer flags strung over the doorway into the studio. In flagrant defiance of my longtime policy of never entering a structure adorned with Tibetan prayer flags, I removed my shoes, paid my ten bucks, and walked in . . .
Ten years ago, Claire Dederer put her back out while breastfeeding her baby daughter. Told to try yoga by everyone from the woman behind the counter at the co-op to the homeless guy on the corner, she signed up for her first class. She fell madly in love.
Over the next decade, she would tackle triangle, wheel, and the dreaded crow, becoming fast friends with some poses and developing long-standing feuds with others. At the same time, she found herself confronting the forces that shaped her generation. Daughters of women who ran away to find themselves and made a few messes along the way, Dederer and her peers grew up determined to be good, good, good—even if this meant feeling hemmed in by the smugness of their organic-buying, attachment-parenting, anxiously conscientious little world. Yoga seemed to fit right into this virtuous program, but to her surprise, Dederer found that the deeper she went into the poses, the more they tested her most basic ideas of what makes a good mother, daughter, friend, wife—and the more they made her want something a little less tidy, a little more improvisational. Less goodness, more joy.
Poser is unlike any other book about yoga you will read—because it is actually a book about life. Witty and heartfelt, sharp and irreverent, Poser is for anyone who has ever tried to stand on their head while keeping both feet on the ground.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 2010
240 people are currently reading
5312 people want to read
About the author
Claire Dederer
5 books531 followersClaire’s first book, Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses, will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in January, 2011. It will be published simultaneously in the UK by Bloomsbury.
Claire is a longtime contributor to The New York Times. Her articles have appeared in Vogue, Real Simple, The Nation, New York, Yoga Journal, on Slate and Salon, and in newspapers across the country. Her writing has encompassed criticism, reporting, and the personal essay.
Dederer’s essays have appeared in the anthologies Money Changes Everything (edited by Elissa Schappell and Jenny Offill) and Heavy Rotation (edited by Peter Terzian).
Before becoming a freelance journalist, Claire was the chief film critic at Seattle Weekly.
With her husband Bruce Barcott, Claire has co-taught writing at the University of Washington. She currently works with private students.
A proud fourth-generation Seattle native, Claire lives on Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound with her family.
Claire is a longtime contributor to The New York Times. Her articles have appeared in Vogue, Real Simple, The Nation, New York, Yoga Journal, on Slate and Salon, and in newspapers across the country. Her writing has encompassed criticism, reporting, and the personal essay.
Dederer’s essays have appeared in the anthologies Money Changes Everything (edited by Elissa Schappell and Jenny Offill) and Heavy Rotation (edited by Peter Terzian).
Before becoming a freelance journalist, Claire was the chief film critic at Seattle Weekly.
With her husband Bruce Barcott, Claire has co-taught writing at the University of Washington. She currently works with private students.
A proud fourth-generation Seattle native, Claire lives on Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound with her family.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,057 reviews
April 11, 2017
This book affected me so much that I feel like kind of a dork for even talking about it. I certainly wasn’t expecting it.
When it comes to vaguely spiritual, get-your-shit-together memoirs, there seem to be two types: there’s the full-on self-help memoir, which is usually a stunt memoir (e.g., The Happiness Project, or Rachel Bertsche’s books), and then there’s the real memoir that just happens to be about getting your shit together (I would put Eat, Pray, Love in this category). The self-help memoir just kind of skates over the surface of things, speaking in pleasant generalities in an attempt to be universal. The real memoir understands that to be genuinely universal, you need to get as specific, as down and dirty, as possible. I thought Poser would be one of the former, and it turned out to be one of the latter.
Self-help memoirs are all about trying to be a better person. In Poser, Claire Dederer already strives to be a really good person. She’s a good mother, a good wife, a good daughter, writer, friend, sister, volunteer. All this goodness is really stressful. As Claire puts it, “I was resolute and cheerful; I was scared all the time. What I felt had nothing to do with how I acted.” So she signs up for yoga to help her deal with the stress of being good all the time. She hopes dealing with her stress will make her . . . an even better good person. As she eventually realizes:
What’s this all about, anyway, this constant striving to be “good”? Why do we do it? What does it even mean? When Claire asks her Buddhist teacher about this, his response is:
Or, as Claire herself eventually puts it, the opposite of “good” isn’t “bad.” The opposite of “good” is “real.”
When you’re writing a real memoir, there’s a fine line you have to walk. You want to tell the truth of your experience without sugarcoating it. You want to write about your mistakes as well as your successes. If you do this, you run the risk of people finding you unlikeable (indeed, some people will condemn your book entirely for this reason, which makes me wonder why those people read memoirs in the first place). It’s true, I cannot say that I liked Claire Dederer every minute I spent reading this book, but did I ever learn from her. I’ve dog-eared so many pages that contain insights I want to go back to and meditate on and contemplate further. For all the books I’ve read, I’ve never really done that before. Poser definitely shook me up, but in a good way. Or make that, in a real way.
When it comes to vaguely spiritual, get-your-shit-together memoirs, there seem to be two types: there’s the full-on self-help memoir, which is usually a stunt memoir (e.g., The Happiness Project, or Rachel Bertsche’s books), and then there’s the real memoir that just happens to be about getting your shit together (I would put Eat, Pray, Love in this category). The self-help memoir just kind of skates over the surface of things, speaking in pleasant generalities in an attempt to be universal. The real memoir understands that to be genuinely universal, you need to get as specific, as down and dirty, as possible. I thought Poser would be one of the former, and it turned out to be one of the latter.
Self-help memoirs are all about trying to be a better person. In Poser, Claire Dederer already strives to be a really good person. She’s a good mother, a good wife, a good daughter, writer, friend, sister, volunteer. All this goodness is really stressful. As Claire puts it, “I was resolute and cheerful; I was scared all the time. What I felt had nothing to do with how I acted.” So she signs up for yoga to help her deal with the stress of being good all the time. She hopes dealing with her stress will make her . . . an even better good person. As she eventually realizes:
I had started going to yoga because I wanted other people to admire my goodness. I came to yoga with my plate held out, asking yoga to give me the same old stuff I’d been receiving all my life, repackaged and in a groovier new form. Going to yoga was part of my goodness project.
What’s this all about, anyway, this constant striving to be “good”? Why do we do it? What does it even mean? When Claire asks her Buddhist teacher about this, his response is:
I’m not sure “good” is a very helpful word. If you’re busy being good, you’re probably going to miss this. You’re going to miss the real stuff that’s going on around you. No, “good” doesn’t really come into it. I think you might want to expunge that word from your vocabulary.
Or, as Claire herself eventually puts it, the opposite of “good” isn’t “bad.” The opposite of “good” is “real.”
When you’re writing a real memoir, there’s a fine line you have to walk. You want to tell the truth of your experience without sugarcoating it. You want to write about your mistakes as well as your successes. If you do this, you run the risk of people finding you unlikeable (indeed, some people will condemn your book entirely for this reason, which makes me wonder why those people read memoirs in the first place). It’s true, I cannot say that I liked Claire Dederer every minute I spent reading this book, but did I ever learn from her. I’ve dog-eared so many pages that contain insights I want to go back to and meditate on and contemplate further. For all the books I’ve read, I’ve never really done that before. Poser definitely shook me up, but in a good way. Or make that, in a real way.
February 14, 2011
I loved this book - until I hated it. As a matter of fact, I'll willingly admit that this book brought tears to my eyes at one point, from the shock of simple recognition. We share a parenting philosophy, Claire and I - the "I'll be the most hawk-eyed, careful parent ever and God will reward me by making sure my children are healthy" approach. And the kicker is that I didn't even know it was a parenting style, much less one held by me, until I found a passage about it in this book and had to remove myself from the elliptical machine and cry.
After that, I was more than prepared to award Dederer 5 stars, with the caveat that the stars would only be for my experience and not necessarily suggestive of your own, dear reader, because this book, really, would appeal only to a very small group of people - relatively well-off, liberal, married, intellectually-minded, part-time working mothers who regularly practice yoga. I mean, that probably seems like a huge swath of the population when you live in Portland, Oregon (or was it Seattle? I'm sorry, I confuse the two - and why wouldn't I?), like the author does, but really, it's not. Anyway, the book starts off very well. It's lucid, well-organized, insightful. It really seems like Dederer has both a good story to tell (about parenthood, about marriage, about family) and that there will be plenty of personal growth, redemption, and illumination (and maybe some humor, too) along the way. She had me cheering as she researched the history of yoga at a dusty bookshop and had an internal argument over whether the asanas ought really be recognized as "authentic" yoga, and comes to the conclusion that insight, however you find it, is worth pursuing. I'm totally on board.
But then. Oh, then the book falls apart. Or rather, it never really comes together at a deeper level, sort of like Claire's handstand practice. There's no "there" there, even though she goes all over town - and eventually, across the Rocky Mountains, to that equally insular liberal, white, bubble of Boulder, Colorado - to find deeper meaning and renewal in her life. Instead of focusing on how yoga (or parenthood, or marriage, or her childhood experiences, for that matter) opened her up and made her aware of her many, many blessings, she spends a whole lot of time shutting down everyone and anything that doesn't live up to her expectations. It's a long list that starts with her parents and in-laws (who keep coming over to help with the kids and give them treats - the nerve!), moves through her husband (who is far too interested in making money to keep the roof over everyone's heads - and Claire on her yoga mat - to be happy), her dear friends (beautiful Lisa, who had four gorgeous babies and then took to yoga herself with alarming alacrity, which brought nothing but trouble, as Claire would have us think), and, of course, the yoga studios she frequents. She has a nasty word for most of them, especially ones in strip malls, but saves her biggest diss for the "chain" studio she encounters in Boulder, where, according to her, the instructor was blonde, slim, and clueless; the students were just a bunch of bubble-headed Boulder co-eds intent on staring at themselves all class long, and the management was so worried about liabilities that, according to her, no one ever was allowed to do inversions, which was why she went to the studio in the first place - she was afraid of inversions. But then she is directed to try a handstand at said pathetic studio, and disaster (well, not really) ensues. Now, I have worked in Boulder for over a decade and we all know there's only one "chain" studio there. I know it well, because I've practiced (and taught) there for years and years. And I can you this: it's not "Ashtanga, done carelessly" - it's power yoga, and it's very well done, as leading power yoga advocates such as Baron Baptiste or Rolf Gates would tell you, since they've visited the studios on a number of occasions. Furthermore, the management encourages inversions for students who are capable, which anyone who has taken an intermediate or advanced class at this studio - or any of the dozens of workshops offered there - can tell you. Finally, no teacher at this "chain" would tell a student to "kick up" into a freaking headstand, as one of Claire's teachers supposedly told her to do! (That's a ticket to a neck injury, for sure!) Sure, maybe I'm a little sore that she was nasty about my beloved studio. But really, it's just a great example of how this book fails to take it to the next level. After all the time she spent laying out her arguments for hatha yoga, which I mentioned earlier, she turns around and proclaims a practice that she's not quite up for to be sub-par? It's the ultimate irony, and illustrates the author's egocentrism.
The final nail in the coffin is the last quarter of the book, which just turns, plain and simple, into almost laughable navelgazing. After referring repeatedly to the troubles her mother caused the family by (sort of) leaving Claire's father when Claire was about 8 for a much younger man, she finally decides that this was an act of courage, and that she and all the other women who left their husbands (well, almost left them) between 1973 and 1979 (she's weirdly specific on this) shaped a generation of women (their children), to whom the book is, in the end, apparently addressed. But how many people out there are the children of (at least quasi-) divorce (who have loving relationships with their mom, dad, and stepfather) between 1973 and 1979, and are also relatively well off, liberal, married, intellectually-minded, part-time working mothers who regularly practice yoga? Not a whole hell of a lot, I'm willing to bet. In fact, maybe only Claire Dederer herself, which forced me to conclude that this book was really just written to her, from her. Boo.
Namaste, Claire Dederer. May the next ten years of your yoga practice bring you more self-awareness than the first.
After that, I was more than prepared to award Dederer 5 stars, with the caveat that the stars would only be for my experience and not necessarily suggestive of your own, dear reader, because this book, really, would appeal only to a very small group of people - relatively well-off, liberal, married, intellectually-minded, part-time working mothers who regularly practice yoga. I mean, that probably seems like a huge swath of the population when you live in Portland, Oregon (or was it Seattle? I'm sorry, I confuse the two - and why wouldn't I?), like the author does, but really, it's not. Anyway, the book starts off very well. It's lucid, well-organized, insightful. It really seems like Dederer has both a good story to tell (about parenthood, about marriage, about family) and that there will be plenty of personal growth, redemption, and illumination (and maybe some humor, too) along the way. She had me cheering as she researched the history of yoga at a dusty bookshop and had an internal argument over whether the asanas ought really be recognized as "authentic" yoga, and comes to the conclusion that insight, however you find it, is worth pursuing. I'm totally on board.
But then. Oh, then the book falls apart. Or rather, it never really comes together at a deeper level, sort of like Claire's handstand practice. There's no "there" there, even though she goes all over town - and eventually, across the Rocky Mountains, to that equally insular liberal, white, bubble of Boulder, Colorado - to find deeper meaning and renewal in her life. Instead of focusing on how yoga (or parenthood, or marriage, or her childhood experiences, for that matter) opened her up and made her aware of her many, many blessings, she spends a whole lot of time shutting down everyone and anything that doesn't live up to her expectations. It's a long list that starts with her parents and in-laws (who keep coming over to help with the kids and give them treats - the nerve!), moves through her husband (who is far too interested in making money to keep the roof over everyone's heads - and Claire on her yoga mat - to be happy), her dear friends (beautiful Lisa, who had four gorgeous babies and then took to yoga herself with alarming alacrity, which brought nothing but trouble, as Claire would have us think), and, of course, the yoga studios she frequents. She has a nasty word for most of them, especially ones in strip malls, but saves her biggest diss for the "chain" studio she encounters in Boulder, where, according to her, the instructor was blonde, slim, and clueless; the students were just a bunch of bubble-headed Boulder co-eds intent on staring at themselves all class long, and the management was so worried about liabilities that, according to her, no one ever was allowed to do inversions, which was why she went to the studio in the first place - she was afraid of inversions. But then she is directed to try a handstand at said pathetic studio, and disaster (well, not really) ensues. Now, I have worked in Boulder for over a decade and we all know there's only one "chain" studio there. I know it well, because I've practiced (and taught) there for years and years. And I can you this: it's not "Ashtanga, done carelessly" - it's power yoga, and it's very well done, as leading power yoga advocates such as Baron Baptiste or Rolf Gates would tell you, since they've visited the studios on a number of occasions. Furthermore, the management encourages inversions for students who are capable, which anyone who has taken an intermediate or advanced class at this studio - or any of the dozens of workshops offered there - can tell you. Finally, no teacher at this "chain" would tell a student to "kick up" into a freaking headstand, as one of Claire's teachers supposedly told her to do! (That's a ticket to a neck injury, for sure!) Sure, maybe I'm a little sore that she was nasty about my beloved studio. But really, it's just a great example of how this book fails to take it to the next level. After all the time she spent laying out her arguments for hatha yoga, which I mentioned earlier, she turns around and proclaims a practice that she's not quite up for to be sub-par? It's the ultimate irony, and illustrates the author's egocentrism.
The final nail in the coffin is the last quarter of the book, which just turns, plain and simple, into almost laughable navelgazing. After referring repeatedly to the troubles her mother caused the family by (sort of) leaving Claire's father when Claire was about 8 for a much younger man, she finally decides that this was an act of courage, and that she and all the other women who left their husbands (well, almost left them) between 1973 and 1979 (she's weirdly specific on this) shaped a generation of women (their children), to whom the book is, in the end, apparently addressed. But how many people out there are the children of (at least quasi-) divorce (who have loving relationships with their mom, dad, and stepfather) between 1973 and 1979, and are also relatively well off, liberal, married, intellectually-minded, part-time working mothers who regularly practice yoga? Not a whole hell of a lot, I'm willing to bet. In fact, maybe only Claire Dederer herself, which forced me to conclude that this book was really just written to her, from her. Boo.
Namaste, Claire Dederer. May the next ten years of your yoga practice bring you more self-awareness than the first.
April 20, 2011
Wow! Am i the only person who didn't like this book? I was so excited to read it, as I live in Seattle and enjoy yoga and know the instructors she talks about. After reading the first 3 chapters I became disappointed. This is the first book that I actually skipped through entire passages out of boredom. Usually the eloquence of a writer will keep me reading, even if I find the subject boring, but with this book I couldn't stay connected.
I really enjoyed the parts about yoga, but then the author starts talking about her life and I couldn't connect her personal life to the yoga or what her point was through most of the book. Sometimes her memories came out of nowhere.
The author judges everything quite openly - people, places, things. In turn, I became judgmental of everything SHE said. I didn't know if I should dislike her for being annoyed with the blind woman that was taking a yoga class or respect her for being so honest about how she felt, even if it meant her coming off as an insecure, judgmental b*$?!.
All in all, reading this book wasn't a complete waste of time. I enjoyed the yoga sections and it was a quick read.
I really enjoyed the parts about yoga, but then the author starts talking about her life and I couldn't connect her personal life to the yoga or what her point was through most of the book. Sometimes her memories came out of nowhere.
The author judges everything quite openly - people, places, things. In turn, I became judgmental of everything SHE said. I didn't know if I should dislike her for being annoyed with the blind woman that was taking a yoga class or respect her for being so honest about how she felt, even if it meant her coming off as an insecure, judgmental b*$?!.
All in all, reading this book wasn't a complete waste of time. I enjoyed the yoga sections and it was a quick read.
March 5, 2015
guys. oh my god. i LOVE this book. this is the best book i have read in YEARS. i would give it fifteen stars if i could. i have never written fan mail to an author before, but i want to write fan mail to this author. i want to buy fifty copies & just dispense them to people in my life like candy (but i sadly am not made of money). i most certainly intend to buy my own copy (i got this one from the library) so i can re-read it over & over & loan it to friends.
it's kind of weird that i love this book so much, because it appears to be about a woman who started doing yoga & had some life epiphanies that she shares by connecting them to various yoga poses. i admit i do a tiny amount of yoga--for about fifteen minutes every other day. i do relaxation poses & a few very basic poses aimed at building strength & flexibility through my back & core. it's pain management for whatever the fuck is wrong with my back (arthritis, spina bifida, scoliosis, who knows). but i don't do yoga in terms of enrolling in a class, seeking out a teacher, having special yoga pants i wear.
but the book is about way more than yoga. what i took away from it: claire is about ten years older than me & seemed to come of age in the same kind of sub-culture as me. there are numerous references to punk bands & a misfit, misspent youth. she finally settled down in her late 20s, got married, & had a baby. when her baby was ten months old, claire threw her back out while breastfeeding. everyone told her to do yoga to deal with her back pain. she was reluctant because she kind of thought yoga was a weird hippie thing or for people far younger & fitter & more comfortable appropriating eastern philosophy. but she tried & was surprised to find that she liked it.
but it did play into her issues with perfectionism. as a new mom, a lot of her perfectionism involved being a perfect mom, & for a lefty weirdo, being a perfect mom meant attachment parenting--breastfeeding, babywearing, co-sleeping, co-op nursery schools. she writes about hating the moms who seemed to do attachment parenting with ease, & feeling contemptuous of the moms who struggled, or didn't bother at all, while also feeling constantly judged herself, like she was neglecting her baby if she stopped breastfeeding after ten months. she writes about how we always hate the people who are the most like ourselves, but doing things just a little differently. i related to that ENORMOUSLY. it's one of my biggest struggles.
she connects her perfectionist tendencies with having a rootless kind of weirdo childhood after her mother left her father for a youthful hippie who drove a tugboat. her parents never legally divorced & remained very involved in the lives of their children, but...you know. still. i personally wouldn't know much about this because my parents stayed together until the day my dad died. their relationship was fucked up though & they talked about divorce everyday for like 25 years, so i guess i kind of relate, sort of. not that it's about me. or that a person would need to relate to every aspect of claire's story in order to get something out of her book.
the book spans ten years of claire's life, from when she started yoga in 1999 (the WTO protests get their own chapter, as claire lived in seattle at the time & watched the riots on TV, wondering when she had become a person that would choose not to be out participating in them) to the present day (more or less). she touches on her husband's struggles with depression, deciding to have a second baby, deciding not to have a third, choosing the perfect school for her daughter, struggling to balance the desire for a bohemian writer life against the emotional upheaval of constant financial instability, feeling smothered by but drawn to family, etc. ultimately, she comes to realize that her adulthood has been all about doing what is perfect & good & right, as opposed to what is real. she writes about learning how to let herself fail, or just not be the best.
i don't know. maybe i am making it sound really self-help-y. maybe it is self-help-y. but i love it. i am obsessed with this book. the only other books i have ever read that made me feel this connected & deliriously happy to have read them are all over creation by ruth ozeki (my all-time favorite novel) & growing up underground by jane alpert (& my fervor for that book has certainly been dulled a bit by reading some of jane's later writing on crazy feminist biological essentialism). i want all of my friends to read this book & then call me so we can talk about it. even if they hate it, i want to know why.
man. if you could marry a book, i would totally marry this book. i honestly feel like it has changed my life at least a little bit.
it's kind of weird that i love this book so much, because it appears to be about a woman who started doing yoga & had some life epiphanies that she shares by connecting them to various yoga poses. i admit i do a tiny amount of yoga--for about fifteen minutes every other day. i do relaxation poses & a few very basic poses aimed at building strength & flexibility through my back & core. it's pain management for whatever the fuck is wrong with my back (arthritis, spina bifida, scoliosis, who knows). but i don't do yoga in terms of enrolling in a class, seeking out a teacher, having special yoga pants i wear.
but the book is about way more than yoga. what i took away from it: claire is about ten years older than me & seemed to come of age in the same kind of sub-culture as me. there are numerous references to punk bands & a misfit, misspent youth. she finally settled down in her late 20s, got married, & had a baby. when her baby was ten months old, claire threw her back out while breastfeeding. everyone told her to do yoga to deal with her back pain. she was reluctant because she kind of thought yoga was a weird hippie thing or for people far younger & fitter & more comfortable appropriating eastern philosophy. but she tried & was surprised to find that she liked it.
but it did play into her issues with perfectionism. as a new mom, a lot of her perfectionism involved being a perfect mom, & for a lefty weirdo, being a perfect mom meant attachment parenting--breastfeeding, babywearing, co-sleeping, co-op nursery schools. she writes about hating the moms who seemed to do attachment parenting with ease, & feeling contemptuous of the moms who struggled, or didn't bother at all, while also feeling constantly judged herself, like she was neglecting her baby if she stopped breastfeeding after ten months. she writes about how we always hate the people who are the most like ourselves, but doing things just a little differently. i related to that ENORMOUSLY. it's one of my biggest struggles.
she connects her perfectionist tendencies with having a rootless kind of weirdo childhood after her mother left her father for a youthful hippie who drove a tugboat. her parents never legally divorced & remained very involved in the lives of their children, but...you know. still. i personally wouldn't know much about this because my parents stayed together until the day my dad died. their relationship was fucked up though & they talked about divorce everyday for like 25 years, so i guess i kind of relate, sort of. not that it's about me. or that a person would need to relate to every aspect of claire's story in order to get something out of her book.
the book spans ten years of claire's life, from when she started yoga in 1999 (the WTO protests get their own chapter, as claire lived in seattle at the time & watched the riots on TV, wondering when she had become a person that would choose not to be out participating in them) to the present day (more or less). she touches on her husband's struggles with depression, deciding to have a second baby, deciding not to have a third, choosing the perfect school for her daughter, struggling to balance the desire for a bohemian writer life against the emotional upheaval of constant financial instability, feeling smothered by but drawn to family, etc. ultimately, she comes to realize that her adulthood has been all about doing what is perfect & good & right, as opposed to what is real. she writes about learning how to let herself fail, or just not be the best.
i don't know. maybe i am making it sound really self-help-y. maybe it is self-help-y. but i love it. i am obsessed with this book. the only other books i have ever read that made me feel this connected & deliriously happy to have read them are all over creation by ruth ozeki (my all-time favorite novel) & growing up underground by jane alpert (& my fervor for that book has certainly been dulled a bit by reading some of jane's later writing on crazy feminist biological essentialism). i want all of my friends to read this book & then call me so we can talk about it. even if they hate it, i want to know why.
man. if you could marry a book, i would totally marry this book. i honestly feel like it has changed my life at least a little bit.
November 7, 2011
Now that I've had a couple glasses of wine and a few days to stew over this book, I'm ready to rant. This was not a good book. This is a memoir of an (upper) middle class white woman complaining about her amazing life. For the first third, you may find yourself enjoying her entertaining wit, but then, all of a sudden, you've had enough. You just can't take the self-indulgent, over anxious, my life is just slightly less than perfect bullshit.
Maybe I shouldn't have had those couple glasses of wine. I am, after all, a middle class white woman, complaining about a book being less than perfect. Ah, the irony.
There were good aspects to this book.
1) I loved reading a book set in Seattle. It may be the first time I've read a book set in a location where I live, and it was a delight. To recognize landscapes, local landmarks, restaurants, neighborhood stereotypes - truly a delight that enhances a reader's experience a million percent.
2) Dederer's wit, or rather, the force that compelled me to finish the book. She is clever. And funny. You may even laugh out loud at times. She can tell a great story. Just maybe not her own.
3) The mommy plot. This feels odd to mention, but it was interesting to jump inside the head of a new mom -- something I never intend to be, but the step my friends are beginning to take. Dederer describes this with honesty. All the pressures I can see taking an effect on my friends in boldly realistic, anxiety-ridden, newbie mom detail.
Now, everything I didn't like about the book.
1) The yoga. I'm not even referring to the long, boring, informative sections on yoga, although I could have done without those. The use of yoga poses as the layout of a novel didn't work. The transition from yoga to present life to flashback was too jarring. There was no natural flow as there is in yoga (or, to be catty, good novels). Plus, the relevance of the chapter's yoga pose to the plot often seemed forced.
2) Too much random information. What this book needs is a focus. Or a better editor. Something. The story line goes something like this: I had two difficult child births, my parents have a non-conventional marriage, my husband's depressed because we don't make enough money and I don't pay attention to him, I lived with my dad on a houseboat, I want to be the perfect mom, 1970s hippie party, finding the perfect kindergarten for your first born is challenging, I worked on a tugboat in 8th grade, my parents visit their grandchildren too often, now that we've moved to Boulder I worry about mountain lions attacking me, I lived with a rocker boyfriend in Australia, I try too hard to be perfect at yoga, etc, etc. Maybe a life is filled with all these random experiences. But when you compile them all together in a book, they seem ridiculous, over the top, random. Perhaps she just wanted to tell all her best stories? If so, there was a huge gap during her teenage years, when she was living her rebellious rocker girl life, which seemed infinitely more interesting.
3) The memoir format. Maybe memoirs just aren't for me. But this first-person narrative was awkward. Most memoirs take you in confidence and make you feel like a close friend. This one held you at arm's length. It was an I'm-baring-my-soul-but-I-won't-let-you-in kind of absurdity. If she's not completely comfortable telling me her story, I'm not going to feel comfortable reading it.
4) Her "epiphany" chapter. The premise of the book is that she's working toward an epiphany, a moment of yoga enlightenment if you will. When it finally arrives (the chapter, not the enlightenment), hold on tightly to the book so as not to throw it against the wall. When she finally comes to terms with her childhood and her parents' decisions, it will not relate to any experience in her book. It will be a conveniently placed chapter towards the end of the book, where the token chapter of revelation ought to be. And you know she has reasoned out this knowledge periodically throughout her lifetime, as any rational being would. Saving it toward the end and delivering it in a chapter completely unrelated to the yoga/flashback/current melodrama format makes you feel manipulated and deceived. Throw. Book. At. Wall.
In summary, this book has it's merits. I recommend reading it until you stop enjoying it. But then, be sure to stop. Or else you'll be ranting about it after you've had a couple glasses of wine too many (if there can be such a thing.)
Maybe I shouldn't have had those couple glasses of wine. I am, after all, a middle class white woman, complaining about a book being less than perfect. Ah, the irony.
There were good aspects to this book.
1) I loved reading a book set in Seattle. It may be the first time I've read a book set in a location where I live, and it was a delight. To recognize landscapes, local landmarks, restaurants, neighborhood stereotypes - truly a delight that enhances a reader's experience a million percent.
2) Dederer's wit, or rather, the force that compelled me to finish the book. She is clever. And funny. You may even laugh out loud at times. She can tell a great story. Just maybe not her own.
3) The mommy plot. This feels odd to mention, but it was interesting to jump inside the head of a new mom -- something I never intend to be, but the step my friends are beginning to take. Dederer describes this with honesty. All the pressures I can see taking an effect on my friends in boldly realistic, anxiety-ridden, newbie mom detail.
Now, everything I didn't like about the book.
1) The yoga. I'm not even referring to the long, boring, informative sections on yoga, although I could have done without those. The use of yoga poses as the layout of a novel didn't work. The transition from yoga to present life to flashback was too jarring. There was no natural flow as there is in yoga (or, to be catty, good novels). Plus, the relevance of the chapter's yoga pose to the plot often seemed forced.
2) Too much random information. What this book needs is a focus. Or a better editor. Something. The story line goes something like this: I had two difficult child births, my parents have a non-conventional marriage, my husband's depressed because we don't make enough money and I don't pay attention to him, I lived with my dad on a houseboat, I want to be the perfect mom, 1970s hippie party, finding the perfect kindergarten for your first born is challenging, I worked on a tugboat in 8th grade, my parents visit their grandchildren too often, now that we've moved to Boulder I worry about mountain lions attacking me, I lived with a rocker boyfriend in Australia, I try too hard to be perfect at yoga, etc, etc. Maybe a life is filled with all these random experiences. But when you compile them all together in a book, they seem ridiculous, over the top, random. Perhaps she just wanted to tell all her best stories? If so, there was a huge gap during her teenage years, when she was living her rebellious rocker girl life, which seemed infinitely more interesting.
3) The memoir format. Maybe memoirs just aren't for me. But this first-person narrative was awkward. Most memoirs take you in confidence and make you feel like a close friend. This one held you at arm's length. It was an I'm-baring-my-soul-but-I-won't-let-you-in kind of absurdity. If she's not completely comfortable telling me her story, I'm not going to feel comfortable reading it.
4) Her "epiphany" chapter. The premise of the book is that she's working toward an epiphany, a moment of yoga enlightenment if you will. When it finally arrives (the chapter, not the enlightenment), hold on tightly to the book so as not to throw it against the wall. When she finally comes to terms with her childhood and her parents' decisions, it will not relate to any experience in her book. It will be a conveniently placed chapter towards the end of the book, where the token chapter of revelation ought to be. And you know she has reasoned out this knowledge periodically throughout her lifetime, as any rational being would. Saving it toward the end and delivering it in a chapter completely unrelated to the yoga/flashback/current melodrama format makes you feel manipulated and deceived. Throw. Book. At. Wall.
In summary, this book has it's merits. I recommend reading it until you stop enjoying it. But then, be sure to stop. Or else you'll be ranting about it after you've had a couple glasses of wine too many (if there can be such a thing.)
April 17, 2011
I loved this book! This is due in large part because it was about yoga, which I do, in North Seattle, where I live. In this book Claire Dederer tells the story of her adult life in Seattle in the mid to late 90s. She's ten years older than me, and thus was into yoga 10 years before me. She had her children in North Seattle at the same time I was going to college while living in North Seattle and nannying in Issaquah (a suburb 17 miles east of Seattle filled with Microsoft money). The families I worked for weren't as intense about being "perfect" as Dederer and her peers were, but I definitely see connections. Also, I was excited that I knew what yoga studios she attended and what stores she referred to. In fact, I've been to Fran's yoga class in the studio Dederer talks of, and I jog through and mostly go to yoga on Phinney Ridge where she lived. Her story telling is humble, funny, and touching. With me coming from a two-parent household, many of her insights into the lives of 70s divorced families helped me to better understand what many of my friends were going through as we were growing up. Also, this book got me to appreciate yoga for what it should be, a time to be present and enjoy my body's strength, rather than a time to work on getting better at being good.
January 16, 2012
eventful life story - her parents were Pacific Northwest hippies who remained married through an extremely long separation while the Mom lived with much younger boyfriend; author herself has an up-and-down marriage to fellow freelance writer with whom she has a couple kids, one of whom was born after serious complications.
The other plus is that she's intermittently funny in describing day to day events. Not "funny enough to make most writers swoon with envy" as claimed by one of the blurb-ers, but fairly funny.
Pluses were outweighed for me by two major minuses:
1. The yoga hook is absurd. Chapters are organized by yoga poses, and there is generally a very strained attempt to make some connection with her life -- "warrior" pose feeds into discussion of family conflict, "child" pose to a discussion of something about one of her kids, etc. If I had been the editor, I'd have channeled Randy Jackson on American Idol waving his hands and struggling for something to say beyond "for me, this was not your best". I can imagine this hook sounding clever in a short book proposal, but it was seriously not a good idea.
2. She is immersed in PNW, hipster, semi-affluent, 30-something, liberal culture but wants to stand apart from it. Sometimes I guess that can be done in a really funny way, but here it comes across as grating. Yes, I'm wearing the same brand of clogs and the same stretch pants as these women, and putting my kids in the same high-minded cooperative nursery school, etc. etc. but I'm doing it all in an ironic, detached manner that gives me a platform for holding the others in contempt. Not appealing.
The other plus is that she's intermittently funny in describing day to day events. Not "funny enough to make most writers swoon with envy" as claimed by one of the blurb-ers, but fairly funny.
Pluses were outweighed for me by two major minuses:
1. The yoga hook is absurd. Chapters are organized by yoga poses, and there is generally a very strained attempt to make some connection with her life -- "warrior" pose feeds into discussion of family conflict, "child" pose to a discussion of something about one of her kids, etc. If I had been the editor, I'd have channeled Randy Jackson on American Idol waving his hands and struggling for something to say beyond "for me, this was not your best". I can imagine this hook sounding clever in a short book proposal, but it was seriously not a good idea.
2. She is immersed in PNW, hipster, semi-affluent, 30-something, liberal culture but wants to stand apart from it. Sometimes I guess that can be done in a really funny way, but here it comes across as grating. Yes, I'm wearing the same brand of clogs and the same stretch pants as these women, and putting my kids in the same high-minded cooperative nursery school, etc. etc. but I'm doing it all in an ironic, detached manner that gives me a platform for holding the others in contempt. Not appealing.
June 7, 2011
I couldn't finish this one. Although the writing was lovely and I did identify with a lot of what the author discusses at the beginning (the grandparents' raw need to be near the baby, yoga as a way to ease perfectionism) I ultimately had the same problem with this memoir as I did with Eat, Pray, Love: it's really hard to listen to someone so privileged complain so much.
As a mom who has just gone back to full-time work and is pumping milk all day long while missing my child, I just couldn't get into reading about someone who works as a writer part-time from home, gets to be with her child most of the day, and takes tons of yoga classes. She whines pretty much non-stop about it. I'm too envious to sympathize with her complaints about her lifestyle--a lifestyle I would pretty much give a kidney to have.
I will go back to plot-driven fiction for a while and maybe revisit this once I get a little more used to being a working mom.
As a mom who has just gone back to full-time work and is pumping milk all day long while missing my child, I just couldn't get into reading about someone who works as a writer part-time from home, gets to be with her child most of the day, and takes tons of yoga classes. She whines pretty much non-stop about it. I'm too envious to sympathize with her complaints about her lifestyle--a lifestyle I would pretty much give a kidney to have.
I will go back to plot-driven fiction for a while and maybe revisit this once I get a little more used to being a working mom.
March 18, 2011
Claire Dederer, with her supple mommy memoir Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses, has delivered an accessible, fresh look at feminism, liberalism, family life and literary coupledom, lightly sprinkled with enough yogic information to warrant its title and give the book some structure.
Dederer transcends whatever mean-spiritedness she might have entertained toward imperfect but well-meaning parents, dodges every cliché she might have used to describe her leftist Seattle environs, and arrives at her twenty-third pose with a centered, cheerful-enough demeanor that surprises readers more accustomed to other, more fiercely-narcissistic writers of her generation. Although she brushes up against a couple of revelations more reminiscent of Ayelet Waldman in Bad Mother, she never really gets that self-focused, retreating instead to the safety of Good Mommyhood. But that's okay.
Dederer delivers some stunningly good writing as she takes us through her life as the daughter of a 1970s second-wave feminist, sister of an alternative rock star, wife of a successful environmental journalist and mother of two precocious (yet surprisingly off-camera) children. And that’s the draw here—although her insights are solid, it’s the writing that sticks to the ribs. My only criticism is the sheer number of self-consciously literary words and phrases that season her narrative. At times it seems she was working from a list of SAT vocabulary words, and I longed for bit more plainspoken wisdom. But all in all, a solid first book from a talented writer.
Dederer transcends whatever mean-spiritedness she might have entertained toward imperfect but well-meaning parents, dodges every cliché she might have used to describe her leftist Seattle environs, and arrives at her twenty-third pose with a centered, cheerful-enough demeanor that surprises readers more accustomed to other, more fiercely-narcissistic writers of her generation. Although she brushes up against a couple of revelations more reminiscent of Ayelet Waldman in Bad Mother, she never really gets that self-focused, retreating instead to the safety of Good Mommyhood. But that's okay.
Dederer delivers some stunningly good writing as she takes us through her life as the daughter of a 1970s second-wave feminist, sister of an alternative rock star, wife of a successful environmental journalist and mother of two precocious (yet surprisingly off-camera) children. And that’s the draw here—although her insights are solid, it’s the writing that sticks to the ribs. My only criticism is the sheer number of self-consciously literary words and phrases that season her narrative. At times it seems she was working from a list of SAT vocabulary words, and I longed for bit more plainspoken wisdom. But all in all, a solid first book from a talented writer.
February 21, 2011
Oh, this book. As soon as I finished (five minutes ago), I teared up and felt a big well in my chest--then I promptly looked up some reviews online to see how others had found it. I liked this book. I think I would like Claire Dederer. The parts about yoga are fantastic and funny and resonant. She might make you crack up out loud. And the landscapes she describes are ones I have visited and liked.
But somewhere in the middle I kept going "huh?" and "wha?" She tackles so much--spoiler! Spoiler alert! Stop reading if you hate spoilers!--that I felt really unsure what this book was about and what her goal was (as we ask ourselves in writing workshops, annoyingly). I mean, it was about yoga and motherhood and allegedly about how the first made her better understand the second, but then, see, we were all wrapped up in what felt like her unresolved and still raw pain about her parents' divorce and then this related to her husband's depression (which I had not noticed, because I was engrossed in the other things this book is about), and then I felt like I didn't get at all how yoga made her better understand motherhood. But maybe I missed something. I dunno; in the end, I thought it was a good book and I will pass it on to my pregnant yoga teacher, but well, Ms. D., I still have some questions for you.
But somewhere in the middle I kept going "huh?" and "wha?" She tackles so much--spoiler! Spoiler alert! Stop reading if you hate spoilers!--that I felt really unsure what this book was about and what her goal was (as we ask ourselves in writing workshops, annoyingly). I mean, it was about yoga and motherhood and allegedly about how the first made her better understand the second, but then, see, we were all wrapped up in what felt like her unresolved and still raw pain about her parents' divorce and then this related to her husband's depression (which I had not noticed, because I was engrossed in the other things this book is about), and then I felt like I didn't get at all how yoga made her better understand motherhood. But maybe I missed something. I dunno; in the end, I thought it was a good book and I will pass it on to my pregnant yoga teacher, but well, Ms. D., I still have some questions for you.
May 2, 2012
When I saw the title of this book, it turned me off, to be honest. Those of you who know me, know that I practice yoga. So, let's just say I had my doubts. However, the book was a good read. The nonfiction narrative takes place over many years while she is working, raising a family, bucking up a sometimes depressed husband, and so on. They are both writers. She started yoga after injuring her back while breastfeeding/carrying around her first child. From that first yoga class, she started a yoga journey that she stuck with during moves and difficult times. There is not too much yoga language, sanskrit, new age malarkey, or some of the items that turn people off to yoga. It does tell how her yoga practice helped her understand some of what was going on in her life. Best of all, she studied with everyone, from the inexperienced down the street to the "guru" John Friend in Boulder, Colorado. Interesting read. She also (perhaps by accident) communicates that yoga is a long-time practice and over the years, the practice will change. What you once wanted to accomplish becomes less important as you begin to better understand your body and not struggle in your psoes.
October 31, 2017
Credo che un parto gemellare sia meno faticoso di concludere questo libro.
L'autrice prende spunto dalle lezioni di yoga per parlarci della sua vita (e sti cazzi?per usare un francesismo...io odio leggere la vita di perfetti sconosciuti) e di come lo yoga gliel'abbia cambiata.
La realtà è invece un'altra: prende spunto da una posizione di yoga e si mette a sproloquiare su quanto sia una madre fantastica, anche se ha appena fatto 30 anni e quindi è vecchia decrepita pronta alla pensione (sentito Governo? la pensione si deve dare a 30 anni, altro che 67!); quindi la posizione del bambino è una scusa per parlare della sua infanzia, quella della montagna per parlare della sua infanzia (ma qualche anno dopo), ritorna sta posizione del bambino (5 volte mi hai propinato il bambino...5!) e torniamo nel 1973 quando mamma hippie ha mollato papà per il toy boy, e avanti così per 328 pagine.
Un'evoluzione però della persona si è vista, verso il capitolo finale: da brava pancina ripiena d'amore (se non seguite Il Signor Distruggere su fb e quindi non capite la citazione, rimediate subito!), che pensa solo alla prole e non ha alcuna intenzione di tornare a "fare la sporcacciona" (semicit.) col marito per almeno altri 6 anni, diventa un po' meno egocentrica e più aperta a riconoscere le cavolate propinate nei capitoli precedenti.
Non fosse stato per la gara col cavolo che l'avrei finito! l'avrei cestinato (anzi, cancellato dal kobo) alla frase "sono vecchia io! ho 31 anni e li sento tutti!" (io ne ho 28....mi sento tirata in causa).
EDIT: dimenticavo la parte in cui ho iniziato ad odiare la scrittrice: c'è una manifestazione in centro, con gente che spacca le vetrine e la polizia costretta a bloccarli e lei che fa? rimpiange di non aver portato la bimba di 2 anni lì in mezzo e trova molto simpatici "questi teppisti che spaccano i negozi". Fatti curare donna...
May 25, 2017
I had skipped this when it came out in 2011 and never felt the lack. But reviews of her just-published memoir have piqued my interest, so I'll read this while I wait for a copy of Love and Trouble.... Upon finishing: Okay, that was all right. I need a Claire Dederer break, though. It's one of those memoirs that tries to enlists readers who share the worldview and have the same worries and life trajectories as the author (read: being an affluent wife and mother, worried about being "good" in all ways), and if a reader hasn't experienced that lifestyle or doesn't share those concerns then not only is there less to appreciate (via "aha" recognition), but the risk of being deeply annoyed by the book/author increases. Which is to say: I squinted and tried to read it as fiction about yoga studios and as a sociological depiction of Seattle circa 1999. It's a little long-winded and glib (esp. about the 1999 WTO protest, which she all gets wrong), and the yoga pose-corresponds-to-personal problem was too forced, but I'l read her again.
December 31, 2013
I read "Poser: My Life in 23 Yoga Poses" by Claire Dederer in 2 days. It's fast and clever and beautiful.
"Beginning is hard. But it's also lucky."
Ms. Dederer uses yoga poses to divvy and dissect her life and realizations - a conceit that will probably weary non-yoga-enthusiasts, and annoyed me from time to time (and I adore yoga and credit it for much that is calm and stable in my life) (the structure also gets a bit forced as the book goes along).
"Time was a continent we walked across… I remember only patches; my memory is piebald, calico."
But "Poser" is also funny and real.
"Now I am going to tell you the secret to a lasting marriage: Choose a spouse who needs to eat as often as you do. Bruce and I are like toddlers on a big day out. We need a snack, no matter where we are going or howling we are going to be gone. If we are headed out for dinner, we bring a baggie of cut-up cheese for the car ride to the restaurant."
The trials of a modern American (white, upper class, liberal, Seattle) mother and writer are laid out in witty banter and often gorgeous poignant language.
"Now the words came out, irretrievable and hurtling, like young soldiers rushing to certain glorious death… The room went hot and bright. The lamplight spangled. There was a pounding in my ears like a bloody ocean."
I had one nagging complaint throughout the book. I understand that children of divorce often feel unstable and angry and sad, and it's clear Ms. Dederer is all of those things (still) (but with just enough grace to afford her wacky post-modern (and IMHO awesome) parents some leeway). But while she finally credits her mother with being an agent of change and feminism, she never once seems to consider what probably would have happened if her parents hadn't split. Perhaps some semblance of stability would have been part of that equation, but what of the legacy of growing up with unhappy parents, determined to stay together no matter what? What do children absorb from watching their parents go through the motions of unstated or unfulfilled desires and emotions? Or from the voiced disappointments? What do they learn about marriage and partnership? Is it any better than instability? Personally, I think it's far worse. I find it hard to sympathize with Ms. Dederer's lament about wanting to grow up with two parents who loved each other. She had that in spades with her mother and stepfather, and her father was close at hand as well. I think that's pretty good odds considering the state of American marriages.
"It's my experience that beauty drags us by the hair into the real."
Still it was a fun easy read - wise and sharp and lovely - and I learned a thing or two about yoga. One of her yoga teachers told her to "find a skeletal alignment that was sustainable, that didn't need muscular support to be held for some time." I think that's exactly right, for me, on many levels. To find a place to stand where your bones and posture do the work, and everything else can fall away, at least for a while.
And her oft repeated mantra about learning to walk away from being perfect, from judgment, towards clarity and counterweight - this resonated with me. (I especially recommend this book to mothers - if you have a tolerance for yoga - but don't worry, it's not the om-shanti spiritual talk - Ms. Dederer appears to have the same knee jerk reaction to that as I do).
"Beginning is hard. But it's also lucky."
Ms. Dederer uses yoga poses to divvy and dissect her life and realizations - a conceit that will probably weary non-yoga-enthusiasts, and annoyed me from time to time (and I adore yoga and credit it for much that is calm and stable in my life) (the structure also gets a bit forced as the book goes along).
"Time was a continent we walked across… I remember only patches; my memory is piebald, calico."
But "Poser" is also funny and real.
"Now I am going to tell you the secret to a lasting marriage: Choose a spouse who needs to eat as often as you do. Bruce and I are like toddlers on a big day out. We need a snack, no matter where we are going or howling we are going to be gone. If we are headed out for dinner, we bring a baggie of cut-up cheese for the car ride to the restaurant."
The trials of a modern American (white, upper class, liberal, Seattle) mother and writer are laid out in witty banter and often gorgeous poignant language.
"Now the words came out, irretrievable and hurtling, like young soldiers rushing to certain glorious death… The room went hot and bright. The lamplight spangled. There was a pounding in my ears like a bloody ocean."
I had one nagging complaint throughout the book. I understand that children of divorce often feel unstable and angry and sad, and it's clear Ms. Dederer is all of those things (still) (but with just enough grace to afford her wacky post-modern (and IMHO awesome) parents some leeway). But while she finally credits her mother with being an agent of change and feminism, she never once seems to consider what probably would have happened if her parents hadn't split. Perhaps some semblance of stability would have been part of that equation, but what of the legacy of growing up with unhappy parents, determined to stay together no matter what? What do children absorb from watching their parents go through the motions of unstated or unfulfilled desires and emotions? Or from the voiced disappointments? What do they learn about marriage and partnership? Is it any better than instability? Personally, I think it's far worse. I find it hard to sympathize with Ms. Dederer's lament about wanting to grow up with two parents who loved each other. She had that in spades with her mother and stepfather, and her father was close at hand as well. I think that's pretty good odds considering the state of American marriages.
"It's my experience that beauty drags us by the hair into the real."
Still it was a fun easy read - wise and sharp and lovely - and I learned a thing or two about yoga. One of her yoga teachers told her to "find a skeletal alignment that was sustainable, that didn't need muscular support to be held for some time." I think that's exactly right, for me, on many levels. To find a place to stand where your bones and posture do the work, and everything else can fall away, at least for a while.
And her oft repeated mantra about learning to walk away from being perfect, from judgment, towards clarity and counterweight - this resonated with me. (I especially recommend this book to mothers - if you have a tolerance for yoga - but don't worry, it's not the om-shanti spiritual talk - Ms. Dederer appears to have the same knee jerk reaction to that as I do).
July 22, 2011
Dederer writes, "I had a sudden thought: What if the opposite of good wasn't bad? What if the opposite of good was real?"
I almost didn't read this book. By the time my turn came on the library waiting list, I was already bogged down with other reads and thought about cancelling my hold. The description sounded intriguing, but yoga books usually annoyed me. Actually, a lot of westernized yoga culture bothers me. Especially little rhinestone tank tops emblazoned with decapitalized slogans like "breathe" and "yoga chick" or ads for vitamins that show smug people in lotus pose, as if to imply that their product is imbued with the same degree of virtue.
Then I forgot about cancelling the hold, and my husband brought it home for me along with his usual bag of library finds. Oh, well; I might as well read the first page. Then I was hooked.
Dederer is a damn fine writer, and skillfully tells a deeply personal story about coming to terms with her unconventional family of origin and her struggle with "goodness" (perfectionism), through the prism of her yoga practice. She candidly recounts how her generation's response to their own mothers' rebellion was to hunker down and try to be paragons of militantly virtuous, organic-food-buying, babysling-wearing uberwives who had to do everything and do it perfectly. Dederer is a few years older than me but I still found her insights relevant. She also gives some dead-on commentary about the graces and foibles of modern yoga culture. It's a wonder the people sitting next to me on the airplane didn't hear me nodding into my book saying, "Mm-hmm, that's right! Yes!"
There are no rhinestones in this book, thank heavens. Just a real story by a real woman who also happened to make me see yoga with new eyes for the first time in my life. I'm glad I read it.
I almost didn't read this book. By the time my turn came on the library waiting list, I was already bogged down with other reads and thought about cancelling my hold. The description sounded intriguing, but yoga books usually annoyed me. Actually, a lot of westernized yoga culture bothers me. Especially little rhinestone tank tops emblazoned with decapitalized slogans like "breathe" and "yoga chick" or ads for vitamins that show smug people in lotus pose, as if to imply that their product is imbued with the same degree of virtue.
Then I forgot about cancelling the hold, and my husband brought it home for me along with his usual bag of library finds. Oh, well; I might as well read the first page. Then I was hooked.
Dederer is a damn fine writer, and skillfully tells a deeply personal story about coming to terms with her unconventional family of origin and her struggle with "goodness" (perfectionism), through the prism of her yoga practice. She candidly recounts how her generation's response to their own mothers' rebellion was to hunker down and try to be paragons of militantly virtuous, organic-food-buying, babysling-wearing uberwives who had to do everything and do it perfectly. Dederer is a few years older than me but I still found her insights relevant. She also gives some dead-on commentary about the graces and foibles of modern yoga culture. It's a wonder the people sitting next to me on the airplane didn't hear me nodding into my book saying, "Mm-hmm, that's right! Yes!"
There are no rhinestones in this book, thank heavens. Just a real story by a real woman who also happened to make me see yoga with new eyes for the first time in my life. I'm glad I read it.
July 16, 2014
I enjoyed this book, so I can't give it one star, but honestly it is not okay. Shanti and I listened to this on a mammoth relocation from the West Coast to the midwest, and it gave us plenty of snorts and snickers, some on purpose, as we greeted and dismissed interminable states like Montana and South Dakota.
Fiction was invented so that people who can't stand their loved ones don't have to wait for them to die to tell the truth about them. Perhaps that will be Dederer's metier. The omissions, including what her mom might really have gotten up to when she fell in with the hippies and the extent to which her wealthy upbringing contributed to her husband's exasperation with their financial situation could have formed the basis of a meaty and provocative memoir. Seriously, in what universe does a part-time freelance writer sample every yoga studio in Seattle without ever considering cost? As it stands, her hippie childhood is simply not that interesting, her problems with her husband come across as fairly mundane, and her kids--well, the only thing more boring than hearing about someone else's dream is someone else's kid. This ostensibly yoga-based memoir is almost as illuminating as hearing about someone else's kid's dream.
That said, Dederer's total inability to recognize her own class privilege in her attempts to speak for her generation of adult children of divorced parents can be wildly entertaining. We laughed most when her meanders into yoga history broke off into personal revelation. She agonizes over first-world problems like whether yoga is a physical practice or a spiritual practice. What's a girl to do? Dederer confesses a childhood love for Archie comics, and has now made what should someday be adapted into a comic book where a sweet LuLu Lemon clad woman must pinball between Yin (Betty) and Vinyasa (Veronica).
Fiction was invented so that people who can't stand their loved ones don't have to wait for them to die to tell the truth about them. Perhaps that will be Dederer's metier. The omissions, including what her mom might really have gotten up to when she fell in with the hippies and the extent to which her wealthy upbringing contributed to her husband's exasperation with their financial situation could have formed the basis of a meaty and provocative memoir. Seriously, in what universe does a part-time freelance writer sample every yoga studio in Seattle without ever considering cost? As it stands, her hippie childhood is simply not that interesting, her problems with her husband come across as fairly mundane, and her kids--well, the only thing more boring than hearing about someone else's dream is someone else's kid. This ostensibly yoga-based memoir is almost as illuminating as hearing about someone else's kid's dream.
That said, Dederer's total inability to recognize her own class privilege in her attempts to speak for her generation of adult children of divorced parents can be wildly entertaining. We laughed most when her meanders into yoga history broke off into personal revelation. She agonizes over first-world problems like whether yoga is a physical practice or a spiritual practice. What's a girl to do? Dederer confesses a childhood love for Archie comics, and has now made what should someday be adapted into a comic book where a sweet LuLu Lemon clad woman must pinball between Yin (Betty) and Vinyasa (Veronica).
July 22, 2016
This is a hard book to categorize. There actually is not much about yoga here and so I was disappointed. It is mostly about her life :: childhood, marriage, and motherhood. The writing is stellar. And I mean that. Claire Dederer can write.
Living in PDX helped me understand and relate to many of her observations about parenthood PLUS the lofty goal of being the perfect mom. I loved her descriptions of the Dansko wearing moms. And yes, I wore- ahem, *wear* Danskos.
Living in PDX helped me understand and relate to many of her observations about parenthood PLUS the lofty goal of being the perfect mom. I loved her descriptions of the Dansko wearing moms. And yes, I wore- ahem, *wear* Danskos.
March 14, 2014
Like Eat, Pray, Love, but worse. I thought the title was a cute play on the subject of yoga poses, but it's actually about her living the life she thought she was supposed to. Reading about someone doing all the things you love for all the wrong reasons was really awful. It might get better later, but I'll never know because the beginning sucked so bad.
May 19, 2012
Sketchy oversimplifications of people, places and things exacerbated by the superficially clever format. At first I loved the conceit of self-contained explorations of life linked to a pose, but the connections weren't there, and the historical/social/emotional interpretations were unconvincing.
Even with the short attention span magazine piece length, it seemed repetitious & belabored. in part because no character besides the author was well-developed or seemed believable/fleshed out. Ironically, she emphasizes her affinity for the emotional truth of novels and I would def read a novel that allowed for other motives & more development of some of the characters--whether as she she sees them and/or how they see themselves.
For example, she swells ad nauseum in every chapter on how her Catholic parents separated but didn't divorce in the 60s & never once considers if their cultural background might have had anything to do with that. In fact, despite detailing her journalistic credits, she never includes any trace of their voices or rationales, as if she'd never asked them. Yet she forces their actions into representing the feminist revolution w/o considering any other factors.
She repeats how her grown brother avoids her because he"a private person," which would work if she were an unreliable narrator in a novel but doesn't here because he is a very well known public person/spokesperson with a long PR career who does interviews.
Dubious attribution is most disturbing when the author uses "We" to mean americans doing yoga, as in her discussion of Rodney Yee(p. 123):
" Emblematic of this inchoate desire for yogic spirituality was the puzzling dominance of Rodney Yee, the only true celebrity that yoga culture had managed to produce....We picked Rodney Yee as an icon because we could project our not-knowing onto him. He was a comfortable, vaguely Eastern, very handsome stand-in for that vast unknown quality that was Indian spirituality." This was not the reality I observed or lived in before or after I started yoga, and, like many of her other claims about what other's thoughts and motivations, lacks any evidence(or even a manufactured anecdote).
Btw there's no chronological, imaginative, alliterative, esoteric, satiric, rhythmic, educational, or allusive reason for having 23 chapters. Not sound, not significance, not years covered in the book, not levels, phases, people, places, tradition--not even poses(some repeat).
Even with the short attention span magazine piece length, it seemed repetitious & belabored. in part because no character besides the author was well-developed or seemed believable/fleshed out. Ironically, she emphasizes her affinity for the emotional truth of novels and I would def read a novel that allowed for other motives & more development of some of the characters--whether as she she sees them and/or how they see themselves.
For example, she swells ad nauseum in every chapter on how her Catholic parents separated but didn't divorce in the 60s & never once considers if their cultural background might have had anything to do with that. In fact, despite detailing her journalistic credits, she never includes any trace of their voices or rationales, as if she'd never asked them. Yet she forces their actions into representing the feminist revolution w/o considering any other factors.
She repeats how her grown brother avoids her because he"a private person," which would work if she were an unreliable narrator in a novel but doesn't here because he is a very well known public person/spokesperson with a long PR career who does interviews.
Dubious attribution is most disturbing when the author uses "We" to mean americans doing yoga, as in her discussion of Rodney Yee(p. 123):
" Emblematic of this inchoate desire for yogic spirituality was the puzzling dominance of Rodney Yee, the only true celebrity that yoga culture had managed to produce....We picked Rodney Yee as an icon because we could project our not-knowing onto him. He was a comfortable, vaguely Eastern, very handsome stand-in for that vast unknown quality that was Indian spirituality." This was not the reality I observed or lived in before or after I started yoga, and, like many of her other claims about what other's thoughts and motivations, lacks any evidence(or even a manufactured anecdote).
Btw there's no chronological, imaginative, alliterative, esoteric, satiric, rhythmic, educational, or allusive reason for having 23 chapters. Not sound, not significance, not years covered in the book, not levels, phases, people, places, tradition--not even poses(some repeat).
November 9, 2012
This was a really tough book to slog through. The concept is unique and makes sense (relating events from her life through yoga poses). And the author is a good writer - if I saw her byline in a newspaper or magazine I'd head straight for the article. But this book took way too long to read - I found myself just not caring about the author (though she is likeable). Part of this is that I felt she created some of her own stress - I also live in a pretty liberal area, but she could have opted out of the nursing, baby co-op, etc if she wanted to. She just would have had to make new friends! Also, with both partners being freelance, some stress is obvious. But if they really wanted to alleviate that, one of them could have gotten a full-time job. And the situation with her parents was just difficult to relate to - the person I had the most sympathy with there was her brother.
I know people like the author - and there's a reason I'm not close to them. While the author is smart and a good writer, I would have preferred this book to be a lot shorter. And maybe a little less self-involved. . . but then I think that was kind of the point. If you're into memoirs, this might be for you. But I would've rather spent the time on something else.
I know people like the author - and there's a reason I'm not close to them. While the author is smart and a good writer, I would have preferred this book to be a lot shorter. And maybe a little less self-involved. . . but then I think that was kind of the point. If you're into memoirs, this might be for you. But I would've rather spent the time on something else.
March 3, 2011
I wasn't drawn to the cover at all, but I was drawn to the topic she was writing about did draw me (yoga, as well as the subtitle: My Life in Twenty-three Yoga poses), so I jumped in with both feet. An endorsement from Elizabeth Gilbert didn’t hurt either. What kept me reading though was the writing. I love the way Claire writes, the way she morphs words into something new; the way she uses language. . . her, um, languaging. Some examples: effortful, forking, efforting, jollity, constellated…
Also her descriptions: “He poured himself the grimmest bowl of cereal ever poured.” (pg. 127). I loved her description of Rodney Yee (pg 123): “…a very buff, eternally youthful Chinese American man with a long ponytail and a serene gaze…”…Yep, that’s Rod the Bod.
I also, for the first time in quite a while, came across words in my novel reading that were not immediately familiar to me, that I had to stop and ponder. This is good! Exciting! It’s been a while since that happened. Claire’s previous experience as a book editor and critic and free-lance writer prior to her writing this book come through loud and clear.
Her book is part memoir with some history of yoga mashed in. The way she talks about her 20’s as being “spent exploring” reminded me of how Amy Wood talks about modern young adult hood in her book Life Your Way(previously reviewed book #60).
Claire hides from her family by going to yoga. She hides from her emotions by going to yoga, as well, but when she gets into a pose…bam! There they are, just waiting for her to face and embrace them (sometimes this results in tears falling). She escapes through yoga as a young wife and mother the way she escaped through books as a young girl in a complicated family-of-origin situation. “A book was a terrific place for me. I went there as often as I could.” (pg.144). This was me.
Oh, and she vomits. A lot.
Sometimes you need to back away from something to gain a little perspective on it, whether it’s your kids, your marriage, your career, your yoga…or yourself. Finally, probably the best message I got from this book is this (and I’m paraphrasing her quote from pg. 297): Act like the person you want to be, when and if you can.
Also her descriptions: “He poured himself the grimmest bowl of cereal ever poured.” (pg. 127). I loved her description of Rodney Yee (pg 123): “…a very buff, eternally youthful Chinese American man with a long ponytail and a serene gaze…”…Yep, that’s Rod the Bod.
I also, for the first time in quite a while, came across words in my novel reading that were not immediately familiar to me, that I had to stop and ponder. This is good! Exciting! It’s been a while since that happened. Claire’s previous experience as a book editor and critic and free-lance writer prior to her writing this book come through loud and clear.
Her book is part memoir with some history of yoga mashed in. The way she talks about her 20’s as being “spent exploring” reminded me of how Amy Wood talks about modern young adult hood in her book Life Your Way(previously reviewed book #60).
Claire hides from her family by going to yoga. She hides from her emotions by going to yoga, as well, but when she gets into a pose…bam! There they are, just waiting for her to face and embrace them (sometimes this results in tears falling). She escapes through yoga as a young wife and mother the way she escaped through books as a young girl in a complicated family-of-origin situation. “A book was a terrific place for me. I went there as often as I could.” (pg.144). This was me.
Oh, and she vomits. A lot.
Sometimes you need to back away from something to gain a little perspective on it, whether it’s your kids, your marriage, your career, your yoga…or yourself. Finally, probably the best message I got from this book is this (and I’m paraphrasing her quote from pg. 297): Act like the person you want to be, when and if you can.
December 18, 2011
I read a good review of this book and recommended it to a new-mom friend of mine in Seattle, who promptly bought it, read the first ten pages and then gifted it to me.
I'm not sure why I thought I would enjoy this book. I am not a mother. Also, I am one of those people who WANTS to like yoga, but always drags myself to the studio reluctantly. I want to be a yogi. But truth be told, it bores me to tears.
All this is to say that this review comes with the caveat that I am not her target audience.
Her writing is very good in certain places, she is clearly talented and witty. On-point analogies and observations kept me moving through the pages. In places it is snort-out-loud funny, if you're a certain brand of privileged, guilty, striving liberal:
"Feeling like I was on the lam, I walked up to the corner market, a sort of glorified convenience store, to buy more Junior Mints and steak a screw-top wine. There I ran into one of the co-op moms who lived in the neighborhood. She was standing in front of the cheddar cheese aisle looking un happy.
"What's up?" I asked her.
"I have to take a cheese platter to a potluck and I'm trying to find some local cheese and they just don't have any time to stop anywhere else!" She looked near tears.
I looked at her her and thought: This is exactly what our lives have become, we are all trying to buy local food in a convenience store and failing."
---
Another reviewer said "There's no there there." That's pretty much how I felt after the first 100 pages. I was craving plot. Conflict. I was waiting for her husband's affair with her yoga instructor. I'm very glad, personally for Claire, that her life turned out better than that, that her husband did not seek greener pastures while her attention was diverted for 5+ years. But it didn't make for a very interesting read. I found myself more interested in the deterioration of her friend Lisa's marriage than in Claire's.
Additionally, the theme of tying yoga poses to various aspects of her life felt like an afterthought and a bit looser than I would have liked.
I'm not sure why I thought I would enjoy this book. I am not a mother. Also, I am one of those people who WANTS to like yoga, but always drags myself to the studio reluctantly. I want to be a yogi. But truth be told, it bores me to tears.
All this is to say that this review comes with the caveat that I am not her target audience.
Her writing is very good in certain places, she is clearly talented and witty. On-point analogies and observations kept me moving through the pages. In places it is snort-out-loud funny, if you're a certain brand of privileged, guilty, striving liberal:
"Feeling like I was on the lam, I walked up to the corner market, a sort of glorified convenience store, to buy more Junior Mints and steak a screw-top wine. There I ran into one of the co-op moms who lived in the neighborhood. She was standing in front of the cheddar cheese aisle looking un happy.
"What's up?" I asked her.
"I have to take a cheese platter to a potluck and I'm trying to find some local cheese and they just don't have any time to stop anywhere else!" She looked near tears.
I looked at her her and thought: This is exactly what our lives have become, we are all trying to buy local food in a convenience store and failing."
---
Another reviewer said "There's no there there." That's pretty much how I felt after the first 100 pages. I was craving plot. Conflict. I was waiting for her husband's affair with her yoga instructor. I'm very glad, personally for Claire, that her life turned out better than that, that her husband did not seek greener pastures while her attention was diverted for 5+ years. But it didn't make for a very interesting read. I found myself more interested in the deterioration of her friend Lisa's marriage than in Claire's.
Additionally, the theme of tying yoga poses to various aspects of her life felt like an afterthought and a bit looser than I would have liked.
July 30, 2011
Dederer is a good writer, and in this work tries to accomplish a number of ambitious things--compare the lives of her mother with her own life and think about the changes wrought by second wave feminists for women today, discuss the anxieties of motherhood among a set of highly educated, privileged-yet-progressive Seattle women, examine her own childhood among hippies and other loving but rather alternative and self involved adults, describe her process of coming to terms with some of her own perfectionist anxieties through yoga classes, and more--yet the book was a quick read. I read it in a day, and found much to admire in her beautiful descriptive scenes. There are a few places--one description of an afternoon piloting a tugboat in Puget Sound as a young teen--where the writing is transcendent.
Snarky and hypercritical at times, it is often quite funny too. Yoga did save her life, but let's be serious. There was not too much despair here; in fact her life has been really good so far--healthy kids, loving parents, an intact marriage to a caring if sometimes depressive man, friends with great taste in alternative rock, and no major traumas to report beyond the separation of her parents in childhood (not much of a trauma in the cultural context--more than 50% of us in her generation have divorced parents). This is not _Running With Scissors_ and sometimes her despairing complaints about her mentally stable, accepting and loving parents who drop in too much to admire their grandkids made me roll my eyes. I could only wish for such parents.
It does capture, critique, and also inhabit, a certain self-involved "stuff white people like" vibe that feels real. That said, that stands in opposition to any idea of enlightenment and acceptance you might expect to find here even as she discusses yoga practice, buddhists, and other means of self knowledge. This is a memoir with some fairly painful blind spots (family "money troubles" here mean shopping at Trader Joe's instead of Whole Foods Market), but it is an interesting rumination on our times.
Snarky and hypercritical at times, it is often quite funny too. Yoga did save her life, but let's be serious. There was not too much despair here; in fact her life has been really good so far--healthy kids, loving parents, an intact marriage to a caring if sometimes depressive man, friends with great taste in alternative rock, and no major traumas to report beyond the separation of her parents in childhood (not much of a trauma in the cultural context--more than 50% of us in her generation have divorced parents). This is not _Running With Scissors_ and sometimes her despairing complaints about her mentally stable, accepting and loving parents who drop in too much to admire their grandkids made me roll my eyes. I could only wish for such parents.
It does capture, critique, and also inhabit, a certain self-involved "stuff white people like" vibe that feels real. That said, that stands in opposition to any idea of enlightenment and acceptance you might expect to find here even as she discusses yoga practice, buddhists, and other means of self knowledge. This is a memoir with some fairly painful blind spots (family "money troubles" here mean shopping at Trader Joe's instead of Whole Foods Market), but it is an interesting rumination on our times.
October 29, 2012
I am fifteen years older than Claire Dederer, the author of this book, so women in my cohort and our mothers' cohort had a different experience of marriage and family and place than the author and her mother did. That said, my own mother was ahead of her time (divorcing in the fifties) and we were both caught up in the seventies (when I was just out of high school and on my own) with the self-exploratory fads and experimentations that Claire's mother (and, in her own way, Claire herself) was. I identified with so much in this book.
I have never tried yoga, so I was surprised at how easily I could visualize the depth of Claire's involvement in the poses as evolving states of being and knowing. (My advance review copy does not yet credit the artist who drew the fantastic iconographic drawings of the yoga postures that precede each chapter, but the drawings definitely add an important dimension to the book.) I found the whole process to be very interesting, with a lot of my own experiences peeking out at me from between Claire's lines. The author uses similies and metaphors in freshly surprising ways, sometimes smacking me awake and delighting me as much as when I first encountered T. S. Eliot's "patient etherised on a table" in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." I enjoyed the quality of the writing in and of itself; but the slow release (as in Claire's yoga) of what this book taught me, the wisdom gleaned for myself, is what I found most striking about Poser. I simply understand so much more—about myself, about my own family, about our development over our lifetimes—than I did before I read the book.
Ironically, the book bogged down a bit for me when Claire found her own answers, but once I closed the book and put it on my shelf, I found myself pulled to consider the unfolding of my own life and strivings in the crucible of the world into which I was born. This, to me, has been the greatest value of reading this book: I came away with greater insight into my own poses and the way they have changed me and with me. 4.5 stars for Poser.
I have never tried yoga, so I was surprised at how easily I could visualize the depth of Claire's involvement in the poses as evolving states of being and knowing. (My advance review copy does not yet credit the artist who drew the fantastic iconographic drawings of the yoga postures that precede each chapter, but the drawings definitely add an important dimension to the book.) I found the whole process to be very interesting, with a lot of my own experiences peeking out at me from between Claire's lines. The author uses similies and metaphors in freshly surprising ways, sometimes smacking me awake and delighting me as much as when I first encountered T. S. Eliot's "patient etherised on a table" in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." I enjoyed the quality of the writing in and of itself; but the slow release (as in Claire's yoga) of what this book taught me, the wisdom gleaned for myself, is what I found most striking about Poser. I simply understand so much more—about myself, about my own family, about our development over our lifetimes—than I did before I read the book.
Ironically, the book bogged down a bit for me when Claire found her own answers, but once I closed the book and put it on my shelf, I found myself pulled to consider the unfolding of my own life and strivings in the crucible of the world into which I was born. This, to me, has been the greatest value of reading this book: I came away with greater insight into my own poses and the way they have changed me and with me. 4.5 stars for Poser.
February 10, 2023
“We didn’t want to look good. We wanted to be good.”
Claire is a new mom, a wife, and a writer and she is so close to having a nervous breakdown that you can see her shaking hand on every page of this typewritten manuscript. She takes up yoga in the midst of her crazy life and somehow yoga saves her.
“I had a sudden thought: What if the opposite of good wasn’t bad? What if the opposite of good was real?”
“I had started going to yoga because I wanted other people to admire my goodness. I came to yoga with my plate held out, asking yoga to give me the same old stuff I’d been receiving all my life, repackaged and in a groovier new form. Going to yoga was part of my goodness project. And yet what yoga seemed to be teaching me was this: Who cares? Who cares about goodness? Who even cares how it looks? There’s only this: a woman in a heap on the floor....If I wanted to look at how things really were, I was going to find imperfection. What would real look like? Without good there, gussying it up, brushing its hair?”
“We left in a whirl....We carried Bruce’s depression and my anxiety with us, on the roof rack, as it were. They weren’t going to leave us alone. They were just part of the deal.”
“I thought I would do yoga all my life, and I thought that I would continue to improve at it, that I would penetrate its deepest mysteries and finally be able to perform a transition from scorpion directly into chaturanga. But here’s the truth: The longer I do yoga, the worse I get at it. I can’t tell you what a relief it is.”
Claire is a new mom, a wife, and a writer and she is so close to having a nervous breakdown that you can see her shaking hand on every page of this typewritten manuscript. She takes up yoga in the midst of her crazy life and somehow yoga saves her.
“I had a sudden thought: What if the opposite of good wasn’t bad? What if the opposite of good was real?”
“I had started going to yoga because I wanted other people to admire my goodness. I came to yoga with my plate held out, asking yoga to give me the same old stuff I’d been receiving all my life, repackaged and in a groovier new form. Going to yoga was part of my goodness project. And yet what yoga seemed to be teaching me was this: Who cares? Who cares about goodness? Who even cares how it looks? There’s only this: a woman in a heap on the floor....If I wanted to look at how things really were, I was going to find imperfection. What would real look like? Without good there, gussying it up, brushing its hair?”
“We left in a whirl....We carried Bruce’s depression and my anxiety with us, on the roof rack, as it were. They weren’t going to leave us alone. They were just part of the deal.”
“I thought I would do yoga all my life, and I thought that I would continue to improve at it, that I would penetrate its deepest mysteries and finally be able to perform a transition from scorpion directly into chaturanga. But here’s the truth: The longer I do yoga, the worse I get at it. I can’t tell you what a relief it is.”
September 7, 2011
I don't remember the last time I vacillated between love and intense annoyance so much in a book. I was initially weary to read a book about yoga by a white north Seattle uber-yuppie mother but in the first few chapters I was won over. The author was funny, self-deprecating and discussed so many issues in approaching yoga (like, is this real yoga, just a workout, white people finding faux-spiritualism through eastern cultures, stinky hippies who think they're better than everyone?) that at least this wasn't going to be an eat pray love sitch. I love yoga. With a capital L and maybe some hearts. But when I started getting into it as an adult, I also wondered if I was just participating in a commodification of an ancient practice. Am I faking it cause I'm not even religious or spiritual (atheism suits me well thanks). It was refreshing to read her thoughts on the subject. But then the 2nd half started that was so privileged white folks problems and 'oh did my mom give me too many choices in life, I ignored my husband for the 1st few years we had kids so hence he's depressed for no reason' blah blah blah that I wanted to throw the book at the wall. I wanted to be on her side but I just couldn't. The yoga parts were the best and they just weren't as strong through to the end.
October 29, 2017
It’s been so long since I discovered a writer I did on a personal level -- a woman I didn’t know about who is living, sharing planet space, making sentences, raising kids and perfecting yoga poses. Claire Dederer, essayist, is enough like me to make me want to read EVERYTHING and enough not like me to leave room for me to nod along with or frown and think, “Hmm.” I adore her.
It started with “Love and Trouble,” a collection of self-reflection she approaches with the curiosity of a detective. She examines old diaries to piece together her sexual past, which includes an unsettling encounter when she’s 13 with an older asshole, her teen years in Seattle, and what it felt like to have an emotional fling with another writer. Some pieces read like writing exercises, a sort of street map to her life and an open letter to Roman Polanski.
Regardless, I closed the book and went straight to the library for a copy of “Poser: My Life in 23 Yoga Poses,” which is essays about the early years of motherhood and more -- using her place on the mat as a vehicle to dig deeper.
January 30, 2015
Loved every page of this book. The books matches yoga poses (in a completely NON-annoying way) with with author's memories of childhood and of her current experiences and struggles raising her children and discovering what her marriage really means to her. I dare you to read this passage from page 177 and not want to read this whole book...
***
"What?" he said. This may be the most ominous syllable in the lexicon of marriage. And of course there was only one answer for me to give, and I think any married person know what the answer was: "Nothing," I said.
He set his fork down with a minuscule, almost inaudible clank, a tiny little sound that was marital shorthand for "This dinner is pretty expensive. Do we have to ruin it with whatever is about to happen?" There was a little bit of "Go fuck yourself" thrown in for good measure.
"What?" he said.
"Nothing," I said. Really, this two-word exchange could make an entire play about marriage.
***
***
"What?" he said. This may be the most ominous syllable in the lexicon of marriage. And of course there was only one answer for me to give, and I think any married person know what the answer was: "Nothing," I said.
He set his fork down with a minuscule, almost inaudible clank, a tiny little sound that was marital shorthand for "This dinner is pretty expensive. Do we have to ruin it with whatever is about to happen?" There was a little bit of "Go fuck yourself" thrown in for good measure.
"What?" he said.
"Nothing," I said. Really, this two-word exchange could make an entire play about marriage.
***
September 12, 2017
I really loved this memoir (it's not about yoga, really, except when it is), and I wished I had read it when my kids were younger. Claire Dederer and I are about the same age and had kids at about the same time -- and were dumbfounded in similar ways about the ridiculously high standards of motherhood that swamped our generation. I've given it my copy to a colleague with an infant, in the hopes that she will let herself off the hook more than the author or I did.
September 28, 2014
Yuck yuck whine whine
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