I WOULD DIE IF I WERE YOU

Art for healing and self-discovery.

In 11 essays, Black reflects on the power of creativity for enrichment, help in facing loss and grief, and finding happiness. Drawing on her own experiences as a writer and teacher, she aims to encourage readers to become “generous, generative, alert, curious, complicated, and—especially—joyful.” Although she stresses the value of all creative work, she focuses most on narrative craft, particularly memoir. “Whatever story within you wanting to be told is valuable,” she writes. Her own story, which she has shared in previous memoirs, has been marked by loss: most significantly, of her leg, when she was a child, causing her to wear a prosthesis; and of her son, Ronan, who died of Tay-Sachs disease when he was 2. While she was caring for Ronan, she found she had only 10-minute blocks in which to write. But she used them with determination, generating words and images without overthinking. She calls the process “Rocket Writing,” and recommends it to writers who feel stuck. Another strategy she suggests is asking, “If I had to tell my life story in five moments, what would they be?” An appendix offers additional exercises and strategies for building and maintaining creative practice. Always circling back to creativity, Black reflects on friendship, faith, empathy, and superheroes. A visit to a pawnshop awakens her to the stories inherent in objects. A visit to a Roman crypt underscores the importance of art in the face of death. Creating art, she asserts, can help us “pass through those tight spaces where we feel lost; stories create the nets that catch us.” And art can foster connection, springing “out of loneliness and despair as a gift for someone—a light in the tunnel for someone who needs it.”

A reassuring guide for nurturing creativity.