Women Like Us: A Memoir

Product Information

Tears streamed down my cheeks as the realisation hit that some situations hit much closer to home than others. I've been there before, too, and maybe, I'm there right now. Dramatise yourself as the narrator It’s not compulsory to be confessional, but as our guide you should let us get to know you a little. You’re a character too. She has always come across as a true, down to earth, 'real' woman, who has had her fair share of struggles, including being an army wife, battling cancer, and how her family coped with the depression her son Josiah went through due to them both writing about it. I don’t read much non-fiction, but am making it a rule to read at least one a month next year (please nudge if you don’t see one on my bio/reading update!). This was one I wish I’d read ages ago, what a book! The motives for writing memoir vary widely, from greed (celebs can command lucrative advances) to propaganda (the author’s experiences set down in the hope of effecting social change) to catharsis (a healing of one’s own – and others’ – wounds) to memorialising (to preserve a story that would otherwise be lost). Whatever their motive, most of the life-writing students I’ve worked with over the years are level-headed. They write to make sense of their lives or to narrate a piece of family history. Sometimes they embargo what they’ve written, because the material is too sensitive; sometimes they publish it privately, for family and friends; sometimes it goes out into the world. The potential impact on others is an increasing consideration. All universities now have ethics committees, and life writing is treated much as sociology or anthropology would be, with consent a major issue: have the “participants” (ie any living person who appears in the memoir) given their permission to be written about?

Grab the reader’s attention from the off You can’t hit us with everything at once. You don’t even need to start with a major episode. But you do have to draw us in, establish a voice and hint at what lies ahead. Jenn Ashworth outside her former high school in Penwortham, Lancashire. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The GuardianSometimes heartbreaking, often hilarious and always entirely relatable, Prowse details her early struggles with self-esteem and ho Use the same storytelling devices that novelists use – plot, character, voice, motif and structure There has to be development, a reason to read on. A sense of style, too: just because it’s non-fiction doesn’t mean it can’t be “literary”. Reading such memoirs gave me a lot to think about but I came to realise that even though we humans are miles apart, our lives are interconnected through similar experiences and the things we feel and go through.

Amanda Prowse has opened up about her life in a way that I feel will relate to many, many women out there. Without wanting to give too much away, because I would urge anyone reading this to read the book themselves, Amanda's life has had huge amounts of love poured into it by her wonderful family and husband.

Audiobooks

Choose your tense carefully The present tense will create immediacy but can inhibit measured reflection. The past tense is the more obvious choice but can seem too sedate and tidy. You may need both. I read each chapter, and yes, there were times I smiled and laughed out loud. I'm as clumsy as Mrs Prowse and could relate to so many things she wrote.

The only thing that I disagreed with is where Amanda refers to her readers as strangers. However to her millions of fans around the world, we all already feel that Amanda is a friend. She and her husband always take the time to reply to her fans in her own down to earth fashion, and I challenge anyone to finish this book and not want to count Amanda as a friend. From her childhood, where there was no blueprint for success, to building a career as a bestselling novelist against all odds, Amanda Prowse explores what it means to be a woman in a world where popularity, slimness, beauty and youth are currency?and how she overcame all of that to forge her own path to happiness. After this explanation of writing the narrator talks about what happens when the daughter shows her mother her writings for the first time. She describes the mother’s disappointment when her daughter explains that writing will be her life’s work. For the mother, the sacrifices she made were too great to be repaid with just writing. The narrator then explains the situation from the mother’s perspective. Where she’s from, writers are tortured and killed if they are men, or called “lying whores,” raped, and then killed if they are women. The only people who write where she’s from are politicians, and they almost always end up in prison eating their own waste. The mother thinks their family needs a nurse, not a prisoner. She reminds her daughter that there were 999 hardworking women that came before her daughter. 999 women who toiled and sacrificed, and her daughter comes with a ratty notebook? Unacceptable.Krik Krak’s epilogue isn’t so much a story as it is an internal conversation an unidentified woman has with herself. Knowing what we know about Edwidge Danticat’s personal history, the most probable narrator of “Women Like Us” is Danticat herself. Like the woman in the epilogue, Danticat also struggled with telling her parents her dreams of being a writer. When the narrator’s mother says, “the family needs a nurse,” the words sound like something Danticat’s own mother could’ve said to her (Danticat 220). And the woman’s determination to continue on writing despite her mother’s protestations, because she thinks if she doesn’t write the stories “the sky would fall on [her] head” (Danticat 222), sounds like it comes from personal experience. Amanda takes a no holds barred journey through her life. In 'The Boy Behind' we learned about the problems her son had with depression, and imagined that since he was feeling better Amanda's life was now wonderful. After all, she is living the dream on a large farm near Bristol, and jets around the world promoting her multi million selling books. However, is a warts and all account (or a poo and all 😂) account. Amanda's story shows that even when you get what you have dreamt of all your life, you have nothing without good health - yours and your family's. Amanda's book isn't just for the rich, the glamorous, the successful, it's for women like us.

It’s not just universities that want to be ethically clean and legally invulnerable. Publishers do too, and memoirs can be a minefield. It’s hard enough being honest with yourself (Mark Twain: “When a man is writing a book dealing with the privacies of his life – a book which is to be read while he is still alive – he shrinks from speaking his whole frank mind”), but when you’re writing candidly about others the stakes are even higher. According to George Bernard Shaw, “All autobiographies are lies” because “no man is bad enough to tell the truth about himself during his lifetime, involving as it must the truth about his family and friends and colleagues.” From her childhood, where there was no blueprint for success, to building a career as a bestselling novelist against all odds, Amanda Prowse explores what it means to be a woman in a world where popularity, slimness, beauty and youth are currency―and how she overcame all of that to forge her own path to happiness. I have heard/read and even used warts and all used many times and I absolutely am using it for this book however it is probably the first time I am using it with actual pure felt meaning! So if you don't know who Amanda Prowse is she is an author who has written A LOT of books, I have read 3 with a few more on my tbrm and many more to buy! So about the book, Prowse takes us through her life, from a wee barra, teen, adult and authorhood. This memoir got really close to my heart as I was able to relate to the author's family when she was growing up, got so crazy about books and reading, how the experiences and the people we meet during our developmental stages leave an impact on us for the rest of our lives. From her childhood, where there was no blueprint for success, to building a career as a bestselling novelist against all odds, Amanda Prowse explores what it means to be a woman in a world where popularity, slimness, beauty and youth are currency—and how she overcame all of that to forge her own path to happiness.

Non-Fiction

This memoir was a rollercoaster to say the least, incredibly raw and real - the author really laid everything bare. It’s a story of real life, success, struggles and mainly hope for everything to come right in the end. It’s not all rainbows and unicorns, but I think that’s what makes it a really special read. Women Like Us: A Memoir is an emotionally uplifting and relatable true memoir of one of my favourite authors life and this book has only made me love her even more. However, there have been events and situations that have tested her and almost broken her at times. This is a book I would recommend every woman reads. I would also say if you can read it on audio book do so. Sometimes heartbreaking, often hilarious and always entirely relatable, Prowse details her early struggles with self-esteem and how she coped with the frustrating expectations others had of how she should live. Most poignantly, she delves into her toxic relationship with food, the hardest addiction she has ever known, and how she journeyed out the other side.