I've Had to Think Up a Way to Survive
On Trauma, Persistence, and Dolly Parton
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I've Had to Think Up a Way to Survive
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Narrated by:
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Lynn Melnick
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By:
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Lynn Melnick
About this listen
A moving and essential exploration of what it takes to find your voice as a woman, a survivor, an artist, and an icon.
The first time Lynn Melnick listened to a Dolly Parton song in full, she was 14 years old, in the triage room of a Los Angeles hospital, waiting to be admitted to a drug rehab program. Already in her young life as a Jewish teen in the 1980s, she had been the victim of rape, abuse, and trauma, and her path to healing would be long. But in Parton’s words and music, she recognized a fellow survivor.
In this powerful, incisive work of social and self-exploration, Melnick blends personal essay with cultural criticism to explore Parton’s dual identities as a feminist icon and objectified sex symbol, identities that reflect the author’s own fraught history with rape culture and the arduous work of reclaiming her voice. Each chapter engages with the artistry and impact of one of Parton’s songs, as Melnick reckons with violence, misogyny, creativity, parenting, friendship, sex, love, and the consolations and cruelties of religion. Bold and inventive, I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive gives us an accessible and memorable framework for understanding our times and a revelatory account of survival, persistence, and self-discovery.
©2022 Lynn Melnick (P)2022 Spiegel & Grau by Spotify AudiobooksCritic Reviews
“The author writes with remarkable vulnerability and candor yet ensures that the often-painful memories she relates don’t cloud her critical gaze. She moves gracefully between confessional and analytical registers, her prose both sharp and full of heart.”—The Atlantic
“A riveting blend of cultural criticism and memoir…In her quest to ‘be more Dollylike, rising again and again from the embers of expectation,’ Melnick offers a gorgeous story of survival and self-discovery.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“It is a mighty task to write generously, robustly, and imaginatively about Dolly Parton, who already exists so broadly at the intersection of many American imaginations, all of them flourishing and fluorescent. But what Lynn Melnick has managed is beyond mere tribute, and beyond biography—it is a rich, close reading of multiple lives, that sometimes find themselves touching. The narratives in this book are masterfully presented and do justice not only to the life of its central subject but also the life of its writer.”—Hanif Abdurraqib