Surrendering Oz: A Life in Essays - Softcover

Friedman, Bonnie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0989753220 ISBN 13: 9780989753227

Publisher: Etruscan Press, 2014

Synopsis

Surrendering Oz is a memoir in essays that charts the emotional awakening of a bookish Bronx girl. From her early job as a proofreader at The Guinness Book of World Records through a series of dominating and liberating friendships and secret connections, the author takes charge of her life as a Texas professor, writer, and wise student of her own soul.

Reader’s Digest says reading Surrendering Oz is like having a conversation with a bracingly honest but fundamentally kind friend. In 15 pitch-perfect essays, she chronicles her hard-earned rejection of the cultural fairytales of womanhood as she comes fully into possession of her life.”

About this title

About the Author

Bonnie Friedman is the author of the widely anthologized Writing Past Dark: Envy, Fear, Distraction, and Other Dilemmas in the Writer’s Life. She is also the author of The Thief of Happiness: The Story of an Extraordinary Psychotherapy. Her work has appeared in The Best American Movie Writing, The Best Buddhist Writing, The Best Writing on Writing, the Best Spiritual Writing, and The Best of O., the Oprah Magazine. She teaches creative writing at the University of North Texas, and divides her time between Brooklyn, New York, and Denton, Texas.

Review

One of ten books longlisted for the 2015 PEN Award for the Art of the Essay.

One of five books shortlisted for the 2015 Creative Nonfiction Award from the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses. 

"[A] fascinating read. Each of Friedman's observations is microscopic in its precision, but her collected wisdom, prolific and sprawling among so many topics, could fill a sea . . . For those of us still seeking permission to act, Friedman's book is strong encouragement." -- The Rumpus

"One of the 10 great books by a small press. A top pick." -- Reader's Digest

"Almost an instructional manual for midlife. . . A must for students of creative writing." --Library Journal.

"I find my life on every page, it is universal.  Every woman who can read should read this book." -- Abigail Thomas,  A Three Dog Life

"In these very personal essays, lit by a harsh honesty and graced by a supple, eloquent prose style, the author has dug deep and found her own truth, and in the process triumphantly reconciled with a flawed self." -- Phillip Lopate, The Art of the Personal Essay

"Bonnie Friedman has never needed to go looking for the extraordinary; she finds it on the pavement under her feet.  Read these essays -- you won't soon forget them." -- Kathryn Harrison, New York Times bestselling author of The Kiss: A Memoir.

"[B]oth literary banquet and a source of rich emotional wisdom . . . deftly dissects issues of identity and voice that are rarely articulated with such grace and logic. This is a special book: if you're a woman or an artist or know someone who is, pick up a copy, and let Friedman's journey shed light on your own." -- Image Journal.

"Growing up in the Bronx, Friedman was always buried in a book and in college she ensconced herself further in intellectualism.  Then, at age forty-one, a near-stranger kissed her on a subway platform and she embarked on a misguided affair . . . Friedman's voice is lyrical, deeply sensual.  I love her descriptions of the Greek grandmother she met who fed a black kitten a sprinkle of kibble as if it were a chicken and of wearing cocoa-colored lipstick that drifted off her lips like mayonnaise." -- Shambhala Sun magazine.

"From the Bronx bedroom she shares with her older sister to the thoroughfares and cities of the wider world, we watch as the girl grows and gains confidence, both as a writer, and as a woman.  The essays that chart her growth have an internal sequence all their own, determined by their emotional valence, not the calendar.  Dorothy from Kansas and Gertrude Stein, Victoria's Secret and bedbugs -- in Friedman's skilled hands, the quotidian stuff and mess of the world come together in a benign -- and even divine -- order.  [An] indelible book." -- Lilith magazine

About this edition

• Publisher: Etruscan Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0989753220
• ISBN 13: 9780989753227
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 241