Just One Thing with Jen Michalski

Jen Michalski’s May issue memoir “Stations of the Working-Class Pubescent Cross” is a series of coming-of-age vignettes. Here she shares just one thing about the piece:

“I've never told anyone any of these things about me in this essay, and my brother would only remember our being in a bowling league when we were young. I've never written creative nonfiction before because I was quite proud of my imagination as a writer of fiction and because I also felt that my life was uninteresting. However, after the deaths of my mother and aunt, I've struggled with being the keeper of our family history, in finding answers to questions about our ancestors, or even the name of my aunt's boyfriend in high school and for whom? I don't have children to whom I can pass along this information. Our family history will die with me and my brother.

Unless I write about it. Unless complete strangers read it and absorb it, consciously or unconsciously, into their histories. Should I put my imperfect self out as public record? Is this how I want to be remembered? All I know is this is who I was.”