Memoir connects across the generations
The book shows how our personal identity is inextricably intertwined with the people who matter to us as well as with our familial and cultural histories.
Born in South Africa, Shira Nayman spent her childhood in Australia and has lived in Israel, Mexico, France and Colombia. She now calls New York home.
Recently, Nayman released her poignant memoir Shoreline featuring essays that connect across distances and generations.
A creative non-fiction memoir, Shoreline shares the joy and challenges of raising children in multiple countries, shares the stories of historical and literary figures from within their cultural contexts and explores friendships and family relations.
The book, through Nayman’s words, shows how our personal identity is inextricably intertwined with the people who matter to us as well as with our familial and cultural histories.
“To live is to grieve,” Nayman writes, ruminating on the deaths of close friends and both of her parents, as well as imagining the impact her own future passing will one day have on her children: “Shorelines never only offer welcome; they’re ever hearkening departure.”
Nayman explained to The AJN that she is no stranger to departure given her upbringing, but her sense of connection with place and people remains strong.
Through Shoreline, Nayman also returns to her Jewish heritage, inspiring thoughtful interactions with writers such as Joseph Roth and with ideas like post-memory, a term coined by Marianne Hirsch to describe how trauma transmits between generations.
Through the exploration of Hirsh’s idea, Nayman examines her relationship with her mother and through artful prose and well-crafted stories about the different relationships with places and people that she has held throughout her life, Nayman shows how “full-bodied relationships are like works of art, defined by hiddenness and shadow, by the bits of emptiness and silence, by the unsayable”.
Shoreline is available on Amazon, amazon.com/Shoreline-Shira-Nayman/dp/1771839163
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