Sunday Stack: First Book of 2024

I tend to place an exorbitant amount of importance on the first book I read in the new year. I’m not sure where or when I got the idea that Book #1 can somehow influence or set the tone for the next 12 months but this has been A. THING. with me for most of my life. Most of my choices tend to be poetry or something to inspire me with a goal (like a writing book) or a title I’ve really wanted to read.

So, considering the shitshow that was 2023¹, I’m as surprised as anyone that I chose a cancer memoir to kick off this year. Or maybe it’s not all that unexpected, given that Pittsburgh’s own Lori Jakiela’s newest book, They Write Your Name on a Grain of Rice: On Cancer, Love, and Living Even So was high on my list.

I love Lori Jakiela and her writing, and I consider her a friend. Several years ago, we shared a stage, both of us wearing royal blue dresses to tell our stories of motherhood to an audience of 500. After reading her latest memoir, you'll probably consider Jakiela a friend, too. In these pages she comes across as exactly who she is: kind, humble, caring, funny as hell, gracious, grateful, occasionally apologetic. ("When you're waiting for a call about cancer, your mind wanders. I hope you don't know this. I'm sorry if you do.")

Fittingly, the extreme stream-of-consciousness, "leaping time" style of this book is like an extended conversation between friends, perhaps at a Panera Bread with a coffee and croissant. The discourse ranges from Jakiela's love of Hemingway and her beloved Pittsburgh to being adopted, working as a flight attendant, parenting and being parented. "My father said many things that embarrassed me growing up," she writes. "Most of these things he'd say loud, on repeat. Most of these things included the word 'ass,' which my father molded like playdough into a fun factory of insults." Indeed, the insults -- directed at anyone and everyone--are a-plenty.

While this is "a cancer memoir," Jakiela doesn't ruminate extensively on her illness or give cancer center stage. It's presented with the understanding of this being a communal experience, one woven into the fabric of one woman's life as a writer, a wife madly in love with her husband, a daughter of hardworking parents from Pittsburgh, a mother of two, and an adoptee. We do, in fact, contain multitudes.

"What you're about to read--thank you again--is a map of mortality, of a mind distracted by everyday things like cancer and breasts, airplanes and emotional-support animals, family and loss, EPA clean up zones, tender humans, flawed writers and artists, lost bedazzled turtles and homing pigeons, and the many ways we're all connected. 'The idea is not to live forever,' Andy Warhol said. 'It is to create something that will.'" With They Write Your Name on a Grain of Rice: On Cancer, Love, and Living Even So, Jakiela has done exactly that.

Lori Jakiela (left) and me striking a pose and hamming it up right before going onstage for Listen to Your Mother Pittsburgh, May 2016.

1. Sunday Stack: Looking Back, Looking Forward